Category: Local Music

General coverage of local music happenings

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Concert Preview Local Music

LBLB October 28… Halloween Style!

Get spooky, baby!  This Thursday WKNC and Tir Na nOg bring you the scariest bands to hit the Raleigh scene: Left Outlet, A Rooster for the Masses, and The Alcazar Hotel. I know you’re heart is racing with fright already!  n all seriousness, Local Beer Local Band Night is FREE, 21 and up, and the nightmare starts at 10 p.m. Keep an eye out for Big Boss’s pumpkin beer. AHHH!!!

Left Outlet

Easily the hottest gay band in Raleigh, this band features:  “T.Lemuel…soothe sayer from another place; D.Smith….dulcet notes stolen from siren songs;  L.Bennett…aural massaging with ivory and circuit;  St. Anthony…self-destructive plunges into the deep and;  C-Tron Bravo…booming pounding grooving."  This band is most likely to rock your face off and steal your boyfriend.  Yummmmm

A Rooster for the Masses

This band is too good.  You might have caught them at Hopscotch during our Local Beer Local Band day show at Tir Na nOg. Their album review by Grayson Currin in the Independent Weekly said, “The Rooster still sings truth to power over angular guitar lines and hi-hat pulses, whether riffing on the downtown void King’s Barcade left behind on ‘No Party Downtown’ (the band released Rojo there in 2006) or territorial tendencies on ‘Headwaters.’”  Well thankfully, Kings is back (was anyone there this past Saturday?? Luckies…), A Rooster for the Masses is playing music, and everyone will be happy.

The Alcazar Hotel

"Inspired by the music and philosophies of such seminal bands as The MC5, Morphine, and The Violent Femmes, The Alcazar Hotel play straight up Rock & Roll, no qualifier (indie, alternative, punk, etc.) necessary.  Their first release “Songs from The Alcazar Hotel” (Knockdown South, 2005) was a widely received hit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands after Dawson moved there in 2006. After a year of squatting and busking, Dawson returned to the states to record their follow up album, “Come ON! Dig The Unified Theory!” “…The Unified Theory” was recorded with a blistering set up of 2-string bass, electric guitar, and vicious drums at Delta Recording Service in Como, Mississippi. It features guest appearances by Jimbo Mathus of The Squirrel Nut Zippers and Luther Dickinson of The Black Crowes & North Mississippi Allstars.”

There will be a really scary interview on Thursday from 7-8pm starring myself and Left Outlet.  Be sure to tune in on the creepyness.

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Concert Preview Local Music

Local Beer Local Band—October 21—Tir Na nOg

As usual,  Tir Na nOg and WKNC present Local Beer Local Band Night. This Tursday, October 21 features music from Mount Moriah, Old Bricks, and Filthybird! Same rules: starts at 10 p.m., ages 21 and up, and FREE.

Filthybird

I’m always a sucker for a band with female vocals. The folks at the Pinhook said, “These guys are kind of a cosmic Americana western eastern totem spirit animal.” They just had their record release party at the Pinhook on the 15th of October.  If you didn’t catch them there, see them this Thursday!!

Old Bricks

I just saw these guys at the album release party for Veelee. That in itself was an amazing show, I hope you were able to make it. Although this band encompasses the same exact members as Motor Skills, the sound is entirely different. Stuart, the singer, reminded me of Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes, in the most wonderful way.

Mount Moriah

Folk rock in the best way.  I have a girl crush on Heather… don’t tell….

Old Bricks is going to come hang out with me in the studio on Thursday from 7-8 p.m. Be sure to tune in!!

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Concert Preview Local Music

LIVE at Tir Na nOg! LBLB October 14!!!

Come down to WKNC and Tir Na Nog’s Local Band Local Beer on Thursday, October 14 to see AMINAL, BRETT HARRIS, and THE HONORED GUESTS! The show is FREE. Ages 21 and up. 10 p.m.

Don’t forget to visit the fancy shmancy new Local Beer Local Band website! Loaded with show schedules and a download-able mixtape!

Aminal

“If pop music is a wild animal, then this Chapel Hill trio’s domesticated it, teaching it to sit up, roll over and lay in their lap. Their songs amble with unhurried grace and purr with ineffable charm. Frontman Patrick O’Neill has a gift for vocal melodies that insinuate themselves into your confidences so completely that, after a couple of listens, you’re ready to buy them a round of drinks. The songs boast a woozy ebb and flow fueled by a vibrant rhythm section that’s capable of unspooling the sound with the measured skill of a master angler loosening and locking his reel.”

– Hopscotch Music Festival

You might have missed these guys at Hopscotch because they were playing at the same time as Best Coast. No worries, catch them this Thursday!

Brett Harris

“…equal amounts of jangle and drift, pop and pontification, like a Nick Lowe and Randy Newman acolyte dreaming in FM ballad Technisound.”

-Grayson Currin, Independent Weekly

“…Durham’s version of Paul McCartney.”
-Zach Hanner, Shawna Kenney & John Staton, Wilmington Star News

Brett Harris recently played on NC State campus for Shack-a-thon. A week-long camp-out to support Habitat for Humanity.

The Honored Guests

“Perfection is better in concept than practice, as most anyone who’s lived with a perfectionist will tell you. It nearly brought down the Chapel Hill band The Honored Guests until they learned to scale their ambitions and expectations to a place where the means of playing music were as important as the ends of making the perfect record.

That struggle is encapsulated not only in the title of the Guests’ third album, Please Try Again, but also in the songs themselves. Sure, the album suggests The Flaming Lips’ Soft Bulletin with its richly layered songs, oddly shaped and resolutely catchy arrangements and dreamy countenance. But rather than being infused with hope, Please Try Again comes shadowed by a sense of frustration and dissipation, tracing a psyche at war with itself.” – The Independent

All of the above bands will be in the station this Thursday from 7-8 p.m. for an interview. Tune in!

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Concert Preview Local Music

Local Beer Local Band October 7

Happy October everyone! Finally feels like fall! Hooray!

Grab that scarf and come down to WKNC and Tir Na Nog’s Local Band Local Beer on Thursday, October 7 to see WILD WILD GEESE, WESLEY WOLFE, and SHIT HORSE! All bands are a part of Odessa Records. The show is FREE! Ages 21 and up. Starts at 10 p.m. My favorite delicious October-tasting beer, Big Boss Harvest Time will be on tap. Yum yum!

Check out www.wknc.org/lblb to see the fall schedule for Local Band Local Beer and to download the free mixtape, which features one song from each band playing this season.

…Wild Wild Geese

http://www.myspace.com/wildwildgeesemusic

“Are You a Baby?, the prelude to Carrboro trio Wild Wild Geese’s forthcoming debut LP, bristles with springy garage rock verve that
seems to fit everywhere and nowhere at once. The Geese play with loose energy and nervy emotion, suggesting The Replacements and Reigning Sound. The screwball guitars feel more like Polvo, though, while the pop undercurrent has as much to do with British punk as American rebellion (or as much Buzzcocks as Stooges). Still, while Wild Wild Geese sound very much culled from all of those bands, it manages to avoid sounding too much like any of them.” – The Independent

…Wesley Wolfe

http://www.myspace.com/wesleywolfe

There’s a reason Chapel Hill, North Carolina is still one of the great American hubs for independent music, and it’s not just indie rock stalwarts Superchunk and the Cat’s Cradle rock club. The reason is because there is a glut of homegrown talent, people like the Kingsbury
Manx or Spider Bags that are churning out vital record after vital record. And go right ahead and add Wesley Wolfe to that list. Storage
is, flat out, one of the finest pop records of the year. Wolfe recorded all the instruments himself, and these are as straight-up as pop songs come. Guitars, bass, drums, vocals, sweet melodies, clever and heartfelt lyrics, and hooks, hooks, hooks. But while the elements are simple, the songs are far from the same. Wolfe can pull off guileless love songs, lover-spurned indie rock, and spaced-out melancholia—and that’s just in the first three songs. His nasal bleat is urgent and sweet at the same time, and when he spits out lines like “sorry only counts the first time”, you know damn well he means it. So you’ve got 11 catchy as hell songs, full of driving guitars and deep hooks, telling earnest tales sung with both feeling and energy—aren’t those the things we expect from pop music? And does it make Storage one of the finest examples of it in 2010. The answer to both questions is a resounding ‘Yes’.
– Popmatters.com

…Shit Horse

“If you’re compelled to wince at Shit Horse on first glance, that’s understandable. The band—three young, white rock musicians from
Carrboro and Danny Mason, a black frontman two decades older than the band’s youngest member—doesn’t do itself many favors: They’re called Shit Horse, of course, and the title of their debut cassette is a riff on the 1969 Jane Fonda film about a dance marathon. They have a theme song—"Shit Horse! Is Gonna Ride!,” ad infinitum—and they prefer to present their songs via guerilla sets late at night on the streets of Orange County…The band ratchets the rhythm until they deliver Mason into a post-punk fistfight, his exasperated voice insisting that he won’t be defeated. So, yeah, maybe Shit Horse is a gimmick with an attitude and a sense of humor for teenagers. But what else did you think rock ‘n’ roll promised?“ – The Independent

The front man of all three bands will join me in the station Thursday night from 7-8 p.m.  We’ll be having a round-table discussion. Tune in if you know what’s good for you!

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Concert Preview Local Music

LBLB September 30—Luego and Schooner!

Come down to WKNC and Tir Na Nog’s Local Beer Local Band to see LUEGO and SCHOONER! The show is FREE and starts at 10 p.m. Ages 21 and up.

Don’t forget to visit our fancy new Local Beer Local Band Homepage for the Fall schedule for LBLB and to download a FREE MIXTAPE with one song from each artist playing this season.

LUEGO

“I cannot emphasize enough how the sincerity of Phelan’s lyricism makes this album a cut above. If you can appreciate alt-country sounds like Wilco and Blitzen Trapper, you’ll also appreciate Taped-Together Stories.” -Tara Lacey, Performer Magazine

“Ocho thrives on trying more. Influences are a burden. Finally folding them until they’re beneath your tunes rather than simply on top of them—which Luego does on Ocho—is an accomplishment that can’t be understated.”-Grayson Currin, The Independent

And some feedback of our own… “Ocho relies much more heavily on background harmonies and a thicker and deeper sound that is stacked with layer upon layer of grooviness and cool.  The bluesy ruggedness and heartfelt emotion of Phelan’s voice is still present but the album seems to be much more of a family affair and holds a certain friendly attire about it….”

SCHOONER

“…rarely has a sibling relationship created something this harmonious….swooning vintage pop, fuzzy Guided By Voices-ish rock and
woozy Sinatra/Hazlewood-like country for an overall effect that’s equal parts dreamy, deadpan and doomed.” -Rebecca Raber, CMJ

“This is the best, most balanced material by Schooner yet…Sonically, lyrically and structurally, Schooner supplies a perfect mix of apathy and anguish to these songs, and there’s no better conduit for such than the voice of Reid Johnson.-Grayson Currin, The Independent

Tune in this Thursday, September 30 at 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. to hear a full interview with Luego! Schooner might show up too so listen in!! See you on Thursday, friends!

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Concert Preview Local Music

Local Beer Local Band Sept. 23rd

Come down to Tir Na nOg and WKNC’s Local Band Local Beer night on Thursday 9/23 to see Veelee, Motor Skills, and Cassis Orange! As always there will be delicious local beer on tap. BY THE WAY the pub just recently got Big Boss’s famous pumpkin ale, Harvest Time on tap… Yum yum yumm! The show is FREE and starts at 10 p.m. Ages 21+.

Veelee

“To put it plainly: Three Sides, the debut EP from Chapel Hill duo Veelee, joins Wood Ear’s The Hard Way and Bowerbirds’ Danger at Sea as recent short, self-made Triangle debuts that are alarmingly, stop-what-you’re-doing-and-memorize-this good.” – Grayson Currin, The Independent

My favorite local duo.  Matt and Ginger are the two sweetest musicians I know. If you didn’t catch them at Hopscotch or at our LBLB day party last Friday, here is your chance! The hottest Raleigh sensation!

Motor Skills

“Motor Skills debuted last year with “Right as Hell,” one of several stunning surprises on the excellent North Carolina compilation, Hear Here: The Triangle. Pitting a skittering electronic beat reminiscent of late Radiohead against a steely-eyed, dark-lined anthem as addictive as anything Interpol has ever written, “Right as Hell” put Motor Skills high atop the must-watch list.” – HopscotchMusicFest.com

With the addition of two new band mates, this poppy, electronic-ish group is sounding better than ever. Three cheers for these guys.

Cassis Orange

“The result of Cassis Orange’s ode to loneliness was a keyboard-laden four-track self-titled indie pop E.P., which upon being released onto an unsuspecting Internet, became a blogosphere sensation, garnering glowing reviews…” – The Fayetteville Feed

This is one of my new favorties in local music. Not sure where exactly these guys came from, felt like nowhere! But apparently they hail from Carborro, NC. This band does feature a member of Motor Skills but they both have their own unique songs. Check out Cassis Orange’s track “Listen Heartbeat” on their myspace page. Awesome song, I hope they play it this Thursday!

I’ll also be having Cassis Orange and Motor Skills at the station this Thursday for live interview.  Some music will be played… perhaps some giveaways?  Tune in 7-8 p.m. before you head out to the pub!

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Concert Preview Local Music

Local Beer Local Band Thurs. Sept 16th

Thursday, September 16 is going to be the first Local Beer Local Band Night with WKNC’s Alumni Mikey P. as official booking agent! Sorry for the late arrival of this blog for I believe I am still recovering from Hopscotch.  That does NOT mean that I will pass up free music at Tir na nOg Irish Pub for Local Beer Local Band Night! FREE, 21 and up, starting at 10 p.m.!  Inflowential and HaLo will be the main acts this Thursday night with Ill Digits controling the jams all night.  Local brewskies will be flowing from the taps!

Inflowential

“Inflowential successfully mixes blues, rock, hip-hop, and reggae to create music with broad appeal. Its kinetic live show has been a draw for fans.”
David Menconi – The Raleigh News & Observer

“Inflowentia lslides comfortably across genre labels, using their live instruments and jazzy undertones to create tracks with an energy and power that feels fresh. A group with great promise…”
Aylin Zafar – Urb Magazine

HaLo aka MR. BEN READY

If you have heard Kooley High’s new album, Eastern Standard Time, then you should recognize the up and coming rapper HaLo (pronounced like”Hah-Low”) who is featured on several tracks. Connected to 9th Wonder and Kooley High’s M.E.C.C.A. Records, HaLo is a witty, up-beat emcee who has arrived on the scene with the mission to delight, electrify and ignite seas of listeners. Currently collaborating with producers such as Foolery, The Sinopsis, and Khrysis, you’ll be sure to hear more from this Raleigh rapper in the future.

Dj Ill Digitz

Once upon a time, Dj Ill Digitz hosted the Midnight Snack for WKNC. You should know him now for his work with Kooley High and his radio show on K 97.5 in his hometown of Raleigh NC. Digitz is one of the few deejays playing real hip hop on commercial radio waves.

And!! Be sure to tune in Thursday from 7-8 p.m. to hear our beloved Mikey P interviewing our acts this week!

See you Thursday, friends.

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Festival Coverage Local Music

Local Beer Local Band Presents Hopscotch Day Party! FRIDAY Sept. 10

This Thursday night will be overrun with Hopscotch goers, therefore, WKNC and Tir Na nOg will be hosting our usual Local Beer Local Band Night on Friday, September 10 instead! New Raleigh and Aviator Brewing Company are also presenting.

There will be a total of FIVE, yes count ‘em five!, local acts this week: Cellar Seas, Veelee, Filthy Bird, Temperance League, and A Rooster for the Masses.  All of these bands are WKNC favorites. It will be a great way to kick off your Friday night. Music starts at 12 .pm.

I plan to have Cellar Seas and Veelee in the station on Thursday from 7-8 p.m. so be sure to tune in for that!

Cellar Seas

Cellar Seas is made up of some of my favorite Raleigh people (a bartender, a dj, and frontman to another great band, NAPS). Slow indie rock with just a twinge of country. Plus, these men are all devastatingly handsome.

Veelee

Veelee is my number one favorite duo within our already amazing local music scene. Ginger and Matthew have some sort of power over me when I see them play. I can’t stop smiling, and I want to dance but no one else is… so I don’t. If this happens to you on Friday, please dance, and I will join you! Veelee will also be playing at 10:30 p.m. at The Hive the same day.

Filthy Bird

I’m always a sucker for a band with female vocals. The folks at the Pinhook said, “These guys are kind of a cosmic Americana western eastern totem spirit animal.” They also have a new record coming out in October, so I’m sure you’re bound to get a sneak peak of what’s on it at this show.

Temperance League

Harder garage rock with a retro feel. Their former band you might remember, Bruce Hazel & Some Volunteers.

A Rooster for the Masses

This band is too good.  You might have caught them Friday the 3rd at the Cave; if not, catch them this Friday! Their album review by Grayson Currin in the Independent Weekly said, “the Rooster still sings truth to power over angular guitar lines and hi-hat pulses, whether riffing on the downtown void King’s Barcade left behind on ‘No Party Downtown’ (the band released Rojo there in 2006) or territorial tendencies on ‘Headwaters.’”  Well thankfully, Kings is back, A Rooster for the Masses is playing music, and everyone will be happy.

So don’t forget! Before you begin your Friday night Hopscotch adventures, head to the pub and check out all of these awesome bands. Plus, if you didn’t get a Hopscotch ticket (There are only about 15 all-inclusive passes left as I write this!) you can still come to this daytime event!  See you there, with a day-beer in hand!

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Local Music Music News and Interviews

WKNC To Premiere New Future Islands and Lonnie Walker Tracks!

Yep, you read it right! WKNC will have the great pleasure of premiering two brand new songs by local favorites Lonnie Walker and Future Islands from their split 7" coming out this November. We are the very first ones to have the tracks, so you’ll just have to tune in to the Local Lunch this Wednesday to hear them (and trust me, they rock).

The one and only DJ Ray will be unlocking the treasure chest of two brand new singles to rock you through the next week and a half until we get to see both bands live at Hopscotch! Are you as excited as I am?!??

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Concert Preview Local Music

Chris Tamplin’s Last LBLB

This Thursday will be Chris Tamplin’s very last Local Beer Local Band Night. Tamplin was the orginal anchor in establishing a relationship between WKNC and Tir na nOg Irish Pub. He even won an Indie from Independent Weekly for starting and booking this event for about three years now. Tamplin is leaving the pub to pursue his dream of opening Motorco Music, a music venue in Durham. Therefore, since Tamplin is leaving, this week will be an extra special show!

This week, September 2 will feature music from all around North Carolina. First up is Asheville’s Darien will open the show with Charlotte’s The Houston Brothers filling the middle slot. Missy Thangs’ other great band Soft Company will be headlining! As usual this is a FREE show, 21 and up, and starts at 10 p.m.! See you there!

Darien

As a local artist who’s inspired by Irish music, there could not be a better act for Tir na nOg this Thursday. She plays the guitar solo and also sings/writes all of her own songs. Darien is an artist for the fans of bands like Rilo Kiley and Beirut. You’re going to love her.

The Houston Brothers

It’s good. I can’t seem to place who these two handsome men sound like… somewhere between Neutral Milk Hotel and Brian Eno. Check out their the link to their page for a full listen.

Soft Company

You might remember the leading lady from her other band, The Love Language. The Independent Weekly described their most recent album as full of “rich harmonies, layered keyboards and counterpoint guitars [that] slip and slide beneath each other.”

I will be having The Soft Company and another one of these acts at the station on Thursday at 7 p.m. so be sure to tune in. None of these acts are ones you will want to miss. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my Thursday night than sending off Chris Tamplin with the help of a few local beers and these three amazing local bands!