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
Ethan Regan – The Only Tour Ever
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Illiterate Light
It’s dangerous to put Illiterate Light in a box, especially with the release of their new album, Arches. Are they a guitar-driven indie rock duo? Kaleidoscopic neo-psychedelia? Synth-kissed, harmony-laden folk? What does one do with an album beginning with “fake tits and diet coke,” then pivoting to train derailments in rural Ohio and never-ending black holes? These prolific farmers-turned-rockers have captured the energy of their live shows—fans crowd-surfing, moshing, crying, and crooning—and infused it into their latest release. “We’ve always been shape shifters, moving between heavy, dark distortion and gentle sweet fingerpicking, writing aggressive songs, introspective songs, and love songs, exploding and embracing,” reflects singer-guitarist Jeff Gorman. “Smashing it all together used to feel strange, but now there’s a glue between everything we do. Our fans get it. They care less about genre. All they care about is feeling. And that’s all we care about. Are you alive or not?” Illiterate Light’s third album, Arches, is not a passageway but an arrival. “We’re no longer striving to define a sound,” said drummer Jake Cochran. “We’re leaning into sides of ourselves that have felt off-limits, sticking to what feels right rather than concerning ourselves with comparison.” Out November 1 via Thirty Tigers, the record is bursting with thunderous anthems, biting lyrics, and lush harmonies. The band originated in the Shenandoah Valley in 2015 when multi-instrumentalists Gorman and Cochran began playing music together while working on an organic farm. Eventually, they left the farm to focus on music, adopting the moniker Illiterate Light from a Wilco lyric. After several years of non-stop touring, they signed with Atlantic Records and released their eponymous full-length debut in late 2019. Two years later, they signed with Thirty Tigers and, in 2023, issued their critically acclaimed LP, Sunburned. Shortly after, they released two additional EPs, making Arches their fourth release in two years. Arches was recorded in two very different locations: small-town Appalachia at Gorman’s home studio and Hollywood, CA at Sunset Sound with producer Joe Chiccarelli (The Strokes, Beck, The Killers). “We wanted the best of both worlds,” says Gorman. “We spent several days with Joe at Sunset. To record vocals in the same live room as so many of my heroes—Neil Young, Paul McCartney, Dylan—was unreal. I knew I was in a holy place.” The LA session was paired with sessions in Virginia, where Gorman and Cochran co-produced the bulk of the record with longtime collaborator Danny Gibney. In their hometown, they experimented with soaring instrumental journeys and had friends sit in on the sessions to keep things lively. Website | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | TikTok
Augustana
Augustana (@danlayus) presents an array of music from his 20 year career in a powerful, intimate solo performance highlighting his latest studio album, Something Beautiful. From the artist’s evergreen hits “Boston,” and “Sweet and Low” up through his inspiring and energetic new material, Dan Layus brings fans even closer to the songs that they know and love. Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
The Wildmans
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Dyke Night
Welcome back for the latest edition of Dyke Night, celebrating 2 years as a safe space for the Triangle dykes, trykes, and their friends ;). Relax, grab a drink, and slip in to the sweet sonic sensations provided by DJ Triple AAA & DJ Mas Culina. Then be ready to scream, cry, and sing the praises of the devastating Poison, Espi O’Najj, & your host, Lady Dyke. Tipping encouraged. This is an 18+ event, so don’t forget your ID! Masking encouraged.
