Why should you care about some old bar? Clubs come and go after all. And sometimes what takes place inside (and outside) isn’t exactly a church picnic. The Brewery, as clubs go, had its good times and its rotten times. Rather than go out with a bang, it faded away in February. It was a […]
Kirk Ross
Bio: Kirk Ross is a freelance columnist for INDY Week and founded the online news and feature publication The Carolina Mercury. He lives in Chapel Hill.Link: http://www.exileonjonesstreet.comEmail: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/ExJS
Posted inNews
Just listen
It used to be that “making it” in the music business meant scoring a contract with a major label and doing what was asked of you. Since the labels dictated royalty arrangements, advances and rights, artists rarely saw much of their earnings from record sales and had to hit the road if they really wanted […]
Posted inNews
Where are the kids?
Each year as the annual King Day march in Chapel Hill rounds the corner at Roberson and Franklin streets, my gaze naturally diverts to a spot along a row of shops that once was the Colonial Drug Store. It’s a wine bar now, making it only a little harder to connect with that day in […]
Posted inNews
In bluegrass legends
Roland White, it can be safely said, wrote the book on bluegrass mandolin (Roland White’s Approach To Bluegrass Mandolin). The founder (along with his late brother Clarence) of the Kentucky Colonels, White still teaches mandolin and guitar in Nashville to the next generation of players. He’s worked in bands lead by Bill Monroe and Lester […]
Posted inNews
Coming home to roost
The chicken trucks no longer roll down U.S. 15-501 between Pittsboro and Durham. They haven’t now for more than 15 years, but for decades they lumbered down that two-lane highway, feathers flying, frustrating the growing number of commuters and retirees making their way from northern Chatham to points east. That was when raising pullets and […]
Posted inMusic
And then there was Dixon
This issue of cartoons isn’t all about looking in the rear view mirror at 2003. We’re using our annual paean to pen and ink to kick off a new serialized comic for our music section. Readers of the new work called (for now) . . . And Then There Was Rock, will recognize the artwork, […]
Posted inNews
Bush’s year: War, pestilence, famine
It started with a martial drum roll already in motion as the case was made–or made up–for marching into the second major military campaign in two years. We paused briefly at the beginning of the year, to take in the horror of a space shuttle disaster, then back to putting the heat on Baghdad. Freedom […]
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The all-purpose phrase
After spending most of Sunday watching wall-to-wall coverage of the bearded man found in a hole in Iraq, the utility of the phrase “now that they’ve got Saddam” became crystal clear. The various talking heads and Talking Heads of State repeatedly used those words to kick off a fresh look on practically everything–the election, the […]
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A fish out of father
When he sat down to write Big Fish, Daniel Wallace didn’t set out to write the book that wowed Hollywood. Nor was he out to capture the essence of his father, a hard-living, hard-drinking, self-made millionaire, a salesman extraordinaire with offices flung around the globe. But he did. And now Wallace, a Birmingham native who […]
Posted inGuides
‘The right person at the right time’
Chapel Hill’s Northside neighborhood has had its share of challenges and champions. The traditional home to hundreds of African-American families that for generations made up the bulk of workers at UNC-Chapel Hill, Northside was the birthplace of the town’s Civil Rights Movement. While residents lived to see a rise in the political clout of the […]