Dominion Riverrock Announces Band Lineup/Schedule

May 17-19, 2013
Brown’s Island

Dominion Riverrock is pleased to announce the band lineup for this year’s fest!  Headliners include:

Soulive
Lettuce
Toots & the Maytals
Anders Osborne

RVA bands include:

The Southern Belles, Photosynthesizers, The New Belgians, The Shack Band, The Trongone Band, Barrelhouse, DJ Mordecai, and William Walter & Tucker Rogers. 

Make your plans now to attend this FREE weekend-long event!

Sounds of RVA’s Guide to Richmond and Virginia Music Festivals 2013

Usually at this time every year (early February), I immerse myself in all things that have to do with summer.  While music festivals aren’t relegated to just summertime, I tend to associate them with summer the most.  The camping is comfortable, the nights are long, and the drum circles are constant.  Here is Sounds of RVA’s 2013 Guide to Virginia Music Festivals.

Before I begin, let it be known that there are Richmond bands who play at other festivals outside of Virginia.  Camp Barefoot, All Good, we’re looking at you.  We’ve got to make the cutoff somewhere, though, and everywhere in Virginia is within a day’s worth of driving time.  We have also separated the Richmond festivals from the other festivals of Virginia. We will update this list as more festivals/band lineups get added.  Please e-mail SoundsofRVA@gmail.com for any additions or changes.

I look at pictures from summers past, I break out the swim suits and pop open a cold one with a Sounds of RVA coozie. 

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Best LPs of 2012 in RVA

As if the awesome EPs released by bands this year weren’t enough, here is the list of our favorite LPs of the year. 

It can often be confusing in this digital age to distinguish for certain whether an album is an EP or an LP, so if I misappropriate anything, take it easy on me.  I have very few physical copies of these albums.

I will be making a post of “slipped discs” - albums I may have overlooked, forgotten, or just plain not heard…and I will ask for input from everyone.  If you don’t see your disc on either list, send me a message (soundsofrva@gmail.com) and set me straight.  I’m not intentionally trying to slight anyone!

As always, please support these artists by downloading their work and/or donating to their efforts. 

Here are the criteria we used in determining this order:

- 10 or more songs and/or over 20 minutes in length
- excellent quality of engineering
- surpasses other LPs in similar genre
- superior song construction
- degree of accessibility to audience
- personal taste (yep)

One more thing, please note that Windhand’s s/t release would have been in this year’s top 10, but we somehow reviewed it as a Best of 2011.  It’s safe to say that we’ve been playing Windhand all year.

Here we go x2 …

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2011 Year in Review

Whew, it’s been a fully-packed 2011 with our share of good and bad music.  In looking back, it’s amazing that so much variety can come from such a small city, relatively.  If I seem to have forgotten someone or something mentioned in my lists, please feel free to e-mail me or comment here. Here goes:

Top Albums from RVA 2011
20. Parasytic - Poison Mind
    Long live crust metal/thrash! \m/

19. Dave Watkins – When No One Else is Here and Everyone is Asleep

        Watkins’ experimental folk is haunting and layered.
18. Old New Things – Ghosts

            The Old New Things are where jazz meets Aaron Copland’s Americana.
17. The Way of the Sun - Coronal Mass Ejection
    This quirky garage rock is raucous, furious, and on point.   Thrash!
16. The Hot Seats - Live!
    These heavy bluegrass/old-time pickers have everything down to a T; the harmonies are spot-on, their shows are engaging, and their music makes even the sourest guy in the room smile.
15. Jonathan Vassar & the Speckled Bird - Signs and Wonders
    RVA’s favorite singer/songwriter released a beautiful album in the beginning of the year.
14.Sports Bar/Sexy Crimes split 7” Road Sodas

            Grisly garage/punk rock with well-written and catchy licks; anthemic and Pink Floydian at times.
13.The Milkstains - Hot Sauce Cemetery

            The Milkstains are serious business with their surf, rockabilly, spaghetti western groove.
12. Jackass Flats - Rusty Feeling
    These alt-country honky tonkers have been together for a decade, and their experience and polish show.  
11. The Haverchucks - s/t
    This pop punk band are as legit as Screeching Weasel or The Queers.  
10.After Nasa – s/t
    Seductive Southern rockers with a proclivity for funk…and post-rock shredding.
9. No BS Brass Band “versus” Black Girls split 7”

            When the No BS horns back Black Girls, dance magic happens.
8. Windhand – s/t
    This record shows why Windhand is getting so much attention lately; their slow-building and churning buzzing guitars with Dorothia Cottrell’s female vocals put this album over the top.
7. Lost Tribe - s/t
    Goth punk with some major psychedelic leanings.  
6.  White Laces – s/t EP
    Crunchy guitars and masterful manipulation of electronic feedback make this shoegaze record stand out from the rest.
5. Former Champions – s/t
    These electro/post-jam hombres space-rock out and take you along for the ride, provided you like dancing.
4. Black Market Guru - Zenith Mountain Suite
    Delightfully hazy, Zenith infuses classic, good time pop rock with psychedelia.
3. Cannabis Corpse – From Beneath Grow Lights Thou Shalt Rise
    With every song name brutally weedy, this album shreds with its last appearances from frontman Weedgrinder and guitarist Nikropolis.
2.  The Atkinsons – Mile Marker
    This is the kind of alt-country album that sticks with you till the end. Great instrumentation, musicianship, and song structures, pristine recording.
1.  Bearstorm (pictured just below)– Horribilis
    A progressive death metal concept album about a man dying and becoming a bear?  Fuck yeah!!

Honorable Mentions (in no particular order):

Sundials/Caves split 7”
Hold Tight – Call the Zoo
This Time It’s War/Fixtures – Rusted Screws/Machinery of Man split EP
I Live with Zombies – s/t
The Nervous Ticks – Appalachian Hunger
Les La Britanica – Soft Swerve
James Dangle – One Time I Knew
The Inflatables – Dirty Looks from a Dog
Little Master – s/t
Horsehead/Long Arms split EP
Young Adult Fiction – Paradise Birds
Grant Hunnicutt Sings Jonathan Vassar
Spirit Ditch feat. Julie Karr – Slow Triggers
Lobo Marino – The Reincarnation EP
Tungs (pictured just below)– Poplicker
Druglord – Motherfucker Rising
Mason Brothers – Ghost Season
The Southern Belles - Lounge Lizard Sessions




New Bands formed in 2011.  Look for them in 2012
Cheyenne
Close Talker
Peace Beast
Fire Bison
Canary Oh Canary
Boney Loner (pictured below)

Best Shows of 2011
1. The Diamond Center @ Cous Cous, 1-22-2011
2.  Homemade Knives, Brown Bird @ the Listening Room 5-22-11

3. The Hotdamns, Sonic Nectar @ Sprout, 3-26-11

4. After Nasa, Lightfields @ house show in Randolph 4-30-11

5. Lights East, The Bridge, Tea Leaf Green @ Alley Katz 2-3-11

6. Gwar, Cannabis Corpse @ The National 2-25-11

7. Divine Suffering, Imperial Order, Bearstorm @ Wonderland 12-11-11

8. Baby Help Me Forget (pictured just below) @ Sprout 6-3-11

Best Live Bands/Musicians 2011
1. Baby Help Me Forget!
2. People’s Blues of Richmond (PBR)
3. The Milkstains
4. Former Champions (pictured just below)
5. The Diamond Center

6. Grease Trigger

7. DJ Williams (picked up by Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe!)

RIP, we hold the following dear in our hearts:
1. Cory Smoot (Flattus Maximus of Gwar)
2. Baby Help Me Forget!
3. Page Wilson (pictured just below)
4. Landmines
5. The Hotdamns
6. Phil Pollard aka Phil Slomski
7. Mouthbreather
8. David L. Williams (music teacher, jazz musician)
9. Frank Benjamin Foster, III (Count Basie Orchestra)
10. The Riot Before
11. Sprout
12. The Triple
13. Sonic Nectar

14. Alley Katz