This Friday evening on “The Local Beat” is going to be a fun one as we are going to try to do the show live from downtown Raleigh at Wristband City in the Sheraton Hotel for Hopscotch Music Festival. With power outages and bad Internet connections we will cross our fingers to see if we can make it work.

Hopscotch will be beginning its second day as the Local Beat takes the air and we will be joined by a variety of guests that may include WXDU‘s Ross Grady, old school local band Soccer member and Lenovo Social Media Editor Gavin O’Hara, as well as several different local musicians who plan on dropping by. The conversation will focus on Hopscotch and the people and music involved in it.

It all starts at 5 p.m. with plans for the show to only last until 6 p.m. so we can all join the Dodos, who are playing live in City Plaza starting at 5:45 p.m.

Feel free to come by and watch the Local Beat from Wristband City, whether you are a Hopscotch goer or not!

As always “The Local Beat” starts at 5 p.m.  every Friday evening on WKNC. Listen live here and be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and ReverbNation!

Friday, Sept. 2 on “The Local Beat” is the first live program since July and it is jammed full of some amazing guests.

Last year we had Independent Weekly Music Editor and Hopscotch Music Festival Curator  Grayson Currin on the program for a full three hours to talk about the first ever Hopscotch. This year we toned it down a bit and Grayson, along with Hopscotch Marketing Director Greg Lowenhagen are coming in for one hour from 5-6 p.m. Join us as we chat about this year’s festival from the eyes of the men behind it.

At 6 p.m. local hip-hop act Kooley High is dropping in for the first time in quite awhile. The group is playing at Kings Barcade with King Mez, HaLo, and Drique London. The show is all ages and cost $1, with the starting time planned for around 10 p.m. I’ll be catching up with Kooley High and talking hip-hop.

The final hour of the show will belong to Hunter MacDermut, aka The Tourist, who is releasing a brand new 12 track album Sept. 3 at Marsh Woodwinds in Raleigh. Scott Phillips (of Goner, Monologue Bombs, and about 20 other local bands) will be opening and the show at 8 p.m. Hunter and I are going to talk about the new album and the show and spin some tracks off of it.

As always “The Local Beat” starts at 5 p.m. and runs through 8 p.m. every Friday evening on WKNC. Listen live here and be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and ReverbNation!

Friday, August 12 on “The Local Beat” is the beginning of our next Local Beat Flashback Series which we do one month a year. Throughout the rest of August we will be looking back at past episodes and dusting off some oldies from the vault.

This week we are bringing back two Local Beat Mini Exclusives from April and a live interview from back in November 2010.

Starting off the hour will be an interview we did on November 5, 2010 with members from The Light Pines. The Light Pines have been in the news recently with their free downloadable release of their debut album which came out just a short time ago. In the interview from last year we talked about that new album and the future plans of the band. It should be interesting to see how things panned out for the group between November and now.

The second hour of the show goes to a Local Beat Mini Exclusive from April with The Huguenots. The band’s bassist, York, came in to chat about the band’s debut release. However, not even two weeks after the interview with me, the band called it quits. Still, it made for an interesting conversation.

The final hour of the episode belongs to another April Mini Exclusive, this one with Adam Eckhardt of A Rooster For The Masses, who sat down with me to chat about their newest album, No One Is Ready. Adam is always a great conversationalist and it made for some fantastic discussions.

As always “The Local Beat” starts at 5 p.m. and runs through 8 p.m. every Friday evening on WKNC. Listen live here and be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and ReverbNation!

This coming Friday on the Local Beat I am dedicating two hours of the show to Troika Music Festival.  Of course by the time the interview airs the festival will be well underway since it is beginning tonight.  Melissa Thomas and Stuart Horne came in to pre-record the interview with me earlier in the week and I felt that it was important to share our conversation before Friday evening and before Troika begins.  Among many things we chatted about the history of the event, compared it to Hopscotch, and discussed what is going on differently in this years festival.  Give it a listen below:

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