Sam Burchfield & The Scoundrels
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Ashley Kutcher – Thanksgiving Break Tour 2024
Ashley Kutcher is a Baltimore-born singer, songwriter, and artist. In 2019, Kutcher performed countless gigs in local bars in between attending college for nursing. Gaining traction with original music online, she answered a TikTok comment with “Love You From A Distance.” After taking over TikTok and inspiring millions of creatives, the song exploded to the tune of over 95mm Spotify streams to date and paved the way for her first two EPs: One Eighty and Survive My Own Mind. In their wake, she sold out her first two headline US Tours. Ashley released her debut album “House on The Water” in January 2024, and has released two singles this summer from her upcoming project. Ashley’s unreleased music is a return to her roots as an acoustic singer/songwriter, marrying hard hitting hooks with a more organic & country influenced sound. Ashley will be on the road in November for her fourth US headline “Thanksgiving Break” tour. Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | TikTok
The Strumbellas
Ever since forming in 2008 and releasing their debut album, 2012’s My Father and the Hunter, two-time JUNO award-winning alternative group The Strumbellas have steadily released follow-ups containing every ounce of stomping, hand-clapping, alt-country gusto, from 2013’s We Still Move on Dance Floors to 2016’s Hope to 2019’s Rattlesnake. They’ll soon round the corner with a brand-new fifth studio album, Part Time Believer, a collection that signals The Strumbellas’ grand return and rebirth. Now with Jimmy Chauveau on board as lead vocalist, The Strumbellas spent the last four years writing, recording, and whittling 50 songs down to 12. Honed by producers Ben Allen (Gnarls Barkley, Kaiser Chiefs), Keith Varon (Machine Gun Kelly), Stevie Aiello (30 Seconds To Mars), and Dave Schiffman (RHCP, The Killers), Part Time Believer continues The Strumbellas’ long-standing tradition of blending anthemic, brightly coloured compositions with yearning, contemplative lyrics. “I think people often feel like things are escaping them, or they’re trying to grab on to something — happiness, gratitude, professional or personal goals — and for some reason, they just can’t get there,” says David Ritter, who handles piano, organ, percussion, and vocals. “Even if they get the thing they want, it doesn’t feel the way they thought it would. A lot of these songs are about trying to, like, figure out why we’re all feeling this way, and how we can find more peace in our lives.” Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | TikTok
Ken Vandermark PNL Duo
Website | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram
Harvey Street
Formed in the summer of 2021, Harvey Street quickly became a staple of the North Carolina music scene. Described as “disciplined electricity,” their original songs such as “Irish Goodbye” and “Betty” became instant favorites in their hometown of Raleigh, NC. With the release of their debut EP “Gone for a While,” Harvey Street cultivated a sound that resonated with music-goers all over the Southeast. With sold-out shows playing alongside Futurebirds, The Stews, Arcy Drive, and many more under their belt, the band embarked on their first Southeastern tour in January of 2024. With their new “Great Escape” EP and summer 2024 tour, Harvey Street is steadily expanding further on the sound and fan base that they’ve developed over the past 3 years. Website | Instagram | Spotify | YouTube | TikTok
The Staves
It was in December 2022 that The Staves celebrated the 10th anniversary of their debut album Dead & Born & Grown – a strange and beautiful period in the lives of sisters and band members Jessica, Camilla and Emily Staveley-Taylor, making their fourth album All Now with the same organic vulnerability as that first record: except now everything was different, and they kind of were too. All Now emerges, bold and bright, from a period of quiet, which followed a period of chaos, for the band. When Good Woman was released in 2021, to positive reviews, it felt like “an echoing silence” to share such a cathartic album with a world shut down. So The Staves had to retreat, again, and actually wrestle with everything they had been through. “There was a delayed reaction to trauma and these big changes out of your control,” says Jess of the period that came after Good Woman, as the band – like the rest of us – were forced to sit with their thoughts, but also still processing the death of their mother and other seismic changes: Emily takes a backseat on this album (while still contributing vocals on a handful of tracks) to focus on motherhood, while Camilla reckoned with her own mental and physical health issues – chronic pain and a series of operations due to Endometriosis began to take an increasing toll. “It all culminated in making me feel extremely alienated,” says Camilla. “Suddenly your body is doing something completely out of your control – depression reared its ugly head again and it sparked an identity crisis. It was a turning point.” So The Staves did what they know how to do best, and got back to writing. The idea was to go against most of what they’d been doing for the last few years by going back to basics and focusing almost solely on each other and their guitars as a starting point. It began with Jess, navigating this new landscape by harnessing her creativity on her own at first in the studio in Hackney at the end of 2022, slowly luring Camilla back to the next chapter of The Staves, before reaching out to super-producer John Congleton (Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen), who the band had worked with on Good Woman, to help them figure out the next step in the studio. “After this feeling of slow motion for a couple of years, it suddenly accelerated wildly towards the finish line,” the band say of the weeks that follow: packing up and heading to LA to meet Congleton and musicians Max Hart and Tamir Barzilay to bring to life what this next album really could be. The result? An album as rich and honest as all the most profound music by The Staves scattered across albums for the last decade, calcified here into something special. There’s the buoyant nostalgia on ‘After School’, a love letter to Emily from her little sisters “looking back on the simpler times” and reflecting on those teenage days shuffling into that one bedroom with the CD player to play the new Sheryl Crow album. “That late ‘90s period was just fucking fun,” says Camilla. “We thought Emily was the coolest, so we thought we may as well go full throttle with a really joyful song.” Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
The Hourglass Kids, Bongfoot
The Hourglass Kids began as a group of high school friends jamming in various basements of North Carolina. Over time, they have evolved into a seven-piece reggae-jam-rock collective known for their mind-melting live performances. Pulling from the musical creativity of all seven members and the unique lyricism of four songwriters and vocalists, The Kids traverse a breadth of stylistic and emotional terrain that includes roots reggae, psychedelic rock, hip-hop, and jazz-rock that has cemented their place in the Carolina roots music scene. Website | Instagram | Facebook | Spotify
School of Rock Chapel Hill’s End of Season Showcase
Free Show / $10 Suggested Donation 11:00 – Doors11:30 – Kiss – 40 mins12:10 – Alice In Chains – 60 mins1:10 – Buffer- 20 mins1:30 – Adele vs. Amy – 60 mins2:30 – Indie Zoo – 60 mins3:30 – Buffer + Farewell for Leaving Staff plus Students – 30 mins4:00 – Epic Albums: Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” – 60 mins5:00 – Bruno vs. Anderson – 60 mins6:00 – End of show Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Facebook Event
Mipso
Mipso formed in 2012 as an excuse to play together between classes in Chapel Hill. Joseph Terrell came from a family of banjo-playing uncles and a guitarist grandma, and he’d gotten curious again about the string band music he’d heard as a kid. Jacob Sharp was raised on equal parts Doc Watson and Avett Brothers in the N.C. mountains and was hunting for a chance to sing harmonies. Wood Robinson added a Charlie Haden-esque interest in bridging jazz and grass sensibilities on the double bass, and Libby Rodenbough soon joined on fiddle, unsatisfied by her classical violin training but drawn like a moth toward the glow of old, weird Americana.Their first album, “Dark Holler Pop,” produced by Andrew Marlin (Watchhouse), included Terrell-penned fan favorites “Louise” and “Couple Acres Greener” and turned the recent grads into a full-blown touring band. Although it hung out on the Billboard Bluegrass top 10, its sonic mission statement was in the name: “Dark Holler Pop” was groovier and catchier than its string band contemporaries.2015’s “Old Time Reverie” earned them an invitation to perform in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade wherein they rolled down 5th Avenue on a 12-foot bucket of fried chicken. They doubled down on touring, honing a telepathic, sibling-esque connection onstage.2017’s “Coming Down The Mountain,” produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee), added drums and pedal steel and put the band on bigger stages with an expanded Americana sound, including the Rodenbough-fronted title track, another streaming hit and live staple.Mipso considered hanging up their hats in 2018 while recording “Edges Run” with Todd Sickafoose (Ani DiFranco, Anais Mitchell). After five years of near-constant touring, they had started to wake up in hotel rooms wondering what state they were in; they’d never had pets. The album took off. Sharp’s intimate vocal on “People Change” floated into dorm rooms and coffee shops across America, cementing Mipso as a bona fide streaming success across four albums and placing them in that rarefied strata of bands with three distinct lead singers. 2020’s self-titled start-fresh album on Rounder Records brought experimental Canadian producer Sandro Perri into the mix and minted a collection with moodier landscapes and unexpected textures.Post-pandemic Mipso is starting fresh again with “Book of Fools.” The songs might be their best yet. “Carolina Rolling By” shows Terrell at his most relaxed and confident—it’s a meditative cosmic country-tinged head bopper. “The Numbers” flirts with 60s surf rock while Rodenbough winks and wags a finger at our market-obsessed culture, and “Broken Heart/Open Heart” features Sharp at his most heart-wrenching and earnest. Other standouts “East” and “Radio Hell” will infect you with earworms made of guitar riffs, Robinson’s pretzel-twisted upright bass lines, and saturated “ooohs” drifting in as if on AM radio waves. Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
Mipso
Mipso formed in 2012 as an excuse to play together between classes in Chapel Hill. Joseph Terrell came from a family of banjo-playing uncles and a guitarist grandma, and he’d gotten curious again about the string band music he’d heard as a kid. Jacob Sharp was raised on equal parts Doc Watson and Avett Brothers in the N.C. mountains and was hunting for a chance to sing harmonies. Wood Robinson added a Charlie Haden-esque interest in bridging jazz and grass sensibilities on the double bass, and Libby Rodenbough soon joined on fiddle, unsatisfied by her classical violin training but drawn like a moth toward the glow of old, weird Americana.Their first album, “Dark Holler Pop,” produced by Andrew Marlin (Watchhouse), included Terrell-penned fan favorites “Louise” and “Couple Acres Greener” and turned the recent grads into a full-blown touring band. Although it hung out on the Billboard Bluegrass top 10, its sonic mission statement was in the name: “Dark Holler Pop” was groovier and catchier than its string band contemporaries.2015’s “Old Time Reverie” earned them an invitation to perform in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade wherein they rolled down 5th Avenue on a 12-foot bucket of fried chicken. They doubled down on touring, honing a telepathic, sibling-esque connection onstage.2017’s “Coming Down The Mountain,” produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee), added drums and pedal steel and put the band on bigger stages with an expanded Americana sound, including the Rodenbough-fronted title track, another streaming hit and live staple.Mipso considered hanging up their hats in 2018 while recording “Edges Run” with Todd Sickafoose (Ani DiFranco, Anais Mitchell). After five years of near-constant touring, they had started to wake up in hotel rooms wondering what state they were in; they’d never had pets. The album took off. Sharp’s intimate vocal on “People Change” floated into dorm rooms and coffee shops across America, cementing Mipso as a bona fide streaming success across four albums and placing them in that rarefied strata of bands with three distinct lead singers. 2020’s self-titled start-fresh album on Rounder Records brought experimental Canadian producer Sandro Perri into the mix and minted a collection with moodier landscapes and unexpected textures.Post-pandemic Mipso is starting fresh again with “Book of Fools.” The songs might be their best yet. “Carolina Rolling By” shows Terrell at his most relaxed and confident—it’s a meditative cosmic country-tinged head bopper. “The Numbers” flirts with 60s surf rock while Rodenbough winks and wags a finger at our market-obsessed culture, and “Broken Heart/Open Heart” features Sharp at his most heart-wrenching and earnest. Other standouts “East” and “Radio Hell” will infect you with earworms made of guitar riffs, Robinson’s pretzel-twisted upright bass lines, and saturated “ooohs” drifting in as if on AM radio waves. Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
