The dB’s play at Motorco Saturday, June 9, at 9 p.m. with The Stars Explode. Tickets are $15. If there were any question whether the first release in three decades by the dB’s might be a nostalgic reach for glory days, they immediately dispense with such a notion with a vibrant and exhilarating lead track […]
Peter Blackstock
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Doc Watson, 1923-2012
I have seen the DavidSeen the Mona Lisa tooAnd I have heard Doc Watson play Columbus Stockade Blues. That’s the company in which the esteemed songwriter Guy Clark placed the legendary North Carolina musician Doc Watson, who passed away at age 89 on Tuesday evening in a Winston-Salem hospital. Indeed: There was no higher art. […]
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Bluegrass’ big event selected Raleigh as its new home, but why?
When the International Bluegrass Music Association announced last week that it would be bringing its annual World of Bluegrass confab to the City of Oaks for at least three years starting in 2013, North Carolina’s bluegrass cred became a talking point: the home-state claim to the late Earl Scruggs, the early-days Raleigh tenure of genre […]
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Yep Roc announces 15th-birthday bash
To celebrate its 15th birthday this fall, local label Yep Roc Records is gathering the tribes in mid-October for a three-night blowout at Cat’s Cradle with Nick Lowe, Robyn Hitchcock, Dave Alvin, Fountains of Wayne, Chuck Prophet, Jon Doe, the Minus 5 and many other artists who have released records on the label in the […]
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Live: Nick Lowe fits them in
Cool and calm, always: Nick Lowe “I’m bound to wind up one lonely, lonely twisted old man,” Nick Lowe sang midway through his set Wednesday evening at Fletcher Opera Theater in Raleigh. The lyric—from “I Trained Her To Love Me,” a song on Lowe’s 2006 album, At My Age—partly portrays how Lowe has painted himself […]
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At 57, Chris Stamey remains one of the Triangle’s most active musicians
Chris Stamey and his acoustic quartet play songs from Stamey’s upcoming solo album at the back bar of Cat’s Cradle before the Old Ceremony show Friday, April 27. The 9 p.m. show costs $10–$12. I had the crazy idea that I could interview Chris Stamey about four different subjectshis recording studio, his new album, his […]
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Drive-By Truckers and Megafaun cover “The Weight,” for Levon
Encore renditions of The Band’s classic tune “The Weight” are pretty common at live gigs; it seems most any band with a reverence for American music and worth their salt eventually gets around to covering it onstage. Last night’s version at Cat’s Cradle, though, carried a bit more weight than usual—delivered, as it was, on […]
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‘Tis the season for Wylie Hunter & the Cazadores
Wylie Hunter & the Cazadores celebrate the release of their new CD at Local 506 Saturday, March 31, at 9:30 p.m. with Onward, Soldiers and the Tomahawks. Tickets are $6–$8. Gazing across Durham Bulls Athletic Park from a bar’s back patio on a balmy spring afternoon, Wylie Hunter recalls seeing Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and […]
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New Wylie Hunter & the Cazadores’ single
On a 7-song debut EP released in 2010, Chapel Hill newcomers Wylie Hunter & the Cazadores served notice they were to be taken seriously. Frontman and songwriter Hunter, a Greensboro native, wrote from the somewhat green perspective of a kid in his early 20s, because, well, he was in his early 20s. But you believed […]
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With a little help from her friends: Kathleen Edwards in Carrboro
Midway through Canadian singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards’ show Tuesday night at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, she welcomed a familiar face onstage to the delight of the hundreds in attendance. It wasn’t necessarily a surprise: A few folks had already spotted Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon in his hooded yellow sweatshirt, commingling in the audience with old friends […]