Music Awards Under The Influence

Hundreds of local musicians and fans turned up at the Granby Theater in downtown Norfolk last Thursday for the third annual Port Folio Weekly Local Music Awards. It was a PFW event, so we won’t call this objective journalism. But, if we do say so ourselves, it was, as one of our staff members put it the next day, a "kick-booty show."

Norfolk’s The Influence was the big award winner of the evening. They took home the coveted Album of the Year Award for their 2007 release, Pig Radio, as well as the Best Pop-Rock Award. They also performed a jamming version of Michael Jackson’s "Billie Jean" to go along with our 1983 theme, inspired by our 25^th anniversary (the first PFW came out in 1983).

Our MC for the awards show, local public radio DJ Paul Shugrue, took home the prize for Best Radio DJ for his well-known show on 89.5 WHRV "Out of the Box," on which he frequently plays local music. No, we didn’t plan that. He won fair and square with 40 percent of the overall vote in his category.

All of the winners, in fact, were chosen by a popular online poll on our website, www.portfolioweely.com, which closed just a week before the show. We had more than 2,500 responses in this year’s voting.

Acoustic/Folk and Album of the Year nominees Skye Zentz and Skip Friel stole the show with their quirky version of Hall & Oates’ "Maneater," featuring Friel on acoustic guitar and Zentz on ukulele (and decked out in full-on funky Material Girl regalia).

Skye Zentz was nominated alongside her dad, local folk music legend Bob Zentz, in both the Acoustic/Folk and Album of the Year categories. The elder Zentz was in the house for Skye’s performance.

Songstress JoAnna Lynne won the Acoustic/Folk category by a healthy margin, and her friend Matthew Archer Stephenson, lead singer of The Influence, accepted the award on her behalf, noting that she couldn’t make it to the show because she was down in Austin, TX for South by Southwest—one excuse we’ll gladly accept.

Ska band Jackmove took home the prize in the Best Punk/Garage category and brought down the house with a kickin’ version of Don Henley’s "Dirty Laundry," complete with raging horn section.

DJ Greg Again was so psyched to win the Best DJ/MC category that he did the robot on stage. And all three Pawn Shop Lifters came up to accept their award in the Best Country/Americana category.

Other musical performance highlights included Rylo’s rocking alt-country/blues take on Adam Ant’s "Goody Two Shoes" and 1888’s tight rendition of "Always Something There to Remind Me" by Naked Eyes.

And Norfolk-based improv comedy group Off the Top overcame a few technical difficulties to entertain the crowd in the first half of the show.

Lots of folks also joined us after the show for nominee Still Pink’s single release party at Scotty Quixx.

A list of the nominees and winners is included at right. Winners are highlighted with their winning percentages noted. Runners-up are indicated in parenthesis.

See you all at the PFW Music Awards 2009!