1. Shakori Hills GrassRoots Festival Shakori Hills GrassRoots Festival certainly invests in its headliner: Solo guitar prankster Keller Williams, who will join The Travelin’ McCourys for his Thursday night set, is a big-ticket item, as is beloved African singer Oliver Mtukudzi. But keying on the top-billed items at Shakori Hills is to overlook the essence […]
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
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The week in music: April 10-17, 2013
1. John Cohen & The Downhill Strugglers If you’re into old-time music or, more generally, the preservation and advancement of foundational American art, bills don’t get much better than this: Like Pete Seeger, Alan Lomax and the Warners, John Cohen served as a source of salvation for the country’s folk music by seeking and documenting […]
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Live: Hiss Golden Messenger brings friends, family to the record shop
As the early spring sun sank low in Durham on Tuesday night, Michael Taylor glanced up at the crowd pressing close to the makeshift plywood stage at Bull City Records. “I didn’t really set up a record release show,” admitted Taylor, sitting in the chair he’d toted from his nearby home, “because I kind of […]
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The week in music: April 3-10, 2013
1. Flosstradamus In my experience, most any time someone mentions seeing a set by Chicago producer pair Flosstradamus, they don’t talk about the dancing that almost certainly ensued or the quick, clever and propulsive cuts for which J2K and Autobot are known. Rather, they tell a story about something that happened before or after the […]
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Simone Dinnerstein & Tift Merritt’s Night
Tift Merritt & Simone Dinnerstein Thursday, April 4 7 & 9:30 p.m. First Presbyterian Church Durham $10–$28 Duke Performances Late into Night, the collaborative LP from alt-country chanteuse Tift Merritt and classical pianist Simone Dinnerstein, the piano line of the traditional “I Will Give My Love an Apple” hangs ominously in the air, each note […]
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Dancing babies
Until last week, I’d forgotten about the great pregnancy scare of sixth grade. I was an 11-year-old kid from the country who lived next door to his grandmother and across a long, straight highway from an inherited family farm. I’d grown up in the church and without cable, with a lot of books but without […]
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The disparate images of Caitlin Rose
Caitlin Rose with Andrew Combs and Michael Rank Thursday, March 28 9 p.m., $10 Local 506 The reviews are in, and most critics agree: The best way to begin a thorough exaltation of The Stand-In, the second album from 25-year-old Nashville singer Caitlin Rose, is to invoke its first verse. “So long ago my radio […]
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The week in music: March 27-April 3, 2013
1. Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell Old Yellow Moon, the debut full-length collaboration between Americana paragons Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell, was nearly 30 years in the making. Crowell joined Harris’ Hot Band in the mid-’70s, but despite all their harmonies, the two never created an album of their own. The bulk of Old Yellow […]
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The week in music: March 20-27, 2013
1. ASG AT THE MAYWOOD Bad news comes in threes: Late last year, the area’s music scene confirmed that adage when a triptych of bad booking stories broke just before the holidays. Tess Mangum Ocaña, long responsible for turning The ArtsCenter of Carrboro into an interesting listening outpost, had been laid off. DIVEbar and Volume […]
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The week in music: March 13-20, 2013
1. ZS, GUARDIAN ALIEN Plain and simple, this is freak music, but it’s not necessarily free: Though Zs and Guardian Alien move with the instrumental dexterity and fluidity of various improvisational ensembles and jam bands, both groups are tightly coiled and carefully created creatures. Sure, their music provides an opportunity for experiential freedom, where listeners […]
