Last week’s Carolina Grown was easily the busiest to date, but when you’ve got so much to fit in for the last show of the year there’s no excuse not to go all out! The first hour of the show was comprised of three rootsy acts from the area that are coming in at various stages of their career. While Kenny Roby sits atop his local throne as one of the standout members of the Alt-Country scene thanks to his work in Six String Drag, acts like Magnolia Collective and Texoma are just finding their footing.
Throughout the hour I spoke first with Kenny Roby about the differences between approaching his songs as a solo artist as opposed to a member of a full band. Roby performed an intimate take on “Tired of Being In Love,” before the focus switched over to the folks in Magnolia Collective. We then spoke a bit about the inception of Magnolia Collective and how it’s grown from their humble start with weekly jams at Carrboro’s The Station. Magnolia Collective then performed a brand new track from their forthcoming full length, set for release sometime next year.
Lastly, we moved onto the newest band of the bill with Texoma. Texoma’s songwriter Zach Terry was one of the original members of Magnolia Collective and we spoke about the differences between working with such a large group as opposed to a “dust-rock” trio. Texoma recently released a self-produced self-titled EP, and having only been a band for 2 months we naturally discussed the difficulties and excitement that comes along with being in such a swiftly moving project. To close out the hour Texoma performed an unreleased track titled “Mary Anne.”