We love Jazz Night at Rapunzel's and we've got a good one this month!
***Please note*** we are moving Jazz to the fifth Saturday of the month do the holiday weekend for the fourth.

On Saturday, May 31st we welcome back Johnny's Blue Locomotive. This hot Jump Swing/Rhythm and Blues combo will have you movin' to the groove. Our very own Quintessential Quartet will warm you up with a few classic swing era tunes.

Seating opens at 7:30PM, the show starts at 8:00PM and, as always, our Jazz Nights are free to all!

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Johnny's Blue Locomotive choo choos from the Shenandoah Valley. They play a selection of blues, rock, and jazz -- it's soul with horns! When Johnny Clark, Greg Moody, Lance Allen, Grace Mattix, Paula Green and their special guests take the stage they want you to get on out to the dance floor and boogie!

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The Quintessential Quartet - our house jazz band - features Anne Krieger, Harry Powell, and Rapunzel’s very own Bob Taylor and Carolyn Stone - sharing the old standards and making you smile.

Songbird Showcase Volume II
Femmes & Thems

Sally Rose
The Great Before Times
Kat Somers
Leah Ruth
Erika Blatnik

Rapunzel’s Coffee and Books
Saturday: May 24th, 2025
doors at 2pm
show at 3pm
$15 cover at the door

Sally Rose
”With their first solo album [Tread Light] in a decade, Sally Rose is getting back to their Americana roots. But don’t worry, they’re still a rock n’ roll riot grrrl at heart — and they're bringing some much needed queer femme representation to the world of country music.” - RVA MAG. Sally Rose (they/them) is a songwriter, performer, and activist native to Nelson County, Virginia. SR has spent the last 10 years sharpening their teeth touring with psych rock band Shagwüf. The stillness of the pandemic however, led SR to rediscovering their love of just vocals and a guitar.

The Great Beforetimes
The Great Beforetimes is a project by Shenandoah Valley-born, settler descendant Ærn Stapel (she/they) and a rotating cast of friends. Self-described as mid-apocalyptic emo-trad, and often deemed "folk punk," TGBT is a mask through which Ærn explores her past of growing up queer in a closed evangelical community, becoming further disabled during the ongoing pandemic(s), and the still spreading necrosis of the colonial apocalypse brought to this land by her ancestors. 

Kat Somers
Kat Somers is a singer-songwriter from Nelson County, Virginia. The last 4 years have been a deep period of healing for Kat as they found their way back to writing and to their most authentic self. That journey is reflected in their lyrics around mental and emotional health and healing, finding a path through the thorns, and the gratitude and joy for the people who surround them today.

Leah Ruth
Leah Malyn Ruth was raised by the earthworms, spicebush, robins, and waters of the verdant Monacan homelands.  They are currently inspired by old time musicians and workers' anthems past. They can usually be found humming through the woods or halls of the hospital working as a nurse...and wishing they were sharing songs in community. Leah is honored to be back at Rapunzels as a little prayer to keep this special gathering spot going. 

Erika Blatnik
Erika Blatnik grew up in Bedford, Virginia and has been writing, recording and performing songs since she was fourteen years old. These days, she still plays the occasional solo show, but is more often found fronting her twangy indie rock band Rikki Rakki. Accompanying her jaunty guitar, Erika's sweet-tart voice and lilting melodies deliver lyrics hell-bent on finding hope in a void-gazing reality.

Rapunzel’s Further Ado Foundation presents:

~*~ Jacob Paul Allen ~*~

on Saturday, March 1st 2025
doors at 6pm/show starts at 7pm

Join us in Lovingston for a solo acoustic show from Nelson County's very own, Jacob Paul Allen! You'll get to hear all original songs and the stories behind them.

This is a kick off event before Jacob heads out across the country on his 'Tie One On' tour so come on down and help us wish him a bon voyage.

Visit https://jacobpaulallen.com to learn more about where he's going and be sure to like/subscribe/follow/and share to help a local artist out a lot!

TICKETS
- pre-sales -: $10 online

- raffle entry: $15 online/or at the door

- at the door: $10 cash, $12 card

Kids 14-and-under or 80-and-better get in free

Rapunzel’s Further Ado Foundation presents:
our monthly Jazz Night featuring:

~*~ Trevor Williams ~*~

with
Daniel Barrale, Bill Edmonds, and Tom Harbeck

• and opening set from The Quintessential Quartet •

on Saturday, January, 25th, 2025
Seating open at 7:30PM, and the show starts at 8PM

All ages are welcome and this is a free community event. Please join us and enjoy some of the best Jazz music ever right here in our little hole in the wall venue. Collected donations go entirely towards funding our Jazz Program to pay our guest musicians. Thank you for helping us to keep Jazz happening in Central Virginia!

Trevor Williams, a Charlottesville-based vibraphonist, plays a blend of classic jazz standards and 1960s-inspired jazz soul. Joining him for this performance are Bill Edmonds on guitar, Tom Harbeck on bass, and Daniel Barrale on drums.

Our house band, The Quintessential Quartet plays every month, for free, and hosts the evening. Featuring Anne Krieger on vocals, Carolyn Stone on bass and vocals, Harry Powell on lead guitar, and Bob Taylor on rhythm guitar - The QQ plays favorites from the Great American Songbook and you probably know every one of them.

MAKE UP OPEN MIC NIGHT DATE IS FRIDAY, JANUARY 24TH! YAY!

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Join us for another one of our intergalactically famous open mic nights! Bring us your talent and start on the road to stardom!

Our open mic night is held NORMALLY on the second Friday of each month. THIS MONTH IS A RESCHEDULED OPEN MIC BECAUSE OF THE SNOWSTORM ON JANUARY 10TH!
This event is known for such a variety of performances that the phrase “You never know what you’re going to see at Rapunzel’s” quickly became its slogan. While it is often musicians that take the stage, The Rapunzel’s Open Mic welcomes and supports all the arts - poets, authors, dancers, comedians, and all y’all other creatives are welcome too.

Seating and signup at 7:30, and the show starts at 8 PM

free for performers and kids 14 and under • $3 donation at the door for audience members

*** Please note that the open mic night is an acoustic event…only bass guitars and keyboards may be amped. Please come early to set that up ***

Thank you!

All performers are invited to be ready at 8ish to join the Rapunzel’s Orchestra on stage to kick off the event with “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” emceed this month by our friend, Grayson Harlow.
There is also a goodnight song performed by the Rapunzel's Orchestra if you can stick around through the end of the evening.

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We have been running this Open Mic event in Central Virginia for twenty-three years!!! Thank you to all of our volunteers, audience members, and performers that have joined us over the decades and to all the folks that help us keep it going still!

xxoo, Rapunzel's

“Justin Golden’s performance…was a revelation” ~ Style Weekly

"We should all be so lucky to have the blues like he does.” ~ NPR Music

This Saturday, January 18th we welcome back our friend Justin Golden for an intimate solo show in Lovingston, Virginia. Join us at at Rapunzel’s for a dialogue between artist and audience as Golden shares his music and about his most recent adventures, recording plans, and work with The Rhapsody Project in Richmond, Virginia.

“The Richmond-based fingerstyle guitarist has made a name for himself as a songwriter, performer and teacher, and as a champion of compositions written as far back as the early 20th century. Whether he’s picking a nearly forgotten melody at a gig or showing students how its played during a Rhapsody Project in-school workshop, few artists are doing more to honor the past.”

~ excerpt from “Striking Gold” article written by Davy Jones
published January 2nd, 2024
in Style Weekly

Rapunzel’s Futher Ado Foundation presents:
Justin Golden
for a solo acoustic show and fundraiser for Richmond based chapter of The Rhapsody Project

when: Saturday, January 18th 2025
Seating @6pm &
Show starts @7pm

where: Rapunzel’s Coffee and Books
924 Front Street, Lovingston VA 22949

how much: $10 donation suggested
$15 donation = raffle entry for Golden Country tee + “Hard Times and a Woman” cd
Kids 14 & under or 80 & better get in free
all ages are welcome

JUSTIN GOLDEN
Justin Golden is a genre blending artist who enjoys playing acoustic Blues and Folk music. In addition to his work as a professional recording and performing artist, Golden maintains a busy teaching schedule and is the director of the Richmond, Virginia chapter of The Rhapsody Project, a non-profit working to provide community enrichment through anti-racist cultural heritage programs.

First picking up the guitar at age 19, Golden did what came naturally and let the music flow through him. His origins are deeply vested in the Blues, with roots in the Mississippi Delta, Chicago, and the Piedmont of Virginia.

Golden has become a champion for traditional Blues music by mastering fingerpicking patterns and transcribing old songs that might otherwise be forgotten. Fascinatingly, the Piedmont Blues style first came to him in a dream, which he later shared with late harmonica player, the great Phil Wiggins. Wiggins told Golden that he’d been unconsciously playing this deeply rooted style all along, and in fact he had written several songs in the Piedmont style before he had ever heard of the style. While perhaps not as well-known as the Mississippi Delta style, the Piedmont Blues has a deep history in Virginia, and is home to some of its greatest practitioners, including John Jackson and John Cephas.

By far, the most distinctive feature of the Piedmont guitar style is its finger-picking method, in which the thumb lays down a rhythmic baseline against which one or two fingers pluck out the melody of the tune. Using this technique, the Piedmont guitarist makes a single instrument sound like several, setting up a complex dialogue of bass and treble parts. While always playing with this history in mind he also has an extremely diverse musical palette, and Golden aims to bring some new ideas to traditional Blues forms.

The Rhapsody Project is a multi-generational community that celebrates music and heritage through an anti-racist lens. Some of the ways The Rhapsody Project does this includes providing music instruction, cultural events, virtual classes, and cultural workforce development to establish racial and cultural equity. These programs teach people to root themselves in their layers of heritage, and tap the power of music and culture to confront injustice and enrich their communities.

To learn more about the Richmond Chapter of The Rhapsody Project visit https://therhapsodyproject.org/richmond/
or email
info@therhapsodyproject.org
with subject line: I want to learn more about TRP Richmond!

Additional donations to Richmond chapter of The Rhapsody Project may be sent here.

In 2024, Golden Country: Volume 1 and Golden Country: Volume 2 were released to rave reviews. If you give each album a play through you’ll hear where Country, Blues and Bluegrass converge. The Golden Country albums feature an original song written by Justin Golden as well as some traditional and maybe more obscure favorites reinterpreted. Partnered with Richmond based backing band, Devil’s Coattails, these recordings were done and produced quickly, and there are more on the way! The Devil’s Coattails group is Trey Burnart Hall (mandolin, tenor banjo, electric guitar), Chris Gatens (upright bass, clawhammer banjo) and Drew Barnocky (drums and washboard).

Though Golden’s influences range far and wide, the blues will never be far from his heart. That’s because he doesn’t see the tradition as limiting, but rather a musical form open to any emotion. “​The blues is not a box,” he says. “They try to make it seem like it’s just twelve bars or it’s gotta be sad or it’s gotta be this or that, but if you listen to so much old pre-war blues, there are so many feelings involved. There’s happy blues, sad blues, just got paid and spent all my money blues, gonna go see my girl late at night blues, there’s blues for anything. It doesn’t have to be a specific form or feeling, it can be whatever you want it to be, but you know it when you hear it.”

Learn more about Justin Golden by visiting his website and be sure to follow him on all your favorite social medias and music streamers to catch his latest releases.

P.s. - if you're available next Tuesday and you want to know more about the gourd banjo that Justin Golden plays - no better chance then this virtual speaker session with Dr. Dena Ross Jennings. She is a local Virginia luthier and community builder residing in Orange County. She also hosts regular music meet ups including the annual Affrolachian On-Time Music Gathering. Learn more from this speaker series hosted by Birthplace of Country Music Museum.

bit.ly/4gcfuv7

When: Tuesday, January 21, 2025 - 7 PM EST
Where: Virtually via Zoom
Cost: free and open to the public

Rapunzel's Poetry and Literature Open Mic Night is a quarterly feature here, focused on the written word. Our next one will be held on Friday, January 17th at *7pm.*

Come prepared to share and listen to local authors of all genres and ages. This is an eclectic evening of diverse work guaranteed to foster creativity in readers and audience alike. This is a safe space to debut your original work or share (with credit) something you love written by someone else.

For those who wish to read or recite: signing up with our marvelous host, Marian Pearce, begins at 6:30.

The show will begin at 7pm and this is a free community event. All ages are welcome to participate or join the audience.

Writers and other creatives are always welcome to share at our regular (mostly musical) Open Mic Nights - held on the second Friday of each month - but this quarterly Poetry and Literature Open Mic is specifically dedicated for celebrating our local authors. Thank you!

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Rapunzel’s Further Ado Foundation presents: Open Mic Night

on Friday, December 13th, 2024

~*~ Seating open and sign ups at 7:30PM, and the show starts at 8PM ~*~
• free for performers, and kids 14 and under or 80 and better •
$3 donation at the door for audience members

Join us for another one of our intergalactically famous Open Mic Nights! Bring us your talent and start on the road to stardom!

We have been running our Open Mic Nights on the second Friday of each month for over twenty-two years!!! Thank you to all of our volunteers, audience members, and performers that have joined us over the decades and to all the folks that help us keep it going still! This event is known for such a variety of performances that the phrase “You never know what you’re going to see at Rapunzel’s” quickly became its slogan. While it is often musicians that take the stage, The Rapunzel’s Open Mic welcomes and supports all the arts - poets, authors, dancers, comedians, and all y’all other creatives are welcome too.

Seating and to signup with our host starts at 7:30, and the show takes off at 8 PM!
it's usually up to two songs shared or the equivalent for non-musical acts -- chat with our emcee and we'll figure it out together.

***** Please note that our Open Mic Night is an acoustic event…only bass guitars and keyboards may be amped. Please come early to set that up. Thank you! *****
* we do currently have a nice (weighted) keyboard set up a Rapunzel’s available to be used upon request, just let us know ahead of time so we can be sure it’s ready *

All performers are invited to be ready at 8ish to join the Rapunzel’s Orchestra on stage to kick off the event with “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” emceed this month by our friend, Beverly Yaeger.
There is also a goodnight song performed by the Rapunzel's Orchestra if you can stick around through the end of the evening.

The Further Ado Foundation presents: Jazz Night at Rapunzel's -
• The Quintessential Quartet •
on Saturday, November 30th, 2024
Seating open at 7:30PM, and the show starts at 8PM

All ages are welcome and this is a free community event, open for all to join us. Collected donations go entirely towards funding our jazz program to pay our guest musicians. Thank you for helping us to keep Jazz happening in central Virginia!

Our house band, The Quintessential Quartet plays every month, for free, and hosts the evening. Featuring Anne Krieger on vocals, Carolyn Stone on bass and vocals, Harry Powell on lead guitar, and Bob Taylor on rhythm guitar - the Quartet plays favorites from The Great American Songbook and you probably know every one of them.

Our first ever • Blue Ridge WYRD • oral storytelling open mic takes place on Friday November 15th at Rapunzel's Coffee and Books in Lovingston, Virginia. We kick things off at 7:30pm.

If you know somebody that's got a WILD story they love to tell, make sure they know about this! Keep your stories to about 8 minutes max please, and give us all the meandering details.

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This event will be a $5 suggested donation (from adults) which will be going to a fellow local non-profit, The Free Book Bus. The Free Book Bus was founded in October 2018 to bring books to children who have barriers to accessing books, and to help families build quality home libraries.

Learn more about them and how to support their mission at https://freebookbus.com/

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From the creator of this event and our host for the evening, Dirtgod Raven Mack -

"Join us for our very first • Blue Ridge WYRD • oral storytellin’ open mic! Only requirements are you’re telling it (not reading it) and you tell it well in about 8 minutes. Wyrd is an old word that “weird” is derived from, but the meaning was more about the flexible nature of what’s real. We’re using it as an acronym for Weaving Yarns, Realizing Destiny. I grew up in awe of country folks out telling each other stories around truck beds, picnic tables, or back porches. I act like I’m a writer or artist, but at my heart, I’m just a storyteller aka natural born shit talker, and that’s in my genetics since before people had wheels. If it’s in yours too, come share it!"

#blueridgewyrd #southerngothiccfuturism

To learn more about Raven check out his work at https://ravenmack.com/
or on instagram, https://www.instagram.com/dirtgod_raven_mack/