It’s a known fact that beer and music go hand-in-hand. Where that fact is written is anybody’s guess, but taken from personal experience, I can vouch for its accuracy.
Starting later this month, Hardywood Park Craft Brewery is debuting a new live music series called Discover Virginia Roots, with an emphasis on “cover” because all the local bands will be covering famous soul, jam or rock bands and musicians [not from Virginia].
Each of the four shows over the year will be at the original Ownby Lane location and will be tied to pre-releases of Hardywood beers made with locally sourced ingredients.
For its inaugural show next week on Thursday, Feb. 22, the band Suggesting Rhythm will channel the Grateful Dead [a band which amazingly just broke the record for most albums to chart in the Billboard Top 40, even though it broke up in 1995]. That show will be paired with Hardywood’s Peach Tripel, with ingredients that come from Chiles Family Orchard in Crozet, Virginia.
The next show on Thursday, May 23, features a salute to funk and soul legend James Brown by the local band, The Big Payback, which features Kelli Strawbridge. Beer for that show will be the brewery’s Virginia Blackberry, which has berries from Agriberry Farm and CSA in Hanover County.
Is summer too early for pumpkin beer? Nah, because Friday, Aug. 16 is when the Janis Joplin cover band Black Janis, featuring local singer extraordinaire Sam Reed, hits the stage while Hardwood releases its Farmhouse Pumpkin beer, which boasts sugar pie pumpkins from Snake Creek Farms in Fancy Gap, Virginia; whole nutmeg, clove and allspice from C.F. Sauer here in Richmond; and fresh ginger root from Casselmonte Farms in Powhatan.
The last show of the season on Thursday, Dec. 19 features Done Gone Feat, covering the classic rock of Little Feat. The beer on tap for this last show will be Hardywood’s Raspberry Stout which features late-season red raspberries from Agriberry Farm in Hanover County.
Tickets to each show are $12 for advanced tickets or $15 at the door. The brewery is also offering a series pass for $40 which includes a locally made poster by Richmond artist Harry Slater, though there are only 100 available.
