Cat’s Cradle

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!

Inara George and Greg Kurstin, alias the bird and the bee, are an army of two. They listen to everything, and answer to no one. Over the course of 3 years, they whiled away scattered afternoons in Greg’s studio in Echo Park, California, sequestered in a little world of their own making, and creating the ten sunshine-drenched, semi-psychedelic ditties you hold before you. Were these compositions intended for public consumption? Inara and Greg never gave it any thought; they made music together simply for the joy of it. the bird and the bee, their self-titled debut for Metro Blue Records, an imprint of Blue Note Records, is a labor of love. If you know anything about the backgrounds of Inara George and Greg Kurstin, the accomplishments of the bird and the bee might not seem quite so casual as all that. Both are blessed with extraordinary intuitive musical abilities, which have been bolstered by years of practice. Multi-instrumentalist Greg was a jazz piano prodigy by the time he started shaving; he moved to New York specifically to study with leftist Jaki Byard, a jazz icon best known as Mingus’ pianist. He returned to Los Angeles and became one of the city’s most well respected musicians, lending his skills to the likes of Beck and Robert Moog, as well as writing with and/or producing The Flaming Lips, Peaches, and Lily Allen, to name a few. As for Inara, she grew up in Los Angeles in a musical household, the daughter of Lowell George, frontman of the eclectic ’70s Southern rock band Little Feat. For several years she was in different bands in the Los Angeles area until she began her solo career releasing 2005’s critically acclaimed All Rise. During the making of that record was when Greg and Inara first met. It was through mutual friend and All Rise producer, Mike Andrews, that Inara and Greg made a connection. “I like to sing standards, and Greg likes to play them,” recalls Inara. “He was working on my record, and one day, after a rehearsal, we hung out near a piano and, for three or four hours, played all the old songs we knew.” When they ran short of material, it dawned on them to augment the repertoire with a few originals and put their own stamp on the traditions established by the greats who had gone before. Like the Tropicalia revolutionaries of ’60s Brazil, who both revered and reacted against the traditions of bossa nova, the bird and the bee wanted to put their own spin on classic pop conventions. Although they composed as a team, Inara was responsible for vocals, while Greg oversaw almost all instrumental parts. Neither party assumed a secondary role; in the creative process, it was purely give-and-take. “Melodies would dictate chord progressions, or sometimes vice-versa, depending on where the vocal part wanted to go,” recalls Inara. “The writing was almost improvised in nature.” This was a change from many of their other gigs, especially for Greg; there was no pressure to deliver a hit song, or capture a signature sound. With the bird and the bee, any idea was fair game. The first song the duo collaborated on, “Again & Again,” became a template for the material to come. Handclaps and tambourines, a bumblebee bass line, and Inara’s beguiling vocals blend together in a summery concoction. Each of the songs that follows similarly and slyly unveils its own unique charm. Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Spotify | YouTube

Capping off a fruitful 12-year long solo career, David Bazan resurrects both the moniker and mindset of his profoundly influential indie rock outfit, Pedro The Lion. The band’s new album and Polyvinyl debut, Phoenix, marks a return to form as the follow up to their 2004 opus, Achilles Heel. Phoenix maps out the emotional intricacies of growing up in Arizona with the songs themselves a darkly hopeful introspection into home and what it means to go back, if you ever can. Since their formation in 2001, mewithoutYou have become a standard-bearer for their genre. Across six full-length albums and a handful of EPs, the Philadelphia band— alternately labeled experimental punk, post-hardcore, indie rock, etc.—have long put a premium on progression, never anchoring themselves to a single sound and instead gracefully wandering across stylistic lines. It’s that same spirit that informed the band’s upcoming seventh album , their second for Run For Cover Records, as well as its accompanying EP . Pedro The Lion links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Spotify | YouTube | Apple Music mewithoutYou links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube