Melissa Swingle Playing The Saw

With the rare instance of the expatriated Alex Bowers visiting from his new home across the pond came a spontaneous show at The Cave. Even more spontaneous seemed to be Melissa Swingle's appearance as she walked in half way through the set with a saw and bow in hand, went directly on stage and did this. Enjoy!




Alex Bowers on piano there, RJ Ventre on the standup double upright giant bass, Dan Hall on drums, and of course Melissa Swingle of Trailer Bride, The Moaners, and The Melissa Swingle Duo...playing the saw. Earlier in the evening the backing trio of Alex, RJ, and Dan played some spunky western jazz along with Ashley Hayes on acoustic guitar and Wendy Hayes on vocals. Sometimes you walk through The Cave to get to Franklin Street. Sometimes you don't make it out the other door. - Carrboro Ninja

Happening Now! - Brett Harris, The Everymen, Shark Week

Brett Harris glosses the era of rock and roll antiquity which gave the term singer/songwriter a face. Dylan, Van Zandt, Kristofferson...bold personalities with a voice to cut through the mix of 60s power genres and sing the American story. With the whirly keys and Beattlesesque pop brightness seen in Up In The Air, Brett Harris soars through the decades to bring the counter culture of early American Folk Rock into focus once again. The Cat's Cradle Back Room in Carrboro, NC hosts a release show for Up In The Air on Friday, March 4th at 8 PM. THAT'S HAPPENING NOW!!!

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There we will also find Wilmington native and Carrboro familiar Sean Gerard giving similar accounts to folk rock as he plays in support. Seemingly torn from the same cloth as Harris, Sean Gerard moves crowds with hooky feels whilst beating on a big six string acoustic guitar. The Real Official Opens.

New Jersey ex-pats The Everymen are making Chapel Hill their home and putting truck loads of hi-fidelity twang everywhere there is an open space. The Cave on Wednesday March 9th will receive a delivery. The Everymen are genre benders, molding indie, pop, and metal to their delight. With a new long-play incoming and a March tour kicking off next week, there is little time to settle in. Slingshot Cash opens the show with both kinds of country filtered through a rock and roll lens. Campfires and Constellations gets on with their psychedelic country outlawness in the headliner spot. Bringing all the bluegrass instruments to bear with a very forward rock and roll beat, Campfires is just one black leather jacket short of being rockabilly.

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Surfy garage pop meets surfy garage pop when Shark Week shares a billing with Greensboro's Wahyas at Slim's Downtown on Sunday March 13th. Wahyas is Joshua Johnson (Pinche Gringo) rattling the electric guitar and Lindsey Sprague, formerly of Daddy Issues, on drums (actually drum...singular.) Their songs are sparse and directional while being riff heavy and unpredictable, like the wind...but if the wind played surf rock. Shark Week recreates the sounds crashing waves and wipe outs with twangy reverberated guitars and urgent doo wop minus the doo wop. --Carrboro Ninja

Album: Magnolia Collective - An Old Darkness Falls

For a band whose Indy Southern rock accent has filled stage rooms like smoke over the Appalachians for the past five+ years, Magnolia Collective's new album An Old Darkness Falls, out on Potluck October 24th, is markedly Americana. Half-half stompers to ballads, the common prose is Magnolia Collective's talent for telling it like it is. No tears on this album, just confessions in the dead of night after every attempt to avoid breakdown and breakup has passed. The acoustic guitars get this part right every time and Rich McLaughlin, famous for ripping stages in half with his electric guitar, brings a darker melancholy to bear with the strummed strings this time around.

On An Old Darkness Falls, Magnolia Collective displays a higher understanding of the human condition. That is, there are things in life you can change for the better, and then there are things you write songs about. The grand tradition of Americana is to be painfully honest with the latter and these songs tell their story with a right hand in the air. Murder ballads and lost lovers are just primer topics for this album. The real tell-all's are the desperate missed chances romanticized in "Coldest Winter" and "The Doldrums". Magnolia Collective has always made heartbreak look pretty, these ten songs drift like swans upon a lake.

Magnolia will release An Old Darkness Falls Saturday, October 24th with a performance at Local 506 in Chapel Hill, NC. Nathan Golub and Maldora share the bill. --Carrboro Ninja