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Shack Up With The Shack Band At The Broadberry

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The Shack Band’s annual music festival is back at The Broadberry this weekend with a lineup specifically chosen to excite the Richmond local scene.

This weekend, The Shack Up is hitting The Broadberry for the fifth time in as many years. On Friday, September 27 and Saturday, September 28, your hosts The Shack Band will close out the month and the summer with a handpicked lineup of musicians from around the region.

Formed in 2008, The Shack Band relocated from their native Blacksburg to Richmond several years ago. After they arrived, bassist Mason Owen and The Broadberry co-owner Lucas Fritz began throwing around the idea of hosting an in-town festival in Richmond.

“There’s all these cool festivals, and tons of them are in Virginia,” Owen said. “But there weren’t so many in town where you can come for the day, come and go as you please, take a break, get a bite to eat, and sleep in your own bed at the end of the night.”

Photo: The Northerners, by Zachary Norris. Courtesy Broadberry Entertainment Group

Finally, after The Broadberry opened in 2014, they had a venue option. It was a prime location with a parking lot large enough to hold a stage, and also provided indoor amenities like air conditioning, a full bar, places to sit, food options, and indoor restrooms. The Broadberry is also adjacent to The Fan and Scott’s Addition neighborhoods, with easy walking access to those that live in the area. All of this made it an ideal spot to host the first Shack Up in 2015 — and The Broadberry’s been hosting it ever since.

This year, eleven bands will play on two stages — one indoors and one outdoors — over the course of the weekend on Friday night and all day Saturday. Jouwala Collective, Mo Lowda & The Humble and The Northerners will play Friday, while Saturday will feature a myriad of local and regional artists headlined by The Shack Band and People’s Blues of Richmond.

The organizers explicitly sought out acts that weren’t necessarily in the mainstream, or well-known by the general public. Instead, they booked bands that they believed brought out the best Richmond and its regional music scene has to offer.

This made it easier to seek out bands that they already knew personally, but they also sought out bands they didn’t know as well, but had seen before, and that thought they fit in with what they were looking for. Occasionally, they even chose bands they had never heard of before, but who sounded great when they came across the organizers’ desks.

Photo: People’s Blues Of Richmond, courtesy Broadberry Entertainment Group

“The lineup is pretty diverse,” Owen said. “We always wanted to be diverse. It has never been our goal to book a giant headliner and a bunch of support acts. We want more quality than just one name that might draw people that don’t go to shows very often. We want this to be a party for the Richmond music scene and its fans.”

One of the regional acts that event organizers secured for The Shack Up is Bennett Wales. Wales is from Virginia Beach and has played with his band since 2016, performing a mix of roots, rock n’ roll, and progressive rock.

Wales has performed before in Richmond at locations like The Camel, and most recently The National. There, he opened for The Wallflowers along with Landon Elliott — another artist performing at The Shack Up.

“Richmond folks are more perceptive to original music than Virginia Beach audiences,” Wales said. “That’s one of many reasons why we jumped at the opportunity to perform at The Shack Up. Everyone is super friendly, and I’m looking forward to sharing our music with those who haven’t heard of us before, and having a good time with friends.”

Photo: Jouwala Collective, courtesy Broadberry Entertainment Group

The Shack Up has been planned since the beginning of 2019, starting with deciding the date and getting a general sense of what bands they wanted to perform at the festival. They also hired a production company for the staging, and secured all the permits needed to perform in the parking lot between The Broadberry and the Exxon gas station next door.

“The first two years, The Shack Up was in the parking lot behind The Broadberry’s patio, and not in view of Broad Street,” Fritz said. “In 2017, we went much bigger and moved it into the adjacent lot to the Exxon, sourced a much larger and more legitimate stage, and took it from there.”

This included bringing in outside vendors and food trucks, such as New Belgium’s Fat Tire beer, PBR (the beer, not the band), and this year’s nonprofit sponsor, Keep Virginia Cozy. Along with selling food and alcohol, vendors will also be providing stations with different activities and giveaways to give The Shack Up a more festival feel, according to Erin Brennan, The Broadberry’s marketing director.

Photo: Holy Roller, courtesy Broadberry Entertainment Group

“We do work with nonprofits and other brands to make The Shack Up super engaging and fun, because all day Saturday is a long time, and having incentives will help make people want to stick around,” Brennan said. “We will have stuff for everyone to walk away with at least a koozie, and people like free stuff.”

Doors open Friday at 7 p.m. and the show starts at 8 p.m. with The Northerners. On Saturday, doors open at 2 p.m. and the first set begins at 3 p.m. with Weekend Plans and ends at 1 a.m. inside The Broadberry with Fear of Music. For full lineup, tickets, and other info, click here.

Top Photo: The Shack Band, via Facebook

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

EVENT: Yell At The Lee Statue, While Drinking Out Of A Container In A Brown Bag

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*Only the most ridiculous parts of this story are true. 

In what can only be described as the apex of neo-Confederate resistance, local Richmond residents on October 23 are planning on gathering once again in the shadow of Lee Monument – this time to yell at the statue, while drinking out of a container in a brown bag.

This comes on the heels of the unsuccessful rally to gain the world-record for yelling the world’s longest “Yea Boi” at Lee Monument this past September. While this event was abandoned due to circumstances particular to the organizers, this most recent rally combines two of Richmond’s most notable pastimes; namely, monuments to slave owning rebels, and drinking out of brown paper bags.

The event page does not specify what should be drank out of said bags, but given Richmond’s prior history, one could surmise that it will almost certainly be Pabst Blue Ribbon, known colloquially as PBR. However, National Bohemian (known in some circles as “Nattie Bo”), Mad Dog 20/20, Naragansett (beer from Jaws), and Night Train, as well as various cheap bourbons, are also strong contenders.

The history of drinking out of brown paper bags can be traced back to a plethora of legal ordinances and boozy eccentricities, which have been popularized throughout pop culture over the years. Yet nowhere has this cultural phenomenon been more adequately captured than by Guns n’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan.

Epic Party Machine, Duff McKagan

McKagan, a notoriously epic party machine, once famously said, ”The first time I discovered Night Train wine was on one of these epic nocturnal flyering campaigns – which were best accomplished while drinking from a brown paper bag.” He explained the utility of brown paper bagging further, saying, “At $1.29 a bottle, Night Train instantly became a band staple. We started piecing together the song ‘Night Train’ a week later while rehearsing, before another flyer-posting outing.”

Nonetheless, as Richmond braces itself for a rally in which yelling and brown bagging are central features, the issue could become one of core constitutionality. The fourth amendment protects the property of an individual against what can be deemed “unreasonable” searches. Therefore, searching individuals drinking from brown paper bags and simultaneously yelling at the Lee statue has the potential to be a violation of both a person’s fourth and first amendment rights.

According to RVA Mag’s sources on the street, i.e., the Facebook event page, 166 people have signaled their intent to be present at the rally, with another 1.1 thousand interested, making this rally potentially 1,000 percent bigger than the failed neo-Confederate rally this past September. Given the city’s $500,000 expenditure in providing force protection and security at that event, no information has yet been released on what would be required to manage an event of this magnitude.

Some observers have opined that strong language backed by the liquid encouragement which flows mightily from brown paper bags has the ability to irreparably alter the social, economic, and political landscape of the Commonwealth. However, neither candidate for governor was available for comment on the rally – because we just didn’t ask.