Venture Richmond Events
2011 previous events
Celebrate Illuminate
Friday, December 2
6 to 9 p.m.
Starts from 10th and East Cary streets to the 17th Street Farmers Market
Free admission
Celebrate Illuminate with Venture Richmond and the River District Canal Cruises Downtown starting Friday, Dec. 2.
This year’s Celebrate Illuminate events are the perfect way to get you and your family in the spirit of the season.
It all starts with The James Center’s 27th annual Grand Illumination, which is slated to be the best yet. The illumination happens at 6 p.m. sharp. After the James Center’s Illumination, follow Santa and the Varina High School marching band down to the turning basin, where they will perform. At 7 p.m., please join Santa for a historically-narrated canal cruise. Southside Baptist Christian School Choral Ensemble will be present and singing at the top of the turning basin. There are also many, many more wonderful events scheduled for the Grand Illumination evening and throughout the rest of the holiday season.
Can’t make it on the evening of Grand Illumination? There will be carriage rides departing from the James Center Friday through Sunday throughout the month of December, up until Dec. 23rd. Reservations are required — please call (804) 769-4580 or (804) 514-4767.
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2nd Street Festival
Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 1-2
Saturday: Noon to 7 p.m.
Sunday: Noon to 6 p.m.
The hands of time are turned back to the past when 2nd Street was the heart and soul of Richmond’s African-American community. Each year thousands of people come to Richmond’s historic Jackson Ward to hear live music on four stages, enjoy children’s activities, taste delicious food, shop in the marketplace, dance in the streets and renew old friendships. For more information, call (804) 788-6466.
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Richmond Folk Festival
Friday-Sunday, October 14-16
Downtown Richmond’s Riverfront from 2nd to 7th streets, including Brown’s Island and historic Tredegar
Free admission
The Richmond Folk Festival embraces the heritage and traditions of all Americans. Legendary masters and the next generation of dynamic young artists will celebrate the musical soul and cultural roots of America on six stages of continuous music and dance. World-class artisans, countless varieties of ethnic foods and a family area ensure there’s something for every taste and every age! The Richmond Folk Festival will engage the entire community, bringing together diverse groups and drawing visitors from across the country. Produced by Venture Richmond and the National Council for the Traditional Arts.
For more information, visit www.richmondfolkfestival.com or call (804) 788-6466.
Richmond’s Eerie Canal Boat Rides
Monday, October 31
6 to 9 p.m.
Canal Turning Basin – Dock and 14th streets
Free admission
Thought your Halloween couldn’t get any spookier? Imagine a canal boat ride with a historic narrator telling a haunting tale of Richmond’s past as you travel down the Kanawha Canal. Candy will be provided for the kids on the free 25 minute trip on Halloween night. Rides leave on the half hour.
Produced by Venture Richmond. For more information, call (804) 788-6466.
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Friday Cheers
May 6–June 24
Every Friday
6:30 to 9:30 p.m.
Brown’s Island
$5 and $10 depending on the show, children under 12 are free.
Celebrating 27 years of music! Thousands of people come to relax after the work week on Brown’s Island to meet friends and hear some of the nation’s hottest touring acts and the region’s top bands.
There are two entry points to Brown’s Island and payment will be taken at all. Cash, Visa and MasterCard are accepted. Debit and credit cards are only taken at one entry point — the pedestrian bridge at 7th Street. No pets are allowed.
Produced by Venture Richmond. For more information, call (804) 788-6466.
Purchase advance tickets online
2011 schedule
May 6th – Carbon Leaf with
Lights East
Cost: $5
As Carbon Leaf approaches their 20th year of award-winning recording and touring, the band enters 2011 with more creative designs to independently produce a steady stream of new music.
The Richmond, Virginia-based group began as an independent band in 1992, then signed on with Vanguard Records for a three album stint in 2004. Along the way, Carbon Leaf scored hit singles at both AAA and Hot AC Radio with “Life Less Ordinary” and “The Boxer,” placed first in the International Songwriting Competition, won an American Music Award, and recorded the music for Universal’s Curious George II soundtrack in 2010.
With nine albums under their belt, Carbon Leaf will release a live CD and DVD in early 2011, a full length CD slated for the fall, and multiple songs and EPs throughout the year.
May 13 and 14 – Dominion Riverrock, featuring Big Gigantic, Perpetual Groove & Yonder Mountain String Band
May 20 – Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue with Glows In The Dark
Cost: $5
Rare indeed is the artist with the virtuosity to draw the unqualified respect of some of the most iconic legends in jazz and the ability to deliver a high-energy funk rock show capable of mesmerizing international rock stars. Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews is one such artist – and there is no one else like him. Trombone Shorty is equally adept on trombone and trumpet and is a man to be reckoned with on both.
May 27– RVA Music Night featuring Three Sheets to the Wind, NO BS! Brass Band and Long Arms
Cost: $5
Richmond’s local musicians reflect a diverse array of styles. From metal and punk to alternative country, pop to jazz, and everything in between, there is something for everyone in the River City. Each of the bands on this bill reflects those dichotomies in a way that’s a lot of fun for their audience.
Three Sheets to the Wind, America’s No. 1 Tribute to Yacht Rock, covers smooth radio hits from 1976 to 1984.
Underestimate their yachting-themed stage attire at your own risk. One thing is for certain — their tongue-firmly-planted-in-cheek
devotion to the AM gold era is no joke. The music is given a faithful and thorough interpretation, and Richmond audiences have been packing venues all over the city to hear the band’s send-ups of so-terrible-they’re-incredibly-cool artists like Toto, Hall & Oates, Michael McDonald, and Steely Dan. Are they serious? Are they kidding? Who cares? We’re all singing along.
NO BS! Brass Band also reinterprets pop hits, but their vehicle is a nine-member horn section of the kind you’d expect to see leading the second line in New Orleans. Don’t expect to hear When The Saints Go Marching In, however. This ain’t yo momma’s brass band. Their instrumental arrangements favor nostalgic guilty pleasures and obscure prog rock from Rush to Led Zeppelin, YES, and Aha.
Long Arms is also not quite what you would expect. Though songwriter James Menefee’s previous projects were long on punk hooks and heavy riffs, Long Arms strips the song back to its acoustic essence. Alternative country is a term that gets passed around a lot.
In Long Arms’
case it describes
two musical worlds that
combined to be far
greater than the sum of their parts.
As diverse as this night of music will be, it's only the tip of the iceberg of the Richmond music scene.
June 3 – Corey Smith with David Shultz and the Skyline
Cost: $5
For Corey Smith, one of the best things
about making music has always been getting the chance to hang out and have a good time with his friends. And it’s still that way, nearly 10 years after his early days of playing the bars around Athens, GA. The big difference now? Well, it seems these days Corey just has a lot more friends to hang with. The crowds at his sold-out live performances frequently number in the thousands — quite a change from the times when he never dreamed of much beyond playing for a handful of his college buddies. But, thanks to his astonishing gift for crafting addictive, soulful songs and the high-energy reputation of his shows, Corey Smith is one of modern country’s hottest young artists, a quintessentially indie performer with a dedicated following most Nashville-fueled hat racks would trade their flashy limos for.
June 10 – Drive By Truckers
Cost: $10
Far more than on any of the Drive-By Truckers’ previous albums, Go-Go Boots rises like smoke from the old Muscle Shoals country-and-soul sound. Having recorded with Bettye LaVette and Booker T. Jones,
and having spent a lifetime listening
to classic soul albums by Bobby
Womack, Tony Joe
White and especially
Eddie Hinton, it was inevitable that the Truckers would eventually produce this album.
We knew they were pin-your-ears-back rock and roll. But here in Go-Go Boots, the Truckers are country, and here, too, the Truckers are soul and rhythm and blues.
It looks funny, on paper — the words country/soul mashed up like that — but maybe in the end it comes down to this one shared ethos: the harder life gets, the more clamantly it calls for art, for music, for beauty — for the slow celebration of loss or pain that is mournfully, beautifully defiant.
It seems a paradox that while the Drive-By Truckers’ sound is so unique; it is still part of a greater and larger family. Some of the other greats, particularly in the south, were spawned from their culture, while others came from the deeper rootstock of the southern landscape itself. Of course in the long run the landscape has a significant say in what kind of culture develops; it’s all tangled together, all connected, and everything shares bits and strands of those fragments, again like a pastiche of random and beautiful genomes. Each of the three vocalists — Cooley, Patterson, Shonna — is distinct; each aches in its own way with sometimes gravelly and other-times smooth sweet wistful broken-glass hurt and yearning and reluctant. Patterson’s songs, of course are almost always willing, in the great Southern tradition, to take on the man — or anyone else — as are Cooley’s, when the cause is big and just.
Their sound — so distinctly theirs — comes nonetheless from the history and the past. It’s all a big tangled beautiful mess, and it all comes out of Muscle Shoals, where, as Patterson’s father, legendary bassist David Hood, astutely notes, the south once did something right with respect to race relations, once-upon-a-time and when it most mattered.
June 17 – The David Grisman Sextet with The Hot Seats
Cost: $5
For nearly half a century, mandolinist/composer/
bandleader/producer David Grisman has been a guiding force in the evolving world of acoustic music. His musical range is wide and deep — embracing many styles, genres and traditions.
An acoustic pioneer and innovator, David forged a unique personal artistic path, skillfully combining elements of the great American music/art forms — jazz and bluegrass with many international flavors and sensibilities to create his own distinctive idiom — “Dawg” music (the nickname given him by Jerry Garcia). In doing so, he’s inspired new generations of acoustic string musicians, while creating his own niche in contemporary music.
June 24 – Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings with The New Belgians
Cost: $10
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings have come a long way since their humble beginnings nearly a decade ago. Steeped within the gilded and gritty sounds of gospel, soul and funk, this nine-piece Brooklyn collective has continued to electrify fans, disc jockeys, critics, record collectors and bloggers the world-over with their authentic, heart-felt sound. The authenticity clearly demonstrated on the band’s four critically-acclaimed albums – “Dap Dippin’” (2002), “Naturally” (2005), “100 Days, 100 Nights” (2007) and “I Learned the Hard Way” (2010), captured and released by the independent Daptone Records.
Dominion Riverrock
Friday-Saturday, May 14-15
Friday: 4 to 9:30 p.m.
Saturday: 1 to 10 p.m.
Brown’s Island
Free for spectators, fee for participants
Dominion Riverrock unites the community through a unique mix of sports, music and fun, set against the backdrop of Richmond’s downtown riverfront. The party begins on Friday with live music, a Mud Run and an acrobatic freestyle bike competition. Then, join in the fun Saturday as athletes from around the region square off in high-adrenaline activities both in and around the river — the James River Scramble trail run, mountain biking, kayaking and much more. With additional musical performances, spectator water sports like the highflying Ultimate Air Dogs, food, exhibits and more, Dominion Riverrock is Richmond’s premier river event. Produced by Venture Richmond and Sports Backers.
Full event information, including schedules and registration for individual events, can be found at www.dominionriverrock.com or by calling (804) 285-9495.
Easter on Parade
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Sunday, April 24
1 to 5 p.m.
Monument Avenue between Allen and Davis avenues
Free admission
The beloved Richmond tradition that showcases attendees “parading” up and down scenic Monument Avenue continues this year on the blocks between Allen and Davis avenues. The event is presented by Kroger and produced by Venture Richmond.
Each year more than 25,000 people converge upon the four-block site to celebrate the arrival of spring and the beauty of Monument Avenue, taking this once-a-year opportunity to stroll in the streets. Music, arts, crafts, children’s activities, food, balloon artistry, a petting zoo, and of course, people and pet watching are all part of the celebration. This is a parade of all Richmonders to come out and participate!
A highlight of the event promises to be the ever-popular Pet Bonnet and People Bonnet Showcases, held at 3 p.m. and 4 p.m., respectively, on the Zayde R. Dotts main stage at Allen Avenue, along with photos with the Easter Bunny, available for a fee throughout the day. Roving entertainment includes Jonathan Austin, More or Less Morris Dancers, a stilt walker and Peggy the Clown.
Scheduled performances/activities include:
Zayde R. Dotts main stage
Soul Providers (1 and 2 p.m.)
Pet Bonnet Showcase (3 p.m.)
People Bonnet Showcase (4 p.m.)
Davis stage
Floating Folk Festival and more (1-5 p.m.)
Children’s area
Activities, produced by First Baptist Church Richmond
Balloons by Extreme Balloon Artistry
The Lambeth Petting Zoo
Inflatable slides and obstacle course
Roving performers
Jonathan Austin
More or Less Morris Dancers
Peggy the Clown and the Stilt Walking Clown (applause unlimited)
Merchandise vendors
Food vendors
Special thanks to the additional sponsors of the City of Richmond, Bon Secours, Lite 98, Style Weekly, James River Greyhounds and Doody Calls.
CAA Championship Fan Fest
Friday, March 4-Monday, March 7
Courtside Richmond
Richmond Coliseum Plaza
Free admission to FanFest, varying ticket fees to the tournament:
Hours
March 4: 11 a.m.-9 p.m.
March 5: 11 a.m.-9 p.m.
March 6: 11 a.m.-3 p.m.
March 7: 5-8 p.m.
Stop by this year’s FanFest outside the Coliseum before and after your game to meet up with friends (or meet new ones), watch the games on large screen TVs, listen to music (including CAA school pep bands), play games, shop for CAA merchandise, and purchase snacks and beverages.