Tour Diary – Chapel Hill, NC (March 9, 2013)

Last night our bus was tagged while we slept behind the gig in Atlanta. We’re not sure if it was the Egg Gang or the E99th Street Posse. We are collecting forensic evidence.

Chapel Hill was a-buzz today: in a complete tizzy…the Blue Devils were in town. The rivalry between the North Carolina Tar Heels and the Duke Blue Devils, two titans of NCAA basketball, is legendary and long-lived. Tonight we are in the home of the Tar Heels and so is Duke. The game didn’t really affect us too much, except the promoter wasn’t sure that he would be able to get anyone to help us load out after the show because everyone would be watching the game……..?

Another sunny day spent strolling the streets. When I think “college town”, I image a place like Athens, or Northampton where a supportive funky community has grown up around the university, fueled by the energy and pocketbooks of the student population. You couldn’t exactly call Chapel Hill “funky” these days, although there was a time when I suppose it could be favourably compared to a place like Athens. Over the years the franchises have moved in and improvements have been made. There are still a few refugees from the old days, a couple of coffee shops and record stores. I bought Spiritualized “Laser Guided Melodies” on vinyl, as a little pre-Spring Solstice present to myself. The Cat’s Cradle sits at the far end of the strip and it is one of the more prominent holdovers from the days before Starbucks came to town. It is a renowned rock club, stinky, dirty and loud and we had the honour of playing it a lifetime ago. Today they have a sister facility for all the old-fart bands and their old-fart audiences, called the Arts Centre and that is where we played….that’s not to say that we or our audiences are old farts….On first glance its not a great room. It’s hard to make it sound good and the seating is configured in an odd way, but once it fills up it becomes a great little box. I think that is a testament to the intensity of our audience down here, old farts or not. We had another very fun night on stage.

…..by the way, the Blue Devils kicked the hometown heroes asses…..