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To the Beat of their Own Drums

For ’90s indie-rock icons Pavement, the groundwork was laid on Pittaway Drive
Often called “your favorite band’s favorite band,” Pavement is credited with influencing a generation of young musicians, while epitomizing the anti-commercial attitude of alternative rock music in the ’90s. Although they’ve achieved waves of international success over three decades, even their most strident fans might be surprised to learn that a formative moment in the history of Pavement occurred on the Trinity JV basketball team in the fall of 1980, when Bob Nastanovich ’85 met Steve West ’85.
 
“We were terrible,” says West, who remembers playing hoops against future-governor Glenn Youngkin’s Norfolk Academy team. West rode the bench, but “Bobby was a great defense guy.” In those days, the varsity team was on the rise, playing tougher schedules each year. “Unfortunately, the JV team that Bob and I were on was up against some guys that looked like they were fully grown with beards.”
 
By the time they became seniors, their bond had solidified, as the class elected West president and Nastanovich VP. “He won in a landslide,” remembers Nastanovich. “Steve West was so popular and always had really good leadership qualities. He's just a really, really good guy.” Nastanovich remembers squeaking by in his own runoff election. “I have that problem with being a terribly sarcastic person.”

Contoocook Line

Classmates like Hanby Carter ’85 and Rob Williams ’85 remember Trinity’s fertile artistic soil, with the support of creative teachers like Pauline Crowling, Marcia Germaine and Will Towles David Peros. By the spring of 1983, West, Carter and Williams had joined Michael Bowling ’85 and John Smith ’85 to form a band called The Cellars. “The first gig they ever played was my sister's 16th birthday party on our back deck,” remembers Nastanovich. “What we thought was going to be about 50 people turned out to be about 400. We had to shut it down early.” 
 
The band’s first sets included covers by The Who and The Rolling Stones, but it was always their desire to play originals, says Williams, and there was one band that united them all in their pursuit of an identity. “When we were just starting out in ’83 or ’84, Steve talked us all into going to see R.E.M. in Virginia Beach,” says Williams, who was inspired by the simple but powerful riffs of guitarist Peter Buck. “To say it was a life-changing event is an understatement.”
 
When Bowling left The Cellars, the foursome briefly changed their name to Stalingrad. But there was a hitch, remembers Carter: “Everywhere we'd play, people thought we were a hardcore punk band, and we weren't.” In need of a new name in a hurry, West turned to best friend Nastanovich, who suggested “Contoocook Line,” a railway reference in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” “He blurted it out, and that's the name we chose, and we stuck with it,” says Carter. Contoocook Line would play together as classmates at VCU, release an album, “Oliver's Garden,” and take a brief shot at the Big Apple before splitting in the early ’90s. “Years later, I was playing some solo shows up in New England and I saw a sign for Contoocook, New Hampshire,” says Williams. “So I followed it to the Contoocook train station and took a picture there… So it’s a real place!” 

A Supportive Scene

As Trinity students, West, Nastanovich and their classmates continued to bond musically over local RVA bands too, including The Good Guys, known for a ska-reggae sound, and power-pop combo The Dads. “The Dads were one of the first bands we really looked up to that got a major-label deal,” recalls Carter. The Eccentrics, considered a younger-sibling band to The Dads, were also part of the Trinity music scene at the time and included Chris Burch ’86, Clancy Fraher ’87, and Will Jones ’87. “The Eccentrics were a good band,” recalls West. “Between the two of us, we had the school covered.”
 
In addition to a few dances and events at Trinity, both bands recall playing Friday-night gigs at the Southampton Recreation Center, where some Trinity parents had organized a weekly, chaperoned teen party called Willfully Active New Generation (WANG). When Fraher first saw Stalingrad at the WANG, he was blown away. “I thought, wow, these guys are at my school?! If they can do it, I can do it. So, in a huge way, that inspired us.” The Eccentrics would play together for seven years, bringing their own R.E.M.-inspired rock to the Mid-Atlantic college circuit after Trinity. 
 
“There was always a flourishing, supportive music scene,” says John Mills ’90, Trinity parent and former board member, who remembers idolizing older Trinity musicians. “What was cool about Trinity was you could be an athlete, and also be in a band or be an artist. There were no limiting stereotypes in the community, and you could just explore whatever you were passionate about. I've always felt lucky to have been there.” 

The DJ and the Drummer

Another big influence on the band was the late Norty Hord ’85, who Williams remembers as being “always a year or two ahead of us in terms of his musical taste.” While still at Trinity,  Hord was already a DJ on WDCE, the student-run radio station at the University of Richmond. “If my band had a demo tape, Norty would play it,” remembers West. 
 
Inspired by Hord, and their mutual fanaticism for punk rock, Nastanovich started his own show at WTJU, the University of Virginia’s student-run station, when he got to U.Va. in 1985. There, he would befriend fellow WTJU disc spinners Stephen Malkmus and David Berman, and Nastanovich would play the drums on the first recordings for a band called Silver Jews. Nastanovich confesses that despite a love for music and plenty of friends in the industry, “I’d never even thought about playing any music,” he says. “I was just happy to spend every spare penny I had on records, and I really loved being a college radio DJ.” 
 
Nastanovich would later join Malkmus in another musical project: Pavement. The two vocalists carved a sonic dovetail — with Malkmus’ aloof, sardonic lyrics contrasting the piercing screams and call-and-response of Nastanovich. The group gained an underground following with their debut LP, “Slanted and Enchanted,” but soon they were in need of another drummer, and West was in the right spot at the right time. “Steve West really hit it off with Malkmus, and those two guys pretty much built our entire second album, which, as far as I know, is our most successful,” says Nastanovich of 1994’s “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain,” which spawned the hit single, “Cut Your Hair,” complete with a video on MTV. 
 
With West on the main drum kit and Nastanovich also providing percussion and vocals, the results were a unique sound that was perfectly timed for the post-Nirvana surge of alternative and college rock into the mainstream music scene of the era. “We were entirely satisfied with the ’90s,” says Nastanovich. “I mean, we made five CDs. We got to quit our jobs in ’92 and travel all around the world playing music for the rest of the decade — which was just a crazy idea!” In late 1999, Pavement decided their creative venture had run its course. The hiatus would last for ten years before the band reunited to tour in support of a greatest-hits record. “A lot of people around us felt like it was a failure, because they thought it could have been a much bigger thing,” says Nastanovich. “But we never thought about that at all. It's been a fantastic run.”
 
When not on tour with Pavement, West has maintained a music career in the Lexington/Staunton, VA area, where he plays in two bands: Unmastered Masters and Darlington Pair. He is also a stone mason specializing in historic houses in the Shenandoah Valley. Nastanovich parlayed his love of horse racing into a career as a breeder, racer, handicapper and commentator for racing media in both the U.S. and the U.K. “I bought a lot of very slow, cute race horses,” he says. “You'd rather have a fast, ugly one, but you’ve just got to be honest.” 

Bright New Corners

On a balmy fall evening in September of 2025, a queue of vinyl-clutching music lovers snaked through the doors and up to the second floor of the Byrd, Richmond’s historic movie theater in Carytown. Upstairs, Steve West sat with Sharpie in hand, autographing albums and posters for fans who had come to see the screening of a new film: “Pavements.” Days earlier, the Richmond Times-Dispatch had included both him and Nastanovich in their list of “Famous Richmonders from A to Z,” and West was gracious and self-effacing with the crowd of proud locals.
 
Released in 2024, “Pavements” tells the story of the band's rise, critical praise, dissolution and reunion, chronicling their often tortured relationship with fame and the dilemma of so many popular artists in the ’90s: how to balance success with remaining true to one’s art and avoid “selling out.” Told in a self-referential spiral, the film plays with the concept of the unreliable narrator — following the band as it rehearses for a reunion show, films its own biopic and produces a Broadway-style tribute musical — with the audience wondering all the while whether any of it is real. 
 
More recently, these icons of ironic indie rock have also picked up a Gen-Z following, thanks in large part to one of their more obscure B-sides, “Harness Your Hopes,” becoming a TikTok sensation in 2024. This summer, Pavement has another American tour in the works, including their first stop back in Richmond since playing the Flood Zone more than 30 years ago. Nastanovich hopes both his mother and West’s mother, who now live in the same retirement community, will be there for the homecoming show at The National theater on Saturday, July 25, 2026. The performance has already sold out.
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