Original Picture Removed by Request
After roaming the downtown mall for several hours while waiting for the doors to open to a show at Gravity I stumbled upon something great. Walking through Lee Park the sound of live acoustic music caught my attention through the buzz of ambient pavilion rattle. As I followed the music I see a hillside scattered with people watching live amplified music coming from what was obviously intended to be a garage. “The Garage” is in its first month of operation bringing free, live, music weekly to the hillside of Lee Park Fridays at 9p.m. Making for a relaxed, enjoyable Friday night for those who perhaps prefer an intimate music environment to the jumble of the pavilion. Grab a cupcake, a milkshake or a cigar from the downtown mall and head over to the garage for a good start to a weekend.
Admin Note: Sorry Shaun! 
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whoa, I wanna be one of the people sitting down on the right in that photo. looks so pleasant. who plays there?
This sounds great. Are they going to keep doing it into the fall?
Neat idea, but I give it 3 weeks before the city shuts it down.
That is AWESOME.
God knows how many times i thought of renting or tried to rent that spece over the years.
it looks gorgeous. Lot of weenies in that neighborhood though; i wish those guys luck in keeping it going—they may have to acoustify. I had the cops called on me for singing Danny Boy on the walk home throught there after a bender. my light pleasant tenor on the evening air, a cool clear night—who could object?… nobody throws shoes anymore?
@3, how would they do that? long as they shut off the amps by 11…
/arguing as if it’s not going to happen anyways
On a bit of a side note, I was at Beer Run last night and there was a band playing inside there. I was startled, but it was awesome. Does anyone know if Beer Run often has live bands?
@5
we used to play amplified on the Mall (plugged in to the light-poles) and got run off endlessly by The Man, citing noise ordinance, complaints from residents of people in apartments above Mall, using city electricity for private purposes, etc. Even shut down for semi-loud acoustic occasionally. I was playing accordion on the roof of Timberlake’s Drug one evening and got dragged down in shame by the popos. a former mayor lives in the house fifty yards (towards High street) from the garage, i think he may be a bit…. you know.
they’ll also try fire-code violations, lack of event-insurance, requirement that any publicized event hire profesional security guards or off-duty cops… a million things. it’s amazing that DUST has been able to do shows for so long.
My through-the-grapevine understanding of this venue is that it’s associated with some adjoining church, but that the church has basically given carte blanche to the girl who’s heading up the project. Neat idea.
what an awesome church, then, and an awesome girl for what she’s doing.
i can’t wait to check it out.
i LOVE that cars will be passing between the band and us kids-on-the-hill watching.
i wonder if she’s thought to get cubano or mudhousee to have a coffee-cart on-site and sell some beignets or thai noodles or something.
The garage and home adjacent to it are owned by Christ Episcopal Church on High Street.
i’ll send them a check and thank-you note.
Lee Park has a bigass sign saying Closed At Dark… a shame, because it and Jackson Park are so pretty at night… i wonder if that will be a problem for the hill-sitters
@6 don’t know, but they sent out an email about it in the afternoon.
The Garage is actually owned by Christ Episcopal Church and was renovated by Kate (the Community Art intern at the church) and a bunch of her friends this summer to be used as a community art space. The plan is for it to stick around as long as possible…
There’s a lot planned to take place at the Garage besides music, though the up-and-coming “The Hill and Wood” was the first band to play there and will continue to make appearances in the future. If anyone’s interested in upcoming events or getting your art/music/creativity in the Garage, go to http://www.thegarage-cville.com. Contact information can be found there.
Website blurb:
The Garage is a newly renovated art space/concert venue/amateur movie theater/silk screen print studio/potluck dining hall/etc located on 1st Street across from Lee Park.
We hope to be a space that values community, creativity, collaboration, and accessibility. We love the paradox of the intimacy and strange publicness of the Garage. It’s tiny and yet incredibly accessible.
Hi, this is Jason. I’m the bassist in the Hill and Wood, the band that, along with Kate, got the garage started.
It’s a fun project to be a part of. We played there last Friday night with Birdlips and there is something about this venue that is special, intimate, and homey. Since many of the “established” venues around town are closing down (e.g. Traxx, Satellite, Starr Hill) it’s nice to see the hole filled by DIY projects like the Garage as well as the Bridge PAI (www.thebridgepai.com).
So far, we’ve not had any trouble with the police, and the Garage been operating both as a rehersal space (for the Hill and Wood band) as well as venue since June, actually. Let’s cross our fingers that the cops will turn the other way.
@14 dude, you named your band after a funeral home? Is it goth rock?
OMG! Trax is closing down?!?
/misses pud house
Oh man, I hate that effin garage. I parked in front of it one night and it was dark so I didn’t see the no parking sign or yellow curb and they towed my car and ticketed me twice–once for parking by the yellow curb and once for blocking a driveway. Gawddamn that was a lot of money and trouble for a careless error.
@16: Sadly, so is Maxx.
@14
good going, and thanks to you and Kate for taking a chance like that—it sounds awesome.
good luck with the po-pos—i think you guys will be in-the-right, but if they give you flack, just unplug for a while…in the past, that always sent them away happy.
any chance of Acorn Sisters, Pixy-Led, some of these other spunky acoustic alt-groups? what ever happened to the acoustic gypsy chick-band that was around for a while?
Actually Sam and Chris named the band before I joined. They named it as such because the Garage was our first rehearsal space.
Anyone know if there’s a show at The Garage tonight, or who is playing?
at 9pm, right?
@21: Yep. Except it starts at 8pm.
/and the late night take-over begins….again…
I just got back from this.
I am utterly, wholly, unalloyedly, perfectly CHARMED. My god what loveliness, what bliss. I have not felt like this about any scene, thing, place, phenom–anything–in Charlottesville in ten years probably. At one point during the show, on the hillside with the church lit and the garage open and the people around and the band, sweet music, playing… there were tears of raw delight running down my face. How simple, how tasteful, how swayingly wonderful If I had a girlfriend, ever, i wouldn’t miss a show, ever, and would probably hold hands or something out of mere soul’s transport.
This open-air, ex nihilo concoction, aggregation, event, blew my fucking mind. Who is this ‘Kate’, what is this band, what benevolent force could allow us such plain innocent decent goodness. I was drinking water, just water, perhaps for the first time after dark in a public place in years not nibbling valium or gnawing methadone or swigging gin to all-thoughts-lost. And was content. Perfectly. Dear Kate thank you, dear Church thank you, dear Band thank you. I emptied everything out of my wallet into the jar, and am floating on air.
The encore, a cover of The Kinks ‘Victoria’, was sub-fucking-lime. No joke.
oh, otter, don’t pull my heartstrings so. byo already broke me to pieces earlier by telling me trax was closing. are you being your wonderful poetic self or is it true true true?
@25
it’s so completely true.
i’m still, next day, adrift on memories of the joy of this new ‘venue’. i stopped two peg-legged panted emo kids on the Mall today hoping they were the vocalist/guitarist so i could gush at them about how great the band/experience was.
no joke. i LOVE the Garage. I hope it runs even in sweater and blanket weather, maybe starts serving hot cocoa and cafe-au-lait/beignets: don’t want to wait until next spring to get more of this great place. I assume that was the ‘house band’ last night, want to see more of them.
of course, it’s nothing like TRAX, but….
anyone know if the garage has a show tonite, i’m so hooked.
so, if I can’t has fun with partying peoples, at least i can has fun soakin’ up the comment column.
/only fun i can has these days…. pout
and I thoroughly take over the column… for now…
how did i know backup planet would be the most recent poster?
but man, you’ve been out doing yourself tonight!!!
tank you, tank you (bows)
I do try my bestest
so how was the garage this weekend – didn’t make it downtown myself
@32
see 24.
Oh man, this sort of project makes me miss Charlottesville so bad. I want to move back. Do they still do green tea milkshakes at Twisted Branch? Tell me they do.
is there a show tonight?
don’t see anything on the website.