Blogs

WXDU announces the addition of "Close Up the Honky Tonks," a new rotating Americana show, to the fall schedule.

"Close Up the Honky Tonks" starts this Saturday, September 20 and airs every Saturday from noon to 2 p.m.

Each week a new WXDU DJ will host, offering a wide variety of rockin' country, bluegrass and folk tunes, as well as some rootsier rock selections. Listen in this fall to hear theme shows, artist showcases and much more. And put in your requests to help shape the show!

We hope you'll tune in to "Close Up the Honky Tonks," Saturdays this fall from noon to 2 p.m. Listen in at 88.7 FM and WXDU.org.

Tune in tonight as we recap last weekend's Hopscotch Music Festival 2014!

At 6:00, Ben Cox sits down with Daniel Lupton, owner of Sorry State Records and member of Raleigh's No Love, and Mike Wallace of North Carolina-native Drag Sounds. They'll talk about the bands' Hopscotch experiences and how they think the festival interacts with and impacts the Triangle's music scene. Ben will also play music from Hopscotch artists and talk about his own experience at the festival.

Next at 7:00, Zach Lechner has a follow-up to his daily festival report blog posts. Hopscotch offers a unique experience to almost everyone who attends, and Zach will share his experience--along of those of other festivalgoers--and review the performances of just some of the 160 bands that played this year's festival.

This Sunday, September 14, on Out There a Minute (10am-noon), I'll be joined by trombist Jeb Bishop. Bishop recently moved back to the triangle after 20 years in Chicago and has played around the world with such groups as the Vandermark 5, the Peter Brotzmann Chicago Tentet, the Flying Luttenbachers, Angels of Epistemology, and many, many, many more (discogs.com lists him as having played on almost 150 different albums). On Sunday, he'll be spinning some of his favorite jazz records. Hope you can tune in.

 Our friends at NYCTaper have posted audio from last week's Little Black Egg Big Band (Yo La Tengo + Steve Gunn & William Tyler) set. In order to download the audio, we (WXDU, NYCTaper & the band) are asking for a donation to Durham musician Letha Rodman-Mechior in her fight against cancer. You can learn more, make your donation, and download the audio here.

Well, it's hard to believe, but Hopscotch 2014 is in the history books. Many thanks to Cory Rayborn of Three Lobed Recordings for another successful day-party collaboration. Thanks also to all the performers: Daniel Bachman, Zeke Graves, Nathan Bowles, Mike Gangloff, Jenks Miller + Rose Cross NC, Little Black Egg Big Band, Sunburned Hand of the Man, MV+EE, Mary Lattimore, Thurston Moore & Ryan Sawyer. Thanks to our dear friends at Kings Barcade for putting up with this silliness year after year. Thanks to Jonas Blank of NYCTaper for providing an immaculate audio feed for our simulcast, as well as [some] recordings for download after the fact (keep checking back to nyctaper.com for more uploads).

Thanks to all of our WXDU DJs who tweeted throughout the weekend. Thanks to Zachary Lechner for attending far too many shows, and writing up his thoughts about all of them in the following posts:

Hopscotch 2014 Day 1
Hopscotch 2014 Day 2
Hopscotch 2014 Day 3

Hopscotch 2014 is officially in the books. It remains to be seen whether the organizers made it into the black on this run, but from my perspective, with the festival’s profile higher than ever, they continue to offer a musical experience unlike anything else in the country.

With daylight still burning, I arrived during Death’s set at the City Plaza. There’s been a resurgence of interest in the Detroit 1970s proto-punkers after the success of the 2012 documentary A Band Called Death. The band’s funky aggression went over well with the crowd. Bassist and vocalist Bobby Hackney talked of Death’s difficulty finding music industry support when it started out (the band’s name, not surprisingly, was a problem), as well as its plans for releasing new music. Although the trio sounded pretty good, I was most taken by the onstage attire of its members, which I can only describe as something that might have been found on a Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome-themed Rick James video shoot.

After Death finished its set I wandered the plaza and ran into the guys from Fabricoh Magazine. Our conversation ranged from the Sun Kil Moon incident of Friday night to (for some reason) Gene Simmons’s infamous 2002 Fresh Air interview. They were a lot of fun and were clearly having a good time.

First at 6:00 tonight: Thursday is the 13th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Three years ago, on the 10th anniversary, WNYC’s Radio Rookies, a Peabody Award-winning youth journalism program, produced a documentary focused on the experiences of young people who were children on that day. In “Radio Rookies - Our 9/11: Growing Up in The Aftermath,” we hear from six of those children, 10 years later, on how September 11 shaped their lives.

WXDU News is at 7:00. Tonight’s stories include:

Having survived the first day of the festival more or less intact, I approached Friday night’s festivities with a more relaxed attitude. Loosely planning the concerts I wished to see, I strolled into Raleigh’s City Plaza during St. Vincent’s set as cool breezes combated the already relatively mild humidity.

St. Vincent’s choreographed dance moves were of the love it or hate it variety (I was mostly into it). The real draw was her driving guitar work; there are few things more satisfying than listening to some ace rhythm guitar work, and Annie Clark is a master of it.

After a break of about 30 minutes, which gave me time to mill around and chat up some fellow festivalgoers, Spoon hit the stage and played an hour-plus set that expectedly stuck to mostly recent material—nothing from before 2002’s Kill the Moonlight, for instance. I could have gone for the slinky groove of “Fitted Shirt,” but what are you going to do? The performance was good, not great, and seemed to flag in energy from time to time. Still, I hadn’t caught Spoon on tour since the Gimme Fiction era, and it was nice to see that the band remains vital after 20 years.

Greetings from your intrepid reporter of the concertgoer experience for WXDU at this year’s Hopscotch Music Festival in Raleigh.

Days ago, I began to feel a vague, somewhat overwhelming feeling. What was this anxiety? It was the sense that the festival was rapidly approaching and I had done very little to plot out my schedule. This is my first Hopscotch. If not approached with the right frame of mind, I thought, the festival is destined to leave me with a sense of disappointment, as I will be able to attend only a fraction of the shows I would like to see. For example, Thursday’s 12:30 slot was ridiculously strong—and impossibly tempting—with Diarrhea Planet, The War on Drugs, and Tim Hecker playing sets (while Thurston Moore was finishing his). Almost immediately after I started to plot my strategy, I realized that it’s pointless to slavishly plan out my schedule ahead of time. I must leave room for contingencies—such is the fun of Hopscotch!