NC Musician

North Carolina musicians made waves on the national stage in 2019. Close to a dozen artists from the state, including Rhiannon Giddens, DaBaby and J.Cole, are up for Grammy Awards in 2020, and new talent keeps popping up.

In 2019, The State of Things met musical visionaries, people fighting to save endangered cultures, and folks who supported their neighbors through another devastating hurricane. The individuals and stories at the heart of those conversations stuck with State of Things producer Laura Pellicer throughout the year.

Emma and Tyler Millard have their own separate, busy musical careers, but when they perform and write together, they deliver a sound that is moody and intimate. The couple pen tales that conjure the ghosts of the past and dig into feelings of nostalgia, often infused with a healthy dose of humor.

Grammy Award-winning artist Rhiannon Giddens is a North Carolina gem. Though she splits her time between the U.S and Ireland, her commitment to the music, culture, and stories of the South is still the driving force behind her work.

The North Carolina-based band Mipso is always on the move. The group is just finishing up a 20-stop summer tour of the U.S. and Canada, and this fall the group will venture back out to a slew of European countries including France, Germany, Austria and Sweden.

As a kid, Laura Ballance was most comfortable slipping into the background. Her introverted nature gave her plenty of space to think and create on her own. As a teenager, she found punk through a music video of Adam and the Ants, and the “otherness” they expressed spoke directly to her.

Durham-based guitar player Jon Shain and bassist FJ Ventre have known each other since high school. They have played music together on and off for more than three decades, and Ventre has played on or produced all of Shain’s CDs.

As a youngster growing up in Carthage, North Carolina, Lucas Meachem had his sights set on a career in landscaping. As a teen, he had his own lawn mower, weed wacker and a green thumb. Plus, his family’s 10 acre property gave him plenty of opportunities to hone his skills. Then he discovered karaoke. Specifically, what Meachem found was the immediate gratification of an audience. 

North Carolina-born jazz musician Max Roach carved out a creative legacy in music that spanned genres. Roach grew up in New York City and during the 1940s he drummed alongside artists like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. 

His recordings were innovative and during the civil rights movement, even political. To honor Roach, Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center is hosting a restaging of Roach’s “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite” recording.

Mystery Hillbillies are a band of misfits. The band is frontwoman Michelle Belanger and a rotating cast of “sidemen.” The group plays a wide range of music, including country, western swing and blues from the early 1940s to today.

Chuck Mountain has not been on the Greensboro music scene long – the band just came to fruition in July – but they have already been on tour and laid down a number of original tracks. The band’s guitarist Beau James says their trip to Nashville, which included camping on the North Carolina state line, expedited the team bonding and lit a creative spark for the band. 

Films that draw viewers into the gritty highs and lows of the music world are having a big cinematic moment. There is the new head-banging Queen biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody,” yet another reincarnation of “A Star is Born,” featuring pop icon Lady Gaga, and the forthcoming “Rocketman” that takes on the rise of Elton John.

The latest issue of the Oxford American magazine is all about North Carolina’s musical past and present, from Doc Watson to Rapsody. The issue features essays on musicians from the Tar Heel State from writers across the South. It also features a companion CD full of samples of the state’s iconic music. 

Leeda “Lyric” Jones honed her skills as a writer, singer and performer busking on the streets of downtown Asheville. At first hesitant to play for strangers, she quickly realized her original lyrics and soulful style helped her forge connections with those who needed it the most.

Chapel Hill-artist Sarah Shook did not follow an obvious path to country music. She grew up in a conservative Christian household, listened primarily to religious music and only discovered country greats like Wanda Jackson and Buck Owens in her 20s. She was also painfully shy as a kid, so when she first took the stage in early adulthood, it was a shock to her own mother.

Many of the songs Cosmic Punk performs are rooted in angsty, teenage feelings. Elayna Jean, the band’s guitarist and vocalist, says that is because she wrote a lot of those songs while she was still in high school.

The Collection started out as a Greensboro-based group with 15 members rotating in as a part of the group’s line up. The collective has now become more of a band with seven concrete members. But the group still sticks to its indie folk roots in it’s upcoming album “Listen to the River.”

Fans of Raleigh-based American Aquarium are in for a treat as lead singer and songwriter BJ Barham embarks on a tour to promote his solo-recording "Rockingham."

John Paul White was one half of the four-time Grammy winning duo The Civil Wars.  Since finishing with that band, he has founded a record label, built a studio and collaborated with artists including Jason Isbell, Roseanne Cash and Emmylou Harris. 

When he paused long enough to write some songs, his new solo recording Beulah was born.

Echo Courts is a five-member surf-rock band out of Greensboro, North Carolina. 

Their second EP, "Ice Cream Social," will have you reaching for your beach towel. But their melancholy lyrics are a contrast to their dreamy, summery sound. The band is playing at Phuzz Phest, a three-day music festival in Winston-Salem next weekend that features more than 60 national and local acts.

Ari Picker is best known as the front man for the acclaimed indie rock band Lost in the Trees, but the North Carolina native is now entering orchestral composition.

Inspired by the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, specifically Book of Hours, Picker has assembled a group of local musicians to debut his piece titled Lion and The Lamb. 

Musician Josh Oliver was a very shy performer for most of his life. Growing up in eastern Tennessee he often heard hymns and traditional music in his church, but he never liked singing very much.

That all changed when he decided to study music at East Tennessee State University. In the music program, his instructors had him performing solos and writing music for himself.

Host Frank Stasio talks with Oliver about his career and Oliver performs music from his latest solo album, Part of My Life.

Mary Johnson Rockers and the Spark recently released their second record, Remedy, that celebrates the many ways in which the band has found their niche in the Triangle music scene. 

When singer-songwriter Anna Rose Beck last appeared on our show, she was trading engineering studies at Duke University for a full-time career as a musician. Now she is fully devoted to her musical career and her newest album, Glass House in Outer Space, garnered a lot of support on the crowd-funding website Kickstarter.

Anna Rose Beck performs live in-studio, and talks with Frank Stasio about her new album. She is joined by Elana Scheiner on cello and Marc Harkness on guitar.

Grammy-award winning artist Branford Marsalis is one of the world’s leading jazz artists. 

Christmas music. It's nearly inescapable at this time of year - on the radio, in shops, in cafes, everywhere. When Phoebe Judge sat down to talk about "Christmas" with jazz double bassist John Brown, the question arose: Why would musicians want to add to the large catalog of existing Christmas songs and recordings?

"It comes from a place of joy," said the double bassist. "We wanted to take this material that's tested, tried and true and say something different about it."

Maceo Parker, Billy Taylor, Thelonius Monk: many soul and jazz legends have North Carolina roots. The new book "African American Music Trails of Eastern North Carolina," creates a road map of African American musical history.