Friday June 7, 2013 5:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Admission: Free with food donation

RAIN OR SHINE!  Inside The Sunrise Theater if Rain.

American Aquarium’s six years as a band have been a fast-moving blur of rubber on road, touring coast to coast through the states and Europe. Most nights of the year are spent far from their Raleigh homes, squinting out from bright stages at a growing legion of passionate fans who’ve followed them through the release of six albums that reflect a whirlwind of too many whiskey soaked nights, nameless women in smoky bars and fast living while your youth is in full bloom. But what happens when it all stops feeling good?

Burn.Flicker.Die. is what has emerged from that scenario for this group of hard working players.  After two years of writing, they journeyed to the legendary recording hub which gave birth to some of the greatest blues, country and rock records of all time: Muscle Shoals/Sheffield, AL. Recorded in eight days under the precise hand of friend/tour buddy Jason Isbell, the record is an aptly named milestone for the band, and their most painstaking effort to date. As a long-time Southern rock artisan, Isbell provided a weathered know-how in producing the record American Aquarium is proudest of. Described as a “consequence record” by vocalist BJ Barham, the band spent that week pushing out everything that’s been haunting them: working for six years, watching buzz bands peak and die, and pining for their own payoff.

Friday July 5, 2013 5:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Admission: Free with food donation

RAIN OR SHINE!  Inside The Sunrise Theater if Rain.

McCormick’s musical family set the stage for a career in music. She grew up listening to the likes of Bonnie Raitt and Steely Dan, but her most essential influences were from her family. “Watching and listening to them was life-changing,” notes McCormick. She started singing and picked up her first guitar at age 9, delving into a variety of styles, from blues to folk to alt-country, until finding her own personal style. She also plays the lap-steel, mandolin and bass and writes all of her own music. McCormick has won two International Bluegrass Music Association Awards for Recorded Event of the Year in 2006 (“Back To The Well”) and again in 2009 (“Proud To Be A Daughter of Bluegrass”) — both for a special Daughters of Bluegrass project. This past year, she also landed her song, “Bullseye”, in the Emmy-Award nominated film, Prayers for Bobby, featuring Sigourney Weaver.

From pensive and intimate ballads to rock n’ roll to indie-pop, she describes her sound today as “unique, well-rounded and genuine.” McCormick adds “My songs reflect a deep look inward as well as the world around me. I find inspiration sometimes in my guitar, on a street corner, or even in a lover. The new album will touch on love, family, addiction and the never-ending search for self-understanding.”

From pensive and intimate ballads to rock n’ roll to indie-pop, she describes her sound today as “unique, well-rounded and genuine.” McCormick adds “My songs reflect a deep look inward as well as the world around me. I find inspiration sometimes in my guitar, on a street corner, or even in a lover. The new album will touch on love, family, addiction and the never-ending search for self-understanding.”

Friday August 2, 2013 5:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Admission: Free with food donation

RAIN OR SHINE!  Inside The Sunrise Theater if Rain.

Utah based band Desert Noises has spent the last two years touring the country spreading their melodic beats and electric guitar to eager listeners. The four members that make up Desert Noises have come a long way from playing local Provo shows to performing sold out stadiums, and they do not seem to be slowing down.

Granted, Desert Noises is still opening for larger names, but that does not make the over 1200 crowd any smaller.

Reminiscent of The Lumineers or The Shins, Desert Noises is nostalgic and comfortable. The steady drums will not bring any surprises to the listener, nor will the background bass, but Boyer’s guitar chops might surprise some. His creative melodies are unique and classy, with an occasional unrestrained break into a rock ’n’ roll solo that characterizes Desert Noises as distinctive and fun.

Friday September 6, 2013 5:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Admission: Free with food donation

RAIN OR SHINE!  Inside The Sunrise Theater if Rain.

Since forming in 2007, The Revivalists have rightfully earned their reputation as the next breakout band from the music capital of New Orleans. The group’s blend of soulful, syncopated rock and earnest songwriting comes to life through a meticulously crafted and ever-evolving live performance. In 2011 they were named Best Emerging Artist at Gambit Magazine’s Big Easy Awards, and were nominated for Best Rock Act in 2012.

With the seed being planted during jam sessions at Tipitina’s Sunday Music Workshops, where drummer Andrew Campanelli and guitarist Zack Feinberg first met, the band found its frontman by pure luck when Feinberg heard David Shaw singing on his Birch Street porch. Fueling the rhythm section, Campanelli’s college friend, George Gekas, became the bassist. Feinberg later invited saxophonist Rob Ingraham, the two realizing their incontestable dynamic while taking music classes at Tulane University. After a fortuitous meeting at French Quarter Fest, Ed Williams joined on the pedal steel guitar. The newest addition to The Revivalists’ cross-generational rocking goodness comes from multi-instrumentalist Michael Girardot. Having played sporadically with the band since 2009, he has grown into an integral part of their live show.

The Revivalists incessantly tour on the national level, often times supporting giants like Rebirth Brass Band and Galactic. They’re also proud to have opened for notable acts JJ Grey & Mofro, Dr. John, and Trombone Shorty. Additionally, they have established themselves as an engaging festival act, gaining notoriety at CMJ (NYC), DeLuna Fest (Florida), Voodoo Music Fest (New Orleans), Hangout Music Festival (Gulf Shores, AL), The Kennedy Center Millennium Stage Series (Washington, DC) and the legendary New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. At the latter they grabbed the attention of Rolling Stone Senior Editor, David Fricke, who later called their performance, “a Crescent City-rhythm spin on jam-band jubilee.”

Friday October 4, 2013 5:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Admission: Free with food donation

RAIN OR SHINE!  Inside The Sunrise Theater if Rain.

Sean Hayes was born in New York City, raised in North Carolina, and came of musical age in San Francisco. “I remember going to sleep listening to the radio next to my bed,” he says, listening to a wide variety of music from the get-go. It was not until I went to college for a year in east Carolina that I heard a banjo and a fiddle and bluegrass.” He began to play a mix of traditional old-time music, bluegrass, Irish music, and original songs in Asheville, NC and Charleston, SC.

On a whim, Hayes threw some clothes and a guitar into the back of his friend’s car and made his way to San Francisco. “I spent a few years in a great little folk scene in San Francisco with Jolie Holland being the queen bee. She is an amazing talent.” Later, he would open tours for Holland. “San Francisco has always felt like a do-it-yourself town,” he says, continuing, “There’s not a lot of music industry, but there is a lot of spirit.”

Hayes cites various influences from the soul, folk, R&B, reggae, and gospel worlds, such as Otis Redding, James Brown, Joni Mitchell, ‘The Anthology of American Folk Music,’ ‘American Primitive, Volumes 1 and 2′ (pre-war gospel compilations), and Nina Simone. He adds, “I also  love Bob Marley and his rhythm section. I think of him as more folk than reggae.”

Over the years, Hayes’ songs have been re-mixed by DJ Mark Farina (“Dream Machine”), covered by folk group The Be Good Tanya’s (“A Thousand Tiny Pieces”), been featured on HBO’s “Bored to Death”, and used in a TV ad campaign for Subaru (“Powerful Stuff”). He sang a duet on Aimee Mann’s latest record and has toured with acts such as Ani DiFranco and the Cold War Kids.

His hometown SF Weekly has raved, “Take him anywhere, play him for anyone, and the response is always the same: People want more. They’ll write down the name if they don’t know it already… an impressive treat in your pocket. Hayes’ music succeeds on the tension between warm, resonant soul and dirt-road folk, all laced with a wandering troubadour’s coo…. the danceable folk singer… Hayes gets his groove on, laying his buttery, quavering voice over swinging drum patterns, mellifluous piano, and funky horn parts… what sets him apart is his voice — a wounded, wavering tone that sounds like a fragile creature, very crushable.”

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle called him “a singular urban/backwoods sound and vision… extraordinary… Hayes achieves… a certain intimate rapport between the performer and audience…”

Friday May 3, 2013 5:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Admission: Free with food donation

RAIN OR SHINE!  Inside The Sunrise Theater if Rain.

Archbishops of Blount Street play ska music unlike anyone from Roanoke Rapids to Wilmington, from Greenville to Greensboro. There are ten guys in the band! We have five gentlemen who play fiery horns, five who sing like nightingales, five that lay down a rhythm on top of which only a corpse could keep still and the whole is even greater than the sum of our parts.

Blount (pronounced, ‘blunt’) Street is a downtown thoroughfare running north and south through Raleigh, North Carolina in the US of A. We named the band Archbishops of Blount Street to give listeners an idea of our geographic origin. Ska, the mother of reggae music, was born in Jamaica and traveled over its half-century of waxing and waning popularity to the rest of the globe. But ska retains its Jamaican sense of rhythm, instrumentation and baudiness.

Some Archbishops are former members of The Jumpstarts, T-Rox & The Skankosaurs, 40 Ozs. and Dread34, all of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill’s finest gone-but-not-forgotten purveyors of skank. Archbishops of Blount Street play ska music covering all its major movements including first wave, two-tone and third wave and will soon premiere original music, too. We’ve played every size of venue from small local bars to major music festivals and have shared the bill with national touring acts like The Pietasters, The Toasters and international stars Bad Manners.

Though we call ourselves a ska band we only build about a third of our set with traditional ska covers. The rest are pulled from five decades of more widely popular music and given the special Archbishops treatment. By our very nature those treatments emerge as identifiably ska, but our mad skills allow us to organically rework each song into a fresh but immediately recognizable take on the original.

Brooklyn-based Americana/Alt-Country band Yarn’s sound owes as much to Gram Parsons and Earl Scruggs as to Jerry Garcia and Exile On Main Street-era Rolling Stones. Following in a fine tradition that includes forward thinking roots bands like The Flying Burrito Brothers and New Riders of The Purple Sage, Yarn weaves roots music idioms into a fresh sound that turns on hipsters and fans of country music alike, with technically impressive song-crafting and universal tales from the road of life.

On Yarn’s latest release, Leftovers, Volume 1 you’ll hear vintage tracks recorded during the band’s first studio sessions back in 2006 and 2007. With this retro-collection, listeners witness the poignant emotion and emotive story-telling that has come to define the sextet’s sound, which straddles the genres of Americana and alt-country, with a dash of jam-band.

Their self-titled debut record reached No. 14 on the AMA and R&R Radio Charts, and ranked No. 79 on the AMA’s Top 100 Albums of 2007. Yarn’s 2008 follow-up, Empty Pockets, spent months in the top 5 on the AMA chart and was honored with eight first round 2009 Grammy nominations in several categories. Yarn’s third release, Come on In, held its own as the #25 record on the top 100 Americana chart of 2010.

Yarn is touring intensively and their impressive live shows continue to build the buzz and the fan base fueled by their first four records.

September 7, 2012 First Friday
5:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Admission: Free with food donation

Nashville, Tennessee is a nexus – a point where tradition and innovation intersect, where commerce collides with art. It may be the only town around where salaried songwriters and full-time session musicians are as common as accountants and schoolteachers. Music is the product, and the factories line the street, from the swank Music Row mini-high-rises to the low-slung Sylvain Park bungalows. And only Nashville could give birth to a band like the SteelDrivers: a group of seasoned veterans – each distinguished in his or her own right, each valued in the town’s commercial community – who are seizing an opportunity to follow their hearts to their souls’ reward. In doing so, they are braiding their bluegrass roots with new threads of their own design, bringing together country, soul, and other contemporary influences to create an unapologetic hybrid that is old as the hills but fresh as the morning dew. This is new music with the old feeling. SteelDrivers fan Vince Gill describes the band’s fusion as simply “an incredible combination.”

The SteelDrivers’ brand of bluegrass – intense, dark, poetic, and inescapably human – is a refreshing reminder of the timeless power of stringband music, and is captured perfectly on The SteelDrivers. Produced by Nashville ace Luke Wooten, The SteelDrivers was recorded mostly live on the studio floor, vocals and all. Its songs grapple with classic themes of regret, love, and redemption, from the escalating prison lament of “Midnight Train to Memphis” to the chilling murderer’s plea encapsulated in “If It Hadn’t Been for Love.” “East Kentucky Home” is a timeless traditional bluegrass lament, with its strains of homesickness, loss, and abandonment, but ingeniously reinvented with off-kilter rhythmic accents and a decidedly contemporary chord progression.

The willingness to set aside the unspoken rules that ruthlessly govern bluegrass set the SteelDrivers apart from the innumerable faceless acts vying for the bluegrass spotlight.

August 3, 2012 First Friday
5:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Admission: Free with food donation

The Honeycutters are, at the heart, the musical collaboration of singer/songwriter Amanda Anne Platt and Lead Guitarist/ Producer Peter James. While their sound has drawn comparisons to such artists as Graham Parsons and Emmylou Harris or Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Platt and James produce a refreshingly unique blend of Americana music that is comfortingly familiar while being entirely original. Whether performing as an acoustic duo or a full fledged Honky-Tonk five piece, The Honeycutters leave smiles on the faces of the ears that they catch.

Their first full length studio release “Irene” (May ’09) was recorded at Asheville’s own Collapseable Studio, and mixed by Grammy Award winning sound engineer David Fergason (Nashville TN) . The album has garnered radio support across the USA as well as overseas, and landed them in Iaan Hughes’ (No Depression Podcast) top twenty of 2009, Fret Knot Radio Hour’s “Nine to Know from ’09?, and as number 32 in WNCW’s listener voted top 100.

Amanda Anne Platt has been hailed as “one of the best songwriters coming out of WNC these days” by WNCW programming director Martin Anderson, and her voice has been described as “perfectly unadorned” and “recklessly beautiful”.  Her song, “Little Bird,” won second place in the general category of the Chris Austin Songwriting contest in 2011. Her lyrics are as catchy and heartbreaking as her melodies. Dane Smith of Asheville NC’s Mountain Xpress writes “Her songs make you sad…in a good way!” In both her simple composition and honest delivery it’s easy to hear the influence of country legends such as Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, or Loretta Lynn, and with this Miss Platt credits growing up listening to her Father’s extensive record collection every Saturday morning. Despite her love for classic country, she cites Bruce Springstein and Tom Petty as major influences and her songwriting carries a wit and an edge that plants her firmly in her generation.

Peter James is rapidly becoming one of Western North Carolina’s most sought after guitar players, known for both insightful solos and tasteful accompaniment. Having first held a guitar at age thirteen, he quickly started making up for lost time by delving completely into the instrument. His natural talent and attention to detail made him an asset to The Slant Six Cowboys, a New Hampshire based group founded by James and singer/songwriter Don Witcher out of their long time musical collaboration. In 2004 they released a self-titled album on 95 North records which reached number 14 on the AMA chart. Since moving to Asheville in 2006 James has played right-hand man to several of the region’s top acts, including Taylor Martin and Brian McGee.

Like so many of country music’s great duos, Platt and James have a musical chemistry that can be felt throughout the songs they play, from the sounds of their guitars to their vocal harmonies. Perhaps this is why they are frequently mentioned along with the movement to “Take country music back to it’s roots”. The Honeycutters are just doing what they know how to do: making music that feels as good to hear as it does to play. Their original brand of Americana has proven equally appealing to both the musician and the music lover, the country and the city, and the old and the young.

Tal Taylor on mandolin, Ian Harrod on bass, and Jon Ashley on drums round out Platt’s songs and create a sound that carries just as well across the bar room as the acoustic duo does in a church or a music hall.

Since releasing “Irene,” The Honeycutters have shared the stage with such Americana giants as Tony Rice, The Seldom Scene, Donna The Buffalo, and The Steep Canyon Rangers. They have been voted Western North Carolina’s favorite local Americana act (2011 Mountain Xpress reader’s poll) and delighted audiences from upstate New York to Seattle, Washington. They are currently planning the release of their sophomore effort, “When Bitter Met Sweet,” for May of 2012.

July 6, 2012 First Friday
5:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Admission: Free with food donation

Virginia-based rock band Sons Of Bill are thrilled to announce the release of their new album SIRENS. This powerful collection of guitar-driven rock songs and reflective alt-country was produced by long-time fan, and fellow Virginian, David Lowery (Cracker, Camper Van Beethoven).

Led by brothers James, Sam and Abe Wilson along with Seth Green and Todd Wellons, Sons of Bill is a band that sounds like where they’re from – somewhere south of Bruce Springsteen’s rock and roll desperation, but slightly north of their alt-country contemporaries.

From the driving country twang of “Find My Way Back Home” to the strikingly beautiful “Angry Eyes,” from the anthemic striving of “Siren Song,” to the tortured but hopeful “Virginia Calling,” SIRENS’ centers on the tension between alienation and belonging in the modern world, resulting in a memorable collection of songs and the band’s best work to date.

Sons Of Bill have released the new song “Santa Ana Winds,” a haunting tale set to a fury of piano and power chords, for free download. Download “Santa Ana Winds” here: http://sonsofbill.com