After spending the majority of the day at Virgin Mobile Free Fest out in Maryland, I hurried back to the District in time to stop by Rock and Roll Hotel to check out D.C. band Fear of Virginia. In front of a packed house, the band ripped through original country fried tunes, as well as some well known covers much to the delight of the many fans in attendance.
Cloture Club: How did you come up with the name Fear of Virginia?
Fear of Virginia: Most of our band lives in the District. However, our guitar player, Matt lives out in Virginia. Several times during the early weeks of the band, we all scheduled practice to be out at his house. On three separate Friday nights the band proceeded to cancel on Matt at the last minute. It wasn’t a coordinated effort but it was clear that the rest of the individuals in the band had something keeping them from heading out to the Commonwealth. When we finally got around to having practice at (bassists) Dave’s house in D.C. our lead singer Mike cracked a joke about us having a Fear of Virginia and the name stuck.
CC: At your last show, you guys covered (among others) CCR and The Band, what are some other prime influences of the band?
FOV: When the band first started, we focused on a shared love of The Band, The Head and the Heart and to a slightly lesser extent, Dawes. Mike definitely has a folksy/classic rock background which has led us to cover CCR and The Band but the band has a pretty wide array of influences including The Who and the Black Keys. There is definitely a bluesy feel to a lot of songs due to (guitarist) Matt’s love for Eric Clapton, especially his remakes of Robert Johnson tracks. I think another band that we all really enjoy listening to is My Morning Jacket. If we can have half the energy of their live shows, we know people will have a good time.
CC: How did the violin player come into the mix?
FOV: Our bassist, Dave, was at his cousin’s wedding on the West Coast and while updating attendees that he was spending much of his free time drinking whiskey and creating music, found out that Tess played violin and lived in D.C. We all thought a violin would be a great addition to our sound and really fill out the music so we had her jam with us and it was a fantastic fit.
Fear of Virginia playing Going Down South @ DC9
CC: Do you guys have any plans on recording soon?
FOV: Yes we do have plans of releasing an EP before the end of the year but our first love is playing music and playing it for our friends/family/complete strangers so right now we’re doing as much of that as we possibly can before winter’s weary winds pass through D.C. and keep everyone huddled up inside. We have been coming up with new songs before each show and it has us really excited to choose which ones we are going to cut in the studio.
CC: Do you guys have any shows coming up soon?
FOV: As we mentioned above, this is what we love most about playing music together – entertaining our friends who have helped us all along the way by taking pictures at shows, letting us practice in their living rooms and actually paying real money to watch us play songs that they’ve already heard 72 times. It’s still a little shocking to us that people like our songs. As for shows, we have a big weekend coming up on October 8th with the Sweet Tea Pumpkin Pie Fest followed by a show headlining at the Rock and Roll Hotel later that night with our good friends Stereosleep. Then we’ll be rocking out at Velvet Lounge on October 15th with a great band from North Carolina called Margolnick (http://margolnick.bandcamp.com/album/taylorsville) and another local band East Ghost (http://soundcloud.com/eastghostdc). We’re super pumped to open for those guys. They are both unbelievable bands and we’ve been blasting their tunes since the day we found out we’d be lucky enough to open for them. So there’s a lot in store for Fear of Virginia in the next month or so – we won’t go away that easily.
You can check out Fear of Virginia on Twitter @FearOfVirginia, on Facebook and at www.fearofvirginia.com.
- Written by Tom Wilbur.
Perhaps someone should wave a skunk at their faces.