John Craigie
Much like community, music nourishes us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It also invites us to come together under the same roof and in a shared moment. In similar fashion, John Craigie rallies a closeness around music anchored by his expressive and stirring songcraft, emotionally charged vocals, lively soundscapes, and uncontainable spirit. The Portland, OR-based singer, songwriter, and producer invites everyone into this space on his 2024 full-length album, Pagan Church. Following tens of millions of streams, sold out shows everywhere, and praise from Rolling Stone and more, he continues to captivate. “The music is always evolving and devolving with each new record,” he observes. “With my last album Mermaid Salt, I really wanted to explore the sound of isolation and solitude as everyone was heading inside. With this record, I wanted to record the sound of everyone coming back out.” In order to capture that, he didn’t go about it alone… Instead, he joined forces with some local friends. At the time, TK & The Holy Know-Nothings booked a slew of outdoor gigs in Portland and they invited Craigie to sit in for a handful of shows. The musicians instinctively identified an unspoken, yet seamless chemistry with each other. Joined by three of the five members, Craigie cut “Laurie Rolled Me a J” and kickstarted the process. With the full band in tow, they hunkered down in an old schoolhouse TK & The Holy Know-Nothings had converted into a de facto headquarters and studio, and recorded the eleven tracks on Pagan Church.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud
Madison Cunningham & Juana Molina
As its title suggests, Revealer—the new album by Madison Cunningham—is full of confessions, intimations, and hard truths the Los Angeles singer-songwriter-guitarist might rather have kept to herself. It’s a warts-and-all self-portrait of a young artist who is full of doubt and uncertainty, yet bursting with exciting ideas about music and life, who has numerous Grammy nominations but still feels like she has far to go, who turns those misgivings into songs that are confident in their idiosyncrasies. It’s also a rumination on music as a vehicle for such revelations, what’s gained and what’s lost when you put words to your innermost feelings. “There’s a sense of conflict about revealing anything about yourself—not just what to reveal, but whether you should reveal anything at all,” she says. “When you have to vouch for yourself and present a true picture of who you are, that can get confusing very quickly. This record is a product of me trying to find myself and my interests again. I felt like somewhere along the way I had lost the big picture of my own life.”Reassembling that picture resulted in songs full of odd turns of phrase, skewed imagery, and witty asides; Cunningham writes to figure things out, and she doesn’t settle for easy answers or pat platitudes. Instead, more often than not she pulls the rug out from under herself, playing both straight man and comic relief. “I’m not immune to a piece of bad news, I just do what I must to move on,” she sings on the percolating opener “All I’ve Ever Known.” If it sounds like a cry of determination and fortitude, Cunningham immediately undercuts herself: “Give me truth but put me under so I don’t feel a thing.”These are dark, funny songs for dark, not-so-funny times. “I wanted this work to reflect how I was taking in the world at that moment, and I promised myself I wouldn’t withhold the good or the bad from this self-portrait. I couldn’t have planned for the startling range of emotions a pandemic would bring on — sorrow, depression, anger, anxiety, fear, apathy. Much less writing during one. While I could take some comfort in knowing other people were experiencing those very things, I had yet to understand how many conflicting emotions a person could carry at once.” The confusion she shared with the rest of the world, however, was compounded and complicated when her grandmother died unexpectedly. Suddenly, the pain became unbearably personal. Revealer became a way for her to work through all of those overwhelming emotions. With rich strings eddying around her measured guitar strums, “Life According to Raechel” is a catalog of missed opportunities and lost time, all the visits she never made to her beloved grandmother, all the important details that make up a life. “There’s always something left unsaid,” Cunningham sings. “Were your eyes green? Were they blue? What was it that I forgot to ask you?”Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud
Mikaela Davis
Five years since her debut album Delivery, Mikaela Davis has moved away from her hometown of Rochester, shared the stage with the likes of Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Christian McBride, Bon Iver, Lake Street Dive and Circles Around the Sun and entered a new decade. But it’s the ever-evolving relationships between her closest friends and bandmates that has propelled the Hudson Valley-based artist onto her new album And Southern Star––a truly collaborative effort that ruminates on the choices we make, and the people we always come back to. Davis earned her degree in harp performance at the Crane School of Music, and has molded her classical music training to create an original and genre-bending catalog that weaves together 60s pop-soaked melodies, psychedelia and driving folk rock. She met her bandmates at pivotal moments in her life––drummer Alex Coté in childhood, guitarist Cian McCarthy and bassist Shane McCarthy in college, and steel guitarist Kurt Johnson in her early twenties. It’s the band’s collective step into adulthood that has informed much of And Southern Star’s thematic landscape. Navigating the periphery of past selves, the coexistence of isolation and excitement in a new environment and the tension of growing away from what we thought we wanted is tackled with a luscious, kaleidoscopic grace. And Southern Star picks apart the reflection we used to recognise, while trying to build a new one. “I finally feel like this album is more me than anything else that’s been released,” Davis says, adding that producing the album along with her four bandmates allowed them to carve out their own ideas, rather than someone else’s. Despite playing together for over a decade, it’s the first time the five-piece have appeared on a full length album together. The bones of And Southern Star was recorded at Old Soul Studios with Kenny Siegal, a person who was an integral part of Davis’ move to the area. The rest was recorded by Cian McCarthy at Horehound Mansion, adding to the album’s intimate nature. The album was mixed by Mike Fridmann at Tarbox Road Studios, who is lovingly nicknamed as the ‘silent sixth member of the band.’ Davis describes the band’s bond as “meditative and telepathic,” adding that although many of the songs were written individually across the past few years, something instantly clicked once they were together. Opener “Cinderella,” written by Coté and Davis, begins with Davis’ distinctive harp plucks and ethereal vocals. It’s a sonic choice that directly points to Davis’ solo beginnings, before blossoming into the textural patchwork of the band’s contributions. The fairytale wanderings of the song peel back in the album’s dream-like canopy, where tracks offer an otherworldly escape from the constraints of reality.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud
Futurebirds
Rock juggernaut Futurebirds’ newest EP, Bloomin’ Too, is a benchmark that not only celebrates 13 years together, it’s also a testament to the sheer iron will of a group of musicians hungry for the fruits of its labor. “Futurebirds is the best it’s been right now, far and away,” says singer/guitarist Carter King. “We’ve been unintentionally carving out our own space since the beginning, since we never exactly fit in anywhere else musically. We were always too indie rock for the jam festival, too country for the indie scene, a little too psych-rock to feel like we were Americana. The music over the years just kind of created its own weird little ecosystem — it’s thriving and it feels great.” The Athens, Georgia-based group once again tapped storied My Morning Jacket guitarist/producer Carl Broemel in the latest chapter of this seamless, bountiful partnership that initially came to fruition with the 2021 EP, Bloomin’.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
Tay Tay Dance Party
2 Hours of Non-Stop Taylor music featuring DJ Swiftie.Website
Hank, Pattie & The Current
Bluegrass visionaries Hank Smith (banjo) and Pattie Hopkins Kinlaw’s (fiddle) innovative twist on traditional bluegrass music is a soulful brew flavored with classical, Motown, jazz, and pop influences. Joined by Billie Feather on guitar and Stevie Martinez on bass, this dynamic, North Carolina based group is performing in support of their fifth album, LETTERS, out now on Robust Records.Website | Instagram | Twitter | Spotify
School of Rock Chapel Hill’s Mid-Season Preview
$10 Suggested Donation Schedule12:00 – Best of CCR – 30 12:30 – The Beatles’ White Album – 30 1:00 – Best of Bruce Springsteen – 30 1:30 – Best of Sheryl Crow vs. Shania Twain – 30 2:00 – House Band – 20 2:20 – Rock 101 – 20 2:40 – Staff Band Summer Season Theme Reveal – 30 3:15 – Evanescence vs. System of A Down – 30 3:45 – Marvin Gaye vs. Al Green – 30 4:15 – Prince vs. Michael Jackson – 30 4:45 – House Band – 15 5:00 – Rock 201 – 30 Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Facebook Event
School of Rock Chapel Hill’s Mid-Season Preview
$10 Suggested Donation. This is a Benefit Show to support the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Breast Cancer Research Fund! Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Facebook Event
Shannon and the Clams
Independent music mainstays Shannon & The Clams are known for their feel-good, vintage-infused, garage-psych sound. Their sonics go from black and white to technicolor on their forthcoming new album, The Moon Is In the Wrong Place, produced by longtime collaborator Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. Faced with the unimaginable sudden loss of singer-bassist Shannon Shaw’s fiancé, Joe Haener, in a car accident weeks leading up to their wedding, the project is a holistic exploration of grief and celebration of life coupled with the most expansive, exciting songs and arrangements of their celebrated catalog. Shaw’s bandmates, guitarist Cody Blanchard, keyboard player Will Sprott, and drummer Nate Mahan, rallied behind her to create their most ambitious, emotionally searing work to date. The title is drawn from a conversation in which Haener, an astrology novice, attempted to ask if Mercury was in retrograde. This ominous precognitive statement became the basis for the record. The Moon Is In the Wrong Place marks Shannon & The Clams’ 7th studio album together and showcases their 15+ years of tight-knit collaboration. Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | TikTok
Snow Strippers
Snow Strippers is a duo made up of members Tatiana Schwaninger and Graham Perez. They met in Florida in 2018 and began making music together towards the end of 2021, forming the band Snow Strippers. Graham had been producing music for years, while Tati had no previous experience making music before. They make electronic music that they want to listen to. They do all of their creative, visuals and merch independently. They run the band along with their label, Nice Bass Bro. Their third full length project, April Mixtape 3, dropped May 2023 on Surf Gang Records.Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Soundcloud
