FestivALL Charleston Story Archives - Page 3 of 3 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Mountain Stage Announces June 25 FestivALL Live Show

Mountain Stage will record episode number 899 on Sunday, June 25 as part of FestivALL Charleston. Tickets on sale now on mountainstage.ticketfly.com, by phone at 877.987.6487, or locally at Taylor Books in downtown Charleston.

On Sunday, June 25 Mountain Stage returns to the Culture Center Theater on the state capitol grounds to record the radio program’s 899^th episode. The show’s Assistant Producer Joni Deutsch will return to the host’s microphone, becoming the first person to guest host a second time, filling in for the co-founder and artistic director Larry Groce. Deutsch’s first opportunity came during last year’s FestivALL Charleston when she guest-hosted with Lucius, Rachel Yamagata, Margaret Glaspy, William Matheny and Adia Victoria. Hear that episode in our archives.

Joni Deutsch on stage in June 2016- hosting Mountain Stage for the first time.

“It’s an honor and a privilege to step up to the Mountain Stage microphone,” says Deutsch, “Last year we kept my guest hosting a surprise up until show time. This time around, I’m happy to be able to say loudly, and proudly, ‘I’ll be guest hosting Mountain Stage for the second time on June 25.’ ”

As part of a new initiative, tickets will be available for seven days exclusively to Mountain Stage Members, who make a sustaining gift to Mountain Stage via this new membership form:

https://secure.wvpublic.org/donate/mtnstage.php

Mountain Stage Members will be given exclusive ticket pre-sale access, plus monthly newsletters, playlists, behind the scenes updates from the Mountain Stage staff, as well as periodic discounts and other special offers.

Advance tickets for the show are $30 and will be placed on sale to the public on Friday, March 31 at 10a.m. Tickets can be purchased online at mountainstage.ticketfly.com, by phone at 877.987.6487, or locally at Taylor Books, 226 Capitol Street in downtown Charleston.

Scheduled to appear on June 25 is the Marcus King Band, led by up and coming guitarist, singer and songwriter Marcus King. The band made a big impact with the release of their 2015 album “Soul Insight.” Raised in Greenville, South Carolina, King was brought up on the blues, playing shows as a pre-teen sideman with his father—bluesman Marvin King—before striking out on his own.

King and company are making their national television debut on Saturday, March 25 on CBS This Morning.

Their latest release, “The Marcus King Band,” was written on the road and recorded during a series of live takes at Carriage House Studios in Stamford, CT. The album captures the energy of the band’s blazing live show, as well as the talent of a rising young songwriter reaching well beyond his years. Joining the band on the new album are a number of mentors and collaborators, including Derek Trucks (who plays guitar on “Self-Hatred”).

No guest plays a bigger role than Warren Haynes, though. A longtime champion of King’s songwriting and guitar prowess, Haynes produced every track on “The Marcus King Band” (and contributed his trademark slide guitar on “Virginia”), expertly capturing the group’s live sound for a cohesive collection reflecting the band’s expansive explorations.

Joining the Marcus King Band is “Nashville’s best-kept secret” singer-songwriter Tristen, who gained notice as an artist with “pop hooks and pure inspiration” through her 2011 folk-oriented record Charlatans at the Garden Gate and was later recast as “a synth-pop siren” with her 2013 record CAVES. Tristen has a reputation for having a “preternatural sense of melody, energetic live shows and emotive vocals” and bringing along Nashville’s hottest musicians as her backing band. Both of her albums were named the best local album by the Nashville Scene and placed in American Songwriter’s top 50 albums of their respective years.

Tristen will make her Mountain Stage debut on June 25 as part of FestivALL.

Tristen spent 2015 as a backing singer and keyboard player in Jenny Lewis’s band and released her first book of poetry, Saturnine, in 2016 which features a foreword by rock and roll poet Ezra Furman. Tristen’s new record Sneaker Waves is due out in 2017.

A complete list of Mountain Stage events can be found at mountainstage.org/shows.

Mountain Stage is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting and distributed by NPR Music. This episode will be scheduled for nationally distribution later this year to 211 affiliate stations across the country.

Lucius to Appear on Mountain Stage During FestivALL Charleston

Mountain Stage with Larry Groce, the long-running live-performance radio program based in Charleston, WV, is pleased to announce that critically-acclaimed indie pop group Lucius will return to Mountain Stage on Sunday, June 26, 2016 at the Culture Center Theater. The show will be presented at FestivALL Charleston by Holiday Inn & Suites at the Capitol Conference Center.

Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 day of show, available Friday, February 26 at 10 a.m. on mountainstage.org, by phone at 877-987-6487, locally at Taylor Books in downtown Charleston and also at Mountain Stage’s upcoming live shows.

Paste Magazine describes Lucius as “…a display that employs collaborative percussion, eye-catching stage props and a symbiosis of themselves and their audience.” That’s exactly what our audience experienced back in June 2013, when Lucius made their Mountain Stage debut on the campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown. Since then, the band has collaborated with acts ranging from Jeff Tweedy to David Byrne and have toured with The Decemberists, My Morning Jacket, Jack White and more.

March 2016 marks the release of their sophomore release Good Grief, which was produced by Shawn Everett (Alabama Shakes, Weezer and The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas). Check out the fan-made lyric video for Lucius’ new single “Born Again Teen” below.

More acts for this June 26 show will be announced soon. Stay up to date on Mountain Stage show news and ticket deals by following us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & Tumblr and signing up for our e-mail newsletter. If you’re looking to discover new music between now and then, subscribe to the Mountain Stage podcast on iTunes.

Art Curator Discusses Children's Exhibit

This is the time of year when the city of Charleston becomes a work of art. FestivALL runs through this week an includes concerts of all kinds of music, theater, shows, dances and, of course, art.

At the Clay Center this week is “Art for ALL: A Juried Children’s Exhibit” with works from children ages pre-K to 6th grade.

When you see it, you will notice the beautiful dioramas, drawings and paintings, but also take a look at how these works are displayed.

This exhibit employs it’s own curator. We spoke with Amanda Rogers, an art history major from West Virginia University, as she prepared to go to work.

Amanda Rogers holds one of the paintings featured in the children’s art exhibit she is curating at the Clay Center.

Let's Talk #WVmusic

Hey, West Virginia. It’s me, Joni Deutsch, your friendly neighborhood public radio host. You have a second to talk #WVmusic? Cool? Cool.

It’s been almost a year since I started “changing tunes” on WVPB’s ‘A Change of Tune.’ Mind you, the original idea was to play music, different music, that West Virginia wasn’t receiving on mainstream radio. “Surely,” I thought, “I’m not the only who wants Alt-J and The Roots alongside Genesis and Stevie Wonder?”

It wasn’t too long before the program expanded to interviews with artists that I loved to play. This was all good and well and Ira Glass-y, but it still felt like something was missing from my music formula. Sure, I can mention pepperoni rolls to Iron & Wine and, yes, I can talk about coal musicals with Yeasayer’s Anand Wilder, but how are those non-WV artist stories keeping to WVPB’s tagline of “Telling West Virginia’s Story?”

And that’s where #WVmusic comes into play. I’ve only scratched the West Virginia music surface with my recent artist/band chats (see: Rozwell Kid and Ona), but if you’re a lover of all things #WVmusic, the next week should be right up your alley.

Left of the Dial: A Conversation about Building West Virginia’s Music Scene

Moderated by WVPB’s Dave Mistich, this panel will consist of me, rocker/producer Bud Carroll, singer-songwriter Todd Burge and producer Eddie Ashworth talking about West Virginia’s music scene. If you’re a fan of the Mountain State’s music scene or a rocker with questions about how to “make it,” we’d love to see ya at The Boulevard Tavern from 4-6pm this Saturday.

Other FestivALL Charleston events

Speaking of which, have you checked out the FestivALL schedule? Walk around any ol’ part of Charleston this week, and you’re bound to find (and hear) some great West Virginia artists like Wilbur by the Sea, Carpenter Ants, Christopher Vincent and more.

The #WVmusic episode of ‘A Change of Tune’

Tune in this Saturday at 10pm EST on West Virginia Public Broadcasting for a West Virginia indie/alt music edition of ‘A Change of Tune.’ And since we can’t fit every bit of #WVmusic into our program, we’ve made a handy-dandy 3-hour playlist for you. Did we miss an artist/band? Let us know!

Oh, and one more thing…

My goal in the next year is to map out West Virginia’s music scene, and I mean literally map it out when it comes to artists/bands, hometown locations, venues and genres. Whether you’re a West Virginia singer-songwriter, you’re in a West Virginia band or you just know a lot about the West Virginia music scene, take a sec to fill out this survey and share it with others.

Duck and Cover, Because "The Blob" is Coming to FestivALL

In September 1958, The Blob, an independent horror, science-fiction film was released by Paramount Pictures and Umbrella Entertainment. Starring Steve McQueen in his debut role, the film left a permanent mark in Americans’ minds, and in 2006, Charleston’s Contemporary Youth Arts Company took the film a step further, writing their own adaptation of the classic film in the form of a musical.

“It’s the Steve McQueen movie,” said playwright and director Dan Kehde, “and we just thought wouldn’t it be fun to put it on stage. We turned it into a full-fledged musical, so this is song and dance. And it’s not high-tech and there’s no…it’s an interesting Blob when you see it. It’s just campy. But it’s been a lot of fun, and over the years, I finally…actually we got permission from Jack Harris, who was the original producer of the original movie, who’s still alive, to go ahead and do this for FestivALL this year. And it’s been pretty exciting. But it’s funny, and it’s family friendly, and the worst thing that’s gonna happen is parents are gonna have to explain the history of the Cold War to their kids. But besides that it’s just a lot of fun.”

This is the third time the Contemporary Youth Arts Company of Charleston will produce The Blob, the first of which was in September 2006 and the second in September 2009. The story takes place in the year 1957 in the small town of Downingtown, Pennsylvania. One fateful night, a meteor falls from space and lands in the middle of a farm, where a curious farmer goes to investigate. What he finds however, is a small oozing blob slinking out of the meteor. To the farmer’s horror, the Blob attaches itself to his arm, and soon after, Steve and Jane, the main characters, find the farmer pleading for help. They agree to aide him, and the two teens take the farmer to the town’s doctor.

“And his arm is slowly being consumed, and so the doctor calls in the nurse, and as the doctor calls in the nurse, the Blob consumes the farmer, and then the Blob consumes the nurse, and then the Blob consumes the doctor. And nobody believes the two teenagers who found the original, the farmer, that there’s a monster out there. So they’re running around the town trying to convince the town that there’s a monster out there.”

Kehde says that even though this is CYAC’s third time producing The Blob, things haven’t necessarily gotten easier and that with each new production, they are presented with new ideas and new challenges.

“To try to adapt a movie onto the stage, without any kind of camera angles, close-ups, special effects, it’s very difficult. It’s very hard to make it entertaining and keep the plot line going, and I don’t know what the hardest thing was, I guess maybe that final scene with the diner and the fire-extinguishers has always been tricky, it should work this time. We’re going to build the diner on stage. Yeah, that would be the toughest one. And to educate everybody in the cast what this thing is about, and about the Cold War and about people worried about flying saucers, and the whole nine-yards.”

The Contemporary Youth Arts Company was founded in 1995 by Kehde, his wife, Penny, and composer Mark Scarpelli and they have been producing original theater in and around the Charleston area ever since. The Blob is just one of many shows Kehde and Scarpelli have written together. Their first show, MARY: A Rock Opera was met with critical acclaim, and they continue to perform it annually around Christmastime. Kehde says CYAC began with a small group of high school kids who were looking for a theater outlet that spoke to them.

The Contemporary Youth Arts Company’s, The Blob

“Just a bunch of kids showed up at my front doorstep, actually. And were looking for a place where they could do shows that usually weren’t acceptable on the high school level, that were a little bit more sophisticated. And that they could have time for, because most of the kids were taking advanced classes, and nobody was going to accommodate them. So we started Contemporary Youth Arts for them, and their friends, and then started to incorporate some original pieces that Mark and I were interested in writing as we went along, until we got a pretty good mix now of kids coming in to do kind of fringy theater as well as a couple of goofy things like The Blob. And we get to write new pieces all the time, and try out new stuff all the time.”

Since its inception, CYAC has expanded to include performers of all ages, but with special emphasis on giving roles to younger people when possible.

“We work with young ones from knee-high, you know all the way up to, you know young adults,” Scarpelli reflected, “of course The Blob actually has some older folks, mom and dad type characters too, just you know, community theater, that’s the fun of it is just being involved and meeting new people, and just watching some of the talents develop on stage. It’s pretty exciting.”

Caitlin Moore and Austin Susman, two recent graduates from George Washington High School are regulars of the Contemporary Youth Arts Company and both say it’s the atmosphere of the company that keeps bringing them back.

“I love that the pieces are challenging,” said Moore, “and they’re new and it’s different from what every other theater company is doing.”

“It’s the shows and the people,” said Susman, “You know, Dan and Mark write some wonderful shows, and I’ve made some great friends with other cast members and a really great relationship with Dan and Mark as well. And also the theater, the Capitol Theater is a beautiful venue, and I love to perform here any chance I get.”

“CYAC has kind of become my second family,” Moore noted, “I’ve only been doing shows for two-in-half-years, but it was the first time I ever stepped on stage, acting, and I fell in love with it as soon as I did it. So ever since then, I cannot bring myself to take a break.”

“The Blob is a really cheesy show,” Susman said, “but it’s a lot of fun, and you can’t leave this theater without smiling.”

The Blob will open at the West Virginia State University Capitol Center Theater on June 19^th^.

New Live Shows Announced for Mountain Stage

Mountain Stage w/ Larry Groce announces four new events scheduled at the Culture Center Theater in Charleston. Tickets for all four events go on sale Thursday, March 20 at 8 a.m.

Sunday, May 18 – Mountain Stage welcomes acclaimed songwriter Rodney Crowell featuring renowned guitarist Steuart Smith (the Eagles) and Friends. Crowell and Emmylou Harris brought home the “Best Americana Album” at this year’s Grammy Award for their duet release “Old Yellow Moon.” Also appearing May 18 is Virginia based modern string band The Infamous Stringdusters and up-and-coming alternative folk rockers Elephant Revival.

Sunday, June 1 — Mountain Stage welcomes back critically acclaimed Austin, Texas based singer and songwriter Patty Griffin, whose latest “Silver Bells” was recorded in 2000 but only recently released. Also featured on this show will be the reunited 90s-pop hit makers Toad the Wet Sprocket, who released “New Constellation” last year to wide acclaim. Their hits include “Walk on the Ocean” and “Good Intentions.” Parker Milsap, who is currently touring with Griffin, will make his first Mountain Stage appearance.

On Sunday, June 8, Mountain Stage will welcome for the first time Twin Forks, a band that includes former Dashboard Confessional front man Chris Carrabba, and The Autumn Defense, featuring Pat Sansone and John Stirratt of Wilco. Their latest,”Fifth,” has a wonderful jangle-pop sound as you’ll hear below.

FestivALL Charleston is June 20-29, 2014.

Finally, on Sunday, June 29 Mountain Stage will be a part of the 10^th annual FestivALL Charleston, a city-wide arts and entertainment event that runs from June 20-29. The final FestivALL event will be a Mountain Stage performance featuring St. Paul and the Broken Bones from Birmingham, Ala. The group of young soul musicians features the vocals of Paul Janeway and recently released their full-length debut album “Half The City”. Most recently the band was listed by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of “48 Best Things We Saw at South By Southwest.”

Tickets for all four of these shows will be available Thursday, March 20 at 8 a.m. Advance Tickets are $15, Day of Show $25, available at MountainStage.org, by phone at 800.594.TIXX(8499) or locally at Taylor Books, 222 Capitol St., Charleston. All four Mountain Stage events will be at the Culture Center Theater, 1900 Kanawha Blvd. in Charleston. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., Show starts at 7 p.m. Visit our Live Show Schedule for a complete list of upcoming events.

Mountain Stage is produced by West Virginia Public Broadcasting and distributed by NPR Music. The show recently celebrated its 30^th year.