The series is curated by Justin Golden, an American roots, Piedmont blues, and Americana artist based in Richmond. Justin has spent years building a career rooted in traditional blues, folk, and country while actively mentoring younger musicians and supporting local arts initiatives.

Justin Golden's origins are deeply vested in the blues, with roots in the Mississippi Delta, Chicago and the Piedmont of Virginia. Golden has carefully studied country blues, with influences ranging from Blind Boy Fuller to Taj Mahal to indie guitar. And as a traditional roots music stalwart, he’s passing the inspiration to youth by teaching them to play as well. His training as an archaeologist has taught him to view music through a historical lens. Studying historic cemetery sites throughout Virginia, he noted that old burial grounds could be lost within a generation, which made him realize that the historic memory of music should also be preserved. Since 2016, Justin has been an instructor of Piedmont Blues Guitar at Augusta Heritage Center's Blues and Swing Week at Davis and Elkins College in West Virginia. While he is keenly versed in traditional styles, he has an extremely diverse musical palette and brings new ideas to traditional blues forms.

Justin performs with his Virginia supergroup DEVIL'S COATTAILS, featuring Trey Burnart Hall (mandolin, tenor banjo, electric guitar), Chris Gatens (upright bass, clawhammer banjo) and Drew Barnocky (drums and washboard). Golden has created a sound where country, blues and bluegrass converge. Together the group has just released Golden Country: Volume 1 to rave reviews.

In early 2025, Justin received a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis, which significantly limited his ability to tour full-time or maintain a consistent out-of-town performance schedule. Rather than stepping away from music, Justin redirected his energy into building this concert series — creating space for collaboration, bringing musical peers to RVA, and continuing to serve the community through live performance.

Also performing:

R.O. (Raphael Odell) SHAPIRO is a purveyor of original Americana music, carefully crafted and soulfully sung. He was born in Brooklyn, NY and grew up in Sag Harbor, an old whaling town at the very eastern end of Long Island. He started performing at an early age, first with dance and then musical theater, before picking up guitar at the end of high school. He attended Yale University, still focusing on theater, but spent a lot of his evenings singing with a cappella groups, a rock band, and a choral folk ensemble called Tangled Up In Blue, or TUIB. After graduating he moved to New York City to pursue acting, but also started picking up some small venue gigs. When he realized that he was more excited about playing dive bars than Broadway, he packed up and headed out west to California to team up with fellow TUIB alum, Jenner Fox, forming the band Odell Fox. They started touring almost immediately, cultivating an energetic and intimate live show experience that R.O. has continued to build upon as a solo artist. They moved to Austin, TX, where they released two records, the “Moon Shiner EP,” in 2016, and “Thank You,” in 2017. When the band parted ways at the end of 2017, R.O. stayed in Austin, gigging regularly in the hallowed venues of that world famous music scene. It was then he developed the full-band, electrified sound that you can hear on 2021’s “King Electric Sessions,” his first release since leaving Odell Fox. In recent years he has typically played solo, touring regularly in the Northeast, California, and Pacific Northwest including Alaska and Vancouver Island. R.O. has drawn comparisons to Ray LaMontagne, Josh Ritter, and Nathaniel Rateliff. He is a winner of the 2022 Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk songwriting contest, and recently recorded with producer/instrumentalist Phil Cook (Bon Iver, Hiss Golden Messenger.) He is currently based in Northern California, and always on the lookout for new communities and stages where he can share his authentic warmth and wit.

ASHLEY VIRGINIA is a North Carolina–based singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, educator, and organizer whose work centers grassroots community building, radical listening spaces, and folk traditions as living culture. Her impact reaches far beyond the stage. Her songwriting has been praised by Americana Highways as “raw, contemporary angst,” and her sound has been likened to the spiritual daughter of Linda Ronstadt and Paul McCartney; drifting between ’70s country cool, West Coast cosmic Americana, and ’60s rock ’n’ roll. As a queer and neurodivergent artist, Ashley’s work centers vulnerability, collective care, and liberation. Her songwriting explores healing, resilience, social justice, and shared humanity; functioning both as personal medicine and a call to connection. In 2026, she will serve as a panelist at Folk Alliance International on “Tracing and Reclaiming Feminist Rhetoric in Folk Protest Music.” Whether building songwriter ecosystems, producing records alone in a treehouse, or inviting rooms of strangers into shared breath and song, Ashley Virginia is cultivating a living folk culture one voice, one story, and one listening space at a time.

With only 100 seats, shows at Révéler are intimate and immersive. A romantic venue with exquisite sound and dreamy vibes, Révéler offers a unique selection of beverages and small plates crafted with care. We kindly ask guests to keep voices low during the show so that everyone can focus on the performance.

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