If you ask Nate Scudieri, the brand director for Rolling Rock Extra Pale Ale, he’ll tell you that his beer and Tyvek have a lot in common: Tyvek are the restless garage band that will play Friday’s “Project 33,” a Rolling Rock-sponsored art show at Flanders Gallery in Raleigh. Rolling Rock is an affordable brew that got its starts in Western Pennsylvania in 1939. Tyvek offer a confounding range of sounds, shifting from unfettered punk tantrums to knotty post-rock brambles, typically mutating a few times on every LP. Rolling Rock is a potable liquid with a slightly metallic taste, dulled by barbed-wire hops. Despite these differences, Scudieri thinks the two are united by their “independent spirit.”
“They’re up and coming, slowly getting a lot of notoriety,” says Scudieri, who, like Tyvek, hails from Detroit. “Over the years, they’ve evolved, but, like Rolling Rock, they’ve always been true to who they are. Years ago they were a three-piece band. Then they were a seven-piece band, and now they’re a four-piece band. But the important thing again is that they, like Rolling Rock, have always done things on their own terms and done things their way. We respect that kind of passion and resilience and being authentic.”
Scudieri also says Tyvek are fans of Rolling Rock.
“Project 33” strives to celebrate their shared spirit with a mural created by Raleigh artist Derek Toomes and a selection of 100 photos submitted to doingourthing.com, a site that Rolling Rock created to capture the top-flight shots that were accumulating on their Facebook page. It seems that Rolling Rock and Tyvek also share their independent spirit with the “billion roaming photojournalists” with a smartphone and a two-year contract.
The event kicks off at 6 p.m. and is free to anyone who sends a Facebook-message RSVP to Rolling Rock—so long as you’re above the age of 21. Rumor has it that Tyvek won’t go on until 8 p.m., but organizers have yet to confirm that. There goes that independent spirit again, preventing them from pinning down exact details.