Virginia Living: A Road to Grow On

My October music column for Virginia Living Magazine has been posted online. "A Road to Grow On" is all about the success of the Crooked Road music heritage trail in Southwest Virginia, and how that region is using the area's music and indigenous culture for economic development.

To read "A Road to Grow On," click this here spot.

And to find out more about the Crooked Road music heritage trail, go right here. 

This, sadly, is my final installment of the Virginia Music column, which I originally started at VL in 2003 (there were a few years that I didn't write it because of other job requirements, but I resumed it in 2012). The decision to stop writing it was based on many factors, including timeliness (my deadlines are often months in advance - hard to organize this gig with that kind of lead time). Also, to do the job well, the columnist has to listen to a lot of music - which is time I don't always have these days. So while I'll continue to write for Virginia Living, I just won't be doing the column anymore. 

I will cry about it, though. Boo-hoo.

And I hope that the magazine continues on with a fresh new set of ears on the beat. This was the first (and still the only) regular music column with a Virginia-wide scope, and I'm proud of the diverse array of subjects I was able to explore (see below). In addition to the main topics, I also got the chance to review a host of noteworthy music releases -- in genres ranging from punk to funk to hip-hop and bluegrass -- and perhaps expose some Virginia Living readers to great contemporary music from the Commonwealth they would otherwise have been unaware of.

Among others, the Virginia Music column covered the following topics:

The early music of Jamestown

The Blue Ridge Institute and Museum at Ferrum College

John Cephas, Piedmont blues master from Bowling Green

WGH in Norfolk and the legacy of top-40 radio

Swamp Dogg, R&B/soul legend 

The Rah-Bras, Richmond punk-pop trio 

Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse

Robbin Thompson, singer-songwriter

The Ferguson Center for the Arts in Newport News

Archivist/engineer Chris King and the People Take Warning box set

The legacy of Portsmouth's Ruth Brown

The Lonesome Pine label and the Music of Coal box set

The James River Blues Society

The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities' "Crooked Road" CD series 

Hobart Smith, banjo master

Invisible Hand, Charlottesville alt-rockers

Music producer Steve Buckingham

Barky's Spirituals record shop in Richmond

The Mockers, Hampton Roads power popsters

Maura Davis and Ambulette, Richmond alt-rockers

The Patsy Cline museum in Winchester

The Richmond Folk Festival

Special Ed and the Shortbus (now called the Hotseats)

Anousheh Khalili, singer-songwriter
Aside Oceans, Blacksburg hard-rockers.

Paul Shagrue, DJ and host of Norfolk's "Out of the Box"

The emergence of WRIR 97.3 FM in Richmond

Margot McDonald, NoVa singer-songwriter

Billy Ray Hatley, roots rock singer
The William & Mary Hip Hop Archive 

The Last Bison, Chesapeake folk-pop ensemble

The Trash Company, one-man Richmond funk pioneer 

(Photo by the mighty Jonathan Romeo and courtesy of the Crooked Road)