Ice clinked in a cocktail shaker behind the bar and forks scraped plates over the chatter of a Thursday night dinner crowd at The Roads Bistro in Virginia Beach.

Standing up front on a cramped stage, the jazz singer flipped her hair and leaned close to the microphone. Her voice was soft and low: “I don’t know if you were expecting music tonight.”

Youtsey is one of hundreds of musicians whose time and talent contribute to the region’s music scene. While venue closings and decreases in pay for live shows since the pandemic have hindered its growth, musicians are working together to collectively address the problems.

Singers, songwriters, rappers, guitarists, fiddlers, DJs and bands make up a community of savvy musicians who sing, spin or strum out livings while delivering sets that slap — whether at an Oceanfront festival or Ocean View dive. Some ply their trade full-time, going on tour and returning for hometown shows, while many maintain day jobs.

Hampton Roads may not be a music mecca like Los Angeles, New York or Nashville, and artists’ views on the local environment differ, but ultimately, they agree the region’s diversity of genres and concerts creates a vibrant scene.

Not Austin, but gigs abound

Youtsey, 30, was a military kid who graduated from Grafton High School in York County and was all set to be a Christian missionary until a “whirlwind jam session” at the famed Elephant Room one Austin, Texas, night in her early 20s.

She was visiting friends and hovering by the low-lit stage waiting for an opportunity. In a break between songs, she waved at the sax player and asked for chance to sit in with the band. She said the look on his face expressed “not now little girl.” Turning, she slowly walked back to her table.

“God,” she prayed, “If you want me to sing tonight, I leave it up to you.”

Then, she recalled the quartet’s leader, trombonist Andre Hayward, approached her table, asked what she could sing and let her on stage, where she sang with the band the rest of the night. She dropped missionary work for the prestigious Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead program the following summer and continued to sing at Austin venues for several years.

When she moved home in 2022, the music scene wasn’t as robust as in Austin, but full of opportunity. The Texas state capital had felt oversaturated. The Hampton resident said it was easier to stand out in Hampton Roads. In a good month, she could play upward of 11 live gigs, as some locals, such as Duane Smith, have done for decades.

A Tidewater music mainstay, Smith believes that while there are more local places to play live music these days, the number of venues that book bands to play original music has decreased. And he’d know.

He’s witnessed the consistently changing landscape since the late 1990s when he founded The Fuzz Band as a student at Hampton University.

Since then, he and his nine-piece funk jazz and soul band have appeared in Black Enterprise and Rolling Stone magazines, toured in Europe and with the USO in Iraq, Kuwait, Egypt and Dubai and played parties for Tommy Hilfiger, Allen Iverson and President Barack Obama.

Recently, Smith has noticed a rise in the number of local businesses using booking agents to hire live entertainment and, in turn, less demand for full bands, particularly post-COVID. In recent years, many restaurants and bars have shown a greater preference for single guitarists or duo groups, Smith said.

“Which, I guess is cool but not cool, you know?”

He misses now-closed joints that had encouraged artists to play originals such as The Train Station Restaurant in Newport News or The Jewish Mother , once a 40-year staple of Virginia Beach.

Many Virginia artists who’ve attained viral success did so by leaving and finding established music industry infrastructure outside the commonwealth, Smith said. Atlanta has a sound. Philly has a cultivated sound, and Hampton Roads could, too, given the right tools.

But, he added, gone are the days when Teddy Riley had a production studio in Virginia Beach — the spot Pharrell Williams got his start.

Like many local artists, Smith saw the recent cancellations of Williams’ Something in The Water as a loss and a new opportunity. While the music festival thrust Virginia Beach into the national spotlight once a year, bringing artists such as Lil Wayne and Mumford & Sons to the Oceanfront, its absence allowed locals to step up and fill the void with their own festival: Vibe Check .

“The level of talent in this area is extraordinary,” Smith said. “Have you ever heard of Roberta Lea ?”

Local to national pipeline

Lea, from Norfolk, is proof that you can make it big and live in Hampton Roads.

She knows the feeling of standing on Broadway watching her music videos play on giant Times Square monitors, because the former Spanish teacher used social media to jump-start a second career as a singer-songwriter.

In April, she slung a guitar strap around her neck, standing next to a semicircle of portable amps on a patio across the street from the Williamsburg Regional Library. It was the city’s 2nd Sundays art festival. Downtown streets were filled with vendors and pedestrians. On the library lawn, a crowd of young parents, strollers in tow, gathered to listen as she spoke about her home state.

“We have a long legacy of musicianship starting with Patsy Cline and Ella Fitzgerald and working its way through to the Timbalands and Missys. … If there’s something in the water, I hope I’m in it too,” she said.

Then, she transitioned to playing “Somewhere in the Tide.”

The 39-year-old mom began writing songs over two decades ago. In the spring of 2021, she sent a tweet to explain her decision to resign from teaching to try and make it as a full-time country singer.

That tweet caught the attention of Rissi Palmer, the host of the “Color Me Country Radio” show, who helped Lea find a grant that funded her first EP. Then, Lea connected via Facebook with singer Holly G., who put Lea on her blog, “Black Opry,” which spotlights Black women in country music. Next thing she knew, Lea was a part of a national tour and was inducted into the 2023 class of CMT’s “Next Women of Country.”

Lea, now a leading voice in regional music circles, is a part of an ongoing conversation with other prominent local artists about how to build local infrastructure to streamline musicians’ careers — and help others make the jump from 50-seat shows to 5,000-person festivals.

She talks to people like BJ Griffin.

A singer and cellist who has appeared on “America’s Got Talent,” Griffin runs a resident artist program through his talent management and production company, Big Juicy Entertainment, that teaches up-and-coming musicians how to create a business model based on their talent. The coaching focuses on five key areas: business planning, brand development, brand marketing, social media strategy and artistic development.

Griffin tells people: “There’s no record company that’s going to come and save you.”

And even if there were, he adds, not everyone wants one, because a record deal is essentially a loan to be used for recording and marketing. An artist doesn’t make money on an album until they first pay their loan back, typically by nonstop touring.

“But with the internet,” he said, “there is so much DIY artists can do to advantage themselves.”

Based on his many conversations with local musicians, he estimates that prior to the pandemic, average pay for a four- to seven-member band would’ve been between $800 to $2,000 for a four-hour live show.

Pay rates decreased during the pandemic, and demand for live entertainment never fully recovered. In 2025, a band averages $500 to $1,500 per show, Griffin said. He estimates that most solo acts also make less than they would have before COVID, now averaging $150 to $400 per four hours of live music.

Griffin is compiling a master list of working musicians in the region. He wants them all to start sharing information and be better positioned to bargain for higher pay for live shows.

Hip-hop takes a hit

Amir Driver, 36, has been a Norfolk hip-hop artist since he was 16, going high school to high school freestyling against whoever wanted to step to him in a rap battle. He said recent venue closings have negatively impacted his genre more than any other.

He started out performing at open mics and clubs willing to host hip-hop shows, mostly on or near Granby Street downtown. But those venues no longer exist. Some, like Posh Dolce, closed over the years because of languishing foot traffic with the slow decline of MacArthur Center. Entourage closed after city code enforcement sweeps and a canceled lease in 2010.

Others, such as Legacy Restaurant & Lounge , were forced to closed after a 2022 city crackdown on nightlife when permits were pulled from at least five nightclubs in response to several downtown shootings that resulted in injuries and deaths, including the killing of Virginian-Pilot reporter Sierra Jenkins outside Chicho’s .

Driver, who launched a clothing brand, was informed around the same time as the nightclub closings that he didn’t have the proper permits to host hip-hop shows in his brick-and-mortar store Made in Norfolk. But, he said, the number of up-and-coming Hampton Roads hip-hop artists continues to grow, and the scene is thriving despite a decrease in live shows by local artists.

Brandon “Shaggy” Stokes , a radio host and DJ for Z104, agrees.

However, he said artists need to understand that local radio is not a first route to national acclaim. Disc jockeys can’t play whatever they want, whenever they want. Like many professions, radio show hosts have quotas. If they don’t keep enough listeners, they’ll have bosses at corporate headquarters to answer to. Playing the day’s Top 40 hits is a tried-and-true method of keeping listeners.

The chance of an unknown artist having their song on the radio during drive time is slim to none, but sometimes stations produce shows highlighting locals at later time slots. Stokes hosted a show, “Shaggy’s Locals Spotlight,” every Sunday night for about four years until he ran out of artists to interview.

Working the scene

So take it from one of Hampton Roads’ hardest working musical acts: To make it here, you’ve got to be versatile.

Chris Hall, a 38-year-old singer and pianist who performs as Chris Keys, joined forces with Mike Littman, a 45-year-old musician who performs as DJ Litt, to form LittKeys around 2016. Ever since, they have been rocking Virginia Beach, including Waterman’s Surfside Grill, Calypso Bar and Grill and HK on the Bay. While Littman has a 9 to 5 doing IT for an oil company, Hall has never needed a day job outside of music.

It’s about diversity, Hall said. Night spots and clubs are cool, but private events pay. During the wedding season, for example, LittKeys plays roughly six private parties to every two public shows.

To make it in Hampton Roads, you’ve got to work the scene. And, few bands have done it as well as Buckshot.

Lead singer Curtis Cowles founded Buckshot in 2013, and over the past 12 years, it’s become one of the go-to country-rock bands for any party, fundraiser or rally in need of a jump-start or up-tempo fun. The set it played at Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s 2022 inauguration was such a hit that it was invited to Milwaukee last year to play at the Republican National Convention.

Buckshot’s seven members have day jobs and family obligations, and they rarely take gigs paying less than $4,500. But, at this point, the money is secondary to the thrill of playing, particularly in front of fans at hometown shows.

“These shows are just more electrifying,” Cowles said in an interview. “I sing to five people just like I sing to 500 people. That’s just how we do it. I can’t turn it off.”

Cowles joined his bandmates for a gig of mostly cover songs at Good Mugs in April. The little Virginia Beach bar was packed with fans eager to rock, country style.

A dude in the back called out: “Wahhhoooo.”

Cowles walked through the bar singing Brad Paisley’s “I’m Gonna Miss Her.” He sat at a table with two couples, serenading the women with a flirty rendition of George Strait’s “The Fireman.” He stood for the Buckshot version of Alan Jackson’s “Gone Country.”

“I’ve gone country / look at them boots,” Cowles sang the lyrics, kicking a bare foot into the air.

Folks at the front of the joint laughed and sang along while people in the back by the pool tables kept on dancing.

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