ANDREW W.K. Tuesday, Nov. 8, 8 p.m., $20–$23 The ArtsCenter, Carrboro Those who haven’t kept up with Andrew W.K. since his 2001 debut album, I Get Wetrecognizable as much for his bloody-faced cover photo as for raucous singles like “Party Hard” and “She Is Beautiful”may be surprised with the twists his career has taken in […]
Spencer Griffith
Bio: Spencer Griffith lives in Raleigh, where he teaches school and writes about bands.
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Talking with Banjo Player Kaia Kater: The Director’s Cut
This is a longer version of an article that appeared in print and online under the title “Tense Strings.” Kaia Kater never wanted to mix her racial identity with her music. She grew up in a mixed-race Canadian family where folk jams were the norm every Thanksgiving and Boxing Day, with a luthier grandfather who […]
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Tense Strings: A Q&A with Kaia Kater, Who Brought Black Lives Matter to the Banjo
Kaia Kater never wanted to mix her racial identity with her music. The twenty-two-year-old banjo player grew up in a mixed-race Canadian family where folk jams were the norm every Thanksgiving and Boxing Day. Her luthier grandfather made her a guitar when she had barely started elementary school, and her bluegrass-playing fourth-grade teacher gave her […]
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Hopscotch, Night Three: Hail, Baroness
Hopscotch Music Festival Downtown Raleigh Saturday, September 10, 2016 We made it! If you’re like me, making it to the end of Hopscotch weekend meant surviving a continual onslaught of Kind bars, realizing that your shoes aren’t quite as comfortable as you previously thought, and occasionally Googling to determine if hyponatremia should be an actual […]
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Hopscotch, Night Two: Mic Checks and Balances
Hopscotch Music Festival Downtown Raleigh Friday, September 9, 2016 Was it something we said? After a smooth start to the festival, night two of Hopscotch was plagued by timing issues that led to extended periods of waiting around and listening to endless streams of piped-in house music, thanks to the delayed sets of two key […]
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Sofar, a Series of International House Shows, Takes Root in the Triangle
Sofar Raleigh/Durham June 17, July 15, August 12 On a Friday night, Jack the Radio is setting up for a crowd of a few dozen people, all squeezed into a Person Street condominium. Only five months earlier, a block away, the Southern soul-and-rock quintet had drawn more than three hundred people to the Lincoln Theatre […]
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Record Review: Chapel Hill’s Texoma Streches Its Sound on The Prospect
For much of its three years as a band, the Chapel Hill quintet Texoma has dubbed its music “dust rock,” a term that conjures sparse stretches of reflective heartland twang. That image held for the desolate moods of the outfit’s 2014 EP. But for its full-length debut, The Prospect, Texoma seems hell-bent on turning the […]
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Live: Without Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Family Carry On at Koka Booth
Willie Nelson & Family, Kris Kristofferson with Ben Haggard, Noel Haggard & The Strangers Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary Sunday, May 22, 2016 In early April, I called my mother and invited her to join me in mid-May to see Willie Nelson play at Cary’s Koka Booth Amphitheatre. “Sure! Who else is playing?” she asked, perhaps […]
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Why Chip Robinson, TONK, and More Want to Pay Tribute to Merle Haggard
SATURDAY, MAY 28 MERLE HAGGARD TRIBUTE KINGS, RALEIGH 9 p.m., $8 “Even if your politics were left of center, chances are you sang ‘Okie from Muskogee’ at some point in your life,” says Chip Robinson of the Merle Haggard hit. “It’s just a great song from a man who wrote a lot of great songs.” […]
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S.P.I.T.T.L.E. Fest Revives Raleigh’s Alt-Country Past
S.P.I.T.T.L.E. FEST SATURDAY, APRIL 16 THE POUR HOUSE, RALEIGH 6 p.m., $10–$12 If you’re not into acronyms, S.P.I.T.T.L.E. Fest is the “Southern Plunge Into Trailer Trash Leisure & Entertainment Festival.” A few decades ago, the event slotted local alt-country institutions Whiskeytown, 6 String Drag, The Backsliders, and Two Dollar Pistols alongside rising national stars such […]