The KNC KKC crew, looking not too shabby the morning after DBB7 night one.

WKNC had the great pleasure of supporting the 2010 Krispy Kreme Challenge as a silver level sponsor. We also sponsored our own team of runners – an amazing challenge since the race fell smack dab in the middle of Double Barrel Benefit 7.

If you read Special K’s preview of the Krispy Kreme Challenge, no doubt you having been waiting with glazed breath to hear how own crew fared.

Max Power blew the rest of the staff away with the astounding time of 47:33. DJ Two Sheds and his training monkey Molly came in next, at 50:03 and 54:21. Major props also go to DJ Mick, Sweet Melissa, Special K, Will, Agent Orange, Osh-Tosh, Mz Kelly, Riff Raff, Hot Tamale and May Day for crossing the finish line.

Check out Technician’s Sights and Sounds of the event and their photo slideshow. If you caught any pictures of our crew, decked out in custom KNC wearables, send them over to us and we’ll put them in our end-of-year slideshow – unless they prominently feature regurgitated doughnuts, of course.

Summer is upon the students of NC State, which means some of us are graduating or going away ’til the fall.

But don’t worry, Local Lunch will still be going strong all summer. We’ve gotten our hands on some awesome new releases from local favorites, and I personally look forward to exploring local hip hop and hard rock/metal acts.

So to all of us that call the Triangle home 365 days a year: Life doesn’t end in May and start up again in August, so why should our music?

WKNC Represent

Merge organized a morning concert on the last day of early voting (9am the morning after Haloween) to encourage music fans to vote. Bowerbirds played, as well as Megafaun, Billy Bragg, Superchunk, Ivan Howard, the dBs and a few others.

Ever since the release of Hymns for a Dark Horse on local label Burlytime Records, Bowerbirds have been destined for big things. In short order, the record garnered glowing reviews from indie trendsetters Pitchfork Media and Prefix magazine and rose to the top of WKNC’s indie rock charts. Within a year they were signed to big-time indie-folk imprint Dead Oceans (part of Secretly Canadian/Jagjaguwar) and went on to tour with the Mountain Goats. Simply put, the Bowerbirds rose through the ranks of the music world at a meteoric rate.

Bowerbirds’ music is characterized by uniquely minimalist arrangements and melodies paired to stream-of-consciousness lyrics, and their debut LP is a concept album of sorts; its 12 songs discuss the conflicts of civilization versus the nature and humanity.

Naturally, with such material, you might consider Bowerbirds to be a ’cause band,’ and, indeed, they tackle the subject of environmentalism with fairly blunt words. Through clever songwriting, though, they avoid the adversarial tone that so many bands with a cause seem to convey; instead, they radiate an earthy idealism that wouldn’t seem too out of place in a Thoreau novel.

Nowhere is it more clear that Bowerbirds is an exceptional band than in concert. With even more sparce instrumentation than in thier album, they manage to create an even more full sound. They will be the final performers Friday night at the Double Barrel Benefit, taking the stage after Schooner.

This weekend is the 6th annual Double Barrel Benefit, our annual fund raising concert. We’ve got great lineups for both Friday and Saturday nights. So come down, have a beer, enjoy some great local music, and help support 88.1

Craig from Birds of Avalon, one of the great bands performing Saturday night, will be on Mystery Roach Saturday morning. We’ll be listening to music from his collection and talking about life, the universe, and everything. (No, not the book, but who knows, it might come up too.)

So listen to Mystery Roach Saturday morning from 8-10 am then head on down to the Pour House to catch the second night of The Double Barrel Benefit.

See you there.

-La Barba Rossa

On 1/22/09, Colossus band members  Sean Buchanan and Bill Fisher dropped in during Local Lunch for a quick interview.

The day started off with Colossus's Sean Buchanan and Bill Fisher stopping by the studio for a quick interview and exclusive debut of two tracks from their next album.

Colossus brought WKNC a belated Christmas gift in the form of 2 exclusive, not yet released, songs from their next album that is set to hit the streets in a few months. Colossus played at WKNC & Tir Na Nog’s Local Beer, Local Band on Thursday, January 22nd, with Double Barrel Benefit 5 alumni, Tooth.

Check out Murdoc’s Picture Blog and exclusive review of Colossus’s next album!

You can listed to the songs Kill More Better and The Mountain in the interview below.

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At first, I thought I would try something else for this week’s post…so I forgot my camera at home and went speeding off to Tir Na Nog’s first metal night featuring Tooth and Colossus. Thankfully my brother came through for me and brought his camera (but he didn’t get there until Tooth’s last song). So grabbed the camera from him and snagged as many good shots as I could.

Being a DJ that started out wanting to be a part of the WKNC Chainsaw Rock crew, Tir Na Nog’s first metal night really got my blood pumping. If you sadly missed this show, then you missed one of the most awesome Local Beer, Local Band nights ever. This may have been one of the slightly more tame metal shows I have attended (since it lacked blood, boobs, and a mosh pit), but it was one of my favorite Local Beer, Local Bands none the less.

Tooth: Durham based Tooth released their EP Animality just before playing at WKNC’s Double Barrel Benefit 5 last year, and have been spreading their punk metal style around the Triangle since.  According to their bassist, Ryland Fishel, the band has been working on their second album and have recorded some tracks that are set to be released on vinyl soon.

Tooth's front man JME Guptill, and bassist Ryland Fishel. No that isn't a reflection of camera flash, it is Ryland building up an energy blast for the last song of their set.

Richard James on Guitar and Noah Kessler on Drums

Ben Wilson on guitar and Ryland Fishel on bass.

Tooth's Hollerer, JME Guptill, as the face of horror.

Tooth's big finish

Colossus: Raleigh based metal at its finest. Colossus mashes elements of thrash metal with power metal elements to create hard rock masterpieces. Colossus singer, Sean Buchanan, and guitarist, Bill Fisher, dropped by WKNC’s Local Lunch for a quick interview and to debut two tracks off of their upcoming album that is yet to be named. WKNC also received an exclusive advanced copy of the album to review and play.

The day started off with Colossus's Sean Buchanan and Bill Fisher stopping by the studio for a quick interview and exclusive debut of two tracks from their next album.

Bill's skill is only matched by the intensity of his facial expressions.

Nicky Nixon shredding an awesome solo that made the strings burn, hence the look on Sean's face.

Benjamin Smith (drums) broke his snare not long after this picture was took. They borrowed one from Tooth to finish the show.

Guitarist Nicky Nixon and Bassist Rylan Wilshire during Colossus's new single, Kill More Better. Killer More Better is based off of the Max Brooks book, World War Z.

The only thing missing from the end of this show was pyrotechnics. However, it did feature the giving of one the most awesome contracts ever.

Click any picture to view the full gallery.

Click here for the WKNC review of Colossus’s next album.

Click here to listen to the Local Lunch interview with Colossus.

This is the first installment of WKNC’s features on all the bands included in this years Double Barrel Benefit.  Be on the lookout for more blogs, interviews, and other cool information in the coming weeks!

For those of you who know me well, you’re aware of how prone I am to wax poetic about the superlative elements of our local music scene. Local music is one of those topics that I’m wont to speak at length about given any tangential opportunity, so when I was asked to write a blog post about Schooner, I had to compile my thoughts for a while. What was I going to write that hadn’t already been said?

I don’t think that it’s a secret to anyone that Schooner is one of my favorite bands from North Carolina. I know what you’re saying…  I’ve got a lot of favorite bands from North Carolina, right? Well, OK, yes… but for those of you who doubt my veracity, I’ve got proof: their bumper sticker is currently one of two adorning the rear of my trusty 1998 Geo Prizm (though, admittedly, it sort of matches the color scheme).

Schooner sound a bit like Stephin Merritt if you replaced his early synthesizer fixation with an equivalent fixation on Buddy Holly and the hazey sounds of shoegaze.  Like Merritt, Schooner’s songs are rooted in solid pop melodies and hooks, but you’ll often find them drenched in more reverb and paired to dreamy choruses. Amidst the atmosphere, Reid Johnson sings with a Merritt-like baritone croon straight out of the 50’s, and adding to that general 50’s vibe are slide guitars, mandolins, and those characteristic palm-muted slow dance rock chords.

Lyrically, Schooner’s songs can seem like character studies from a Faulkner novel; they’re often told in the past tense and are filled with bruised, distinctively Southern tales of lost love, missed opportunities, and regret.  It can be heavy stuff, surely, but with the sweet pop melodies that Schooner brings to the table, you could make even the saddest tale feel like a catchy, danceable rocker.

So why do I consider them to be one of my favorite local bands?  To answer that, let’s listen to one of their songs, “Married,” from their 2007 release, Hold On Too Tight.

Listen carefully and you’ll realize that in three short minutes, through oblique phrases and echoing slide guitar runs, we get a glimpse into a lifetime’s worth of memories and regret. Whatever your interpretation of lines like “constellations were laid upon,” you know several things for certain by its conclusion: she was the one, he’s probably been in love with her for far too long, and her marriage symbolizes the end of hope that she’ll come back.

The ability to fit all of that complex sentiment within the trappings of a deceptively simple verse-chorus pop song is a gift that few songwriters possess, and the fact that Schooner is able to do it so effortlessly with just about every song they write earns them a spot in the highest echelons of my music collection.

The best part? They’re awesome live, and you can see them at this year’s Double Barrel Benefit.

Whatever your tastes are, there’s a vast bounty of world-class music to be had here in the Triangle, and it’s due to this great variety that we’ve held the Double Barrel for the past six years.  This year’s edition promises to continue what has become one of the best damned Raleigh traditions around, and we’ll be writing features for each artist playing.

Schooner plays third on Friday, February 6th, and tickets are available from the Pour House website.

Set your calendars For Friday February 6th, and Saturday February 7th for WKNC’s annual Double Barrel Benefit #6 at the Pour House in downtown Raleigh.  Both nights are loaded with 8 of the best bands in our area for a small price, with all proceeds going to WKNC & NC State Student Media.

Prices are $7 in advance and $9 at the door.  There is a $5 surcharge for all attendees under 21.

Bands on Friday include (in order of appearance):
Lonnie Walker
Lost in the Trees
Schooner
Bowerbirds

Bands on Saturday include (in order of appearance):
I Was Totally Destroying It
Violet Vector & the Lovely Lovelies
Birds of Avalon
Polvo

WKNC will be broadcasting live from the site both nights.

Throughout the next month WKNC will begin featuring exclusive blogs about each of these fantastic bands leading up to the show.  Be on the lookout for those as well as listening to each of these bands on WKNC 88.1 fm.

In addition, the two days leading up to the show, WKNC will play 100% Local Music during its Daytime Format.   More information on this later.

When I started Local Lunch in the beginning of 2008, I have to admit… I didn’t know jack about local music. I knew we had a show called The Local Beat and that our Double Barrel Benefit 5 was going to feature 8 local acts, but that was essentially it. So there I was, half way through January and still struggling to find something that made my show different from all of the other WKNC DJs, and all I knew was that my shift was set in the middle of lunch time, I was hungry, and I needed to plug some of the acts from DBB5. In a nutshell, that is basically how Local Lunch was born.

So now I had a locally themed show, but I still didn’t know anything about local music. I asked myself, “What is the best way to learn about the local scene?”; and knew that I had to get in to going to local venues and seeing local acts. Thankfully, DBB5 had 8 local bands who I had been spinning and enjoying for a month. Another long drawn out story later, I was having a great time watching a band called The Future Kings of Nowhere (FKON). And thus how I fell in love with local music and renewed my interest in music in general.

FKON went on to become one of my favorite bands in 2008, and that is why I encourage everyone to go out and explore the local music scene. If you are like how I was, and don’t know who to go see or where to go to catch great local bands at; I suggest you check out the WKNC Rock Report. Or find your favorite band for 2009 by attending WKNC’s Double Barrel Benefit 6 on Friday and Saturday, February 6th & 7th.

I was once told that “Some of the greatest experiences of life where to be had in places far from home”. I hope you will discover, like I did, that such a saying is untrue because of the experiences to be had at some place down the street, rockin’ out with bands from down the street.

The Future Kings of Nowhere