Deliliah is a moldy peach.

From what we here, Kimya Dawson is deservedly selling well in the back-catalog department these days, thanks to the perfect placement of “Anyone Else But You” in Juno. And, what’s best, she just announced some last minute dates in these parts: Saturday, Jan. 26 at Schoolkids Records-Chapel Hill and Sunday, Jan. 27 at Bull City Headquarters. Both shows are at 7 p.m. And, if you just want to hear the songs, listen here.

UPDATE: Kimya will also play Chaz’s Bull City Records at 4 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 26. Nice.

“You guys wanna hang out in 2008?”

If you happened to see our 2006 cover story on Carolina beach music culture, The Infinite Shag, you may remember our guide, Steve Rogers. Steve is still an avid shag dancer, but he also once played in a rock band, The Night Riders, in Alamance County from 1963 until 68. Their record was made for the famous Justice label and was reissued in recent years. They played some originals and modern rock songs that became timeless—you know, the sort-of guidebook for early rock teens like The Kingsmen, The Swingin’ Medallions, and of course, a little bit of the Beatles.
This Sunday, January 20 from 8:30-11:00 p.m, Steve and the members of The Night Riders will talk about those teenage garage rock days on the Triangle’s radio repository for such things, WXDU, 88.7’s “Who’s Got the Cuckoo.” It’s an extended version of the one-hour show for this special reunion, with the heart of the program somewhere around 9-10:30 p.m. Robby Poore will chat with the band, while Stephen Conrad plays records throughout. The show is also celebrating its own three-year anniversary. Don’t miss it.

Addendum: The Night Riders now have their own web site: www.introducingthenightriders.com. Go check it out.—Chris

The Allen Boys at home

With all the hubbub over the Great Eight last week (insert smartass remark here) and the accompanying Saturday night showcase at the 506, it was easy to overlook the fine afternoon of free music going down across the Triangle. In addition to two packed in-store performances by Kimya Dawson at Bull City Records and Schoolkids-Chapel Hill, Saturday was the Museum of History’s seventh African American Cultural Celebration, which included bluesman John Dee Holeman and Great Eight alums Carolina Chocolate Drops last year. This year’s highlights included the piedmont blues of Boo Hanks, whose placement in the bustling lobby didn’t get him the attention he deserved, as well as Mount Airy’s Sacred Steel combo The Allen Boys, who bring the Steel out of the church but don’t leave the worship experience behind.

It’s near-impossible to talk about The Allen Boys without mentioning Robert Randolph, the pedal steel virtuoso who has helped bring the instrument to the mainstream (apart from country music, at least) since his inclusion on the 2001 John Medeski/North Mississippi Allstars project The Word. But where Randolph and his Family Band have begun to secularize the style, adding in heavy doses of funk and rock (they had Clapton sit in on their latest album and give regular live nods to Hendrix), DaShawn Hickman and the rest of the Allen Boys smooth it into a more soulful approach. As they drew onlookers from the second and third-level mezzanines that oversee the lobby, it became clear that some were experiencing the pedal steel’s joyful noise for the first time. Others lifted their hands to the sky during the band’s spirited take on “I’ll Fly Away” or clapped along when the group brought out a quartet of females singers for “I Made A Vow.”

Drummer Ranzy Moore and bassist Mitchell Fonville provide a backbone for the slow burners to ride along and the more sprightly numbers to feed from, while Cameron Moore’s keyboard plays the foil to Hickman’s steel. This is the kind of band that you won’t be able to see for free too much longer unless you’re in their Mount Airy congregation. For more free music suggestions, keep reading…. (more…)

March 2, Downtown Event Center: Blue Cheer, The T’s, Rocket Cottage. Very nice.

Some strange tale with a capsule version familiar to readers of these digital and physical pages: DeYarmond Edison moved to Raleigh from Wisconsin, become one of the most interesting bands in the CapCity and broke up in 2006. Frontman Justin Vernon started writing songs as Bon Iver and headed back to Wisconsin; Megafaun’s Brad and Phil Cook and Joe Westerlund stuck here. Both bands got national record offers the same day last year, and both are doing well. The four will share a Triangle space for the first time since August 2006’s break-up at Kings at Local 506 on Monday, Feb. 18, the day before both records are released nationally.

According to News & Observer’s Great 8 (which is a pretty great list, I think, if you try not to concentrate on the other 365 days of this here leap year), Bowerbirds’ first album Hymns for a Dark Horse will be released in April on Secretly Canadian’s new kid sister, Dead Oceans. I thought that record was already out (in two editions, no less!), but I reckon not. Usual disclosures—which mean less and less with this news, thankfully—apply.

The News & Observer wants to pump you up for Friday’s Great 8, their annual pittance to that thing we call local music.

Aaron Greenwald, interim director of Duke University’s Duke Performances since Jan. 1, 2007, has been appointed Director of Duke Performances, a university spokesperson said today.

“I am excited to continue this approach that emphasizes theme and context in the performing arts,” Greenwald said Thursday afternoon. “I’m interested in figuring out ways for the performing arts to deliver what Duke has to offer to  the community.”

Greenwald organized last fall’s Thelonious Monk series, which brought Kronos Quartet, Johnny Griffin, Hank Jones, Jason Moran, the Charles Tolliver Orchestra and over a dozen others to Durham. Greenwald says he began organizing the university’s current Soul Power series after researching Durham-raised Drifters founder Clyde McPhatter, and that he wants to continue mining North Carolina’s contributions to the international arts community for continues Duke Performances’ offerings.

Turns out Rick Cornell was right in his premonition: David Menconi has the story over at On the Beat. Another one down. More to come tomorrow.

That’s the word from the band’s home Power Team Records, which also claims Red Collar. The excellent Durham trio will head to Baltimore to work with the Government Issue/Jawbox/Burning Airlines/etc. veteran in May. UPDATE: Stereogum calls HNMTF a band to watch. Plus, two tracks on the Gum Mix. Very nice.

Well, prettier.

Yo La Tengo plays The ArtsCenter in Carrboro Thursday, Jan. 10, on the latest leg of their Freewheelin’ Yo La Tengo tour, advertised as “an almost-acoustic set of songs from their entire catalog.” There’s certainly more electric guitars and customary YLT noise than you’d expect from that description, but the material is still great. Check out this November bootleg from Boston (courtesy Bradley’s Almanac, like the photo above). Covers of Dylan, Neil Young, The Flamin’ Groovies and Rex Garvin, as well as this mighty version of “Deeper into Movies.” Get your tickets soon.

Took about two ganglia and a casual familiarity with the state of music sales to guess this one: Killswitch Engage, Dillinger Escape Plan, Every Time I Die and Parkway will now be playing Lincoln Theatre, not Disco Rodeo, on Thursday, Jan. 17.

Bull City Headquarters continued its practice of solid booking with a terrific triple-bill Saturday night. The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers kicked off the evening, considerably more stripped-down in the absence of Bu Hanan comrades Daniel Hart (on tour with somebody) and David Karsten Daniels (who recently made Seattle his new home). Brad Cook (Megafaun) and Casey Trela (Sweater Weather) sat in on double bass and glockenspiel/auxiliary percussion, respectively, while Alex Lazara’s trademark keyboard additions were mostly replaced by his accordion. Perry Wright explained the approach afterwards:

“Bu Hanan and The Prayers & Tears have had a seismic upset with DKD’s continental drift to the west coast, but the unsettling has given me the opportunity to take this new material in any number of directions and has, in all honesty, sort of reinvigorated my dedication to this album. Things like bringing in Brad Cook and Casey Trela for an all-acoustic arrangement allowed us to disregard our worn-out default settings and stylistic crutches to see if the new material has any legs on its own.”

the everybodyfields performing at Local 506, September 2007

Fair warning: I absolutely love the everybodyfields. Nothing is Okay, their 2007 release that was also my favorite album last year, brought them out of the considerable shadow cast by Ramseur Records labelmates and tour buddies The Avett Brothers and has made them legitimate club headliners in their own right. Fortunately for Triangle residents, they seem to cross over into North Carolina as often as they play their home state of Tennessee. They spoiled us again this weekend, playing The Pour House on Sunday night after stopping by The Garage in Winston-Salem on Friday and The Boone Saloon on Wednesday.

While they’ve never had a stable line-up (I’ve seen no fewer than five different iterations of the everybodyfields perform since March 2006), the revolving cast of sidemen and sidewomen constantly reinvigorates Sam Quinn and Jill Andrews’ impressive back catalog. Most recently, Josh Oliver has been backing them with bluesy, occasionally edgy guitar and keyboard work, while Tom Pryor adds mournful cries from his pedal steel. But the nexus of the group are Quinn and Andrews, who have some of the most gorgeous male-female harmonies this side of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. As they harmonize over lyrics about heaven’s barroom and God’s moonshining ways on “The Red Rose” (from 2004’s Halfway There: Electricity and the South), it’s hard to tell where Andrews’ voice ends and Quinn’s begins. Andrews delivery of lines like “And I can’t help but ask/if today would be my last/would you care?” from Nothing’s “Lonely Anywhere” could touch even the most callous listener (see it performed at September’s show at Local 506 here). While Quinn’s witty crowd rapport lightens the mood, he is just as capable of conveying gut-wrenching stuff through his own laments on leaving, losing, and home.

Performing to a sold-out crowd Friday night, the everybodyfields followed Brian McGee & the Hollow Speed’s outlaw country with two sets, opening with a promising new tune and closing with a brilliant take on The Smashing Pumpkin’s “Today”, and touching on all three of their albums in between. “Good To Be Home,” the penultimate track from 2005’s Plague of Dreams (one of the band’s three best albums as well as one of their three worst, according to Quinn), was a highlight: Quinn quieted the occasionally talkative crowd with his homesick verses, a welcome invitation to empathy.

The weekend’s wintry weather didn’t seem to keep many at home Sunday night, either, as The Pour House had a similar turnout despite the NFC Championship game spilling into overtime. Although they played much of the same material as on Friday, the band still had a few tricks up their sleeve, breaking out a killer cover of Lionel Richie’s “Stuck on You”. Hey, look at that guy up front dance:

Well, they’re off to a start!

At 462 West Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, a new club has decided to host bands and live music. Mansion 462 resides in the long-empty space once home to the Avid Reader rare bookstore, and just before the transition to the club, furniture boutique Chaise.

I used to work at the Avid Reader, and it was a recommended stop for town visitors, especially touring musicians: To wit, I once sold a hilarious ‘50s cookbook to Lux Interior and Poison Ivy of the Cramps. The structure of the building has great appeal as a Franklin Street storefront, with its open, glass front walls and resplendent hard wood floors. But for all the times I’ve wondered what would become of that space—retail, pub, something else entirely—I never thought of it as a live music club. It’s shaky territory to open a club in the first place, and keeping a schedule of live music only adds to that hard work, especially when sandwiched between the kings of the block in Local 506 and The Cave. But it’s also right next door to Carolina Brewery and a string of restaurants and bars including Elaine’s, whose owner Wesley Johnson, co-owns Mansion 462. It could be another strong stop for post-meal traffic.

We’ll see, anyway: Dexter Romweber was a bona fide regular at the Avid Reader. He would often just stop in to leave photocopied pages of a new song or poem he’d written, then march back down the street silently. Dexter plays at Mansion 462 with his duo this Friday, Jan. 18, in the first major show there. Here’s hoping he kicks his old stomping grounds right into a strong future of hosting music.

The Baltimore duo formerly called Monarch (not this Monarch, which is actually Monarch!) and now called Wye Oak has signed to Merge. They play Local 506 Tuesday with The 1900s and in Greenville at the Spazzatorium in Greenville on Wednesday.

Marianne Taylor, the booking agent of the closing-Saturday Hideaway BBQ, reports that Wayne “The Train” Hancock’s Friday, Jan. 25, show at The Berkeley Cafe has been canceled. This is the first show moved from Hideaway to Berkeley, so we’ll have to wait until the Jan. 29 Asylum Street Spankers show at Berkeley to see how Hideaway’s built-in audience transfers into downtown Raleigh.

Via Mr. Menconi, via the Pistols’ MySpace blog. They’ll play some shows in 2008, then hang it up. It’s been a fine, fine run of sad, sad songs.

FYI: Serpents tells us they won’t be passing through on Friday, January 25.

May 5. I assume this can only be the work of our good friend, Mark and Matt, at Harvest Records. Bless those two. Very much super-excited.

This is heartening.  With Buckner!

“God bless, or get neglected.” —Why?, from “Good Friday”
[Reprinted from indyweek.com.]

In its Sunday Arts & Entertainment section each week, the News & Observer runs approximately one page of starred album reviews. If the words you read about music in 2007 were limited to this page, you would conclude that the music scene in the area covered by your daily paper of record was nearly nonexistent. In 248 CD reviews on page 2G of the Arts & Entertainment section (5G on June 10), the News & Observer published 10 reviews of local records. The class of 2007—if you’re an adherent to 2G—was John Brown, Gary Brunotte, Martin Eagle, Dave Finucane, Donna Hughes (from Trinity), Martin & Johnson, Pratie Heads, Scott Sawyer, Will Scruggs and Steep Canyon Rangers (from Asheville). Surprising? (more…)

Where is the stage? Oh, there is none. [Photo by Jeremy Lange, Independent Weekly]

I knew I needed my earplugs: One listen to the The Airing of Grievances, the debut from New Jersey quintet Titus Andronicus due on Troubleman Unlimited later this year, and it’s obvious that this band is loud—three guitars, a frantic drummer, keyboards, shout-along vocals. Just before Titus began its Tuesday night set at Dain’s Place on 9th Street in Durham, I ran to my car to grab them. They started without me. Of course, they had work to do (winning over a too-small bar with too-loud rock is only half-enviable), and that’s what they did. Frontman Patrick Stickles played the first two verses of Midtown Dickens’ “A.M. Dial,” as Midtown member and Dain’s bartender Catherine Edgerton dropped her jaw from behind the bar. Titus continued with a nearly hour-long onslaught of its inebriated but literate sprees. “Fear & Loathing in Mahwah, NJ”—the first cut from Airing and from the band’s first seven-inch record on Shake Appel—mauled:

Titus stalled toward the end of its script, playing all the covers they could muster as the headlining Spider Bags had a drummer running late on an inbound flight from San Francisco. Titus tore through The Misfits’ “Where Eagles Dare” with abandon, Stickles prowling around the bar like he owned the place. And—as unsuspecting undergrads wondered what was happening to their microbrewery hub on 9th Street and the Spider Bags (“the greatest band in the world,” says Titus) jeered from two feet away—he sort of did:

This band is probably coming to a house or a dive near you. Go before they’re playing a club with a cover. They will be soon. For another photo that I took (it’s arty and spectral!) and Titus tour dates, drop down below this here break.

Joe Swank & the Zen Pirates at Hideaway BBQ in Nov. 2006, or happier times.

In just 15 months, the Raleigh venue and restaurant—which will close January 19—became a leader in Triangle booking and roots music

Marianne Taylor has been booking and collecting money at the door of Hideaway BBQ since the Capital Boulevard restaurant and music venue opened its doors Oct. 13, 2006. On Saturday, Jan. 19, with a show by Georgia band Delta Moon, she’ll sit by the door and pay the band at night’s end one last time. The restaurant closed for business Jan. 1, as the News & Observer reported Wednesday night, but it will continue hosting live music under Taylor’s supervision for the next two weeks.

Nevertheless, five days after Taylor learned she was out of a job as the club’s chief booking agent, she still saluted the vision of founder and owner Palmer Stacy, who she calls “the biggest music fan I’ve ever met.” Stacy hoped to establish a combination restaurant and music club modeled after Stubb’s Bar-B-Que in Austin, Texas. He hoped Raleigh could have a consistent home for the roots music he loved. He filled the menu with beef brisket, roadhouse slaw and fried catfish, and he covered the walls in country music memorabilia from his private collection. Taylor filled the lineup with top quality Americana: From Southern Culture on the Skids and Billy Joe Shaver to Tres Chicas and John Doe, Hideaway BBQ was becoming a must-play destination. Taylor attributes a large part of the charm to Stacy.

“There’s a lot of difference between a bar owner that has music and a music lover that has a bar,” says Taylor. “Every band that played here, whether he liked the genre or not, he bought merchandise from them.”

Stacy says the financial woes for Hideaway have been nearly constant from the start. When Taylor headed to South by Southwest last March, a general manager told her the restaurant would possibly be closed before she returned. Taylor speculates that the location of the restaurant stymied traffic, and high costs upfront coupled with monthly upkeep fees ultimately made it clear that Hideaway couldn’t sustain itself. Stacy says he overestimated gross profits relative to the overhead of the new building.

“I always told people that I was tired of going to music venues that were dirty old boxes,” says Stacy, a practicing attorney who had no experience running restaurants but was involved in a small Hillsborough Street Americana club called The Hideaway several years ago. “But now I know they’re that way for a reason.”

Stacy says the typical mid-sized music venue (Hideaway held 300 people) pays a few thousand dollars in rent and utilities each month, and even small rock clubs, including several in the Triangle, are having trouble staying open. His monthly costs, he adds, were “three or four times that.”

“You can’t build a nice, new building and compete, especially when it’s tough all around,” says Stacy, who will begin leasing the space later this year. “Live music in mid-sized venues is closing everywhere.”

At least the music portion of Stacy’s endeavor was paying for itself. It just wasn’t spilling over into already slow food and beverage sales the way Stacy and Taylor had hoped.

“The people that came to see the shows would eat and drink, and that would help keep the restaurant open,” says Taylor. “But [the money] that came in the door wasn’t helping keep the restaurant open.”

Despite Hideaway’s end, Taylor says she’s proud of the work she did with Stacy there, and the community response to the bands playing the club told her that people in the Triangle do want to hear this music. She already had shows booked through April, and the gigs will proceed as planned at Berkeley Cafe and Lincoln Theatre, starting with a performance by Wayne “The Train” Hancock at Berkeley Cafe on Friday, Jan. 25.

Taylor started booking roots-music shows in the Triangle in February 2004 after returning to Raleigh from Nashville. Her first two bills at The Pour House—Tony Rice with Peter Rowan, followed by Jerry Jeff Walker two days later—were among the club’s biggest. Taylor started booking several shows per week at The Pour House, but she left the club to become Hideaway’s full-time booking agent in September 2006. Though The Pour House signed a new lease several months ago, Taylor says she doesn’t regret her decision to move to Hideaway BBQ.

“The 15 months I booked at Hideaway were the best of my life,” says Taylor. “I’m really sad about it. But I understand that Palmer couldn’t keep going, so we turn the page.”

You can still catch these shows at Hideaway BBQ:
Friday, Jan. 4: The Coal Men, Mando Saenz, Possum Jenkins
Saturday, Jan. 5: The Cadillac Stepbacks
Friday, Jan. 11: Enter the Haggis
Saturday, Jan. 12: Mike Farris (6 p.m.)
Saturday, Jan. 12: Midlife Crisis (9:30 p.m.)
Friday, Jan. 18: Bombadil
Saturday, Jan. 19: Delta Moon and the Filmore Valley Boys

These shows have been moved to The Berkeley Cafe:

Friday, Jan. 25: Wayne “The Train” Hancock
Tuesday, Jan. 29: The Asylum Street Spankers
Thursday, Jan. 31: Malcolm Holcombe

One show has been moved to Lincoln Theatre:

Saturday, Jan. 26: Don Dixon & the Jump Rabbits and Tad Dreis

Sad to see it go…

Hideaway BBQ, we hardly knew you. Well, at least I didn’t know it as well as I would have liked. The drive to Hideaway BBQ, which closed its doors for good after Saturday night’s Delta Moon show, was close to a two-hour roundtrip for me. That, along with two young children at home, meant I didn’t get there as often as I would have liked. Naming the Hideaway shows that I wanted to attend but wasn’t able to make would take up a good chunk of the drive there. (For starters: Steve Wynn, Peter Case, Hacienda Brothers, Elizabeth Cook, Dale Watson, Wayne Hancock, Jason Isbell, the Bottle Rockets, the Coal Men, the Dynamites and Malcolm Holcombe.) Still, I got there often enough to store up some favorite memories:

David Childers stomping the stage backed by the Modern Don Juans (as physically mismatched a crew as you’ll encounter but equally musically simpatico) playing most of the then new Burning in Hell. Childers and the Modern Don Juans, an institution that had a couple of years on Hideaway BBQ, had their own closing recently, with their last show having taken place at the end of December.

Sarah Borges, as talented as she is gorgeous, winning everybody over with a mix of roots-rock originals (think Car Wheels Lucinda meeting Wanda Jackson halfway) and cool-record-collection covers, from Charley Pride and Dolly Parton to X and the Compulsive Gamblers. Top-shelf band, too.

Tommy Womack, the biggest rock ‘n’ roll star that 99.7% of the population has never heard of, playing both “The Replacements” and “Alpha Male and the Canine Mystery Blood.” That’s about 15 minutes of Womack’s singular songwriting, which is part stream-of-consciousness and all stream-of-genius.

(more…)

Watts!

And the lineup for Double Barrel Benefit 5, which makes its debut at The Pour House…

Friday, Feb. 1: The Future Kings of Nowhere, North Elementary, The Never and Annuals (returning from their night-two set last year)

Saturday, Feb. 2: Tooth, Red Collar, Fin Fang Foom, Sorry About Dresden

Not as holy-shit-how’d-they-do-that as last year’s DBB4 (The Mountain Goats, Megafaun, Annuals, The Old Ceremony, The Nein, The Prayers and Tears, etc.), but still pretty worthwhile. Tickets are $7 in advance, $9 at the door.