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The teen rock band Superstition grew out of the pandemic and is now booking gigs across Hampton Roads. Photo by Corey Miller.
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Parks’ latest book, “Unthinkable,” which is partially set in Middlesex County, was released this summer. Photo by Sara Harris Photography.
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Gloucester's Flat Iron Crossroads is becoming one of the coolest performing arts venues around, hosting musical acts from around Virginia, the country and even the world.
A fledgling music venue in Gloucester is making itself into a place where music and community go hand-in-hand, while a teen rock band is shaking up the Williamsburg music scene and hopes to become the “next big thing.” Meanwhile, Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula residents might want to grab the newest Brad Parks novel to see if they ended up as a character in a thriller about a dad trying to save the world.
Flat Iron Crossroads
It started as a gas station, built about 100 years ago at the intersection of two roads in Gloucester County.
Today, Flat Iron Crossroads is becoming one of the coolest performing arts venues around, hosting musical acts from around Virginia, the country and even the world.
After rising literally from rubble four years ago, the venue nearly closed for good during the pandemic. But with a lot of patience and a little ingenuity, owner Ray Friend managed to reopen in November to live shows.
Now Flat Iron Crossroads is trying to position itself to become a place that’s as much about music as it is about creating a vital community center where people can gather and learn.
“I wanted to make this one of those places that people come to from all over,” Friend says with a smile.
Initially, Friend was simply looking for a place to play music with his buddies when he bought the former gas station at Flat Iron Road and Daffodil Lane, located several miles from downtown Gloucester. The crumbling old building, which had last housed a lawn mower repair business, was in decline. Friend gutted it and rebuilt it from the inside out, raising the walls and turning it into a solid, soundproof structure that would appeal to musicians.
It didn’t take long before word got out and musicians began to ask to play at Flat Iron. Friend ran with that idea, crafting his place into a performing arts center reminiscent of small venues that once dotted the country.
Flat Iron opened in October 2019 but abruptly shut down the following March because of the coronavirus pandemic. Convinced to stay in business, Friend pushed forward, building a state-of-the-art outdoor stage. He started streaming events, created a radio show, started a YouTube channel and continued to create what today, by all accounts, is an outstanding sound system.
Since it reopened last November, Flat Iron Crossroads has continued to draw musicians from Virginia and beyond, including local musicians, Grammy-nominated artists and even a band from Belize.
“It’s a gem that people just don’t know about,” says Brian Eubanks, creator and bassist for the Hampton Roads-based blues band Fade to Blue, which has played at Flat Iron several times. Eubanks called the outside stage in particular “phenomenal—a musician’s dream come true.”
Inside the gray, nondescript building strung with lights and bedecked with a fuchsia-colored door is a light, airy space that caters to both the listener and musician. Friend himself painted 4x4-foot likenesses of famous musicians such as Jerry Garcia, Billie Holiday and Michael Jackson on sound-absorbing acoustic panels. Spaced between the wall paintings are various instruments, mostly guitars, that any musician can grab to try out.
The stage itself is wrapped in an acoustic curtain, with all the equipment needed for a show. There’s even a baby grand piano that can easily be rolled onto stage. Offstage, a small green room is filled with creature comforts for visiting musicians. Food trucks park outside when there are performances (about two a week), while a bar inside provides beer, wine and soda.
“You come one time, you’re going to fall in love with this place,” Eubanks says. “They make it easy for people to come enjoy the shows. They make it easy for the musicians to come and play. Everyone pitches in to make the experience of the evening a wonderful one.”
Registered as a nonprofit, Flat Iron Crossroads is run mostly by volunteers. General Manager Dia Lawless books the acts, making sure there’s a good mixture of local and regional bands as well as different types of music—from jazz, folk and blues to reggae, bluegrass and big band. There are one or two shows a week at affordable prices.
“I’m not aware of any other place that brings such a diverse music selection,” says Curt Smith, deputy director of the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission. “They’re doing a good job of bringing some acts that don’t usually come through here. It’s an excellent venue to add to Gloucester.”
Flat Iron’s goal is to educate and entertain, and Friend has lofty goals, including holding master classes and music workshops (there have already been a couple), producing educational videos and offering performance space. He envisions mentorship and intern programs and partnering with local schools to help students learn about the world of music, theater, dance and video production.
“Making you feel part of a community,” Friend says, “that’s what this whole thing is about.”
Brad Parks
Something you should know about best-selling author Brad Parks: he does, in fact, put people he knows into his novels. He also puts places he’s lived in his books, too.
So it should come as no surprise that Parks, who has called Virginia home for the past 13 years, set his latest book in and around Middlesex County, where his family is building a house. For the past few years, Parks has split his time between Middlesex and Williamsburg, where he’s often seen typing away at his laptop at a Hardee’s or more recently, a Mellow Mushroom pizza joint.
Parks’ latest thriller, “Unthinkable,” was released this summer. The novel starts off in Richmond, but features places such as Williamsburg, White Stone and Surry County. Mathews County readers might catch a mention of a storage space in Hudgins.
“There are lots of stories hiding here,” Parks says. “Like any writer, I’m very much inspired by what’s around me. For the past 13 years, that’s been the Middle Peninsula.”
A Dartmouth College graduate, Parks started his career as a newspaper reporter for the Washington Post and then the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger, first as a sports writer before switching to news. In the back of his mind, he always thought writing fiction would one day be a good semi-retirement gig for him, when he’d go live on the water and churn out books.
“Then newspapers started dying and accelerated the timeline,” he says. “I started thinking, do I get pushed into something, or do I fly?”
He and his wife, an educator, agreed that she would start looking for a job, and he’d move to wherever she found one and he’d focus on writing books. In the midst of their move to Virginia, he got a call that a book he had already written was picked up by a publisher.
Parks’ first six novels were part of a series featuring—what else?—an investigative reporter as the main character. His first stand-alone book after the series, “Say Nothing,” was set in Gloucester, with scenes in Middlesex and Norfolk.
A writer known for mixing tense plots with relatable characters, Parks is the only writer to have won the Shamus, Nero and Lefty Awards, three of American crime fiction’s most prestigious prizes. For “Unthinkable,” he drew off his own experiences and made the main character a stay-at-home dad.
In the novel, Nate Lovejoy is happily raising his two children while his wife, Jenny, climbs the corporate law firm ladder when he’s kidnapped by a shadowy secret society.
Whisked away to a mansion in White Stone, a town in Virginia’s Northern Neck, Nate is told that a billion people could die unless he takes a certain “unthinkable” action. The book’s narrative has the reader hanging on every plot twist as it mixes mystery with science fiction, physics and a “completely fictional power company” in Virginia.
In early reviews of the book, author David Baldacci called it a “fast, furious, fun and deliciously twisted tale.”
And yes, the book features the names of people Parks has encountered, including some who gave to local charities for the right to appear as one. Robert “Buck” McBride of Mathews and Greg and Kara Gritchmeier of Middlesex show up, as does Terry Nienhuis, a member of the Williamsburg Players community theater group, of which Parks is also a member.
“It’s fun for folks,” Parks says of his character-naming practice. “I tell my friends and family, don’t tell me something unless you want it to end up in one of my novels.”
Over the years and his 11 books, other characters have developed from Parks’ time spent in various Hardee’s locations. After spending a few years living in Staunton and haunting a Hardee’s there, he was even recognized by the fast-food chain with a plaque mounted on the wall in his honor.
Unfortunately, the pandemic put a (temporary, he hopes) stop to his visits to Hardee’s. So over the last year, he’s been writing from the Mellow Mushroom, where the outdoor patio has heat lamps in the cold weather.
Employees (and the owner’s wife) were delighted when they realized the identity of the man who would sit for hours with his laptop, usually ordering a cheese pizza and bottomless Coke Zeros.
“He’s a great guy,” says owner Gray Nelson. “We treat him like one of our own. He’s very cool; he’s very chill. I think he just likes the vibe and environment.”
Once the pandemic eases, however, and Parks is living full-time in Middlesex, on the shores of the Rappahannock River, it’s likely he’ll end up back at the Saluda Hardee’s.
“They’re my people, for sure,” he says.
Superstition
It was their first gig, and the four musicians still didn’t have a name for their band.
Then, during soundcheck, they were playing so loudly a clock fell off a wall. The four looked at each other. “Wow, man, that’s superstitious,” guitarist/singer Jack Rooks says.
“Right after that I was like, dude, that’s our name,” says bandmate Brendan Hawkins, and the rest of them agreed. And so, Superstition came to be.
Basically born during the pandemic, Superstition is a group of four Williamsburg teenagers who play a style of music that even they can’t quite describe. Psychedelic hard rock or grunge is how guitarist Gaius Del Negro tries best to explain it.
But it’s a whole lot more. Some rock, yes, but mixed with influences from all the ages, from the Beatles to Pink Floyd to U2. ’60s music, ’90s music—if the band members like a sound, it has crept into their music in one way or another.
“We’re not a pop band,” Hawkins says. “Our music doesn’t sound like anything in the top 10 right now, but all the kids our age, they love it.”
Love it they do, because since Superstition started making their name known last fall, they’ve been attracting attention on social media and booking gigs across the Williamsburg area. They even caught the attention of a music producer, who took them to a studio in Nashville over the summer to record some of their original songs, several of which will be released as singles this fall.
For the group of 16- and 17-year-olds, who started their band because they just like jamming together and making music, it’s been something out of a dream.
“I never expected anything like this to happen,” says Del Negro. “At all.”
“I don’t even know what has happened,” Hawkins says.
From drummer Riley Schwartz: “We’re still trying to just take it in.”
The four high school students first started playing music together toward the end of 2019. Schwartz, Rooks and Del Negro had already been in a band, Canned Peaches, which broke up shortly after Hawkins contacted Del
Negro hoping to play with him. They all felt something click.
As the world went into lockdown, the group began practicing and writing their own songs. By October, they started playing in public. Their Instagram followers began rising, and then, through a friend of Hawkins’ mother, they came into contact with music producer Johnny Markowski, drummer for The New Riders of the Purple Sage, an offshoot of the Jerry Garcia Band.
Markowski, who lives in the New York area, took a liking to the young singers, taking several trips to Virginia to work with them before meeting them in Nashville in July to record some of their songs. They recorded five songs and plan to start releasing them this fall on platforms such as Spotify.
In the meantime, Superstition is continuing to pop up at venues across Williamsburg and the Peninsula.
One of their favorite spots to play is the Brass Tap in New Town, where the outdoor stage allows them to play to anyone, really, who happens to be in the vicinity.
“They’re really impressive,” says Bug Small, an Arlington resident who was in the nearby Barnes and Noble on a Friday night when the music caught her attention. The 19-year-old was visiting Williamsburg with her parents and sent them on to dinner while she caught some of the show. “They really seem to know what they’re doing. It’s really cool to see kids doing music.”
Their shows are loud and fun, accented with a smoke machine and flashing colored lights. Swartz is on drums while the guys play guitar, and they all take turns singing. They feed off the crowd’s energy, encouraging the audience to dance and get a little crazy.
“You’ll want to get close to the stage, because that’s when we start rocking,” Rooks says.
Rooks’ father, Tom, says that since Superstition took hold, other teen bands have also entered the scene. Williamsburg isn’t always the most thriving place to be a teenager, he says, but the band is working to change that. “It’s like the band that brought all the kids together,” says Tara Hawkins, Brendan’s mom. All the members’ parents serve as de facto managers, helping book shows, organizing equipment and selling merchandise.
And while they’re all just kind of holding their breaths, waiting to see what happens next, Superstition’s fans are pretty sure.
“Watching them grow has been amazing,” says 15-year-old Bella Martinez after hearing them live for the first time. “I can tell they’re going to be the next big thing.”
