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Fiddling Into Richmond: Chance McCoy Brings Bluegrass To Richmond Music Hall Tonight

Graham Stone | September 6, 2019

Topics: album release, banjo, Bluegrass, brady allen heck, chance mccoy, fiddle, graham stone music, guitar, Holy Roller, music, music video, Old Crow Medicine Show, Richmond Music Hall, rock and roll, wander wide

Best known for his work with Old Crow Medicine Show, Chance McCoy has plenty to offer on his own, and he’ll show it off in the river city tonight.

Tonight at the Richmond Music Hall, a virtuoso fiddler, guitarist, and banjo player will be diving into the local music scene with a performance featuring his latest album. 

Chance McCoy is best known as a member of GRAMMY-winning Americana powerhouse Old Crow Medicine Show — but Wander Wide, his debut solo album, reveals a remarkable depth and versatility beyond anything we’ve heard from him yet. 

Photo courtesy Chance McCoy

Captivating in its cross between the traditional and the progressive, the record shows little regard for the conventional boundaries of genre and decade. It blends old-school bluegrass melodies with modern rock and roll arrangements, and rich, atmospheric production. McCoy based the album off of a live residency show he put on weekly at The Basement in Nashville, and the studio recordings here tap into the same exuberant energy he brought to the stage every night, with performances that unexpectedly twist and turn, sometimes transitioning from one tune to the next within the same track.

Ahead of his upcoming show at Richmond Music Hall at Capital Ale House downtown, I reached out to Chance for an interview and came to find out he had actually been staying in Richmond while working on a major motion picture. 

He invited me over to his apartment, so I stopped by and had a nice talk with him and his bandmate, Jackie, about some of his past and recent work, including his upcoming album, Wander Wide. We talked about their time in Richmond and the various projects he’s been working on here, including his newest self-made music video (filmed right here in Richmond down at the Pipeline Rapids — see above). We also talked a bit about his time with Old Crow, his transition from old-time music to the varied sounds of his upcoming album, and where he plans to go moving forward.

Check out the interview with Chance below, and be sure to grab tickets to catch him tonight with Graham Stone Music and Brady Allen Heck of Holy Roller.

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

Rock Is Dead, Let It Die

RVA Staff | April 22, 2019

Topics: Converge, Doomriders, EDM, hip hop, Old Man Gloom, rock and roll, RVA 36

*This article originally appeared in RVA Mag #36, on the streets now at all your favorite spots. It’s a special contribution from Nate Newton, a member of the bands Converge, Doomriders, and Old Man Gloom.

Rock and roll is dead. Each and every one of you need to hear this: you, the “real” fans of “real” music. Because, let’s be honest — it’s all about you.

You, who cannot believe these kids today and their awful taste in music — music you are not willing to understand. You, who “cannot stand this EDM shit.” You, who can’t stand all of this ineffectual “indie-rock bullshit.” You, who don’t get modern rap and hip-hop. You, who think this year’s lineup at Coachella (or any other festival) is “shit.” You, who constantly wonder where all of today’s rock and roll heroes are living, and where the rock and roll lifestyle migrated (hint: they’re rappers). You, who distinguish yourself in the wild with your natural bluster of, “There’s no good music anymore.”

Rest assured, I was once you.

Envision in our future a vast island of garbage, floating aimlessly in a dead ocean. Not one of trash, waste, and rubbish. No, this island of garbage will be built with vinyl copies of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, made over and over for record store day, year in and year out — because the eight million copies already in circulation throughout America are somehow not enough. This island will stay afloat through remastering, remixing, repackaging, rehashing, and re-releasing every re-forgotten classic of utmost importance to the Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers.

Why? Because for them, there will always be an inherent need to buy the same album, over and over, for the next 50 years. Never exploring, never recognizing that the vast musical frontier is generational, and that every generation makes new music for their time. Instead we cling to a vast Pangea, whose bedrock is made of millions of Beatles anthologies and Led Zeppelin box sets. And on this supercontinent are mountains built by the Best of Chicago, and snow-capped with every useless copy of Whipped Cream and Other Delights by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

This musical wasteland will always be adrift, like a massive, rudderless ghost-ship set to sea by the rock gods of our elders’ wonder years. Their gods can never be replaced. Should they be, the replacements know that they, too, may very well be replaced. So the mantra of “there’s no good music anymore” marches on, and with it, the generation of music fans who will always know best. The ones who still want you to know that The Who sang “Long Live Rock.” The kids are alright — didn’t you know?

In the end, the younger generation — the ones whose work you hate — are the ones driving creativity in 2019. They don’t care about your rock and roll; they’re worried about an uninhabitable planet, worried about affording a house one day, worried about crowdfunding their medical bills. They are definitely not interested in being told which rock and roll altar they need to kneel to. They’re on to the next thing, and thank fuck for that. They don’t need your old rock gods. It is time for them to make their own, and it’s time for us to make space. Nurture their creativity.

The island needs to be set adrift. Let the birds shit on it. Let the seeds be fertilized and sprout new musical life; a musical life we won’t understand. It’s time we let the island become an unrecognizable paradise.

The kids are alright… they always will be. Let rock and roll finally die.

Do. Not. Fucking. Resuscitate.

Photo by Rama, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

Astral Plane: Weekend Playlist by Shagwüf

RVA Staff | November 2, 2018

Topics: Glam Gutter Punks, richmond, rock and roll, RVA, Shagwüf, Weekend, Weekend Playlist

Every Friday night, RVA Mag drops one scorcher of a playlist curated by Virginia’s most influential artists, musicians, and institutions.

As you look for that sexy sweet freak this weekend, let Richmond’s glam gutter punks, Shagwüf, take you on a thrill-ride full of mind-bending harmonic reverberations, suited for whatever your night-work needs might be this November weekend.

Keep banging, Virginia.

Aesthetic Anarchy: Weekend Playlist by J Roddy Walston & The Business

RVA Staff | October 12, 2018

Topics: J. Roddy Walston & The Business, musicians, rock and roll, Soul Music, Weekend, Weekend Playlist

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

This weekend as you jam through the post-storm nighttime gloom, follow the boozy, bluesy rock n’ roll of J Roddy Walston & The Business on a musical masquerade that will bond your sub-conscious to a sonic highway of interstellar excess: perfect for all the high and low drama of a dangerously-fall weekend.

Be sure to check out J Roddy at the Broadberry on November 23 with Piranha Rama and on the 24th with Illiterate Light.

Get yer dancing shoes on, Virginia.

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

Toxic Boombox: Weekend Playlist by Tony Foresta of Iron Reagan and Municipal Waste

RVA Staff | September 21, 2018

Topics: Cross-Over, Iron Reagan, metal, Municipal Waste, richmond, rock and roll, RVA, thrash, tony foresta, Weekend Playlist

Every Friday night, RVA Mag drops one scorcher of a playlist curated by Virginia’s most influential artists, musicians, and institutions. As your witching hour circle pit gains velocity make sure to lay waste with thrash legend Tony Foresta of Iron Reagan and Municipal Waste’s weekend playlist: A playlist tightly packed with all of the essential ingredients needed for a weekend rock and roll fiesta of the highest order.

Be sure to check out and pre-order Iron Reagan’s new five-song EP, “Dark Days Ahead,” on Pop Wig Records, dropping October 12.

Cover Photo by Steve Krandel

 

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

 

Old Men Escape Nursing Home, Make Way to Heavy Metal Festival

RVA Staff | August 6, 2018

Topics: festival, heavy metal, Judas Priest, Nightwish, Pensioners, rock and roll, Wacken Open Air

Wacken Open Air Festival in southwest Germany is the largest gathering of heavy metal bands in the world. This year, scions of the heavy metal world like Judas Priest, Sepultura, Dimmu Borgir, and Nightwish converged once again to bring planet Earth the heaviest music in the known universe. Which is precisely the kind of event that two aging pensioners were hoping to make before their plans were foiled by the local police.

According to FOX 8, the two men were found making their way to the festival before being reported missing by their nursing home. The pensioners appealed to the police’s sensibilities, but ultimately were escorted back to their taxi as a “precaution.”

It is not clear if they were among the 75,000 people who purchased tickets to the festival. This is the 29th year the festival has taken place and to metal fans of all ages, we say, “for those about to rock, we salute you.”

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