Your Money, Their Time: How Some Army’s Decision To Go Slow After a Kickstarter Campaign Made One Stone and Too Many Birds Better

Some Army
Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro
Friday, April 8, 9 p.m., $7–$10

The first time it rained, the water flooded Russ Baggett’s new sanctuary.

It was the summer of 2015, and the Some Army bandleader had just moved to Alabama. His wife, Hannah Baggett, had finished her doctorate at N.C. State and found work at Auburn University. The two bought a house in nearby Opelika, a small, conservative town that all but shuts down on Sundays.

Not long after arrival, Baggett turned his energies inward. He populated the basement with instruments and recording gear and began tinkering. He’d physically left the Triangle music scene, in which he’d been playing in various bands for nearly two decades, but he hoped to stay involved from a distance. He wasn’t going to give up the introspective rock of Some Army, whose other members remained in North Carolina. In the basement of this small house with the big yard, he could record and share demos any time he wanted. There was nobody close enough to be bothered by noise, either.

“I can set everything up,” Baggett reasoned, “and not worry about breaking it down every day when I leave.”

But here came the rain, the water trickling in. Baggett has a few handyman skillsput him in front of a tape machine or a keyboard, and he’s fine. But a sump pump? Please.

Still, he approached the household problem as he would a musical one: he figured out how to fix it himself. Like the move, he would make it work.