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From various performance centers to smaller venues like restaurants and brewery patios, live music is available nearly every night of the week in our region. Let’s catch a show with these great local musicians and bands!
The Panel
The following six people are prominent in this region’s music circles and have been for a number of years. They were asked to list their 10 selections for Roanoke’s Best Bands, regardless of genre, and could not vote for their own bands.
Kerry Hurley: Blues singer with Fat Daddy and Thrillbillyz, among other bands; former owner of Blue 5 Restaurant; blues radio personality for the past 20 years.
Jason Martin: Owner of Martin’s Downtown Bar andGrill, which featureslive music nightly.
JoJo Stockton: Virtuoso guitar player and leader of several bands, including Hott Sauce. He works for the Roanoke Sheriff’s Department.
Cheryl Lunsford: Music teacher and owner of the Guitar Dojo; performer and band leader of the Rhythm Runners, a Gypsy jazz group. Mother of rising singing star Erin Lunsford.
Aaron Oberg: Guitarist, singer and songwriter; store manager, Fret MillMusic.
Tom Ohmson: Musician (a nationally prominent mandolin player) with his band Blue Mule; owner of Flat 5 studio in Salem, which records regional musicians and occasionally produces a nationally significant collection.
Aaron Oberg summed up the exercise about as well as possible:
“I don’t really like [Best Of lists]. There’s a lot of criteria to consider; comparing apples to spaghetti. Egos do soar. But I know that all of those bands work hard at their craft and I would consider them all to be professional musicians. I couldn’t vote for any band I hadn’t actually heard. My own poll [of 20 fellow musicians] yielded slightly different results from my own opinion, but it was still helpful.”
Oberg is one of six people deeply rooted in the Roanoke music landscape who selected their personal favorites among the many groups and individuals playing professionally on a regular basis. The result was arguable (as lists like this tend to be), but it includes a range of genres, ages, styles and even local recognition. Some, it seems, are better known than others.
There seemed to be one constant: Hoppie Vaughan is at the top of the curve. His group is Ministers of Soul, but he plays solo frequently and Oberg, himself a superb picker, says playing with Vaughan “is a rite of passage. He is two tiers above everybody else in town and he stays in his own wheel house.”
Prominent music performers like Jane Powell and Trucker’s Delight are not listed because they play seldom these days, a fact of age, though when they do play (mostly reunions and special occasions), they remain superb. The Kings, a group that has been around since the late 1960s and whose members are mostly eligible for Social Security, are still busy, still appreciated, still outstanding and still on the list of “Best.”
Roanoke has been home base for a region almost cluttered with fine musicians. It is the largest locality on (actually near) the Crooked Road, a nationally prominent bluegrass and old-time music phenom and it has produced bands in every genre from hip-hop, to jazz, to swank, to heavy metal, to country and rock, to gypsy guitar, to easy listening (yep, that, too). The music industry in Roanoke fell on bad times a few years ago—mostly because of an economy that wouldn’t support it—but it has rebounded almost spectacularly. The list of solid musicians—many of whom play in several bands just to keep busy—is long and the bench is deep. “You see a lot of the same guys in different formations,” says Jason Martin, owner of Martin’s Downtown, one of the busiest music venues in the region.
However, there is a cloud, says Martin. “We are in a good spot,” he says, “but I don’t see a lot of younger musicians and I worry about the future. There just doesn’t seem to be any garage band experimentation. It’s hard to make a living playing music. At best, you have to teach because most of these musicians are making $100 a night when they play.” And they don’t always play often. Where’s the money? “Corporate events, weddings and colleges,” says Martin. “Cruise ships are good.” For gigs like those, a band can bag $2,000 to $3,000 a night, he says.
Some musicians—like rapper/hip-hop performer Poe Mack (honorable mention on the list)—have a solid national following, but Mack is also a prominent promoter, who sells background music, as well. He is also Jane Powell’s nephew, giving him something of an “in,” which is often necessary for musicians, says Kerry Hurley. Hurley has worked all the angles on music for money: club owner, band singer, radio personality, promoter and he knows that there “are a lot of cliques and if you’re inside one, you do well, you get a lot of bookings. But it’s tough to get in.”
Some groups–like My Radio, which flirted with national attention in recent years–“don’t seem to desire national fame,” says Martin, “but they’re world class.” Roanoke has its own venues for the nation’s best, and occasionally local bands or individuals will open a show at one of the civic centers, The Jefferson Center or the Harvester in Rocky Mount. They are good venues for exposure.
In any case, the music is here, it’s good, it’s prominent and most often, you can afford to go see it. Here are the bands our panel picked as the best in the Roanoke Valley, in no particular order:
Hoppie Vaughan & The Ministers of Soul, Fat Daddy, Jo Jo Stockton and SoulacouStix/Hott Sauce, The Kings, Groova Scape, The Worx, Radar Rose, Lenny Marcus Trio, Lazyman Dub Band, Marie Anderson
Honorable Mentions:
Star City Swag, Acoustic Endeavors, Poe Mack, Thrillbillyz, My Radio, Canned Biskits, Le Hotclub de BigLick, Larnell Starkey & The Spiritual Seven, Uptown, $5 Shake, Latin Clive, Tobacco Apache, Morgan Wade and the Stepbrothers, Bluegrass Boys, The Rhythm Runners.
Here are brief descriptions of the top bands. The quotes are from the selection committee, though they didn’t want to be identified specifically because—as Oberg said—there’s a lot of ego and competition out there.
Hoppie Vaughan & the Ministers of Soul is the region’s standard and Vaughan, a former session musician in Nashville, is the crowning touch, regardless of the group he’s performing with, including those nights when he’s alone on stage. His guitar and bass playing are simply unparalleled here and his singing is quite good.
Fat Daddy is one of two of Kerry Hurley’s bands named (Thrillbillyz is honorable mention) and that’s because nobody here plays the blues better. Lively, bouncy, full-throated. Hurley recently played several gigs in Paris. France, not Texas.
Hott Sauce is JoJo Stockton’s primary band, but Stockton “has played with all of them.” He’s on lead guitar and bass and is as busy as any musician in the Valley, although he has a full-time job with the Roanoke Sheriff’s Department. The recent report of a “farewell performance” by Hott Sauce was true to a degree. Says Stockton, “Solacoustix is the band I’m booking the most now (same musicians, different singer). I am, of course, an independent blues artist (so JoJo Stockton and Solacoustix) and I still do Hott Sauce. I just use them more as a specialty band, mostly due to bar budgets and all that is involved.We cost more than bars normally pay.”
The Kings were formed in the ‘60s and was the house band at the King’s Inn during the 1970s. It has never let up on the gas pedal. It plays full-out (blowing its horns, in spite of Mark Knopfler’s entreaty that “there ain’t no horns in rock ‘n’ roll”) and playing music you know.
Groova Scape has stormed onto the stage in the last couple of years, following the lead of Henry Lazenby (nationally noted author Roland Lazenby’s son) and singer Brittany Sparks (whose Janis Joplin set stops the show). It’s bluesy, hot and wildly popular. The band “has come a long way in a few years,” says a panelist.
The Worx has been “a juke box band” for more than a quarter century, playing up and down the East Coast. “They don’t do much original work, but they bring people out in the 25 to 45 demographic,” says a panelist. “They’re good at what they do.”
Radar Rose is a veteran folk/rock band featuring the singing of Anastasia Thompson and Jane Ga-brielle, a professional artist who was once called “The erstwhile earth mother of Roanoke’s [music] sce-ne.” The band bills itself as playing “singularly exciting, dynamically vigorous and eloquently powerful, unadulterated acoustic rock.”
Lenny Marcus Trio is led by a psychiatrist (at the VA Hospital in Salem) who’s hardly in it for the money, but this sophisticated jazz group is the best of its type in these parts. He has studied and played with people like Ellis Marsalis and Charlie Byrd and is often compared to Vince Guaraldi, Oscar Peterson and others.
Lazyman Dub Band plays reggae/rockabilly/jam/funk and is “a pretty good band with great horns,” says a panelist. The band was formed in 2007 and has played every type of venue from small clubs to huge festivals (it has its own festival in Roanoke). “They sell out clubs,” says a panelist. “Good party band with upbeat music. They sell a lot of beer” for clubs.
Marie Anderson is the only solo act on the list and she is likely the busiest, according to a panelist who would know. “She’s on stage five to six nights a week, playing a variety of music with her guitar and her [drum pedal, harmonizer and loop pedal]. She probably knows 400-500 songs [actually, she claims 1,500] and does her own thing. She’s one of the hardest workers in town and, truth be told, I don’t know how she gets the gigs she gets.” Her music ranges from 1930s ballads through just about every form, including her own compositions.
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