Show Review: Allison Russell (Coastal Credit Union Music Park, Raleigh, NC – 4/20/2024) Concert Reviews Music Features by Ken Templeton - April 22, 20240 Community. Hope. Connection. When you see Allison Russell perform, you are called to your better angels. You are called to see the better angels in others. You are called to experience joy as resistance. When introducing her Grammy-awarding winning song, “Eve Was Black,” about halfway through her incredible set Saturday evening, Allison exhorted the audience to not take a word of it as judgment–not even of those who see others as less than. “Eve Was Black,” traces some of current racism to acts of erasure–namely, that Eve, and other figures of Christianity, were white; this erasure made it easier for white people to commit their brutal actions against people of color, because they saw Black and Indigenous people as less
Show Review: Josh Ritter, Amythyst Kiah (The Carolina Theatre May 16, 2023) Concert Reviews Music Features by Ken Templeton - June 1, 20230 “I’m singing for the love of it, have mercy on the man who sings to be adored.” This line from Josh Ritter’s song, “Snow is Gone,” seems to sum up who he is as an artist. In the twenty years I’ve been going to Josh’s shows, I have never once seen him be anything less than jubilant on stage. He loves it, he is grateful for his audience, and he is unabashed in his joy. He brought the latest iteration of The Royal City Band to The Carolina Theatre in Durham last week, with mainstays Sam Kassirer (piano), Zack Hickman (bass), and Ray Rizzo (drums) joined by Jocie Adams (clarinet) and Matt Douglas (saxophone, lead guitar). I loved the songs
Show Recap: Sierra Hull & Justin Moses – Down Home Concert Series (February 24, 2023 Raleigh, NC) Concert Reviews Music Features by Ken Templeton - March 3, 20230 When Sierra Hull and Justin Moses took the stage last Friday night, they didn't waste any time. After a brief hello to the crowd, Sierra said, “Well let's get picking.” From the first note, their effortless virtuosity was on display. For most of the evening, Justin played guitar and Sierra played mandolin. However Sierra also played guitar brilliantly, and Justin showed off his range by also playing mandolin and dobro. Sierra was the 2022 IBMA mandolin player of the year; Justin is the reigning IBMA dobro player of the year. Needless to say, this is a couple who push and stretch and encourage each other to new musical heights with each song. Most of the songs on the setlist were from
Live Review: Jake Blount (The Pinhook, Durham, NC September 7, 2022) Concert Reviews Music Features Reviews by Ken Templeton - September 13, 20220 Last Wednesday was kind of a homecoming for Jake Blount (he/they). They told the crowd at The Pinhook here in Durham that years ago they played his first professional show in Durham, North Carolina. The concert was the kickoff of Jake's tour in support of his forthcoming album The New Faith, one of the best records I have heard this year. The New Faith is an Afrofuturist consideration of our ongoing climate catastrophe. Jake alluded to the speculative fiction of N.K. Jemisin and Octavia Butler, but also reminded us that Afrofuturism has been around for a long while–ever since the invention of race. They shared scholar Isiah Lavender III’s notion that science fiction is exactly how Black people should engage
Show Review: Andrew Marlin at The Nightlight (Chapel Hill, NC June 9, 2022) Concert Reviews Music Features Reviews by Ken Templeton - June 16, 2022June 16, 20220 “I’ve seen a lot of shows here, and it’s real nice to finally get to play The Nightlight,” Andrew Marlin said last week. The Nightlight, in Chapel Hill, has low ceilings, a few skylights, a bar, and a reading nook in the back corner with a couple of couches, a coffee table, and bookshelves with paperbacks tumbling onto each other. It kind of felt like we were in a ship bottom, so even though I knew the music would be excellent, I was curious if the room would swallow up the sound. It was awesome—as I was walking out, I heard three different people go up to the sound engineer and thank him. Nightlight is one of the few venues I
SHOW REVIEW: The Lumineers / Caamp (5/24/22 Coastal Credit Union Music Park Raleigh, NC) Concert Reviews Music Features by Ken Templeton - June 1, 20220 In April of 2012, I went to Bull Moose Music in Brunswick, Maine, to get the CD of this band I’d been obsessed with since hearing their four-track session on daytrotter. The guy behind the counter looked it up on the computer. “The Lumineers? Hmmm…we should have one.” They’d ordered one, because this was before The Lumineers were The Lumineers. I looked on youtube for clips of shows, and found mostly house concerts in Denver: Jeremiah, Wesley, and Neyla in the middle of a small mob of their already-devoted fans. Fast forward ten years and they’re playing to a crowd of 20,000 in Raleigh, NC. And unlike many bands that have had this kind of success, The Lumineers have not really
The Tallest Man on Earth Daughter of Swords (Haw River Ballroom – February 26, 2022) Concert Reviews Music Features by Ken Templeton - February 28, 20220 There’s just no other word: this show was cathartic. After two years of postponements and cancellations, Kristian Mattson, aka The Tallest Man on Earth, is back on stage, and he brought everything he had. There were times when his performance evoked the title of his last album–I Love You. It’s a Fever Dream–in the best possible way. Daughter of Swords opened the show, and she is a totally transfixing singer, often seeming transfixed, channeling a sound out of time. She holds notes, and bends them in unexpected directions. “Long Leaf Pine” was a highlight of her opening set, and the final song reminded me of Richard and Linda Thompson’s ability to say so much with a simple, telling turn of phrase.
Concert Review: Wood Brothers / Ryan Montbleau June 4, 2021 Concert Reviews Music Features by Ken Templeton - June 9, 20210 Shakori Grassroots Live June 4, 2021 “It’s such a blessing to be here,” Ryan Montbleau said about halfway through his opening set on Friday night. Were truer words ever spoken? After fifteen months of livestreams and lamentations, live music is back. It is, indeed, a blessing. This was my first time going to Shakori and it was a perfect evening. You drive out to Pittsboro on mostly back roads. When our GPS said we’d arrived, it wasn’t immediately clear that we had--on both sides of the road were vast fields. A minute later, we saw the dirt road entrance to Shakori and saw the cars parking in one of those fields. We pulled in behind a couple of guys--maybe a father and son--drinking
Show Review: Hiss Golden Messenger at Cat’s Cradle (January 11, 2020) Concert Reviews Music Features Reviews by Ken Templeton - January 13, 20200 Saturday felt good. My family and I moved to Durham, North Carolina last summer. I spent the morning volunteering for a donation drive for families displaced by substandard living conditions in one of the city’s largest housing projects--the outpouring of support was humbling. And I got to see Hiss Golden Messenger play in a venue where the crowd knows when not to sing during “Heart Like A Levee.” I mean, it’s so standard for audiences to keep singing when they’re not supposed to on that song that MC Taylor was ready to say, “Gotcha,” and then had to stop the song because the not-singing threw him off. “I just want to congratulate you for knowing not to sing there,” he
Concert Review: John Prine, Durham Performing Arts Center, November 1, 2019 Concert Reviews Music Features Reviews by Ken Templeton - November 6, 20190 Until last weekend, I’d only seen John Prine play at festivals. He has become a staple at Newport over the past few years, and was a highlight at The Cook Brothers’ after show in 2018. The other festival I saw John play was the Fleadh in London in the spring of 2004. It was raining that misty British rain and there were about 300 of us crammed into a tent while most of the festival crowd watched a very drunk Adam Durwitz and The Counting Crows suck at music. John started that set with “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore,” saying, “I wrote this song during the Vietnam War and I stopped playing it for a while.