Kym Register is about as Durham as it gets. Born at Durham Regional Hospital, they've spent most of their life in and around the Bull City. Their mother and grandmother are from Durham, too, and once lived on Geer Street.
"I think Durham still has this Durham love, and that is sick. We have to love our town to make it cool and to make it what we want it to be," said Register, who uses they/them pronouns. "I think we're still small enough to where we can make things happen. There are people on the city council that we all know. I love that people who are involved in the arts are also involved in our government."
For the past 17 years, Register has been giving back to the city as the owner of one of its most esteemed clubs: The Pinhook. People call it a lot of things, but at its heart, it's a queer and musician-owned venue that prioritizes queer voices across several musical genres.
"It's interesting when I hear people in reviews call it a dive bar. That's not actually how I see it," Register said. "It is kind of a punk club; it's a queer club that's punk-ish. And it's not always the most beautiful place all the time, but it's a homey space. It's lived in and it's been here forever. We've been here for 17 years and that's really old in club years."
As a musician who has spent years touring themself, Register has learned a lot about how a club should and should not run. They can also confirm that most of these spaces are owned and operated by people who don't look like them. With that knowledge, The Pinhook is doing its part to even the field.
"There are plenty of amazing straight white men in the world, but it's just also a monolith. So we hire a lot of queer people and make sure our staff is not just white. It's really important to make this space, especially in the south."
Before opening The Pinhook, Register was part of a space called Bull City Headquarters that was a collaboration with Chaz Martenstein of Bull City Records, Heather Anne, and a few other friends. Bull City Headquarters was a DIY space at Old Five Points that hosted both music and art shows.
"Chaz was having all these great punk shows at his record store, but he needed a different space to keep them going. It was a lot of punk and queer DIY stuff and eventually we started hosting art shows and we wanted to open a computer lab," Register said.
"We had a lot of great shows there from people like John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats and Phosphorescent," they continued. "Rent was like $500 a month, and that eventually became hard for us to pay. I was touring a lot too, so after four years that folded."
In 2008 Register was working at Alivia's on Main Street when they teamed up with partners Liz Albrecht and Nick Williams to open The Pinhook.
From a 'labor of love' to successful business
In its early days The Pinhook was a true labor of love, and its owners were learning as they went along.
"We had a bunch of couches all over the place and nobody really knew what they were doing," Register said. "We had to ask the rugby team to move the cooler behind the bar because we had put the bar in before the cooler."
Register said that while they were able to book some shows, it wasn't always easy. The sound system was not ideal and it was hard for them to book touring acts because the club was so new, and word hadn't gotten out outside of Durham. Over the next few years though, it was slowly becoming a local favorite and a valuable space that felt unique to downtown Durham. This became very apparent in 2016 when the club was hit with a hefty and unexpected tax bill.
After both of their business partners left, Register was left as the sole owner of the club and all the responsibility that came with it. "We had made so many mistakes on the way financially," they said. "That's not my strong point. Business is not why I got into this. I had had the place for two weeks when I realized we had 80k in debt. And I lost my mind."
Register says that the employees of The Pinhook at the time encouraged them to ask for help from the community. They ended up putting on a series of secret shows that have over time become legendary. Acts like Sylvan Esso and Mipso showed up to perform at the small club and they were able to raise enough money to pay the tax bill.
"I remember those lineups were so weird. That's what I loved about them," Register recalled. I remember Vivica C. Coxx just chiding Mipso. It was amazing. She was just messing with them so much."
Shortly after and with another community funded push, The Pinhook was able to upgrade their sound system. Since then it has been a hot spot for both local and touring bands and also a space for events like their monthly Queer Country Night, an event that features karaoke and line dancing.
Aside from being a club owner, Register is also a musician. Their current project Meltdown Rodeo released their latest album on Don Giovanni Records in 2023. Register describes the music as "queer southern country."
"It's about telling the stories of the south through a queer lens and understanding how they're related," they said.
Meltdown Rodeo evolved out of Register's former project, Loamlands. Register says that Loamlands and Meltdown Rodeo are essentially the same band, but they had to change the name for an interesting reason.
Like a lot of people, they went down a rabbit hole on ancestry.com during the COVID lock down. From there they learned that in the early 1900s an ancestor of theirs had moved down to Louisiana where they started a plantation that was, coincidentally, called Loamlands. Register said the news completely shocked them.
These days Register's main focus is on The Pinhook and its place in the local community. This past summer The Pinhook teamed up with Duke Arts for a series of shows called Music Near The Gardens, a substitute for the annual Music In The Gardens event. For this, Register was tasked with curating a series of concerts held on Duke's east campus that were immediately followed by afterparty performances at The Pinhook.
