A place to play
By Liz Barry on Apr. 24, 2008
The stage is a blur of strobe lights, instruments and swaying bodies. Metal music blasts from tall speakers into 6,000 square feet of rundown warehouse. The scarred wood floor trembles under the force of the music.
Welcome to The Pit.
Lynchburg’s newest music venue dwells on the ground floor of 1217 Kemper St. The Pit is the brainchild of Tony Evans, an 18-year-old Jefferson Forest grad who launched the venue with the help of his father, Jerry Evans, and a cadre of friends.
The Pit is an alcohol- and drug-free venue open to all music genres, but will lean toward metal music, Evans says. He wants the venue to be a safe environment where parents feel comfortable dropping off their kids, or even staying, so he recruited volunteer security guards to keep the crowd under control.
“We want to be a permanent place for people to have a good time,” Evans says. “We want to be an establishment.”
Opening Night
The Pit opened with a bang on April 19. Five local metal bands took the stage: War Without Reason, Charred Martyr, Krayola Carnage, Noob Saibot and Iosin.
It’s just past 7 p.m. and the second band, Krayola Carnage from Appomattox, is playing.
Close to 50 people surround the stage, mostly teenagers and 20-somethings. Many have that metal edge: black T-shirts, tattooed biceps, piercings sliced through lips. Two are dancing violently up front, limbs thrashing and heads banging to the beat.
With three bands yet to play, momentum is building. People trickle through the door and join the crowd up front.
Evans spread the word about the show through Myspace and friends at local high schools and colleges, whom he calls “Pit Soldiers.”
No place to play
When it comes to music venues, Lynchburg has long been overshadowed by cities like Charlottesville, Roanoke and Richmond.
Bands have turned to underground scenes like Zanzabar, a garage in Lynchburg that would sometimes draw more than 200 people. Local metal band Dismembering Nightmare was behind the makeshift venue.
“Over time, as it got bigger, it just kind of got out of hand,” says band member Don Henley says. “We should have had a permit, we should have had all that stuff from the get-go.”
Zanzabar, which hosted mostly metal bands, was shut down in January.
But things are starting to change. In the past several years, a handful of coffee shops that have cropped up in the area offer up-and-coming artists a place to play.
Add The Pit to the list of pioneers.
“The biggest thing to do here is hang out at Wal-Mart,” says Kenny Wells, a co-manager of The Pit. “It’s about time something like this has happened here.”
Charlottesville entrepreneur Oliver Kuttner, who is renting the space to Evans, predicts that Lynchburg will undergo a renaissance in the next decade.
“At this point, Lynchburg is in the cycle of attracting people with vision and creativity and a dream,” he says. “It’s not necessarily attracting a lot of people with a lot of money, but that is starting.”
So far, so good
The Pit’s first show was bigger than Evans expected. A total of 138 people showed up. Maximum capacity is 200.
Ashley McMillan, 23, drove from Waynesboro. Her boyfriend plays in Charred Martyr, and it’s not the first time she’s been to Lynchburg for metal music.
“They’ve got a good scene down here, better than Waynesboro.”
McMillan likes the gritty feel of The Pit.
“If it’s too shiny, it’s going to get messed up anyway,” she says. “You might as well start where you will end up.”
Kevin Adrey, 21, drove from Charlottesville with a friend. Though Charlottesville is known for a vibrant music scene, he said the metal scene there is small and tight-knit.
“I think this could be the start of something amazing,” he says.
Eric Rodriguez, 24, from Appomattox is happy to see a new, legitimate venue in town. Rodriguez is more into classic rock than metal music, but came to see his friends in Krayola Carnage play.
“They’re doing it the right way,” he says. “It’s not in some guy’s basement with sketchy stuff going on.”
Making it happen
Evans, the vocalist for War Without Reason, has wanted to open a music venue for years.
“When I was a kid, I wanted something like this so bad,” he says.
Evans has long kept a notebook full of ideas for a venue. After graduating from high school, he decided to make it happen.
To help pay the rent, Evans got a loan from his father, Jerry. Father and son did a lot of the manual labor to get the space ready. Tony Evans describes his father as “just an average blue-collar worker trying to make a difference.”
The son was pushing to get the venue opened by the end of January, but the building wasn’t ready.
“I’m 18,” he says. “I don’t know everything about running a business.”
By April, Evans got his business license and passed inspections.
To make ends meet, Evans works at a local pawnshop and is taking classes in business management at Central Virginia Community College. He says the classes have been helping, especially calculus.
A blank slate
Evan plans to stick with The Pit for a year to see if it makes enough to cover rent and expenses. If The Pit takes off, he hopes to invest in a better sound system to replace what he calls “years’ worth of clutter.”
The Pit is still raw, a blank slate. The concession stand is made of plywood. Two beams near the stage are wrapped in duct tape.
Evans and Wells want to liven up the place.
Right now, there’s one grim mural on the wall, painted by their friend, Rodriguez. It’s a twisty matrix of eyeballs and snarling teeth. Next to it, another mural is in progress.
“The white’s gotta go,” Wells says of the wall.
But for now, there are higher priorities. For one, booking the next show.
For more information on The Pit and a list of upcoming shows, visit myspace.com/lbc_pit.
COMMENTS
great to see some bona fide place to play for local music.
but i have to say that there are other types of music than metal. a look at the show rosters for the pit, metal, metal and more metal. open your minds and you’ll get more people to open their wallets. a failure will only further the notion that lynchburg, just isn’t worth the trouble and cause them to take their time and efforts out of town where the safe bets are. good luck.
“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct...”