Bewitched in Hanover

In Hanover County, no one can hear you scream.

RED VEIN ARMY's macabre haunted house attraction at the Hanover Vegetable Farm is a few cuts above your normal spook fest.  Read my Richmond Magazine piece on this bone-chilling Halloween stop by going here.

And for more on RED VEIN ARMY, a group of inspired frighteners who prompt goose pimples all year with special events, run right here.

(Photo by Richard Bailey / Red Vein Army)

Last Man Standing: The Sherman Holmes Project

No one sounded quite like the Holmes Brothers, from Christchurch, Virginia.

The roots music trio were as steeped in the ways of traditional and modern country as they were in R&B and gospel. But when Wendell Holmes and Popsy Dixon passed away within months of each other, surviving member Sherman Holmes had to find a new sound and way of working.

Now available online, my July-August Virginia Living Magazine music column, which is about Sherman's journey, his excellent new album (produced in Richmond by state folklorist Jon Lohman), and how a veteran musician can reinvent himself and his music at an advanced age.

Read "Last Man Standing" by going to the VL website right here 

For more on the Sherman Holmes Project, go to this place.

And to read my Virginia Living profile of Jon Lohman and the Virginia Foundation For the Humanities Folklife Program, click this spot.

(Photo by the mighty Pat Jarrett!)