The Steel Wheels are having a double rooster of a holiday weekend.
First up, they are set to perform on Saturday at the 11th annual Rooster Walk Music and Arts Festival in Axton, Virginia. And on Sunday the string band from Virginia is heading to The Rooster’s Wife to perform in Aberdeen, North Carolina.
It’s the first time the band will perform at either venue, according to Trent Wagler, the band’s founder and frontman, who plays guitar and banjo. Continue reading
Featuring an eclectic collection of more than 120 acts, Hopscotch Music Festival will return for its 10th year on Sept. 5-7, 2019 to downtown Raleigh, North Carolina.
Hopscotch has been described as “America’s (secret) best festival” and “the premiere experimental and underground festival in America.”
Wristbands go on sale at 10 a.m. Thursday, May 23, at bit.ly/Hopscotch10
Check out the impressive lineup below:
From the good folks over at the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA):
Raleigh, N.C. — This fall, the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) hosts the first solo museum exhibition of the visual art of Scott Avett, founding member of the Grammy-nominated Avett Brothers band. Open October 12,2019,through February 2, 2020, Scott Avett: I N V I S I B L E will include large-scale portraits, prints, and paintings. Until now Avett’s work with The Avett Brothers has taken center stage. The NCMA exhibition shines a lighton his art making, thereby demonstrating the richness and diversity of his practice.“I’m not anything first—not painter, musician, writer, printmaker, performer—before I am an artist,” said Avett, who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from East Carolina University and lives in Concord, N.C. Continue reading
Boone, North Carolina-based musician Shay Martin Lovette found himself in good company late Saturday afternoon during MerleFest.
A perennially favorite of those interested in seeking out new music, the MerleFest Band Competition pits up-and-coming artists against each other in a competition that plays out live on The Plaza Stage near Lowe’s Hall on the Wilkes Community College campus.
This year’s band competition finalists included Lovette, Pretty Little Goat (Brevard, NC), None of the Above (Piedmont Triad, NC), Brooks Forsyth (Boone, NC), Alex Key and the Locksmiths (Wilkesboro, NC), Massive Grass (Wilmington, NC), Redleg Husky (Asheville, NC), and The Mike Mitchell Band (Floyd, Virginia).
Once the last note of a fiddle string drifted away, the guitars were stored in their cases and the judges had cast their ballots, it was announced that Lovette had won the competition and the opportunity to play on the festival’s coveted Cabin Stage in a prime-time performance slot in front of more than 10,000 Merlefest fans, following blues great Keb’ Mo’ and preceding bluegrass legend Sam Bush.
Lovette and his band performed “Heat Lightning,” “Wherever You Roam,” and “Parkway Bound” in the competition. When they hit the Cabin Stage, they added two new songs, “First Day Here” and “Promenade.”
Learn more about Lovette at www.shaymartinlovette.com.
Lovette joined the ranks of other talented band contest winners who include Ashley Heath and Her Heathens (2018), The Trailblazers (2017) and Fireside Collective (2016).
For the uninitiated MerleFest is a celebration of Americana, bluegrass, folk, roots, blues, country, gospel and more music that the late, great Deep Gap musician Doc Watson would qualify as “traditional plus” music. During the four-day festival, MerleFest also offers a songwriting competition — Chris Austin Songwriting Contest — for up-and-coming songwriters to have their music heard by Nashville songwriters.
MerleFest 2019 attendees received a special treat on Sunday afternoon when the Steep Canyon Rangers hit the stage.
Perennial MerleFest favorites, the band, whose members mostly hail from Brevard, North Carolina, has been affectionately dubbed “Steep” by their fans. And those fans were not disappointed by the band’s special set, titled “North Carolina Songbook,” a tribute to this state’s vast musical heritage.
When Gov. Roy Cooper introduced the band he noted that the state is recognizing 2019 as the “Year of Music.” In a nod to Cooper’s initiative, the band performed one-off set of covers by North Carolina artists, which included, appropriately, Deep Gap native and MerleFest founder the late, great Doc Watson’s “Your Long Journey,” a beloved tune written by his wife, the late Rosa Lee Watson, as well as a haunting rendition of Chapel Hill native James Taylor’s “Sweet Baby James.”
The band said in a release, “The influence of North Carolinians can be heard in almost every genre of popular music from Earl Scruggs to John Coltrane. Many of them worked in textile mills by day and played music with friends and family on the weekends. Some were virtuosos who packed up their influences and took the world by storm. All were, like us, a product of the music and people they grew up with in Carrboro, Jacksonville, Eden, Tryon… every corner East to West.”
Doc Watson soaked up and shared more of this state’s music and played fiddle tunes, blues, jazz, country, rock ‘n roll, and everything in between. This has been Doc’s lasting legacy for the Steep Canyon Rangers, and the band said they were excited to share the North Carolina Songbook for the very first time on Sunday afternoon at MerleFest.
MerleFest, in a release, said it is pleased to partner with Come Hear NC, a promotional campaign of the North Carolina Department of Natural & Cultural Resources and the North Carolina Arts Council, to celebrate 2019 as “The Year of Music,” a designation Cooper announced in November of 2018. MerleFest, honoring its locale, has programmed over 35 artists who currently call North Carolina home, each artist representing a different aspect of the state’s great musical history. Come Hear NC was designed to celebrate North Carolinians’ groundbreaking contributions to many of America’s most important musical genres — blues, bluegrass, jazz, gospel, funk, rock and everything in-between.
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