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The Richmonder Has Big Plans For RVA

Brea Hill | October 21, 2019

Topics: Doc Branch and the Keynotes, emilio's, jazz, Roger D. Carroll, salsa, Steve Green, The Richmonder Public House

The long-running and much-beloved jazz club in the Fan gets a new name, new management, and a new concept.

As August turned to September, the city of Richmond learned that one of Richmond’s longest-standing jazz clubs, Emilio’s, had become the Richmonder Public House. The process of transition had actually begun over a month earlier, as Emilio’s introduced a new menu “courtesy of The Richmonder” in early July. However, it wasn’t until August 30 that the transition was officially announced.

The new management, three young black entrepreneurs who took over from previous ownership this summer, still want to keep the venue largely the same. “We love Emilio’s,” said a spokesperson for The Richmonder. “Everybody sees it as the corner spot; it’s a landmark of jazz here in the city.”

So the Richmonder will largely remain the same as the Emilio’s Fan dwellers have known and loved. However, the new management felt the name change was important to differentiate themselves from previous ownership.

“We still wanted to offer it kind of like Emilios,” said the spokesperson, “but… of course we want to change it up, since it’s new owners.”

The Richmonder’s curry wings and rice. Photo via The Richmonder/Facebook

However, the name isn’t quite the only thing changing — the menu has undergone a transformation as well. Authentic Spanish-inspired dishes were what stood out about the Emilio’s menu. However, the Richmonder has replaced the previous tapas menu with a smorgasbord of traditional dive bar food. Highlights of the new menu include chicken wings with house-made sauced and flavors, as well as burgers, hot dogs, fries, and assorted flavors of mac and cheese. “Bar grub” starts at $6 with a variety of add-ons for $3, and entrees range in price from $10-$14. 

Live music and salsa night were what brought in the most business for Emilio’s, and thankfully the new owners will be carrying on that tradition. Throughout the week, themed dance nights will also be happening. 

“Tuesday will remain salsa night with Steve Green, who’s been here 15 years,” a spokesperson confirmed. “Thursday, we have Roger D. Carroll, who’s been here for two years.” 

Musical mainstays of Emilio’s past will also continue to perform on a regular basis, including Lady E and Doc Branch and the Keynotes.

“Doc actually made the Guinness Book of World Records for consistent jazz music for the last 35 years here at Emilio’s, so that’s something we couldn’t let go,” said the spokesperson.

Doc Branch at The Richmonder. Photo via The Richmonder/Facebook

Though many elements will be changing, the focus for the new owners is to let the community know that they have a place to go for live entertainment every night. 

“Music speaks the language of all nations,” said a spokesperson. “So what we want to do is bring a place where all the vibes are good. It doesn’t matter what you look like or where you’re from — just bring all your culture here.”

Weekly food specials, such as $5 burger night on Mondays and $2 Taco Tuesdays, are also regular staples of the Richmonder’s food offerings.

The Richmonder also plans to install a sidewalk patio, just as soon as they can secure a permit from the city. They hope to have the patio in place by next summer.

While the transition from Emilio’s to The Richmonder may have seemed sudden to some, the new owners want to assure everyone that the spot on the corner of Broad and Meadow is still as inviting as ever. Whether you love jazz, salsa, or simply a good neighborhood spot to hang out, The Richmonder Public House hopes you’ll stop in soon.

Additional reporting by Marilyn Drew Necci. Top Photo via The Richmonder/Facebook

Jazz Is Phish @ The Broadberry

Justin Mcclung | August 14, 2019

Topics: Broadberry, jazz, jazzisphish, phish, richmond, RVA

The Chase Brothers are the prolific music directors behind Jazz Is Phsh.

Growing up in Baltimore MD, the two brothers began making a name for themselves when they were teenagers while building a fanbase around their original music. By the time The Chase Brothers were in their twenties, the two had collectively shared the stage with Santana, Aerosmith, Kiss, Crosby Still & Nash, OAR, Derek Trucks, Victor Wooten, Oteil Burbridge & many other great artists.

While the brothers turned their attention to songwriting and music directing, the duo launched a series of high caliber, collaborative projects that include Jazz Is Phsh, The James Brown Dance Party, A Family Affair and The DAB Sessions.

The epic collaborations that Adam and Matthew organize have created a connection for music fans of multiple musical genres that bridge musical communities together.

With their unique tribute to Phish, The Chase Brothers have brought a fresh take on the music of Phish to some of the best musicians in the world and created a platform for Phish fans to experience their favorite music through the eyes of jazz musicians.

BUY TICKETS HERE

Fat City Strut: Weekend Playlist by Gabe Santamaria

RVA Staff | March 1, 2019

Topics: funk, Gabe Santamaria, hip hop, jazz, La Cocina Studios, Playlist, rva magazine weekend playlist, soul, The Flavor Project

Every Friday night, it begins again: RVA Mag brings you yet another excellent playlist curated by influential artists, musicians, and institutions.

This week, we’ve got a hot one, coming straight to you from bass whiz, leader of The Flavor Project, raconteur extraordiaire, and man-about-town Gabe Santamaria. If you know his work — with La Cocina Studios, The Hustle Season podcast, and a variety of other musical outfits around town that have benefitted from his skill with a bass — you’re sure to expect the powerful funk, soul, and Latin flavor that comes through on his playlist, along with a generous portion of hip hop to keep your head nodding. Your feet will move, your energy levels will go up, and you’ll roar like a lion as you start your March off right.

Shake your moneymaker, Virginia.

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

Don’t Touch My Bikini: Weekend Playlist by Mike Doughty

RVA Staff | February 22, 2019

Topics: funk, hip hop, jazz, mike doughty, Playlist, punk rock, Ruby Vroom, rva magazine weekend playlist, Soul Coughing, The Broadberry

Every Friday evening, RVA Mag once again brings you an outstanding playlist curated by influential artists, musicians, and institutions.

This weekend brings us the wonderful opportunity to jam out with a playlist from Mike Doughty. Former frontman for Soul Coughing, Doughty is a talented, unique songwriter with a knack for mingling jazz, hip hop, and funk styles into his fundamentally rockin’ repertoire.

Since the dissolution of Soul Coughing in 2000, he’s amassed quite a strong discography of solo albums. However, in recent years, he’s been returning to the work of his 90s group, recreating the original inspirations and giving us solo versions that reveal new ways of seeing those beloved songs. He’ll be doing precisely that when he comes to The Broadberry on Tuesday, February 26 — his current tour finds him celebrating the 25th anniversary of Soul Coughing’s classic debut, Ruby Vroom, by playing it in its entirety.

You can grab tickets for that show right HERE — and you should! But until then, you can enliven your weekend with a highly varied and always awesome playlist created just for you by Mr. Doughty himself. He’s got all sorts of sounds for you, from blues and soul to jazz and funk to hip hop and punk rock. What all these tunes from highly disparate genres have in common is that they’ll keep you dancing all weekend long.

Move aside, Virginia, and let the man go through.

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

Common Knowledge: Weekend Playlist By Todd Herrington

RVA Staff | January 18, 2019

Topics: classic rock, folk, funk, jazz, postpunk, soul, Todd Herrington, Weekend Playlist

Every Friday night, RVA Mag drops a hell of a playlist curated by influential artists, musicians, and institutions.

This week’s installment is brought to us by Todd Herrington, bassist extraordinaire and man-about-town. You might recognize him from his work in a variety of local groups, including Mekong Xpress & the Get Fresh Horns, The Big Payback, and the Cris Jacobs Band (to name a few), as well as his excellent solo work. Herrington wields his bass to create a variety of different sounds and genres of music, and his playlist reflects his eclectic palette, showcasing everything from soul jazz and postpunk to old time folk and classic 70s rock. All of it is sure to get you through a cold, rainy weekend with a sunny smile on your face.

Tune in, Virginia.

Photo by Chris Gamber

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

RVA Global: With The Bombs Came Bebop

RVA Staff | January 7, 2019

Topics: Banh Minh Jazz Club, Hanoi, jazz, RVA 35, RVA Global, Vietnam

*This article originally appeared in RVA Mag #35, on the streets now at all your favorite spots.

On the edge of Hanoi’s old quarter sits the Hanoi Opera House. A relic of French colonialism and an architectural beauty, it presents and accomplishes a perfect draw for tourists — but locals know better. They know what’s behind it.

Quyen Van Minh, a Vietnam War survivor and renowned jazz musician, opened the Binh Minh jazz club in 1997. Although it has relocated twice since its debut, the club found a permanent home on Trang Tien, a small V-shaped alley behind the old opera house and the bustling Hang Ma intersection. The club is well guarded by palm trees, smog-stained neon signs, and a lofty fence line.

“Mr. Minh is known as the ‘Godfather of Jazz’ in Vietnam, simply because of the role he played in pioneering jazz as a respected genre of music in Vietnam under socialist rule, and developing Vietnamese jazz as a genre in its own right,” said Stan BH Tan-Tangbau. Tangbau is an ethnographic researcher, and is completing a book on Minh and the history of jazz in Vietnam.

Minh’s club is reminiscent of a neon-saturated Bossa Nova bar. Framed photos and abstract paintings adorn the walls, while the bar still sells Marlboro Lights — Minh’s favorite. The only sounds to compete with the drone of motorbikes outside are the appreciative murmur of the crowd, and the smoky-horn melodies of the band on stage.

The band is a six-piece ensemble, but usually only four of them stay through the whole set; a five-piece drum set and bass backs the baby grand in front, while the center players do a number on the clarinet and saxophone. The audience is an older crowd. Many have been here  before, and are fine with paying the higher rates the bar charges for drinks and smokes as there is no entrance fee.

Minh is easy to spot: His black-and-silver ponytail, jazzman’s goatee, and the cigar clutched between his lips are iconic. He drifts around the room, saying hello to old comrades and bar regulars, his aura cool and cordial. After a few songs, he grabs a saxophone, one of three in rotation, as his piece of choice for the evening.

Minh is Vietnam’s first jazz star, and today one of the most eminent musicians in Hanoi. His grainy, nostalgic cool is a relic of what fell out of favor in American jazz circles decades ago, with the advent of rock and roll music. Jazz in Vietnam today is at the forefront of the live music circuit, with venues located in every major city in the country. Yet until recent years, Vietnam’s relationship with jazz was more complicated than its seventh-chord harmonies.

“Of course, we had jazz in Hanoi from the 1920’s,” said Nguyen Manh, a pianist and professor of Jazz at the Vietnam National Academy of Music. “It was in metropolitan hotels, and back when people watched Charlie Chaplin movies in the theatre. It started in French Hanoi, with French music, but of course it’s not 100 percent jazz.”

While the French first introduced Vietnam to jazz, Manh insists it wasn’t until the Vietnam War that the country saw the introduction of rock-time, brass band jazz. In Vietnam, this conflict is known as the “War of American Aggression,” in which America’s desperate and futile crusade against Communism erupted in senseless genocide. From 1955 to 1975, Vietnam was America’s playground for airstrikes and chemical warfare, creating a strained relationship between Vietnam’s people and American jazz.

“Louis Armstrong soundtracks were always being put on Good Morning Vietnam,” Manh said.

The period brought many firsts to Vietnam, such as shopping malls and saloon life for stationed soldiers, the first inclusion of the press on the frontlines, and the expansion of AFVN (Armed Forces Vietnam Network) radio, boasting they would play “all the hits from back home.” According to historians, B-52 pilots would cut through the air and listen to Bebop jazz while dropping millions of tons of napalm on anything from Viet Cong command posts to villages of women and children.

“Minh’s encounter with jazz and attempt to play began in the late 1960’s, when he first heard jazz on the radio,” Tangbau said. “[He’d] chanced upon an overseas channel, most likely Voice of America’s jazz hour program.”

 

Minh had his own transistor radio. It was Chinese, one of the thousands sent down by Vietnam’s Communist comrades to the north. He used it to listen to the BBC and American broadcasting stations. He was 12, sitting in secrecy, enjoying jazz hits outside his father’s earshot.

Already adept with the guitar and clarinet, Minh was entranced by the new form of music. “It was something new, strange and mesmerizing for him,” Tangbau said. “He has never heard it before. This is because jazz has simply disappeared from northern Vietnam after the end of the First Indochina War in 1954, [when] the new government set the country on the path of socialist revolution.”

After the U.S. exited Vietnam in 1975, jazz was placed on a nationwide ban by the Vietnamese government, who failed to lift the outdated policy until the installation of the “Doi Moi” economic reforms in 1986. Listening to jazz during this ten-year period was considered subversive to the standing government — a simple playback could mean prison.

“All cultural artifacts associated with the capitalist enemy were banned,” Tangbau said. “There was some jazz that came into Vietnam under French colonial rule, mainly in the European style hotels and lounges. A little bit of jazz was broadcast on radio, and perhaps a little bit of gospel in the churches in the first half of the 20th century. All these disappeared in the north after 1954.” Things were a bit different in the south, at least while the United States occupied that part of the country.

“In the south, under American influence, there was some jazz, although rock’n roll was the more popular genre of the time,” Tangbau said. “There was even a small group of Vietnamese musicians who played jazz in the south. After reunification in 1975, all these disappeared.”

For a few years, jazz all but disappeared from public consciousness in Vietnam. “Those who had the chance to study in Eastern Europe were aware of jazz, but there was just no cultural space for it in Vietnam,” Tangbau said. “It was risky to even try play jazz or bring the genre back.”

However, Minh’s desire to continue playing the music he loved outlasted the government’s restrictions. As the Soviet Union began to crumble in the late 1980’s, Minh and other artists were able to play Western music without fear of censorship.

According to Tangbau, the previously negative perception of jazz shifted when the Vietnam Association of Musicians endorsed two concerts in 1988 and 89, orchestrated almost entirely by Minh. “The 1988 and 1989 concerts really turned things around,” Tangbau said. “Jazz was endorsed by the official musician circle. After 1989, Minh was even invited to teach saxophone and jazz music at the national conservatory.”

The music you hear in Vietnam today differs between North and South Vietnam. Whereas in the South, Ho Chi Minh City embraced American culture with fast-paced Bebop and the swell of jazz bars on every block, northern cities like Hanoi took much longer to embrace anything outside old traditions. “Vietnamese jazz is still on the way to developing its own identity, by combining that with our ‘root’ traditional music,” Manh said. “Many Vietnamese folk songs have been rearranged, also many new compositions using our pentatonic scale.”

Minh was able to transform a prohibited practice, one many associated with pain and suffering, into a new method of healing and growth. His dedication and passion for jazz brought a new, younger wave of jazz musicians in Vietnam, including his own son. The multiple generations of jazz musicians were able to create a sense of community that combines jazz with Vietnamese culture, rather than being pushed to the fringes.

Vietnam’s new push for cross-border education is sending some students to Europe for their educations while bringing foreign instructors to teach at the National Academy of Music in Hanoi. However, according to Manh, as their curriculum catches up with France and America, most students are opting to remain in Vietnam. The Academy began teaching jazz as part of their available curriculum in 1991. According to Manh, jazz curriculum gained significant popularity in the 1990’s and early 2000’s.

“So this is one of the biggest schools we have here for jazz — we are the pioneers in the country,” he said. He collaborates with world-class artists and invites many of them to Hanoi for lectures and demonstrations.

“In our [playing] style, we go back to our roots, one that combines western and eastern jazz,” Manh explained. “But for teaching, we try to keep to classical jazz. American jazz has the basics for every student.”

According to Manh, Vietnamese artists wish to explore foreign styles of jazz, a movement which the country has encouraged. In 2005, Vietnam hosted the European Jazz Festival, while in 2017, the San Francisco Jazz Orchestra visited Vietnam to mark the 10th anniversary of Vietnamese and American diplomatic ties.

That same year, under a program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, and the U.S. Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City, Grammy Award winner Herbie Hancock visited Vietnam with an eclectic ensemble of legendary jazz artists and musicians from the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at the University of Southern California. In addition to their performance, the artists spent the following weekend conducting workshops and seminars at the Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City conservatories.

Back in Binh Minh, time stands still. Alongside young, curious locals and wandering tourists, Minh and his group of wartime survivors sit close to the stage each night at 9 p.m. sharp, drinking Hanoi beer.

There are no revolutions, no seminars or symposiums, no fear of survival, no culture wars, no airstrikes, no bombs: There are simply good people, good cigars, and good music.

“Jazz is a universal language,” Manh said. “It’s more than the war.”

Words and Photos by Madelyne Ashworth and John Donegan

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