Author: Matt Moore

Fordham & Dominion Brewing’s fifth annual R2Hop2 set for April 23

Live music, games, regional vendors, food, craft beers on tap: Those are just a few of the attractions as Fordham & Dominion Brewing Co. hosts its fifth annual R2Hop2 Beer and Music Festival on Saturday, April 23, from noon-5 p.m.

More than 40 vendors will fill the Dover microbrewer’s sprawling grounds at 1284 McD Drive, offering fresh food and beer, face painting and even haircuts for the kids.
Live music will be provided by Delmarva-based bands Pasadena, Barrelhouse and Casey Alvarez.

According to Ryan Telle, Fordham & Dominion’s VP of marketing and lead graphic designer, the goal for this year is to make the festival as interactive as possible.

“In addition to guests being able to move from vendor to vendor, there’s gonna be things to partake in—the keg toss, or photo booth, Jenga, corn hole, face-painting, and the bounce house,” he says.

The festival will have a strong Delaware flavor, with more than 90 percent of the vendors coming from in-state.

This communal approach has become the root of a number of elements featured in this year’s festival, including a collaboration with Painted Stave Distilling of Smyrna on a dry hopped whiskey. Over the last eight months, the two companies have worked closely together to bring this whiskey into fruition and will release it at the festival via an interactive Painted Stave booth.

“They’ll have their own booth serving the whiskey, in addition to a booth where people can drink the beer by itself, then the beer in the barrel that the whiskey was made in, then the whiskey itself,” Telle says.

The same mechanism that makes this whiskey, as well as the entire Fordham & Dominion portfolio, has also inspired the name R2Hop2.

“It’s this piece of equipment that we use on a regular basis to dry hop our beer, and it kind of looks like R2D2,” Telle says. “He’s a full functioning employee, if you will.”

Since 2012, the R2Hop2 Beer and Music Festival has grown every year, with more vendors added to its roster as well as unique features like the antique fire truck that will be parked at the brewery—complete with draft pumps on the side of it that pour beer.

The history of the brewery itself extends back to 1989, when Old Dominion Brewing Co. was founded by Jerry Bailey in Ashburn, Va. Old Dominion was eventually purchased by the longstanding Fordham Brewing Co. in 2007, which was founded in 1703 by Benjamin Fordham and rebranded in 1995 in Annapolis.

By 2009, the two breweries merged under the title Coastal Brewing Company and moved to the current headquarters in Dover.

Since then, the two brands have been brewed and bottled under the same roof while still maintaining their distinct characteristics.

“Fordham is that sessionable, easy-drinking beer for that craft beer drinker who’s on the cusp,” Telle says. “They’ll drink a major brewery brand, but they can also gravitate over to that Fordham portfolio. Whereas Dominion is for more of that experienced craft beer drinker—those high-alcohol beers, those double IPAs, those Belgian tripels. It kind of pleases all beer drinkers’ palates.”

Ten years later, Fordham & Dominion Brewery has become a prominent name in the craft beer industry, producing more than 15 beers and distributing to more than seven states as well as to the United Kingdom.

“We’ve always believed in being a mile deep and an inch wide. Having more of a monumental impact in our own and also neighboring areas means the most to us and for our future,” says Fordham and Dominion Marketing Coordinator Joe Gilmore.

According to Telle, the R2Hop2 Beer and Music Festival is intended to emphasize the importance of community as an integral element of the brewery.

“The idea is to make quality beer on top of making friends,” he says. “Whatever you can do to make an impact.”

General admission for the festival is $25 and includes four beer samples, a commemorative glass and unlimited soda. Designated driver tickets are also available for $20 and include unlimited soda as well. VIP tickets are sold out.

The local band has become known for intense, beer-soaked, but not unstructured performances

On a cold night in January, James Everhart is in the main room of Planet 10 Media, a multimedia production company tucked in the back of a Bear industrial park. The lead singer and guitarist for Scantron, Everhart and his three bandmates have just finished a rehearsal. He tears into a 12-pack of Yuengling, grabs an armful of the green bottles, and walks into the neighboring boardroom and sets them on the dark wooden table where Will Donnelly, George Murphy and Lucas Rinz are sitting.

Everhart takes a seat, twists the cap off his bottle, takes a swig, and sighs.

“Oh, man, I haven’t had a beer in like, four days. This is awesome,” he says, as Donnelly, Murphy and Rinz break into laughter.

Drinking hard and working harder has proven to be a winning formula for a band that, over the past three years, has become known for its energetic, unrestrained live show, featuring a blistering set of garage, punk rock songs played with great intensity at full volume. At any point, its members may be jumping, kicking or downing bottles while maintaining full control and condensing the noise into a single tight, melodic arrangement peppered with harmonies and tasteful guitar lines, lasting no more than the duration of a pop song.

You might say that Scantron is loose but not unstructured.

Everhart, a Wilmington native, and Donnelly, who’s from Washington, have spent the last eight years playing music together in various projects, performing in basement shows, dive bars and concert halls on first a local, then national and international scale.

The two first met in late 2008 through a mutual friend while Everhart was attending the University of Delaware. They soon joined a couple of other students to start a rock group called Shakedown. Sticking primarily to the Newark-Wilmington music scene, they played almost exclusively at basement parties packed with ripped jeans, hemp necklaces and “Hot For Hillary” [Clinton, who was running for President even then] t-shirts.

Earning those fraternity dollars

“I guess I sort of became a Delaware transplant,” Donnelly says. “I was working in a studio down in Maryland and would go up every weekend to play house parties—the chitlin’ circuit of Newark, Delaware.”

“Yeah, we earned those fraternity dollars, man,” Everhart chimes in.

By 2010, Shakedown had disbanded and Everhart and Donnelly started another band, Villains Like You, shifting their focus to a more blues and classic rock sound. The result was a three-year period of exhaustive jam sessions, shirtless guitar solos and an opening stint for Blues Traveler at The Grand Opera House in 2012. In the process, Everhart and Donnelly began to sharpen their performance chops and extend their reach beyond the local music scene, networking and playing in Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York City.

In April 2013, Villains Like You opened for Philadelphia-based rock and roll band Low Cut Connie at the now defunct Mojo on Main. There, Everhart hit it off with lead singer Adam Weiner and multi-instrumentalist Dan Finnemore. By the time creative differences brought Villains Like You to an end later that month, Everhart had joined Low Cut Connie on a national tour as their new guitarist and backing vocalist.

Throughout the summer, he would return from tour and pick up shifts at Home Grown Café in Newark while Donnelly ran sound at Mojo Main and bartended at Oddity Bar in Wilmington. Whenever a band would cancel a performance at Home Grown, Everhart and Donnelly would take their place, milking the bar tab while playing covers and working on original songs that they would eventually record in Donnelly’s apartment above Rainbow Records over the course of three days.

Origin of the name

As for the band name, its origin is as simple as the name itself.

“Honestly, we just got drunk and decided to call it Scantron,” Everhart says with a grin.
By August 2013, Everhart and Donnelly released their debut EP—a scorching collection of four garage rock songs that sounds like Fats Domino got into a brutal bar fight with The Sonics and won. The record was released independently, and the band posted it online and burned discs, with handmade artwork, that they gave out at shows. It wasn’t long before boutique label Grimtale Records pressed the EP on vinyl and distributed it.

Soon after that first release, George Murphy, from Bear, contacted Everhart and Donnelly. A prominent figure in the area music scene, Murphy has become known for his time with local acts like The Keefs and Travel Songs, in addition to the film and design work he has done as the co-founder of Planet 10 Media.

“When I first heard the four-song EP, I was totally floored,” Murphy says. “This was so much more of what I wanted to be doing musically—I was so thrilled that they were doing it.”

Murphy soon began playing with Everhart and Donnelly, solidifying the lineup and using his Planet 10 Media office as home base for the band to write and practice.

It was also during this time—late September, 2013—that Low Cut Connie shuffled their lineup and Donnelly hopped onboard, along with Everhart and fellow Delawarean Larry Scotton, of Arden.

From there, they spent the duration of the year and most of 2014 touring heavily and recording with Low Cut Connie, working on that band’s third release with Thomas Brenneck, a former member of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. Brenneck also has worked with artists such as Charles Bradley, Amy Winehouse and Alabama Shakes.

Despite leaving, returning and leaving again to play with another band, Everhart and Donnelly continued to view Scantron as their primary creative outlet, looking to take their road-tested musicianship and newfound inspirations back to Delaware to flesh out new material whenever possible.

“I’m just like the war bride back here at home while these guys are out on the road, trying to get everybody together to come down to Bear,” Murphy says, cracking a smile.
In early February 2014, Everhart bought a Tascam 38 reel-to-reel tape machine, and he, Donnelly and Murphy set up in a back room at Planet 10 Media and got to work on a new record.

Teaming with Universal Funk Order

Throughout the rest of that year, they spent any free time allowed by Everhart and Donnelley’s demanding tour schedule holed up in Murphy’s office recording their next EP. The lack of a time constraint gave them the advantage of experimenting with new sounds and ideas, without consequences. This freedom brought about a collaboration with Delaware-based horn group Universal Funk Order.

The result of these sessions is Scantron’s second EP, Palamino Blackwing, released in August 2014 through Lazy Boy Records. Like their debut, this record contains four songs, but takes that original garage-rock formula and translates it into a more funk and soul sound. The first pressings sold out within months.

Since then, Everhart, Donnelly and Murphy have grown accustomed to the band’s sporadic nature and have embraced it, spending most of last year playing and recording whenever they had a moment. Last month, they recruited Rinz, of the Philadelphia-based band Satellite Hearts, to play bass.

“We just finished our first practice with Luke and he killed it,” Everhart says, high-fiving Rinz enthusiastically. “This is actually, in fact, the first time we’ve hung out with Luke for more than two hours.”

As of now, Everhart and Donnelly, both 27, and Murphy and Rinz, both 26, have no plans to record a full-length record. Instead, they’re looking to continue recording and releasing the strongest batch of songs they can come up with.

“We want to treat every song like it’s a single,” Everhart says. “[We want to] write a song you can whistle.”

Finishing his drink and adding it to the collection of empty bottles on the table, Everhart looks around the room at his bandmates, and nods.

“This is the epitome of doing it,” he says.

Here’s what’s pouring

Celebrating 30 Years in Fairfax

Since 1985, a small team of friends and family have owned and managed Fairfax Discount Liquors on Concord Pike. Now celebrating 30 years in business, they are offering an enhanced shopping experience featuring wine tastings, limited supply libations and a 20-door cooler, which chills dozens of beers from around the world. The festivities start on Friday, Dec. 4, and will continue through Sunday, Dec. 6.

Heavy Seas: 20 Years of Beer

Baltimore-based brewery Heavy Seas Beer celebrates 20 years of craft brewing this month. To commemorate the occasion, the brewery will release “Winter Storm” —a recreation of the first beer ever tagged “Heavy Seas”—but in a strong, 10 percent ABV, barrel-aged version. In addition, another anniversary beer, “20 Year Storm,” features imported UK malt and local Domino sugar (which is made in Baltimore) and was aged in bourbon barrels for approximately 75 years. There will be several anniversary events in Baltimore, including the world premiere of “20 Year Storm” on Monday, Dec. 7, at the Heavy Seas Alehouse; the “20 Beers for 20 Years” event on Tuesday, Dec. 8, at Ryleigh’s Oyster, and the official release party for “20 Year Storm” at the Heavy Seas Tap Room on Wednesday, Dec. 9.

TheFiftyBest Chooses Painted Stave Vodka

TheFiftyBest.com has presented Smyrna’s own Painted Stave Distillery with the gold medal for “Best Flavored Vodka.” Chosen out of 51 contenders during a blind tasting held in New York City, Painted Stave’s Time Warp Vodka is distilled using espresso beans that are locally roasted by the Young Bean coffee shop in Clayton.

Winter Pairing Dinner on the Water

Now through April, beat the cold and step inside the Cape May-Lewes Ferry Terminal for fine food and brew. Food prepared by the ferry’s chefs will be paired with beer from Dogfish Head Brewery on Friday, Dec. 4, and 16 Mile Brewery on Friday, Dec. 18. Tickets are $59. Dinner is from 5:30-8:30 p.m.

May the Force Be With You

In light of the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens film, Iron Hill Brewery will host The Dark Side Party Multi-Tap at its Wilmington location. Set for Saturday, Dec. 19, from 1-5 p.m., it will feature eight beers, including “Millennium Falcon,” “Chewbacca Chocolate Stout,” “Galaxy Far Far Away Black IPA” and “Wookey Jack.”