September Spirit Ball
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September Spirit Ball ~*~
Friday, September 26th please join us for our September Spirit Ball with Charming Disaster + Please Don’t Tell who will be bringing us an evening of playfully dark music and mystery to usher in spooky season
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The Charlottesville based whimsically witchy trio, Please Don't Tell will help us host Charming Disaster during their Fall tour in support of their new album, The Double (2025). We will be celebrating in Lovingston welcoming the strange and unusual and offering all sorts of shenanigans before the music starts.
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When: Friday, 9/26/2025
Doors and Festivities begin: 6:30pm
Show: 8pm
Attire: please arrive in your preferred spectral form
Where: Rapunzel’s Coffee and Books in Lovingston, Virginia
Who: those looking for a thrilling evening together, all ages welcome
Tickets: link and details at the bottom of this page, pre-sales available through 8/13-9/14
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Brooklyn-based musical duo Charming Disaster was formed in 2012 by Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris. Inspired by the gothic humor of Edward Gorey and Tim Burton, the murder ballads of the Americana tradition, and the dramatic flair of the cabaret, they write songs that tell stories, using two voices to explore dark narratives and characters with a playfully macabre sensibility.
In their critically acclaimed albums Love, Crime & Other Trouble (2015), Cautionary Tales (2017), SPELLS + RITUALS (2019), Our Lady of Radium (2022), Super Natural History (2023), and newest collection in The Double (2025), Charming Disaster has explored love, death, crime, folklore, mythology, magic, science, and the occult. In Charming Disaster’s theatrical live performances, they combine vocal harmonies and clever lyrics with ukulele, guitar, and virtuosic foot percussion, drawing listeners into a spooky, offbeat universe of paranormal romance, con artists, circus performers, and ancient mythology, playing out against a backdrop of nightclubs, car chases, circus tents, the afterlife, and beyond.
Charming Disaster’s music has been featured on the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, they have opened for legendary cello-rock ensemble Rasputina, goth icon Voltaire, and punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls, and their theatrical, entertaining live performances have captivated audiences across the United States. They have played festivals, bars and clubs, museums and art galleries, bookstores and libraries, and the occasional historic cemetery. They have appeared alongside storytellers, comedians, fire eaters, puppets, burlesque artists, poets, and circus performers. Recent appearances include Dragon Con, Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater in NYC, Brooklyn’s historic Green-Wood Cemetery, the Rochester Fringe Festival, Philadelphia’s Science History Institute, the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, VA, Cleveland’s Wizbang Circus Theatre, and the Coney Island Sideshow stage.
“Charming Disaster are unusual, spooky, wickedly talented, and completely unafraid to delve deep into the underworld in exploration of all things lurking in the dark...they have a knack for making the macabre fun.”
Please Don’t Tell is a Charlottesville, Virginia based trio that offers an intriguing, off-kilter mix of bedtime anxieties, folk witchery, and parlor naughtiness from an unnatural concoction of acoustic instrumentation. When taken together, the sound of the three ladies and their varied influences peers down from the rafters in the menacing shapes of classical and choral strains, decades of goth club exposure, and the unshakeable shadow of bluegrass mountain sounds seeping in from their Central Virginia locale. Christina Fleming, Nicole Rimel, and Anna Hennessy have been performing their Dark Chamber Cabaret music together since 2021, and fans adore that it is lush, vulnerable, humorous, and a little salty. They share pissed off and delightfully self aware songs that have been said to both charm and provoke existential dread. Their first ep was recorded and mixed by Gabriel Rabben and Sam Wilson and released in 2024.
“Nestled in the quaint embrace of Charlottesville, VA, this trio’s repertoire, a whimsical blend of nocturnal worries, folkloric charm, and the kind of mischief one might expect in a dimly lit Victorian parlour, emerges from an unlikely medley of acoustic instruments. And yet, for all the spectral echoes of yesteryear that dance beneath their tunes, there’s a timeless quality to their music, suggesting it might have effortlessly found its place in the annals of history, serenading an era that never knew it needed them, without so much as a discordant whisper.”
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sliding scale cover options:
The Night of (depending on remaining space) you can get in with $12 cash at the door, and it's $13 for cards
now through Sunday, 9/14 (8AM est) we will offer a limited number of pre-sale tickets starting at $13 online
$15 is recommended to shower the band in love~
$20 = one ticket + a donation to Rapunzel’s Further Ado Foundation
kids 14 and under or 80 and better get in free :)
This is the only authorized link for pre-sale tickets... don't let the ticket scalpers fool you.
When you get to the show we will have your name on a list and can confirm your purchase with your ID. Alternatively you may bring a print-out of your receipt or have your phone ready with the email pulled up.
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P.s. - just in case you didn't know, small businesses are crushed by transaction fees so please consider bringing cash not only to our events but everywhere cool that you spend your hard earned money. Thank you for understanding and supporting local musicians and small businesses/non-profits like us!
We have not added a surcharge when providing pre-sale tickets because we think that's gross. Any questions may be directed to: rapunzelscoffeeandbooks@gmail.com