—David Menconi, Down on Copperline
Around her Triangle stomping grounds, Rebecca Newton is best-known as the longtime big-voiced leader of Rebecca & the Hi-Tones. But she’s always been a major local-music presence offstage and behind the scenes, too. For live-music venues that are struggling, she has in recent years become the person who can come in and turn things around.
Back in 2017, Durham’s Carolina Theatre was stuck beneath a seemingly insurmountable debt situation. Newton was brought in at the peak of the crisis to serve as the Carolina’s new President and CEO, and she guided it back to financial solvency over the next three years.
Fast-forward to this past summer, and a similar situation with The ArtsCenter in Carrboro. The longtime Orange County culture hub had moved to a new location at 400 Roberson Street in late 2023, after its original space was sold. With a concert capacity of 130, the new space was smaller than the old space but considerably plusher.
The organization was struggling with the challenges of a different and smaller space, combined with the expenses of acquiring a new venue. Newton (a longtime ArtsCenter board member) signed on as unpaid Interim Live Events Manager in June 2024.
“I told them I’d do it pro bono until December to see if we could make it work,” Newton says. “So I started booking people I knew, hired new sound and production people, did some co-promotions. I had told them I’d put in 10 to 20 hours a week, and I was working 60 hours every week. That was not sustainable, but it needed to be done. Reviving it was like a startup. And by the end of the year, we were back in the positive and doing well.”
Things have gone well enough for the ArtsCenter board to remove the “Interim” from Newton’s title and upgrade her title to Live Events Director as of January 2025. She started drawing a modest salary based on part-time hours, and even hired two fulltime employees who will eventually take over her responsibilities. Meanwhile, ArtsCenter has been selling out events by Pop Up Chorus, former Connells guitarist George Huntley, Actors Improv and more.
“I think we should be damn glad people are here to support performers, and make sure they’ll have a good experience,” says Newton.
Newton’s own life in music goes all the way back to 1969 and Cat’s Cradle in the legendary Chapel Hill nightspot’s original spot on West Rosemary Street, which she used to sneak into as an underage teenager. A few years later the Cradle would be the first place Newton ever sang at in public, when she hopped onstage with the late Tommy Edwards’ The Bluegrass Experience.
By the early 1980s, Newton was leading the Hi-Tones, a band that was playing swing music long before that style became top-of-the-charts trendy. But what paid Newton’s bills was her parallel career in the online tech world for a series of companies, most recently at Epic Games (maker of “Fortnite,” among other popular games).
Newton retired from the land of dayjobs at the end of 2024, and she doesn’t actually have a fulltime band of her own nowadays. But she still regularly turns up at the microphone onstage at events including Danny Gotham’s recurrent “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” tribute shows.
Newton will take the stage at ArtsCenter on March 8 for her own “Becca’s Birthday Bash and Dance Party!” That’s part of a busy spring ArtsCenter schedule that includes a March 16 St. Patrick’s Day show with Pratie Heads; Johnny Folsom 4’s David Burney playing his solo Johnny Cash tribute act March 28-30; and singer/songwriter Jess Klein on May 17.
“I love what I’m doing at ArtsCenter now and feel really lucky to have stumbled into this,” Newton says. “I took it on to see if we could make it viable. Anything could still happen, like another pandemic. But so far, it’s been viable. We’re making the ArtsCenter a good experience with good sound. I like doing things and doing them well. That’s my M.O.”
