concerts: julien baker w/ gracie and rachel @ cat’s cradle

Julien Baker was stellar at the Cradle last week; photos are up on Speakers. Openers Gracie & Rachel were a little Tori Amos, a little Vienna Teng, a lot themselves, and a whole lot of spectacular harmonies. The keyboard / violin combo is fantastic, the music is reserved without being shy or retiring, and their…

promo: jphono1

Hung out with my buddies in JPhono1 on Monday night, at my other buddy Alex’s place, to do some promo shots for them. I love that top one so much.

basketball: miami @ unc

The very young, very short-benched Lady Heels are hitting a wall — with a short bench shortened further by the loss of Xylina McDaniel to an ACL tear for the rest of the season — and they’ve struggled continually since beating Syracuse a few weeks ago. We took my folks to see them play Miami,…

concerts: magnolia collective, jphono1, mark holland

A farewell show of sorts for MagCo, long among my local favorites, as drummer Jon Truesdale and his wife Jo are moving out of the country — a wonderful live goodbye to this lineup of a band that started as a fun covers side project and has produced some of my favorite music in the…

basketball: clemson and syracuse

Carolina started off the ACC season with two wins (before getting absolutely outgunned by a deep, talented Notre Dame team on the road yesterday). Trav wrote about Clemson here and Syracuse here. My full photo sets are available in this collection.

gettin’ ready to get down

1. tales of new year’s festivities We watched football and ate pizza, and then we listened to all our favorite start a new year songs. It was the best NYE I’ve had in a long time. 2. accounting for some unfinished business if you didn’t like me then you probably won’t like me now 3….

christmas mix: if you want to see a miracle

I’ve been making what I call a Christmas mix — that is, not holiday songs but a mix made at the holidays — since 1997; first they were tapes, then for a few years cds, and finally, in the digital age, the last seven nine ten eleven years have been downloadable zip files, and this…

worth getting up for this fall

Worth getting up for this fall: Kev and Angela’s wedding; college basketball, and thus our UNCWBB season tickets starting; house shows; soups in the crock pot; ostentatious displays of Christmas lights; boats covered in Christmas lights; making people I love go look at things that horrify and amaze me all at once; the re-created Rathskellar…

basketball: app state @ unc

Last December, Trav came up to see me a couple weeks before Christmas, our last visit before he and his guitars moved here, and on a whim, I bought tickets to the App State / UNC women’s basketball game, just so we had something to do. We, of course, had so much fun we bought…

old burying ground, beaufort, nc

Part of the trip to Beaufort two weekends ago was to visit the Old Burying Ground, one of the oldest cemeteries in North Carolina. It was unbelievably lovely and fascinating. Full set here.