By the time she was 18, she’d already set the blues world on fire with her debut, 1997’s Turn the Heat Up. 2000’s Grammy nominated Wicked and ’02’s Talking to Strangers put some funk in her résumé. With her latest, The Soul Truth, you can add soul as well. As brassy as she appears live […]
Grant Britt
Posted inMusic
PineCone makes a move
It’s enough to make Emmylou move downtown. When PineCone left Stewart Theatre behind this year for the Progress Energy Center (formerly the BTI Center), it opened up a new world of access for the roots music organization. More seats meant they could book acts like Harris, who plays Meymandi Hall next year on St. Patrick’s […]
Posted inNews
Ex-con aims at lost generation
Leading one of Durham’s most ruthless street gangs in drug dealing, drive-bys and armed robberies got him a 30-year prison sentence when he was barely out of his teens. While in prison, he turned his life around. Now, when Vegas Don speaks, at-risk kids listen. Otis Lyons, who goes by the street name Vegas Don, […]
Posted inNews
Co-Op grows performers
The last time Pete Laiosa was in the public eye, he was in a laid-back folk/frock duo called the Swivel Rockers. The band has been recently resurrected in a different configuration, but now Laiosa has taken on another performing role, as publicity director for the N.C. Songwriter’s Co-op. “The whole focus is to grow the […]
Posted inNews
Saving soul
Everybody’s got it, but few are able to express it. When white guys try it, they usually tack on a “blue-eyed” prefix so that when they can’t deliver the goods they have a built-in excuse. Soul is both the medium and the message. It’s not used much any more to describe a style of music […]
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Diddlin’ with the beat
It’s a beat like no other–the call of the wild, electrified. A rhythm that’s a raw, primitive thud that shakes you to your core. His sound was unique in the ’50s, and still today it’s instantly recognizable as the property of one Ellas McDaniel–better known to millions as Bo Diddley. The trademark rhythm came along […]
Posted inNews
Bailing out the Bayou
If you’ve always thought of yourself as enough of a character to be in a book but were unable to do it yourself, now’s your chance for immortality. Durham author David Terrenoire will put you in his next novel–for a price: a $100 donation to Hillsborough’s Blue Bayou club. “It’s my neighborhood bar–it’s just not […]
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Uncanned Tuna still hot stuff
The band wanted to call themselves Hot Shit. Their record company wanted them to be the Rolling Stones. Neither one got what they wanted. “I wish we’d been the next Rolling Stones,” Jorma Kaukonen laughs. But his band Hot Tuna made out pretty good anyway. “I guess the good news is that we got to […]
Posted inNews
Skeeter Brandon bites back
At first, band members thought the man approaching them in the parking lot was a fan wanting a last word with Skeeter Brandon before he left the gig. But when the guy produced a gun and stuck it in their faces, they realized this particular fan was looking for more than words. “I told the […]
Posted inNews
John Dee Holeman
“I like to play slow blues, because my fingers have slowed down some,” John Dee Holeman says of his style. But sometimes he’s not as slow as his accompanist. “We needed to go a bit faster, but I don’t think he gets it sometimes,” says Holeman of a recent rendition of “Give Me Back My […]
