After Action Report – Via Calori

On September 20, we played at the Via Calori street chalking festival for charity. Technically, we backed up our friend Jahnel by learning a few of her original songs (and we also prepared a few covers.) All in all, it was a truly magnificent day and the artists in the surrounding area should think about making the drive next year.

Our time to perform was 11:00 AM, and we were worried that we were going to arrive late as the festival was located an hour drive south of DC within Fredericksburg, Virginia. We meant to arrive at 10:00 to see Cynthia play, but we arrived closer to 10:30. When we got there, there were not that many people out in the designated listening area, which initially made us a duo of sad pandas. But once we began walking towards where the chalk artists were “lining” the street, we happily discovered the music was propagating for blocks upon blocks! This was great because – technically – was a REALLY large crowd.

Cynthia played a lot of her beautiful original songs on piano at the festival. She’s obviously a multi-instrumental artist, as we’ve seen her play guitar at Iota Club. Jahnel hopped on stage to play a song or two before Cynthia’s stagetime concluded. They sounded good AND looked like they were having a great time, which channeled into the audience.

Yours truly, The Glorious Capitol Heights, were up next. With a level of badassesery commensurate with who we are, we approached the stage in slow motion with explosions happening behind us. At least that’s what I felt like happened. I grabbed my guitar case to open it and DISASTER STRUCK! My guitar case took a spill the day before, with my guitar in it, and apparently it didn’t make it. The headstock split into what a guitar repairman later called “the smiley face”. I was kind of taken aback, as this has been my only acoustic I’ve ever owned and was really attached to it. But we had to play onstage in 1 minute – so I informed Kenny and Jahnel of the issue and straight up stole Jahnel’s guitar from her. I played her instrument on all the covers, and when she needed her guitar to play lead on her own songs, I played my instrument and didn’t actually plug it in. It looked like I was playing and that’s all that matters I guess!

We had a wonderful time playing and the set went pretty well, and at the end of our set we still had about 12 minutes of our hour left, so Jahnel jumped off stage and Kenny and I played a few songs Han Solo style, except with two people.

The dude who was coming up next was getting his guitar setup and we invited him on stage but he declined, probably thinking who the hell are these weird guys inviting me onstage at the last minute? This guy ended up being Chris Compton – who we had seen play before at Madam’s Organ or Iota club, but we didn’t write him up on this blog. We recognized one of his original songs, which was kinda cool. Chris played a song we recognized but had never heard the original artist – This Land is Your Land by Woody Guthrie. Seriously check it out if you’ve never heard the original version. He also kicked out some 90s alt rock standards like Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Hey Jealousy. He’s a talented artist with a great voice and plays the guitar with a fierceness on par with Leonidas’s kicks. THIS. IS. CHRIS.

We were also able to see Dan Barry sing a bunch of his original songs. We really enjoyed it and loved his hallelujah cover.

But he discussion of Via Colori doesn’t end there. This was our first adventure ever in Fredericksburg before and there’s a lot to see there. We took coffee at Hyperion espresso (twice) which has coffee on par with The Coffee Bar and Filter in DC. Some buskers us hustled into Pickers Supply to look at some mandolins and it’s a great store so check it out. There was also lots of chalk art with tons of featured aritsts. My favorite was the Nightmare Before Christmas / Doctor Who remix that I didn’t get a picture of.

Here’s a sweet look at this giant well mural that was being painted while we were there. The whole wall started off green and was slowly painted up. The piece of paper there shows it’s final form. They were auctioning off individual squares of the mural. Everyone needs a giant fish mouth on your wall.

Artist Info

Cynthia Marie
Cynthia’s website is http://cynthiamarie.org and here’s a link to Cynthia’s facebook. Her Soundcloud is “chalk” full of music so make sure to bing listen!

Jahnel
Jahnel’s been mentioned here before but I’ll repeat her info because it’s super important! She’s got her music consultancy company Bearhawk Artist Management, a twitter account, and her facebook page!