If bluegrass lore has it right, Del McCoury left his spot as Bill Monroe’s lead vocal man in The Blue Grass Boys to marry. In that case, karma met him full circle, rewarding his familial dedication with perhaps the best bloodline bluegrass band in the music’s history. They come dressed in suits and smiles, picking, […]
Grayson Haver Currin
Bio: Grayson Haver Currin was the music editor of INDY Week and the co-director of Hopscotch Music Festival.Twitter: http://twitter.com/currincy
Two smoking barrels
Sure, the second WKNC 88.1 Double Barrel Benefit was about celebrating a local station in the midst of a long-awaited resurgence and helping it pay the bills. But, ultimately, Double Barrel II should stand as a representation of the hard-working, well-worth-the-cover upstarts hoping to make it in the Triangle. Whereas last year’s slate worked with […]
Double barrel benefit for WKNC
If–thanks to company Christmas parties for the past month–you haven’t been able to catch any of the new area acts you either keep reading or hearing about, WKNC 88.1 has done the work for you. During two smoky, sweaty and smiling nights downtown at Kings, just show up and listen as nine of the state’s […]
Music
The Bands Perhaps as important as what actually happened this year in the Triangle music scene is what was supposed to happen. According to studio schedules and previous interviews in long-discarded notebooks, we should have seen records from The Cartridge Family, des_ark, Rob Watson, STRANGE, Terry Anderson & The Olympic Ass Kickin’ Team, Bellafea and […]
in countdowns
Come party with some 40,000 of your neighbors at the 14th Annual First Night Raleigh. Musically speaking, you can expect a quartet of guitar-led rock songs with melodic capabilities that have been turning heads for years and/or decades: Arrogance warms up for its Pour House marathon set on the 1st with this until-midnight set, while […]
Booking, recording and forming
With an upcoming Ready Set album and a full-time job occupying his time, Ryan Pound has turned his chief booking and promotion duties at Bickett Gallery over to the tag-team of Ryan Cooke and Spader’s Mike Dillon. Pound still plans on booking a few shows each month at the Gallery and around Raleigh, but he […]
Homebrew
It’s not that Randy Bickford and The Strugglers stand alone in awe of the Will Oldham legacy and the Drag City trademark. Oldham and his deftly whimsical something-like-folk are as important and influential as most anything released this past decade, and a horde of allegiant followers have emerged just past the glow of his battered […]
in singin’ & playin’
If you thought Ryan Adams was bitter, you need to hear Jeff Klein. But you won’t get just fire Thursday, Dec. 16 at The Pour House. You’ll get four of the country’s best young Nashville bards together in one room for an in-the-round affair. Jason White made waves when he sent Tim McGraw to the […]
Polk, etc.
Back in 1844, when slavery was a question and the acquisition of California still remained at the hands of Zach “Old Rough and Ready” Taylor, North Carolina native son and University of North Carolina alumnus James K. Polk campaigned for president on a firm stance for annexation and the northern border of the Oregon territory: […]
Homebrew
Prog is tough. For the casual rock fan, it’s over-flamboyant, overindulgent stuff that’s too difficult to follow, though it may, on occasion, yield a gem of “Tom Sawyer” stature. For the serious rock fan with a natural allegiance to one of several hundred subgenres, it’s either pure anathema or pure bliss. There’s rarely any sort […]

