Categories
Arts & Music

Gimme Five! Patrick Phelan of Luego

Patrick Phelan had only met producer Jeff Crawford a few short months before he called him up and told him he wanted to make a Luego record together.  They talked it out at OCSC at least once over a round of PBRs and Wilco records.  Then, they burst into action.  Their introduction had been a sort of blind luck, but the hard work and heart they put into the next few months was pure intention.  The resulting record, 2009’s Taped Together Stories, showed the fruits of their labor— a playful barrage of pop rock melodies and warm, folk-minded arrangements and a testament to the well-oiled working relationship between Phelan and Crawford.

Categories
Weather

Not even close to the record

On this date in 1954, it was 11 degrees.
Two years later, another record was set — this time for the warmest — when temps hit 77.
Still, it’s cold.

Categories
Arts & Music

SPOTLIGHT: Shipwrecked at Playmakers


PlayMakers Repertory Company will present Shipwrecked! An Entertainment through Dec. 19 in the Paul Green Theatre at UNC’s Center for Dramatic Art.
The real-life-yet-tall tale by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies tells the story of Louis de Rougemont, an explorer who traveled the world and told his tales of adventure to breathless audiences in the music halls and scandal sheets of Victorian England. The swashbuckling storyteller, accompanied by his faithful dog Bruno, quickly garnered fame and fortune, and then fell from grace just as swiftly.

Categories
Weather

Windy day

It’ll warm all the way up to 33, but still feel cold thanks to a stiff wind.
Via the NWS:

Partly sunny, then gradually becoming sunny, with a high near 33. Northwest wind around 15 mph, with gusts as high as 26 mph.

Categories
Community

SPOTLIGHT on the holidays

As if your dance card isn’t already booked solid with shopping mayhem, visiting kinfolk and leafing through the L.L. Bean catalog, The Citizen hereby offers a rundown of save-the-dates for this year’s holiday season. Topping the list, of course, is the annual Chapel Hill-Carrboro Christmas Parade on Saturday, Dec. 11 from 10 a.m. to noon.

Look for The Heelraiser, Santa, doggie drill teams and plenty of marching musicians. The route runs through downtown Chapel Hill and Carrboro, offering plenty of room to set up camp and enjoy some hometown fun. This year, the entire parade will be broadcast on The People’s Channel.

Categories
Featured

Winter’s coming…

Photo by Jock Lauterer.

The photo by Jock Lauterer of the snow-dusted landscape on the cover of this issue of MILL is a reminder that not only is winter coming on, but that we seem to be in a climactic stretch in which that really means something.

Categories
Featured

December is for the birds

When it comes to bird watching, the winter season has a few things going for it, mainly visibility and variety.
For the avid birder to the curious beginner, it’s prime time, a season when waves of species make their way through the Piedmont.

Categories
Arts & Music

Advance Notice: The Week in Happenings 12/6-12

Your guide to the week ahead (mostly because we don’t trust you to figure out this far in advance).

Tues – 12/7

  • Yonhimbe / Hunnie Bunnies / Ski Mask / Pretty Birds That Kill @ The Nightlight – $5

Wed – 12/8

  • Crooked Fingers / Cotton Jones / Mount Moriah @ Local 506 – $12

Thurs – 12/9

  • Stroke It, Noel: A Fully Orchestrated Performance of Big Star’s Third Album @ Cat’s Cradle – $17 adv / $20 day of the show

Fri – 12/10

  • Stroke It, Noel: A Fully Orchestrated Performance of Big Star’s Third Album @ Cat’s Cradle – $17 adv / $20 day of the show
  • Cantwell, Gomez and Jordan / The Mighty Contact / Jews and Catholics @ The Pinhook – $TBA

Sat – 12/11

  • Kooley High / Carlitta Durand / King Mez / HaLo @ The Pour House – $6 adv / $9 at the door
  • Carolina Chocolate Drops / The Low Anthem @ Lincoln Theatre – $18 adv / $20 day of the show
  • American Aquarium / Luego @ Motorco – $TBA

Sun – 12/12

  • Relient K (acoustic) / Sherwood / Deas Veil @ Cat’s Cradle – $15 adv / $18 day of the show

Anywhere else?

Categories
Featured The Eater

A GUIDE TO EATING


Again with the trucks
If 2010 has shown us anything, it’s that the food truck is not a flash-in-the-pan phenom.

Categories
Featured

Conjuring a What-If world

By Vicky Dickson

“I feel children’s fiction is the most important fiction written,” says John Claude Bemis, “and the most entertaining.”

Categories
Arts & Music

Gimme Five! Rick Miller of Southern Culture on the Skids

On their new record, The Kudzu Ranch, Southern Culture on the Skids revels in the swampy barrage of country, rockabilly, surf rock that’s been their calling card from the start (aka all the way back to 1983!). Rick Miller, Dave Hartman, and Mary Huff trot out all the old styles while imbuing them with a little edge and a lot of humor and showing off all the ways the band’s grown.  They sing of bone dry dirt, busy roads, bad boys, and neighbors burning trash.  There’s also, appropriately, a track about pig pickin’ and if you mosey on down to the Cat’s Cradle this Saturday, Dec. 4, you can join the band at a holiday pig pickin’ to support the Carrboro Food Pantry.

And now just the five filthiest question this side of the mason-dixon:

1. If your band were a fried food, what would it be?
3 pieces of fried catfish with raw onion on white bread on a paper plate on a picnic table in a square cinder block building. (Catfish Sandwich, Archibald’s #2 , Tuscaloosa, Alabama.)

2. When was the moment you thought you’d made it?
When I quit the day job in 1992 – my proudest career moment to date!

3. Describe your typical band practice.
Practice usually goes like this.

  1. somebody is late.
  2. talk or argue for a while – doesn’t matter which.
  3. rehearse the songs we screwed up last at the last gig
  4. make some coffee or tea (our practices depend on caffeine more than alcohol)
  5. run thru a set list till we are bored (Mary likes to check her email at this time)
  6. jam really loud for a while on a riff or a song.
  7. tell each other not to forget what we just played “cause it was really good”.
  8. try to play it again but realize we forgot it but there was some other stuff we just played “that was really good too”.
  9. go home – come back tomorrow and do it again cause “practice makes perfect”.

4. What/who might be a few inspirations or influences that would surprise people?
Belly dancing records!!

5. What did you want to be when you grew up? (How did that work out?)
I wanted to be a farmer like my Grandfather and Uncle but my family told me it was hard to make a living being a farmer – so I decided to become a musician and I love my job!

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Join Southern Culture on the Skids at the Cat’s Cradle this Saturday, December 4th for an old fashioned pig pinkin’. And, by all means, give Rick a high five when you see him!