Richmond Magazine: Q&A with Noah-O

I'm all over the August 2014 issue of Richmond Magazine -- available on finer newsstands right now. I have contributed concert previews, personality profiles and even some "back to school" features. Go and buy a copy of the mag so you can play that exciting new game, "Find Don Harrison's Byline." 

One of this month's articles is a Q&A with Richmond-area rapper Noah Oddo, a.k.a. Noah-O, who just recently dropped a fine new disc called Monument Avenue.

It begins:

Noah Oddo, aka Noah-O, went national a few years ago when the video for his song “I Got It” won airplay on MTV. Since then, the Henrico-based hip-hop artist and producer has been fostering area talent through his Charged Up Entertainment company, while working on his latest disc, Monument Avenue. 

Peppered with appearances from fellow River City hip-hoppers, Oddo’s 14-song collaboration with producer Taylor Whitelow is an ambitious sonic travelogue through life in the Richmond he knows, with live instrumentation, creative arrangements and unflinching wordplay about single mothers, subtle racism and the power of music. 

Read the rest by clicking right here.

For more on Noah-O and his new disc, go to this spot.

Coastal Virginia Magazine: Beyond the Voices

Hear ye, hear ye...

My feature article on Studio Center, titled "Beyond the Voices," is now available at the Coastal Virginia Magazine website.

Founded by the legendary Warren Miller, and now owned by former radio executive William "Woody" Prettyman, the Virginia Beach-based Studio Center boasts multiple locations across the U.S., and has grown from a recording studio and voice talent agency into a "we do it all" kind of operation -- media translations, 3D animation, graphic design, GPS automobile prompts, you name it.

"Beyond the Voices," which is in Coastal Virginia's July issue (on sale now), starts out like this.

The first thing you notice when you visit Studio Center is the smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

“Help yourselves,” Chris Wilson says as she offers a plate of gooey goodness to the group of visitors relaxing in the recording studio’s well-cushioned lounge, tricked out with multiple TV screens and a pingpong table.

The Studio Center staff was directed to taste-test dozens of brands just to get the right company cookie, the marketing director says. Both Virginia Beach locations of Studio Center, including the company’s main corporate office (a former headquarters for Gene Walter Homes), boast video editing suites, soundproofed studios and casting rooms that share the dreamy aroma. “Chocolate Chip cookies are one of the things that Woody likes to have at all of our locations,” Wilson says.

To read "Beyond the Voices," click right here.

Online extra (don't you love them?):  I, along with the Coastal Virginia eyewitness news team, got the chance to spend the afternoon at Studio Center a few months ago and talk to some of the staff. The result is this nifty little short film.  Check it out.

Richmond Magazine: Digging at Country Music's Roots

What do you do when you write TOO much, and the excised stuff is just too good to leave on the cutting room floor?

You turn it into an online extra, of course.

So let's call my new web-only feature on early country music for Richmond Magazine a "companion" to the feature article on the 1927 Bristol Sessions (and the soon-to-open Birthplace of Country Music Museum) that I wrote for the publication in this month's issue. 

Or we can call it a bonus track. Or maybe inspired leftovers. 

Here's an excerpt from "Digging at Country Music's Roots." 

Country, or “hillbilly,” music had actually been around as a commercial concern for years prior to the Bristol Sessions. If we are to judge history purely on where the music was recorded, New York City could also claim itself the “Birthplace of Country Music” if it wanted to.

In 1922, a fiddler from the Texas panhandle, Eck Robertson, met up with an older fiddler of mysterious origin, Henry Gilliland, at an Old Confederates Reunion in Richmond. They decided to travel to the Big Apple and inquire about playing on one of those new talking machine platters. The duo auditioned for executives at Victor, who said what the heck, and captured what are considered the first commercial recordings of what we now know as old-time music.

Read the online extra, "Digging at Country Music's Roots," by clicking right here. 

Read the main article on Bristol, "Standing on the Promises," see an early country timeline, hear the music and get the full Rich Labs multi-media experience by clicking right here.

The photo shown is of fiddler Eck Robertson. A handsome feller.

Coastal Virginia Magazine: A Bridge to Somewhere

The Lesner Bridge is rotting away, rotting away, rotting away.

To get the lowdown on the decade-long journey to replace the Lesner, one of the true gateways to Virginia Beach, check out my feature article in Coastal Virginia Magazine called "A Bridge to Somewhere." 

The article not only details the money woes and design controversies surrounding this project, it takes a look at the state of other coastal connections in Hampton Roads.

It begins:

Driving along Shore Drive on the Lesner Bridge, a visitor can take in the fishing boats on the glimmering water and the seafood restaurants dotting the shore and never suspect that this, one of Virginia Beach’s signature gateways, is deteriorating.  

The John A. Lesner Bridge, a much-traveled Route 60 expansion that crosses Lynnhaven Inlet at the intersection of the Chesapeake and Lynnhaven bays, is corroding away. And the rot can’t be stopped. “There’s a chloride attack on the reinforcement,” says Chris Wojtowicz, project manager at the Department of Public Works in Virginia Beach. “It’s corroding the metal from inside the reinforced concrete, from the inside out.”

Since 1988, inspectors have been finding cracks and saltwater damage in the Lesner, which is actually two bridges, serving approximately 41,000 vehicles a day traveling east- and westbound. (That figure, the city’s official number, comes from a 2008 study and is probably higher.) Attempts have been made to repair the rupturing, often at great expense. “Structurally it’s a sound bridge,” Wojtowicz says. “But it requires a lot of maintenance and the amount of maintenance per year is accelerating.”

Grab the July issue of CV -- on newsstands now -- or read the article online by clicking right here.

Richmond Magazine: Standing on the Promises

My feature article on the famous Bristol Sessions of 1927, and the impending opening of Bristol's Birthplace of Country Music museum, is now online at Richmond Magazine's website.

An excerpt:

Countless books, essays and American Studies dissertations have been written about what happened in Bristol; it’s been called “the Big Bang.” Jazz traditionalist Wynton Marsalis — no dirt-kicking honky-tonker — has stated that any serious study of American music has to include these sounds. In 1998, the U.S. Congress proclaimed Bristol the “birthplace of country music,” even though what was captured was a wider snapshot of rural traditions, including gospel.

The folks at Richmond Magazine have done a remarkable job with their online presentation of the piece -- you can peruse a special timeline on early country music and hear some of the legendary music featured by some of the performers discovered at the sessions (like the Carter Family, shown).

The article can be found in the July issue of the magazine, adorned with great photos and a snazzy layout. OR you can read "Standing on the Promises" here with all of those cool extras: http://richmaglabs.com/bristol/index.html

To find out more about the Birthplace of Country Music museum, which officially opens in August, go here: http://www.birthplaceofcountrymusic.org/

Open Source RVA on WRIR 97.3 FM

Oh conundrum.

So check this out: I start this blog in order to highlight all of my journalistic endeavors. But then I get too busy with my journalistic endeavors to blog.

The one thing I've really neglected to promote on these pages is the weekly radio program, Open Source RVA, that I co-host for WRIR in Richmond. The hourly news and talk show has featured a dizzying number of public officials, artists, musicians and community leaders in its nearly two years on the air, and can still be found every Friday at 4PM EST on 97.3 FM. The show is rerun on following Mondays at 4PM. You can also stream Open Source RVA online, live -- or through a time portal -- at http://wrir.org.

Listeners can also download selected Open Source RVA podcasts by choosing from this menu right here.

And we've just re-vitalized the Open Source RVA website at http://rvaopensource.com.

There, the Open Source publishing division features the work of distinguished Richmond-area voices such as Mark Holmberg, Dale Brumfield and chef Jimmy Sneed, as well as my co-host Chris Dovi and the homegrown Richmond Public Media news team.

Mark it. And may the Source be with you!

Coastal Virginia Magazine: Out of the Dark

The current May/June issue of Coastal Virginia Magazine includes my in-depth feature article on the aftermath of the Bank of the Commonwealth scandal.

The article, entitled "Out of the Dark," details what has happened to all of the shut-down and boarded up properties in Norfolk that were tied up in the scandal, which saw bank executives and local developers go to prison.

The piece begins:

The F.A. Roethke Building was left to rot.

The former home of the region’s oldest car dealership, this two-story warehouse was once a thriving symbol of 20th-century progress and ingenuity. Originally constructed in 1915, it doesn’t fit the standard structural boilerplate; an expansion in 1938 made it look even more unusual.

“It’s basically like two triangles fused together,” says Nicole Turner, a project manager at Luna Development, which bought the Roethke last year at auction for $225,000, a fraction of its value several years ago. The company is in the process of renovating the Monticello Avenue structure and renaming it Fort Tar Lofts in a nod to one of the three Colonial-era battlements that saw action during the War of 1812. The plan is to convert the building into 19 apartments, all of them paying homage to this striking slab’s former use.

“The apartment names will stick to the car theme,” Turner says. “We plan to give them names like the DeSoto and The Plymouth, to retain some of the history of the building.”

The renovated lofts will have an industrial feel with exposed brick, she explains, and the units will revert back to the original windows and flourishes. “We haven’t seen too many of these types of buildings in this area,” she says. “You have a lot of them in Richmond with their tobacco warehouses, and we’re trying to do something similar here with this renovation. This is a historic building, and we’re trying to preserve it.” Turner pauses. “It’s been a challenge.”

Before Luna purchased the property, it had been deteriorating for years, with foliage seeping through the cracks, birds squatting in the rafters and mounds and mounds of indoor trash. “Structurally it was pretty sound,” she says. “There were a lot of broken windows, and it had holes in the roof so the weather just kept getting in.”

The Roethke’s previous owners had bought the building in 1998 from the Norfolk-based Bank of the Commonwealth—for more than it was worth—and then left it to die. Funds appropriated for its renovation were used instead to pay off other loans and to cover 
other investments.

It was only one of many properties across the region that had been dark for years, entangled in an ongoing loan fraud scandal that eventually saw the Bank of the Commonwealth closed down, its top executives sent to prison and four local developers, including the Roethke’s owners, also sentenced to time in jail. The crime? Participating in a conspiracy to hide millions of dollars in losses from Federal regulators, shareholders and the BoC’s board of directors.

To read the rest of "Out of the Dark," buy the latest edition of Coastal Virginia... or click here to read it online.