By Jim Morrison Ani DiFranco turns 47 a week before her Sept. 30 show at The NorVa. She has a couple of kids, ages four and 10. They’ve radically changed her work life, though not in the ways you’d expect. She’s working on a memoir, chipping away at telling her past rather than writing anthems…
Symphony Takes Flight
By Montague Gammon III Virginia Symphony Orchestra’s NASA Langley Centennial celebration concerts soar from Newport News to Neptune and beyond, going galactic after a brief orchestral orbit. Of course, the race to space did not start a century ago, but it was in 1917, as World War 1 was raging, that the Langley Memorial Aeronautical…
Sober 3 Doors Down Reinvents Itself
By Jeff Maisey For 3 Doors Down singer Brad Arnold, it had been five years between studio albums “Time of My Life” (2011) and “Us and the Night” (2016). With a couple of new band members, the recording of “Us and the Night” was a way to reinvent 3 Doors Down and reintroduce the group…
Ian Randall Thornton Produces Folk Music Gem
By Jim Morrison Ian Randall Thornton likes to let the songs flow naturally, following whatever is inspiring him at the moment. But he also doesn’t want his albums to just be a collection of unrelated songs. So when he started working on the tunes that would become his new album, “Lineage,” about three years ago,…
Norfolk Chamber Consort Opens 2017-18 Season with Baroque Drama
By Jeff Maisey The duels and competition of ideas among some of America’s early political leaders are famously documented in historical written accounts, but it is perhaps even more fascinating to think of composers from the Baroque period nearly impaling the other. Such is the background for Norfolk Chamber Consort’s 2017-18 season opener, “George Frederick…
CONCERT PREVIEW: The Black Lillies
By Ron Wray Cruz and Sam, it felt like we could go on for hours, and we almost did. I had a great talk with these guys who are in great part the centerpiece of the salty-sweet band, The Black Lillies. They’re coming to Jim Morrison’s North Shore Point House Concert Series, in conjunction with…
ALBUM REVIEWS: Galaxy Dynamite, Skip Friel, Uglyography, Astral
Uglyography “Evil Rays” (Steamy Attic Records) If the producers of the TV sitcom “Bang Bang Theory” are looking for new soundtrack material in future I’d suggest giving Newport News-based Uglyography a listen. My first impression of the quirky 18-song album is they’ve really tapped into the sounds of Barenaked Ladies, They Might Be Giants and…
Social Distortion Drives Past into The NorVa
By Jim Morrison Mike Ness formed Social Distortion in Orange County in 1978 and it took more than a decade before the band hit the big time with their self-titled debut featuring “Ball & Chain.” They’ve never been prolific — just three albums in the last two decades — but Ness has been a survivor,…
Barbara Nesbitt: Tidewater success story returns for two gigs—and some Orapax pizza
By Jim Roberts Barbara Nesbitt was a teenager when she first sang with Rare Daze in the late ’80s at Cogan’s Instant Art Bar. Little did she know that gig would begin a journey that has taken her from Tidewater to the artistic Mecca of Austin, Texas, with a six-year layover in San Diego.…
50 Golden Years of The Hampton Jazz Festival
By Michael P. Curry It was the Summer of 1968. The very first Hampton Jazz Festival was presented (after the idea had been gestating for about a year) on Armstrong Field at (then) Hampton Institute. That first Festival included performances by Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Mann, Theolonius Monk, Nina Simone, Dionne Warwick, Muddy Waters…