RVA Shows You Must See This Week: December 24 – December 30
FEATURED SHOW
Friday, December 26, 8 PM
Big No & Noah-O, King Delt, LBE Hunt, Big Street Deedy, Reppa Ton, P2P RIXH, T.R.I.G., Ron Lee & Stunna Hoot, Mizz D, Sneeze, Ed Da Realist, MFR Youngsta, Street Religious Fry, Hosted by Awol Beatz, Music by DJ Banga @ Ember Music Hall – $21.40-$136.15 (order tickets HERE)
It may be the most wonderful time of the year, but the week between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve is not exactly the most happening time for live music here in Richmond. Not that you’d wanna go to a show on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day anyway — Christmas Eve is for watching It’s A Wonderful Life on basic cable, and Christmas Day is for NBA games. But the whole week is a bit thin on the ground in terms of live music to immerse yourself in. Thankfully, this city always manages to come through in the clutch, and this Day-After-Christmas throwdown at Ember Music Hall is a perfect example of that. Veteran Richmond MC Noah-O has always shined brightest in full length collaborations — with DJ Mentos, with Fan Ran, with the late great Kleph Dollaz, and more. In 2023, he collaborated with fellow Richmond rapper and longtime friend Big No (not to be confused with the Richmond-based indie rock band of the same name) on the first installment of Richmond Brave, a full-length collaboration that allowed both rappers to push and challenge each other in order to produce some of the best material they’ve ever come out with.
Now, just in time for Christmas two years later, Big No has teamed back up with Noah-O to produce Richmond Brave 2, an even longer collab (runtime just under an hour) featuring incredible production by Retro Izzy and featuring some of the best tracks of either MC’s career — from the pensive, emotional “Nothin’ For You” to the trapped-out swagger of “Red Flag” (“She say ‘He’s from Richmond, that’s a red flag'” had me cracking up the first time I heard it — Richmond ladies, where’s the lie, am I right?). This record may not be hitting until the last two weeks of 2025, but it’s gonna catch everyone who already put together their list of the best local hip hop of the year with their pants down — time to rearrange the top five, y’all. Or maybe it’s just time to roll out to Ember Music Hall to shake off the post-Christmas dinner sleepiness with a hellacious hip hop throwdown with Noah-O and Big No. These guys will have you ready to get back out on the floor as soon as they hit the stage.
You’ll have plenty of other amazing hip hop artists to warm you up over the course of the evening, too. Not only will there be appearances by most of the folks who have features on Richmond Brave 2 (I imagine a lot of them will make encore appearances during the headlining set), including King Delt, T.R.I.G. and Ed Da Realist, there will be a bunch of the best Virginia rappers on the bill as well. From the scrappy, hyperactive verses of Sneeze to the hardcore boom-bap moves of Reppa Ton, the vibe-heavy street stories of LBE Hunt to the laid-back flow of P2P Rixh, this is an overstuffed show full of hip hop excellence. There are quite a few other names on this bill I haven’t even mentioned yet, so really, if you want to know the full deal, there’s only one thing to do — show up. The headliners are really enough of a reason to do so all by themselves, but the many support acts will ensure that you get plenty of bang for your buck. Which is only right and natural — after all, it’s Christmas.
Friday, December 26, 8 PM
Reveler Cabaret: Holiday Special, feat. Matt Fattal & Caroline Scruggs‘s Curious Quintet, Qing Blaze, Jo’rie Tigerlily @ Reveler Experiences – $25 (order tickets HERE)
At Christmas time, we all understand that the live entertainment offerings available around the city are going to be a bit non-standard, and Reveler certainly seems to understand the assignment where that’s concerned, bringing us a multimedia extravaganza for their day-after-Christmas Reveler Cabaret (if it doesn’t rhyme, you’re pronouncing the name of the venue wrong). Mixing music, comedy, burlesque, and drag, this show will have something for pretty much everyone of legal age, and will definitely vibe with an attention span greatly curtailed by hours and hours of sitting in front of the TV watching basketball with your uncles while overstuffed with grandma’s Christmas ham. The main attraction as part of this one is Matt & Caroline’s Curious Quintet, who bring together singer-songwriter-theremin virtuoso Caroline Scruggs and trumpeter-vocalist Matt Fattal to lead an ensemble also featuring clarinet, banjo, bass, and washboard through a set of classic jazz, swing, and American standards.
While this might be a fair distance from the humming space vibes of Caroline Scruggs’s usual theremin-based work, she has recently released a single called “December Baby” that not only encapsulates the classic pre-war jazz vibe but is even themed around Christmas. So I guess taking a listen to that track might give you a good idea of what to expect. Then again, you really never know where things might go at Reveler. Which is, of course, a good thing. As for the rest of this bill, it will be hosted by local burlesque performers Qing Blaze and Jo’rie Tigerlily, who always push the boundaries of what counts as burlesque, what counts as drag, and what is just hot boy/girl shit. These two will certainly get you hot under the collar. The evening will also feature comedy from a Black queer perspective from Andre, burlesque from Darshe Dazzles, and drag by Vagenesis, so you’ll get a little bit of everything for your ticket price. And you’ll certainly get a lovely gift of entertainment from the performers at the Reveler Cabaret. Merry Christmas to one and all!
Saturday, December 27, 6 PM
National Fruitcake Day Bash, feat. Killing Salvation, Fatehaven, China Lake, Inurvah @ Gallery 5 – $10 in advance, $15 day of show (order tickets HERE)
OK, just to get things absolutely crystal clear: I googled it, and National Fruitcake Day is a real honest-to-goodness holiday, which is apparently celebrated on the third day of Christmas (three French hens). Fruitcake is one of those cliche desserts I’ve heard people talk about all my life but never tasted or even seen in the wild, so please don’t ask me if it’s any good, or what this show will have to do with it. All I know for sure is that this year’s best musical celebration of National Fruitcake Day is happening at Gallery 5, and features four excellent metal bands hailing from somewhere in the mid-Atlantic region, all rocking out hard and blasting us with brutal riffs. While all of them may be new to you, they all deserve at least as much of a chance as a slice of fruitcake on your Christmas dessert plate.
Killing Salvation dish out chugging blackened death metal brutality, full of sinister melodies and heavy as fuck at the same time. Fatehaven throws down some belligerent, snarling thrash metal with the toughness of Pantera alongside the chugging grooves of Slayer and Anthrax. North Carolinians China Lake refer to themselves as hardcore, but I think partisans of that community will be much more likely to see this downtuned ensemble’s brutal chugging ferocity as fitting into the deathcore niche. I hear quite a bit of Sworn In and Whitechapel in this band’s sound, along with some unusual electronic flourishes to keep you on your toes. And Inurvah (your guess is as good as mine on the name) does some powerful modern thrashing with a strong European influence. Overall, if you like metal and fruitcakes — or even if you only like metal — this one’s guaranteed to be a good time. Even if there isn’t any dessert to be had.
Sunday, December 28, 5 PM
RVA Drum Shed & Potluck @ Gallery 5 – $8 suggested donation
Here’s a fun event that’s definitely going to be musical, though there’s very little I can say to narrow its scope beyond that. You see, RVA Drum Shed is a monthly event that brings together percussionists from all around the city, regardless of musical style or skill level, to interact, work on their percussion techniques and skills together, and have a whole bunch of fun! This event is intended to foster some fun jamming together by pairing up various drummers for 1 on 1 percussion sessions. Hosts Matt Wild (Pyramid Mass) and Hunter Johnson (Terror Cell) will pair folks up to rock together in totally random fashion — literally by throwing everyone’s name in a hat and pulling out two people at a time to jam for five minutes. One would presume that anyone who feels the slightest inclination to hit some drums with some sticks would be welcome — after all, very few of us are virtuosos, but we can all tap our feet and pound a table along with our favorite tunes. Plus, it’ll be fun to see what everyone else is able to come up with; depending on who shows up, we might see some real impressive displays!
In addition to the percussive festivities, the evening will also feature a potluck, so bring along some food to share! Some of our hosts are also involved with Gallery 5’s Riffs And Recovery program, and therefore it seems appropriate that the evening will also introduce a new mocktail menu for Gallery 5, featuring assistance from Point 5 non-alcoholic bottle shop, and Mother Shrub drinking vinegars. All that plus plenty of percussion, and a chance for you to jam? Seems like a lot of fun to me. And if nothing else, it’ll give us all a chance to bang away some of those angsty feelings we’re bound to have lingering after spending the holidays with family. Right? Let’s all go to Gallery 5 Sunday night and bang the drums about it.
Monday, December 29, 7 PM
A Man To Cook For, Beefcake, Kale Gawd, Show Pony @ Bandito’s – $8 in advance, $10 at the door (order tickets HERE)
I don’t know about anyone else reading this, but when I saw that the headliner at Bandito’s on Monday night was an acoustic band from Virginia Beach called “A Man To Cook For,” I didn’t exactly have high hopes. What could that name possibly portend? I didn’t expect much. Therefore I was blown away when I put on the group’s debut EP, Multitasking, and discovered some upbeat acoustic-electric indie tunes with a strong melodic sense and some excellent male-female vocal duets. Telling zoomers and even younger millennials that for me they hearken back to the late 80s-early 90s DMV-area post-hardcore emo-indie greatness of groups like Tsunami, The Hated, and Slack probably will seem like a totally random reference, but my fellow 50 year olds will know that this is a sign of high quality. And hey, all those Hated records got reissued recently by Numero Group, so you young folks have no excuse not to catch up with them. But catch up with A Man To Cook For first, because these folks are a currently-active project and definitely deserve support. To put it plainly: their songs are damn good.
Richmonders Beefcake, whose name always makes me think of an early South Park bit, are also on the bill, offering direct support with their muscular alt-rock riffage. Named for a legendary Oregon Hill cat, they followed up their 2023 debut, …Is The Cat’s Name, with this year’s Something In Between EP. The tunes on that release show a strong melodic sense without letting the pop elements dull their edge, and at times throw totally unpredictable stylistic shifts into the mix. Rapper Kale Gawd, who recently collaborated with Beefcake on a new version of their track “King Nardos,” is also on this bill. Both his solo material and his Beefcake collaboration show of strong lyrical flow and a powerful melodic sense that should click for anyone who appreciates classic emo-rappers like Aesop Rock and Atmosphere. Kicking the whole thing off will be Richmond rockers Show Pony, who have released two EPs of powerful grunge-inflected alt-rock so far this year (the year will be over in a few days, but you never know what they’ll manage to get in under the wire). These guys will get things started on the good foot, and the night will just get better from there. Come rock out.
Tuesday, December 30, 7 PM
Neighborliness, feat. Daniel Clarke, John Winn, Curtis Fye, Robby Sinclair @ Reveler Experiences – $15 (order tickets HERE)
Here’s another one of the interesting types of things that generally only happen in the live music world around major holidays — especially, wouldn’t you know it, around Christmas. That’s when some long-gone local band, the members of which have since scattered to the four winds and now don’t even live in the same country anymore, end up back in town at the same time for long enough to get together and do one more show for old times’ sake. Neighborliness are doing so this year at Reveler, and anyone who was involved in the Richmond jazz scene 20 or so years ago should be stoked to see the return of this quartet. Of course, the rest of us probably need a more detailed explanation, but thankfully there is an easy one: this quartet, made up of pianist Daniel Clarke, vocalist/saxophonist John Winn, bassist Curtis Fye, and drummer Robby Sinclair, had an eclectic and unpredictable approach that mixed creative interpretations of classic jazz standards with unexpected twists on modern pop classics and their own original tunes. The combination got them quite far during their most active times, leading to a State Department-funded tour of Asia and Russia, and a performance at the Kennedy Center.
Neighborliness’s run extended for almost a decade, but the band finally ended in 2009. Since then, Sinclair has been a US Jazz Ambassador through the Kennedy Center and an in-demand session drummer, and now lives in Paris. Fye remained in Richmond and became a recording engineer with extensive credits for local, national, and worldwide artists (including Miramar, Outer World, and Landon Elliott). John Winn remains a songwriter and composer, and also teaches at a local private high school. And Daniel Clarke has released solo material and collaborated with artists like k.d. lang and The War On Drugs, while also serving as the Musical Director for SPARC’s Live Art. And the night before New Year’s Eve this year, all four of them will converge on Reveler Experiences in Carytown to show all the young folks who weren’t around to catch Neighborliness the first time exactly what they have to offer, and why they were so beloved back in the day. Whether you’re a longtime fan excited to see the boys share a stage once again or a jazz lover intrigued by talented local ensembles of bygone days, you’ll definitely want to come check this one out. Its like may not come our way again.
Email me if you’ve got any tips for me about upcoming shows (that take place after the week this column covers -– this week’s column has obviously already been written): rvamustseeshows@gmail.com
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