- Coming up next on "Curate."

- [Lewis] I wanted to be a dad, so this is actually the best of both worlds.

I get to play my stuff.

I get paid for it.

I didn't care about being a star.

- [Jadea] I really wanted to reshape and redefine what womanhood meant to me without my mother in my life and I really wanted to dig really deep into the mother wounds that I had and any of the transitional pierce I was going through.

(spirited music) - Welcome back.

I'm Jason Kypros.

- And I'm Heather Mazzoni.

If you've paid any attention to the local music scene over the past 40 years, then you have to know Lewis McGehee.

- He strummed his first guitar at just seven years old and was playing shows at 11, and later signed a record deal while living in New York's famed Greenwich Village.

- Just like Bob Dylan.

Speaking of whom, he's opened for Dylan.

- As well as John Prine, Robert Palmer, and Bruce Hornsby.

McGehee has made a name for himself across the country.

- But it's been the legacy he's created right here in Hampton Roads that's sure to live on for many years.

♪ I can't keep track of names and faces ♪ ♪ My momma tries to understand ♪ (door clacks) - [Paul] Lewis has been around for a long time.

He's one of the most famous local musicians in Hampton Roads.

He's opened for Bob Dylan, Talking Heads, John Prine, just to name a few, but despite all the brushes with fame, he remains our local musician: a real Hampton Roads treasure.

(spirited music) ♪ Well, I was standing ♪ ♪ On a white, sandy beach ♪ - [Paul] It's hard to think of anyone in the region who has been as prolific, played as many gigs, played in front of as many people, and after all these years, he's still ubiquitous in the area.

You'll see him on the marquees around town, still playing several nights per week.

He's had great success and he doesn't seem like he's slowing down a bit.

♪ And then she said Lewis ♪ ♪ I know you're tired ♪ ♪ But you're a hardworking man ♪ ♪ So I'm gonna take you ♪ ♪ To a very peaceful land ♪ ♪ To a very peaceful land ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ (audience applauds) - I was in, my first band was, I was 11 or 12, so whatever grade that is.

You know, sixth, sixth grade-ish, something like that.

So, I was playing in bands all through high school, and of course, it was always a sideline.

Just a sideline.

I didn't have a clear vision, but kind of, I was rolling towards this way, and the '70s was different.

'70s, I was really out there trying to make it.

I wanted to be, you know, 'cause all I knew at that point in the '70s, I went into this quote, "career" that was either make it big or starve.

There was not a lot of middle ground for what I did, and if there was middle ground, you had to be on the road all the time, 'cause '86, '87, I toured with Hornsby, and still trying to get my material out there and hoping that some record label somewhere would say, "Yeah, we'll sign Lewis," but that didn't happen.

So, somewhere around late '80s, early '90s, I said, "You know what?

I really think this is where I'm supposed to be."

And it wasn't a point of setting my goals lower.

It was kinda feeling like this feels right.

It was a reconciliation with where I was at, who I was, 'cause I wanted to be a dad, so I started thinking, "This is actually the best of both worlds."

I get to play my stuff.

I get paid for it.

I didn't care about being a star.

(relaxed music) I wanted my music to be the backdrop for people's lives.

I wanted to put on the cassette, or the album, or the CD.

I got that, where people come and I play my stuff and I think my music is their backdrop, but it's on a more consolidated basis.

It's smaller and really more intimate in a way.

♪ Katie, don't go ♪ ♪ It's too hard to let go of this ♪ ♪ Katie, don't go ♪ (gentle music) (audience applauds and cheers) - Thank you.

We'll do that, yes, yes.

- She's learning.

Learning young.

- I know.

You stuck some tips in there too.

I raised four girls in the bars and they all, I raised four daughters in the bars, and it worked out.

- Yes, I've seen your one daughter play up there with you.

- Kayce.

- Yes.

- Yes, the keyboard player.

Yeah.

- Love it.

- What we've been able to build, which I could never have foreseen, and by build, I just mean the children, having them to center me and give me such a purpose, and then the fact that Lewis was able to make that happen for me, really, and that he was able to support us and be there for anything we needed and make us laugh.

- I had no idea, and when I got, when I committed to being in this area in 1980 that I would be able to continue to do what I do, and fortunately, I happen to be in an area that's been really responsive to me personally, I think, and I don't take credit for that.

I give credit to the people who come to see me play, and I feel like I've developed friendships, so many nights when I'm playing, I don't feel like I'm playing to an audience.

I feel like I'm play to a bunch of friends.

Hopefully it's like something comfortable for them, like putting on an album.

I'm doing that, like, "Let's put on the Louis McGehee second set album," and I've just been really fortunate and got some great friendships out of this entire thing, and why would I go anywhere else?

(spirited music) (spirited music continues) (spirited music continues) (audience applauds and cheers) Thank you, thank you.

(spirited music) - She's gonna start laughing.

- So, we'd be super angry and he would figure out a way to make us laugh, which, like, it wasn't actually funny- - We were mostly just annoyed.

- but then by the point, you start laughing, you like, kinda get over it, so it worked- - It did work.

- for the most part.

Not every time.

- I also have a lot of good memories.

- You don't bring that up in your therapy or anything, do you now?

(family laughs) - Getting a guitar for Christmas was always this thing.

- [Lewis] A rite of passage?

- Yeah, it was like a rite of passage that if you got a guitar for Christmas, it was like, "All right."

- You're in the band.

- Yeah, you're in the band.

- Yeah, I started playing out with you when I was about 15, I think, was when I first played guitar with you.

♪ It was easy to do ♪ ♪ The things that you wanted ♪ ♪ I bought them for you ♪ - Well, we did a lot of recordings too, you know.

I'd captured little moments and stuff and got people, y'all used to listen, putting headphones on and hearing your voice with all the effects.

The reverb and delay.

It just sounds real.

Back in the day, I would teach, you know, 30 hours a week, it was almost like a full-time gig and then go out and do gigs at night.

So, I was playing guitar a lot.

Five to six hours during the day, and then go out and play a three- or four-hour gig, and that was, you know, five, six days a week for 40 years pretty much.

- Your songwriting is very introspective and very emotional and, you know, it's not party music.

It's thinking, it's thinking songs, and I feel like that gave, at least for me, an opportunity to see a side of how you think, and how you feel, and all of that that most people never get from their parents.

- Yeah, it's kinda cool 'cause I do think some of the lines in some of my songs have become, sorry.

Ingrained.

Don't capture that.

(family laughs) - [Kayce] Maybe you should.

Well, 'cause I think too there was a permission that we got to express our emotions and, like- - Cry?

(family laughs) - I think that's just Irish.

- We're a crying family.

♪ Well ♪ ♪ I'm saying you treated me like ♪ - I've been thinking about the music lately as I've matured and thinking about what it is that works for some people and not for others, and I think it's really, like, a combination of things.

It's the sound, the songs that pull people in, and it's vibrational, I truly believe that, but I think it's the presentation, what you could call performance maybe, but I think that people feel whether it's sincere or not, and that's what I hope that I've been able to convey with music is a sincerity in the music that I've written and that I'm trying to project and to get them to feel similar feelings to me, whatever that may be, on a given night.

It's very transitory.

It's very in the moment.

I kinda like that too 'cause once the gig's done, it's done.

I'm driving home and it's just like, it's almost like it never happened, but in the moment, it can be very magical.

When I get into the moment, I am lost in it, and I truly mean that.

When I'm playing, I feel like I get into that song, and some of these songs I've played 10,000 times, but once I start going, I disappear in the song.

Even if it's repetitive, even if it's the same venues and I see the same people, but I feel connected to 'em through the music and they're part of who I am as a personality, and hopefully vice versa, that I have contributed to their life in the way that they have contributed to mine.

We kind of feed off of each other and that's when the magic begins 'cause I feel the energy coming from them that they're appreciating what I'm doing and it makes me wanna give more, and hopefully it continues to build to a point to where we all feel this same thing and that everybody feels good.

That's the bottom line.

You want people to feel good.

♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ - [Heather] Listen to your favorite classical music offerings with Dwight Davis, Raymond Jones, Wayla Chambo, and Jana Lee Ross on 90.3 WHRO-FM.

- Today, we are joined by the ever so talented Jadea Knight.

Jadea, how are you?

- I'm good, how are you?

- I'm doing pretty good.

Okay, so who exactly is Jadea Knight?

- I feel like people know me first through photography, and then I got to a point where I wanted my photographs to move, so I kinda stepped into the filmmaking world.

- That's interesting.

You wanted your photographs to move.

Tell me about that.

- I definitely was photographing people and different things, like I said, depending on what stage in my life I was at and what exactly emotions I wanted to express to the world, so it got to a point where I was like, "What if I can actually tell a story through motion picture?"

basically.

- What is "To A Familiar Stranger" about?

- It's initially about the relationship between me and my mother.

She was the familiar stranger that I was talking about.

I got to a point in my life where I really wanted to reshape and redefine what womanhood meant to me without my mother in my life and I really wanted to dig really deep into any of the mother wounds that I had and any of the transitional pierce I was going through, so in the film, I am speaking to myself, but I'm speaking to an older version of myself that I no longer want to be connected with, so I am the familiar stranger in my film.

- So, I met you through The CAN.

Like, from that moment to right now, how did we get here?

- The time I applied to The CAN's residency in 2022, I believe, I was really looking for community, but I felt like I kinda hit a place in my career where community felt like that was gonna cultivate me to push me forward to creating something that I really wanted to create, and so I didn't get the residency, but they had an alternate situation, which was a workshop, and they really encouraged me to tell my story when I didn't know if I wanted to tell it or not, so "To A Familiar Stranger" actually came about through the workshop with The CAN.

- Did you meet Tremaine then as well?

- So, no.

I actually used to work at the only film lab here in the area and Tremaine came to the film lab to buy a camera, and so that's how I met Tremaine.

We talked a little bit.

He told me what he was doing, I kinda told him what I was doing, and a year later, we made "To A Familiar Stranger."

- Jadea, thank you so much for coming to talk with us.

- Of course.

- And now the film.

(bird chirps) (swing creaks) (bird chirps) (swing creaks) (bird chirps) (ethereal music) (water plashes) (water continues plashing) (birds chirp) (insects stridulate) (insects continue stridulating) (thunder faintly rumbles) (thunder continues rumbling) - [Jadea] You have lived more inside your head than you've ever lived outside of it.

Soon, stagnancy had gradually evolved into a state that you unconsciously embraced.

And the rage?

(machine shrills) (insects stridulate) Was your rage your mother's or even her mother's?

(insects stridulate) (insects continue stridulating) You carried that rage with you through life with more pride than it deserved.

(birds chirp) (swing squeaks) (air whooshes) (insects stridulate) (insects continue stridulating) Between your legs I sit as you plant rows of vines into my head.

(birds chirp) (insects stridulate) Over, under, and out, over, under, and out, just as the ancestors shows you how to protect my crown.

My scalp?

Now a vineyard.

Over, under, and out, over, under, and out, just as the ancestors showed you how to escape.

My scalp?

Now a map.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (rain roars) (gentle music) (rain continues roaring) (gentle music continues) (rain continues roaring) (gentle music continues) (relaxed music) (relaxed music continues) (relaxed music continues) Embarrassed by the thinness that seemed to pervade your existence, you questioned which parts of yourself were still even functioning properly.

You continue to struggle with the elusive concept of love as you couldn't seem to part ways with all that has hurt you.

Fear and insecurity seeped into parts of your life, opening a void that started to stretch between you and everything you touched.

(elegant music) (elegant music continues) (elegant music continues) (elegant music continues) (wistful music) (wistful music continues) (wistful music continues) (wistful music continues) You began to drift away from a familiar version of yourself and you knew that if you didn't define yourself, you would be confined by the pain that your mother left.

(ambience hums) (poised music) (projector whirs) (relaxed music) - [Speaker] Well, I don't think I was running away from life.

I was running away from rejection.

I was running away from not being accepted.

(projector whirs) (relaxed music) - [Speaker] But you have to go through the fire first.

You have to experience the full fall and the complete self-loathing in order to come around to something like the forgiving of oneself.

(projector whirs) (relaxed music) (relaxed music continues) - [Jadea] Your mother's wounds bled onto you and you were afraid that this is all you'll ever be.

(birds chirp) (wistful music) Being exposed to a broken perspective makes it hard to determine what's real.

Although avoidance felt safest, you realize in order for things to change, you would have to stop abandoning yourself.

(wind whooshes) (chimes clink) (wind continues whooshing) (chimes continue clinking) (calm music) (insects stridulate) (calm music continues) (calm music continues) (wind whooshes) (calm music continues) I crave a very particular type of bond: connection and love.

(birds chirp) (tranquil music) (tranquil music continues) (tranquil music continues) (tranquil music continues) (elegant music) It's as if something that should happen is waiting for me.

It feels as though it's looking right at me.

(insects stridulate) It's something that owes itself to me.

Something deep in me wants more, and I can't rest.

(bird chirps) (hopeful music) (bird continues chirping) (hopeful music continues) - What a beautiful work of art that was.

- I agree.

I love the use of black and white and how it really helps to tell the story.

- Yes, I could have watched that 10 times.

The imagery is just flawless.

- [Jason] Well, then today's your lucky day.

- Why's that?

- Because that's a wrap on this episode, but we'll be back next week with more wonderful stories from the incredibly talented Hampton Roads art scene.

(inspiring music) (inspiring music continues) (inspiring music continues) (inspiring music continues)