Scene Recap: Alex Jonestown Massacre, rva.lol, Supfest

Countless great outlets, organizations, and individuals cover the music scene in Richmond, so many that it might be hard to keep up to date on all of them. We’ll try to collect some great articles, coverage, and news bits we’ve read each week here at The Auricular.

• I’ll say this at the start: this column is going to go through ups and downs. It opens with a few important (and positive!) reminders, dips in tone for a bit, levels back off, and then goes all over the place in the end. Stick with it, I guess?

• First up, voting for this year’s Newlin Music Prize closes on Thursday. For anyone who might be unaware, the prize recognizes the best album released by a Richmond artist in the previous year. Twenty records make up the official shortlist, and a jury of more than 175 members of the local arts community casts the final vote. The winning artist receives $2,500, while each nominee takes home $250 for making the shortlist. This year’s field is particularly stacked. Several of these albums rank among my favorite records of the entire decade. The award’s Instagram account spent the past week posting its annual “For Your Consideration” blurbs, which give a quick snapshot of each record before voters make their decision. I always look forward to that part of the process, even though writing twenty distinct taglines that capture an album’s essence in roughly thirty words can feel like a small creative puzzle. Last year, fellow board member Maggie Graff elevated the posts with some sharp visual design, but this year she pushed things even further by pairing the blurbs with slick illustrated treatments. If you haven’t explored the shortlist yet, do yourself a favor and dive in. There’s something here for everyone, and it’s hard to imagine anyone listening through all twenty records without discovering at least a few new favorites. (Shortlist information here.)

• This weekend is Supfest at The Camel, celebrating one year of Single Use Podcast airing on WRIR. The lineup is packed with local talent, and the event doubles as a benefit for the Richmond Community Bail Fund. Both nights were already highlighted in this week’s show column on the site, and Marilyn Drew Necci covered the details thoroughly, so I won’t repeat everything here. I do want to give some credit to the team behind the show: audio engineer/co-producer Phil Shepard, video producer Marshall Hanbury, and host/co-producer Khadija Hassan. They’ve built something genuinely special. I’ve been hooked since the very first episode dropped with Deau Eyes at the start of 2025. Richmond has no shortage of platforms where musicians can tell their stories, but Single Use stands out. Every conversation carries a level of care and curiosity that lets artists open up in ways that feel natural and thoughtful. If you can, swing by The Camel this weekend, but either way, add Single Use to your regular listening rotation. It’s worth your time. (Ticket information here.)

• Hotspit played what may be their final show Monday night at Gallery5. There’s a lot to say there, but the simplest version is this: they’re one of the best bands Richmond has ever produced, and I’ll keep saying that as long as anyone is willing to listen. They leave behind three remarkable records– CC (2021), Memory Of A Mirror Image (2023), and (red wind) (2025)–each of them revelatory in its own way. Hearing CC for the first time in the summer of 2021 is a moment that’s permanently etched into my memory. The same goes for the first time I reached the closing track, “A Memory Shouting,” on Memory Of A Mirror Image. That ending felt seismic. I’ve been slowly working on a review of (red wind) since it came out, constantly rewriting because my words never quite capture what makes the record so striking. But with the band’s final show behind us, I’ll share a small excerpt from what I’ve been drafting: “Song to song, Hotspit has never existed in such vivid detail as they do on (red wind). Yet even in this sharp definition, a hazy glamor remains, suggesting something is still out of reach. Plainly put: as clear as they’ve ever been, they still manage to perplex.” If you want a physical copy, tapes for (red wind) are available through Impermanent Records. Pick one up and spend some time with it. It’s a fitting document for a band that leaves behind an extraordinary legacy. (Tape order link here.)

• Alex Jonestown Massacre is also coming to an end. Their last show is tonight at Single Use. I’ve got a lot to say about this one as well, but I’m going to tuck that at the end of this column. Still, for people just giving this a quick skim, you should make plans to see AJM tonight at The Camel. You will not be disappointed. (Ticket information here.)

• Soundtrack RVA has also shut down, according to this Instagram post. Fittingly, their farewell still pointed people toward resources that support the local scene, encouraging followers to keep up with RestlessRVA and the newer rva.lol (which I’ll get to shortly). Richmond has seen plenty of show calendars come and go over the years, but Restless and Soundtrack were the only ones that ever really carried consistent attention and influence, so losing one of them is a real hit. Maintaining something like that is tedious, largely invisible work, and rarely comes with much recognition. Because of that, it’s worth taking a moment to acknowledge the people behind the account and thank them for the time and effort they put into it. They will be missed.

• The public memorial for former WRIR president Melissa Vaughn will be held on Saturday, March 28, from 12:30 to 3:00 PM at Gallery5. Still reeling from this loss. I highly recommend this piece by Don Harrison that captures the legacy Melissa left behind. (Article link here.)

• The public memorial for Timothy McCready (aka Timothy Bailey) will be held on Saturday, April 11, from 1:30 to 4:30 PM at the Richmond Friends Meeting House. I wrote about his passing in The Auricular’s newsletter last month, and I don’t think I have the emotional fortitude to write more this moment, but this obituary really captured the special spark he gave to this world. (Obituary link here.)

• Onto happier news, Logan, from the Internet has launched rva.lol, a continuously updating calendar that pulls in listings for shows and open mics across Richmond. The site scrapes information directly from venue pages and supplements it with some manual entries, creating what should quickly become the default destination for anyone trying to figure out what’s happening around town on a given night. Full disclosure: I helped Logan in a very small way during the early stages and will be keeping an eye on the listings to make sure as many public events as possible end up on the site. It’s worth calling out that DIY venues and house shows aren’t included there. For those, I’ll defer to a phrase I grew up hearing all the time: ask a punk. Logan and I are also tinkering with a few other ideas that I’m hoping to share more about soon, so stay tuned. For now, do yourself a favor and bookmark rva.lol on both your phone and your desktop. It’s going to be an essential tool for keeping up with the city’s music scene. (rva.lol website here.)

• Also on the launch front, Will Weaver from Good Day RVA has started a new project called show/a/day RVA. It’s a simple yet great concept: a daily look back at Richmond concerts that happened on that date in the past, complete with photos, setlists, stories, and whatever other tidbits and artifacts can be unearthed. The very first post today talks about a 2006 performance by Nine Inch Nails at the Richmond Coliseum. It’s a fun time capsulre idea and a great excuse to revisit the city’s storied music history. Go check it out and give the account a follow. (Instagram account here.)

• And rounding out the run of launches, Jim Ivins (The Fan, The Jim Ivins Band) has recently started a Substack that I’ve been enjoying quite a bit. He immediately pulled me in with a detailed story about how he ended up being part of the first American rock band to perform in Sudan, which honestly should be enough on its own to spark curiosity. But I also found myself returning to another post where he floats the idea of a so-called “Virginia Curse.” It’s quickly become one of my favorite things to keep up with online right now, and is well worth adding to your list of regular reads. (Substack link here.)

• The Richmond Seen recently unveiled the longlist for its first-ever SEEN Awards, highlighting a wide range of people and organizations across six different categories. Finalists will be revealed at the end of the month, with the winners set to be announced on April 16. Take some time to browse through the list. It’s a great way to discover the artists, organizers, and community figures actively shaping Richmond’s culture right now. And if you’re not already following The Richmond Seen, now is a good time to start. They’ve done excellent work spotlighting the city’s hip-hop scene, and it’ll be exciting to see how the platform continues to grow from here. (The Richmond Seen link here.)

• Hey, VCU is launching an archive of all things GWAR, or, as Rich Griset put it, “a permanent collection of their ephemera at Virginia Commonwealth University.” Read more about it over at Style Weekly. (Article link here.)

• In similar news, there’s scuttlebutt that another archive or library focused may be on the horizon…

• The Camel Sessions are back this Sunday at The Camel, and the organizers recently announced that these shows will now be free. As someone who loves a good weekend matinee and has been pleading for more of them around town, this might be the best news I’ve heard all year. Tomorrow’s lineup is wildly stacked: Rebecca Porter, Elle Christine, Gavin Crocket, Cole Sullivan, and Leah Swift, who some might recognize from Flora & The Fauna. The series is organized by local singer-songwriter Tall Joshua, and speaking from experience, it’s one of the nicest ways you can spend a Sunday afternoon in the city. If you’ve never been, this weekend is a great place to start. (Show information here.)

• Griffin Smalley’s regular column at RVA Magazine–formerly Sound Check, now titled RVA Live Music This Weekend (even though it also highlights new releases, which… don’t ask me)–also spotlighted Supfest along with a Gaza benefit show happening at Bandito’s Burrito Lounge. He opened the piece with a line that really stuck with me: “That is what Richmond does best, make killer tunes and help each other out.” It’s a great column as usual, so make sure to check out the rest. (Article link here.)

• As always, RVA Shows You Must See This Week was another fantastic read by Marilyn Drew Necci. Still amazed at her ability to cover these shows with so much detail after all of these years. I honestly don’t know how you could consider yourself a fan of Richmond music and not read her column regularly. (Article link here.)

• These Scene Recaps usually end the same way: I highlight a local song and offer a few thoughts about the band behind it. Most of the time, that means a quick paragraph or two from me. Every once in a while, though, it spirals into something much longer. (As was the case with Drook last year.) In my head, it feels like a necessary treatise, but in reality, it reads more like messy babbling. Thinking about the band I want to close with this week, I can already feel that same impulse creeping in: a string of stray thoughts that start as praise but ultimately turn into frustration about how certain bands slip through the cracks in Richmond. I’ll try to rein myself in as best as I can.

As mentioned earlier, Alex Jonestown Massacre will play their final show tonight at The Camel as part of Supfest. Over the course of nine years, they quietly became, at least in my view, one of the most underrated bands in Richmond. It’s a tricky thing to say because, in reality, most bands in this city are overlooked unless they reach the point where much larger publications instantly cover their every move. Maybe “underrated” isn’t quite the right word. Here’s a better way: Alex Jonestown Massacre never quite received the recognition they deserved in Richmond.

Trying to pinpoint when I first encountered the band meant digging back through old memories and a wonky web archive. Their earliest releases arrived around the same time The Auricular was getting started. I can’t shake the feeling that I wrote about their 2018 album Fear Of A Flat Planet or their 2019 EP Candy Apple Island, but after combing through the site, I can’t find anything to confirm it. Even so, those releases stuck with me. “The Pajama Boys Are Back In Town” remains one of my favorite song titles ever, and Fear Of A Flat Planet features the unbeatable “From The Dog Whistle To The Bullhorn.” Meanwhile, the artwork for Candy Apple Island is exactly the kind of playful irreverence that immediately catches a millennial’s eye.

But even those records weren’t actually my first exposure to AJM. The Auricular launched in September 2018, yet I had already started cataloging Richmond music by then, and their April 2018 EP What We Do Is Stupid jumped out instantly. As someone who has been a Germs fan for most of my life, that title and artwork were impossible to ignore. Any longtime Germs devotee will happily tell you how gloriously absurd Darby Crash and that entire band could be. Brilliant, yes, but undeniably absurd.

Fortunately, that description doesn’t quite apply to AJM. That EP includes “Fuck You, Go Away,” a song that still echoes in my head whenever I find myself stuck in a conversation I’d rather escape. If the people on the other end knew the track, they’d probably be thinking the same thing.

The band continued releasing music over the years, eventually culminating in their self-titled album in August 2024. That one I did manage to write about in a roundup column, where I described it as “a spectacular showcase of what punk should always strive to be in any form — politically charged, socially conscious, melodically hooked, and communally engaged.” That sentiment applies not only to the album but to the band as a whole. At a time when some local outlets were lamenting the supposed absence of protest music, AJM were delivering it plainly and unapologetically with songs like “Regulize Komplete.” And yet, larger recognition still seemed to elude them.

Part of that may have come down to opportunity. Richmond places enormous emphasis on live performance, and without consistent show slots, it’s difficult for a band to build momentum no matter how strong the recorded material is. Even with people like myself championing them, or Griffin Smalley giving their self-titled record the thoughtful coverage it deserved, those opportunities never quite arrived in droves for the band.

I hate to beat a dead horse, but whenever I think about bands like AJM, I can’t help pining for the days of Strange Matter. I know nostalgia for that venue is practically a cliché at this point–especially after a recent social media question that whipped local music fans into a frenzy–but it’s hard not to imagine how different things might have been if it were still around. Strange Matter hosted eight or nine shows a week at its peak, often with packed local lineups. Mark Osbourne made it a point to give new bands a chance, which meant there were simply more openings across the board. With that kind of ecosystem, venues like The Camel, Gallery5, Cobra Cabana, and Get Tight might not feel quite so jammed when it comes to booking. It’s not that those spaces aren’t doing great work, but the closure of Strange Matter undeniably shrank the number of stages available, especially for punk bands like AJM.

Over the past year, Richmond has seen an unsettling number of great bands call it quits. I touched on that a bit when writing about Gnawing’s farewell show last year, and the feeling has only intensified since. This week alone sees both Hotspit and Alex Jonestown Massacre playing their final sets. Of course bands break up. It’s part of the natural cycle of music. Members move on, start new projects, and keep creating, sometimes in ways more fulfilling than the bands we mourn. Still, something about the wave of departures over the past twelve months feels different, almost like missed opportunities for the city to truly appreciate what these groups brought to the scene. In many ways, Gnawing’s story parallels AJM’s, though Gnawing both started later and ended earlier.

I don’t want to presume how the members of Alex Jonestown Massacre see their own history, but it’s easy to imagine them viewing it as a cautionary tale: nearly a decade invested in a band that never quite caught traction. If there is a lesson here, though, I’d frame it differently. AJM had the talent, the perspective, and the sonic identity to stand out anywhere. The real cautionary tale is what happens when a scene fails to fully nurture artists like that. AJM leaves us with an impressive catalog of great songs and dense records, yet it still feels like the city (and the world) were robbed of that next step the band could have reached. And who knows what that could have been?

Well, so much for keeping this brief.

I’ll end it here. If you have the chance, head to The Camel tonight and see Alex Jonestown Massacre one last time. And while you’re there, maybe yell out a request for “Disparaging The Boot Is A Bootable Offense.” Their bassist once told me the track was recorded as a joke with no intention of releasing it, but somehow it made the cut, and it’s become my favorite song they’ve ever done.

You can listen below, but I’d also recommend spinning their entire 2024 self-titled album. It’s a reminder of exactly why this band’s departure stings as much as it does.

Long live Alex Jonestown Massacre.