Coastal Virginia Magazine: Chasing Air

Settle down around the campfire, kids, and let me tell you all about a macabre little tale I like to call "Chasing Air."

The special October investigative piece for Coastal Virginia Magazine charts the rise in ghost hunters (or paranormal investigators) around the region, and nationwide. These groups, inspired by popular television shows like "Ghost Adventures" and "Ghost Hunters," are busy listening for EVPs and testing for EMF fields at a haunted location near you. And not just at Halloween. 

For the piece, photographer David Uhrin and I went on a paranormal "lockdown" with a TV-perfect team from Virginia Beach, Paranormal Science and Investigations (PSI). What we found may shock you. 

A spooky excerpt:

Uhrin has been snapping photos alone in the upstairs bedroom. Suddenly, we hear a blast of white noise.       

“Is the radio supposed to come on by itself?” Uhrin yells. “The radio just came on.”       

Everyone freezes. “That’s one of the claims.” Roddy says.     

After checking out the upstairs room, and asking the photographer to reenact his movements, they review the video feed to see if he touched the radio. He didn’t. “But he sure jumped when it came on,” Chacon says.     

I ask about the alarm function. It was turned off, I’m told. “It should be relatively easy to check this out, find out the model and the manufacturer,” Roddy says of the incident. “See if there could be a surge or something else ... ”      

The noisy static blares through the small house, and the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up. We just had a ghost show moment. 

Read the rest of "Chasing Air" by clicking right here:

(Photo by the mighty, and mighty courageous, David Uhrin)

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)

Richmond Magazine: Paranormal Activity

I'll be honest: Some feature stories can be very hard to write, while some just seem to write themselves.

Perhaps I was channeling some otherworldly entity lingering in the ether when I penned my latest Richmond Magazine feature, or maybe the long and strange story of the Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) at the University of Virginia -- the only full-service paranormal laboratory affiliated with a major U.S. academic institution -- was so interesting in and of itself that even I couldn't screw it up. From start to finish, I felt guided by an unseen hand (of course, that could have been the spirit of my helpful editor, Jack Cooksey, who became just as enthralled in the subject as I was).

Yes, as hard as it may be to believe, UVa is home to a privately-funded research lab that takes a serious, scientific look at such things as reincarnation, deathbed visions, psychic phenomena and near-death experiences. My article, "Paranormal Activity," introduces you to the staff of DOPS and the uncommon work that they've been doing for 47 years in Charlottesville.

The story begins:

Dr. Jim Tucker admits that he encounters things in his daily research that he just can’t explain.

Take, for example, the case of James Leininger, a boy from Lafayette, Louisiana, fascinated with airplanes, who began having nightmares when he was 2 years old. “Airplane crash on fire,” James would cry out, an atypical comment for his age. Over the coming months, he would inform his parents, Bruce and Andrea, that he’d been a pilot, also named James, who flew planes off a boat and his plane had been shot down. When Bruce asked him who shot his plane, the boy, a bit exasperated, said, “the Japanese.”

A few weeks later, he revealed that he had flown a Corsair plane, and remembered the name of the boat: “Natoma.” Shown a map, the youngster pointed to the waters surrounding Iwo Jima and stated that this was where he died. He added that “Jack Larsen” was there.

James’ father, a conservative Christian who struggled with the idea of reincarnation, was a little spooked. He did some research and discovered that there was indeed a USS Natoma Bay involved at the battle of Iwo Jima, and one of its Corsair pilots was lost in the mission, a man named James Huston. In the violence of the larger war, the crash was a nondescript event not widely reported or remembered.

“Huston’s plane had crashed in exactly the way it had been described by the boy,” says Tucker, an associate professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS). “It got hit in the engine, burst into flames, crashed in the water and quickly sank. The pilot of the plane next to his was named Jack Larsen.”

Creative Director Steve Hedberg has done a great job illustrating the article, so you'll want to grab the October edition of Richmond Magazine, on newsstands now. But to read the online version of "Paranormal Activity," click right here.

To find out more about the Division of Perceptual Studies, and to watch videos of test cases that DOPS researchers have looked into, go to http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/psychiatry/sections/cspp/dops/

Photo by the mighty Adam Ewing!

Coastal Virginia Magazine: Straight Outta Virginia

My feature article on the William & Mary Hip Hop Collection is now available for your reading pleasure at the Coastal Virginia Magazine website. 

That just doesn't sound right, does it - Hip Hop and William & Mary? Believe it, son. 

Find out how, in bucolic Williamsburg, the roots of Virginia rap are being studied, explored, collected and documented - the early days of Missy Elliot, Timbaland, Mad Skillz, Clipse, Pharrell Williams and more. 

Here's how the article, titled "Straight Outta Virginia," begins:

Kevin Kosanovich doesn’t look much like a b-boy. 

Instead, the College of William and Mary graduate student gives off the veneer of a brainy lacrosse player. Armed with a dry wit, the stocky 33-year-old Saginaw, Michigan native wears glasses, frequents cultural symposiums for fun, and says he’s getting too old to stay out late at night. In many ways, he’s your average white academic fellow living in AnyCollegesville, USA.

But Kevin K., as unassuming as he appears, possesses mad skills.        

The American Studies doctoral candidate can tell you all you want to know about the old-school break dance crews, cocaine rappers and hip-hop street teams of the Old Dominion. The roots of Pharrell, the early days of Missy Elliott, the beginnings of Timbaland, the down low on Danja ... this bespectacled redhead has got, or is getting, the knowledge.         

“How did Hip-Hop come to Virginia? That was something I was really interested in,” Kosanovich tells me as we prepare to enter William and Mary’s Earl Gregg Swem Library together on a 100-degree day in early July. “Who were the people who created this culture?”         

If I were you, I'd go out and buy the October issue of the magazine so you can see all of the cool pictures that accompany the piece, as well as CV Creative Director David Uhrin's awesome layout. But you can read "Straight Outta Virginia" by clicking right here.   

For more on the William and Mary Hip Hop Collection, go right here.

Photo of Kevin Kosanovich by the mighty Jim Pile.

Virginia Living Magazine: Setting the Stage

It's time to take a tour of Virginia's major performing arts companies, courtesy of Don Harrison.

The September/October issue of Virginia Living Magazine features "Setting The Stage," my big overview of the commonwealth's most vital, interesting and conspicuous arts organizations.

Here, you'll get the lowdown on nearly two dozen different performing troupes -- the likes of Virginia Stage Company in Norfolk, Richmond Ballet, Crystal City's Synetic Theater (pictured), American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Abingdon's Barter Theatre and many more. It's a one-stop shopping place for info on the performing arts in the Old Dominion. There are also some scoops -- information on upcoming seasons, planned new venues, possible future collaborations and special concerts and performances. If you like the arts, you'll dig.

(It was been suggested to me that, because I'm so familiar with different parts of the region, that I was the only writer who could really do this. But I think I misheard that -- I'm actually the only writer crazy enough to do this. Not only was this a multi-sourced 5,000+ word epic, it was a rush job as well.)

You'll want to pick up a printed copy to see all of the great photos and to experience that typically-fabulous Virginia Living glossy presentation, but the bi-monthly magazine has posted the big spread online too.

To read "Setting the Stage," click here. And break a leg.

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.