When Brett Smith explains where his new office will be, he motions overhead to a heavy, bare, two-story steel structure and tries to detail floor plans over the background din of buzzing saws and roaring engines. Eventually, he resorts to yelling. “It will be somewhere up there,” shouts Smith, leaning back and pointing toward the […]
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
Posted inMusic
Reviews of Des Ark’s Everything Dies and Phil Cook’s Southland Mission
Des Ark with T0W3RS & Bad Friends Saturday, Oct. 10, 8 p.m., free Back Alley Bikes, 100 Boyd St. Carrboro 919-967-7777 www.backalleybikes.net The first five songs from Everything Dies, the proper new full-length album from Des Ark, should feel familiar. Early in 2010, Aimée Argotethe singer, songwriter, soloist and bandleader who has powered Des Ark […]
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Using tattoos to keep pets—or at least their lessons—around forever
I don’t like being told to get over dead pets. A few years ago, a wounded and malnourished pit bull crept into my frontyard, his tail and ribs broken and his skin hugging his skeleton as though he’d permanently lost his appetite. My girlfriend at the time, Tina, pursued him, but he disappeared down the […]
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Broke? Not so into bluegrass? World of Bluegrass’ best features may be the freebies
If you don’t yet possess a ticket to World of Bluegrass, the overarching event that will inundate downtown Raleigh with banjos and mandolins and the like for five days this week, you probably never will. The week’s main attraction, an eight-band amphitheater bill on Friday capped by Alison Krauss and Steep Canyon Rangers, has long […]
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IBMA loves Raleigh. The city should ask for more.
World of Bluegrass Tuesday, Sept. 29–Saturday, Oct. 3 Downtown Raleigh www.ibma.org/world-of-bluegrass This week’s festivities were meant to mark the third and final World of Bluegrass in Raleigh, at least according to the International Bluegrass Music Association’s initial announcement back in 2012. The organization planned to plop its signature event in the burgeoning center of downtown […]
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Needles & cred: The INDY’s sketch of tattoos in the Triangle
Needles & Cred, the INDY‘s inaugural look at tattoos and tattooing in the Triangle, is not meant as a comprehensive guide to area ink. Despite the woes of one former area tattooer, the region is indeed too rich with a tradition of body art and a lineage of entrenched or active body artists to capture […]
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Owen Pallett out at Hopscotch 2015, Waxahatchee and Greg Fox in
There’s news of another big cancelation from the Hopscotch Music Festival today. Owen Pallett, set to headline tomorrow night at Fletcher Opera Theater, has scratched his show due to a family emergency. This is the latest in a string of cancelations for this year’s event, including Eyehategod, John Chantler and Mumdance last night. In each […]
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Hopscotch 2015: Five years ago, a simple city design solution fixed Hopscotch’s most complex problem
Hopscotch Music Festival Thursday, Sept. 10–Saturday, Sept. 12 Various Venues, Downtown Raleigh www.hopscotchmusicfest.com Bike racks and chain-link fences almost kept Hopscotch from happening. In early 2010, nine months before the inaugural festival brought Public Enemy and Panda Bear to its headlining outdoor stage, no one knew how to use Fayetteville Street as a ticketed music […]
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Hopscotch 2015: Pause positions (the best sets for quiet time)
Music festivals are often about motion. People behave like pinballs, moving from one stage to another, trying to cross acts off to-see lists and squeeze as much value from a high-price ticket as possible. But sometimes, the best way to enjoy such a long, exhausting weekend is to find a few sets that let you […]
Posted inMusic
Hopscotch 2015: With experimental music, Hopscotch has grown more deliberate
Loading a music festival with experimental acts is itself a high-stakes experiment. That was at least one lesson of Big Ears, a three-day event that debuted in Knoxville 18 months before Hopscotch arrived in Raleigh. For its first year, Big Ears appeared to have the most radical programming philosophy of any American “rock festival.” The […]