You can buy tickets for the both nights for $40. Tickets for individual shows are also available – $25 for Friday and $25 for Saturday. All shows are all ages. And remember all proceeds will go to the Be Loud! Sophie Foundation. Tickets: Both Nights/Weekend Pass $40 | Friday Night $25 | Saturday Night $25 Ladies and gentlemen…it is time to BE LOUD again! Be Loud! ’19 is the weekend of August 23 and 24th at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, with all proceeds benefiting the Be Loud! Sophie Foundation. This is our 6th Anniversary show (yes, we said 6th!) and we’re pleased to announce that Chatham County Line is headlining Friday night with The Old Ceremony, The Tan & Sober Gentlemen and Alive at 27 rounding out a super fine bill. Saturday night features Preeesh! plays Joe Jackson (Ladd, Plymale, Sledge, Dennis doing songs from the first two Joe Jackson records…more on that below) with Greg Humphreys Electric Trio, PopUp Chorus and Pajama Day. A great weekend of music! More information over at the website for Be Loud! Friday headliner Chatham County Line has been crossing borders musically and literally since they formed in the Triangle in the early ’00s. Call them “newgrass”, “guerilla bluegrass” or whatever you like…they’ve been at the forefront of an insurgence of Carolina bluegrass and have taken their incredible music throughout the world. The Old Ceremony are another local treasure who also bend genres, make incredible records and put on a mighty fine show. The Tan & Sober Gentlemen produce an avalanche of Scotch-Irish hillbilly insanity they dub “Celtic punk-grass.” Alive at 27 rocked the stage at our annual spring high school showcase and just released their first EP this summer. Saturday night features Preeesh!, a supergroup comprised of John Plymale, Rob Ladd, Robert Sledge and Brian Dennis, who will be performing songs from Look Sharp! and I’m the Man, Joe Jackson’s first two records from 1979 (which was 40 years ago!). Be Loud regulars will recognize these four from previous festivals and the songs are equally memorable. Greg Humphreys has also played Be Loud before, fronting Dillon Fence and Hobex, and we’re thrilled to have his current band the Greg Humphreys Electric Trio come down from New York City to perform this year. Get ready for a little soul, a little funk and a lot of fun. If you’ve never seen or been involved in a PopUp Chorus show you are in for a treat. The whole audience learns, rehearses and sings a song in 40 minutes and (drumroll) we’ll be singing Tom Petty’s “American Girl”. Pajama Day’s indie pop was a big hit at our high school showcase. Thanks for your support and Be Loud!

Sunny SlopesJohn Jaquiss, Bill Tarman, Casey Cook, Kent Howard, Josh Bratch Links: Facebook | SoundCloud Speed Stick Geeked out drummers Laura King, and Tom Simpson bring you heavy improvisational drum performance based on sweating, and blasting out the freshest beats. Sharing a kick drum they use their psychic connection to forward movement and exploration. Links: Facebook

What makes the poetry of the Bible different from other ancient poetic traditions? Placed in its ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean context, Professor Vayntrub highlights the unique characteristics of biblical poetry and shows how novices and experts alike can appreciate the beauty and insights of these texts. Dr. Jacqueline Vayntrub is Assistant Professor of Hebrew... Read More →

The final words sung on the sixth album by WHY? are an apt place to begin: “Hold on, what’s going on?” Because while there’s much familiar about the oddly named Moh Lhean-mastermind Yoni Wolf’s sour-sweet croon, his deadpan poet’s drawl and ear for stunningly fluid psych-pop-folk-whatever arrangement-a great deal has changed in the four years that’ve passed since 2012’s Mumps, Etc., an LP that honed the band’s orchestral precision and self-deprecating swagger to a fine point. It’s significant that this is the first fully home-recorded WHY? album since the project’s 2003 debut. Made mostly in Wolf’s studio and co-produced by his brother Josiah, the result is obsessive, of course, but also intimate, and flush with warmth and looseness. But the biggest transformation is a bit subtler. After years of eying his world, in part, with a cynical squint, Wolf here learns a new mode. While Moh Lhean never stoops to outright optimism, it chronicles our hero finding peace in the unknowing, trading the wry smirk for a holy shrug, and looking past corporeal pain for something more cosmic and, rest assured, equally weird. A low tone opens the album on “This Ole King” as acoustic pluck and upright bass form a Western bedrock beneath Wolf’s fragile voice. But as the song pushes on, the playing gets brighter and the vocal becomes a mantra-like hum inspired by Ali Farka Touré’s blues, before rolling into a second part rich with chiming keys and twisting harmony-Brian Wilson’s kaleidoscopic vision of pop. If there’s new litheness here, it’s probably because Wolf spent much of the time between albums collaborating-with ex/muse Anna Stewart as the fuzz-pop duo Divorcee, and MC Serengeti as the puckishly depressive Yoni & Geti. And if there’s a lithe newness, it may be that Wolf excised some nostalgia via his 2014 solo tapes-one re-recording choice raps from his own catalog, and another covering cuts by artists like Bob Dylan and Pavement. It’s no wonder, then, that “The Water” handily morphs a moody folk tune into some strange new form of full-band dub. Or that “One Mississippi” bounces along happily over a flurry of bizarre percussion, whistled melodies, and trippy synthesizer blips. Perhaps most impressive is “Consequence of Nonaction,” which vacillates between a quiet meditation for guitar/voice/clarinet, and wild, sax-strewn astral art-funk. Movement is a key theme of Moh Lhean. It’s a breakup album without a romantic interest-coded within the lyrics is a tale about fleeing the seductions of a wintry figure for something synonymous with spring. “Easy” plays like a ward against the old ghost who haunts “January February March,” while “George Washington” places our host in a tiny watercraft, “paddling for land/hand on heart and heart in hand” as that faceless malevolent force stays ashore. While writing these songs, Wolf suffered a severe health scare far from home. Rather than drive him to depression, his brush with mortality imparted an incongruous impression of peace and connection to the living. At the end of “Proactive Evolution,” wherein WHY? enlists mewithoutYou’s Aaron Weiss to celebrate the stubborn persistence of humankind, Wolf samples not only thinkers like Sharon Salzberg and Ram Dass, but his actual doctors-the voices that helped shape his new outlook. Sure, Wolf poses as many questions as ever. Moh Lhean’s gorgeously psychedelic closer, “The Barely Blur” with Son Lux, puzzles over the nature of existence. But rather than leave us with the macabre chill of death, as many a WHY? LP has, the song dissolves into the infinite-the sound of the Big Bang. Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram