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Hi! Happy weekend.
We’ve got some good music stuff cooked up for you this week. First: this month’s INDY playlist. It features a couple of tracks I learned about while participating in a WHCL segment on local music and a bunch of singles that came out this month, including new releases from Daughter of Swords, Lou Hazel, Skylar Gudasz, and Phil Cook.
I really like what I’ve heard from Cook’s Appalachia Borealis, a forthcoming instrumental release produced by Justin Vernon—when I read in the press release that it evokes Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou (a super high bar) I was skeptical but…listen for yourself. It’s good.
Second: I’ve liked everything I’ve heard from Sarah and Austin McCombie of Chatham Rabbits (one of North Carolina’s many rootsy, romantically paired musical duos) but their new album Be Real With Me is my favorite yet. Ahead of a two-night gig at the Haw River Ballroom (tomorrow is sold out but I hear there are still tickets for Sunday) I had a candid chat with Sarah McCombie about making music and beating the system—one of my favorite interviews in a long time.
On parental ambivalence and reproductive rights:
I’ve always wanted to be a mom but we live in this place that is bizarrely fixated on women being pregnant, but also on not supporting them at all once the kid is actually here. I worry about—okay, if I’m pregnant, what if I have a miscarriage and we’re touring and in Oklahoma? What would life look like?
On being a working artist:
I don’t ever want to come across as gripey and whiny because Austin and I both feel very, very blessed to do this for a living. To be self-employed is a miracle and I’m so grateful for it. But just like everything else in America right now, [the industry] is being run by the man at the top, and everybody else is working and making them money and we’re not seeing any of it.
More music and culture coverage below. Thank you for reading!
“What people forget is that going to see live music is just like going to therapy or going to the gym,” says Sarah McCombie, pictured above with her husband and bandmate Austin McCombie. Photo by Samuel Cooke.
elsewhere in the culture section
Writer Grace Yannotta took a snowy traipse through Durham’s robust jazz scene, popping in at Kingfisher and Sharp 9 Gallery. Read her rundown here—it’s a great overview of how North Carolina Central University’s music program has put the city on the map for jazz (and also just how many opportunities there are to go see live music during the week).
Next week, Mike Wiley will perform Changing Same, his play about the murder of Booker T. Spicely. Never heard of Spicely? His death is a wrenching story of racial violence and white supremacy that many towns like Durham have managed to bury. The play will take place at the Hayti Heritage Center on February 28—it’s a good opportunity to see beyond the historical marker.
Still looking for weekend plans? We’ve got you with INDY Selects. And ICYMI: things to do during Black History Month.
Jane Porter did a great interview with Irregardless owner Lee Robinson on the 50th anniversary of the Raleigh restaurant’s opening (peep the feature photo—it looked like a very fun place to work in 1976). She also wrote the next installment of our library series, a deeply reported dive on the Athens Drive Community Library. Read the full story to see why it may move—and why advocates think it should remain in or near its unorthodox location inside a high school.
ICYMI: Navigating Duke Gardens this year, Durham’s sweetest influencer, and two twin spaces are Raleigh’s latest haunts.
— Sarah Edwards —
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