Southern Folklife Festival Featuring Merle Haggard & Tift Merritt, Rebirth Brass Band & Dumpstaphunk, Big Star’s Third, a brass-band symposium and more Thursday, Aug. 21–Saturday, Aug. 23, Chapel Hill and Carrboro Schedule and tickets: blogs.lib.unc.edu/sfc Concert posters and newspaper clippings, rock ‘n’ roll records and archival photographs, Cajun tunes and handmade instruments: What sort of […]
Allison Hussey
Posted inMusic
Live: Nickel Creek carries on in Cary
Nickel Creek, Josh Ritter Koka Booth Amphitheatre Thursday, Aug. 14 2014 In 2007, the not-quite-bluegrass trio of Nickel Creek wrapped up its “Farewell (For Now)” tour, going on one of those cursed indefinite hiatuses so its members could pursue other projects. In the years since, the trio of mandolinist Chris Thile, fiddler Sara Watkins and […]
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IBMA’s World of Bluegrass gets wider with Del McCoury
The lineup for this year’s World of Bluegrass festival, which comes to Raleigh with the International Bluegrass Music Association awards and conference, keeps getting better. The festival just announced that Del McCoury is now a part of the Saturday, Oct. 4, show. He’ll play a special 90-minute set that celebrates the legendary guitarist’s 75th birthday. […]
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Art review: The original works behind Merge album covers in Unbelievable Things
Unbelievable Things: 25 Years of Art on Merge RecordsLIGHT Art + Design Through Aug. 9 As a part of its 25th anniversary ballyhoo, Merge goes multimedia in Unbelievable Things: 25 Years of Art on Merge Records, an exhibit in the Durham label’s original home of Chapel Hill. The show offers an up-close look at the […]
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Losing gear, getting cool, being offensive: A Q&A with American Aquarium’s BJ Barham
A few weeks ago, American Aquarium frontman BJ Barham got a little more than he expected from Twitter—and, to be fair, I had a lot to do with it. His band’s van had been stolen and destroyed in Indianapolis; in an online eulogy, the band shared that the van was jokingly called “Rape Van Winkle,” […]
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The great venue shuffle brings blues to downtown Durham, folk to downtown Cary
Every few months, it seems that another wave of area music venue reorganization passes through the Triangle. The most recent cycle concerns many of the area’s long-running roots-music clubs, including the revitalization of an old favorite and the sudden shuttering of a standby. PAPA MOJO’S CLOSES Fans of zydeco, blues and jazz got a shock […]
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Live: Falling back in with Fall Out Boy in Raleigh
Fall Out Boy, Paramore, New Politics Walnut Creek Amphitheatre Tuesday, July 22, 2014 January 18, 2007: The night before my 15th birthday, I stood in the cold in a hand-painted T-shirt with two older cousins, waiting for the doors to Raleigh’s Disco Rodeo to open for my first-ever club show. It was the “Friends or […]
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Live: The Milk Carton Kids surmount illness and hecklers in Durham
Milk Carton Kids Carolina Theatre, Durham Thursday, July 17, 2014 The last time the Milk Carton Kids were in town on a tour of their own, the duo played at Casbah, the Main Street club that closed at the start of the year. The outfit got a major venue upgrade for its current round, playing […]
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Merge is big business, but the label still helps power local music
Music scenes depend on the youth of new recruits, people like Marc Kuzio and David Smith. Kuzio is a 19-year-old bandleader from Raleigh, and Smith, his friend, is a 21-year-old college DJ at N.C. State. One helps make local music; the other helps ensure it gets exposure. But without Merge Records, the Durham label that’s […]
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Live: Getting Fucked Up on happiness
Fucked Up, Weed, Bandages Kings, Raleigh Saturday, July 5, 2014 On the surface, the Toronto hardcore-but-not-hardcore band Fucked Up appears aggressive and abrasive. Just consider the name. Behind that intense façade, though, are songs that are sweeping, and, to use an oft-abused term, epic. When paired with the band’s relentless live energy, those tunes turn […]