As Recess music editors and two of the biggest music fans at Duke, we set out to discover Durham's music scene. We picked up a copy of the Independent Weekly, turned toward the back and found the listings for live music in Durham: a Monday open mic night, Wednesday night traditional Irish music at the James Joyce and a weekend stocked with jazz. How were we ever going to balance our demanding coursework with the time it would take to research this thriving scene?
Easy. The Indy was simply wrong. Monday's open mic night had long been cancelled. The lads at the Joyce had no knowledge of any live music, traditionally Irish or otherwise, on Wednesday night. Instead, we had all week to listen to records, write papers and chuckle about another "open mic night" at some bar called The Basement on Thursday.
The chuckles grew to a roar when we descended the cement staircase to the appropriately titled concrete-floored sleazefest on Broad Street, just a short walk from East Campus. We entered the room, glanced at the large, vacant stage to our right and walked past the pool table that served as the room's centerpiece.
The crowd was small, sparse and overwhelmingly male. Thirty minutes, we said, and we would have enough material to ridicule the sorry sight. In the meantime, we approached the bar, which carried the full line of Aristocrat liquors and offered $1 draws of Anheuser-Busch's budget brew, Natural Light.
The first-and unnamed-band we saw take the stage played a respectable take on southern rock. During their three-song set, the crowd grew to a couple Duke students, some men with guitars and a host of Durhamites enticed by the aforementioned Natty Light special.
Taking their lead from ex-House of Pain DJ Everlast, two white guitarists played a bluesy riff while a young black man in a football jersey and commodious pants spewed forth a rather impressive rap. We admit it-we didn't expect that sort of diversity at open mic night. The next band brought the crowd to its feet with a blues-funk combo set, and the following act-a woman with a sultry soul voice-forced us sit down again, firmly under her spell. How could so many acts come out of Durham's sleepy woodwork? And why weren't more people there to enjoy it?
Local musician and record label promoter Ken Daye thinks it's all about the venues. "The only reason Chapel Hill has a music scene and Durham doesn't is because Chapel Hill has the advantage of having great venues for musicians to play at, whereas Durham has nothing."
For the past few weeks, Daye has been trying to change that. The venue recently played host to a record release party for artists on Daye's local record
The Basement doesn't seem to have too much trouble competing with other venues for the talent and time of local musicians, yet its open mic performances don't exactly pack the floor. According to Daye, by the event's second week, the size of the audience had more than doubled. If what we witnessed on our Thursday night at The Basement was "double," the Durham scene is in worse shape than we thought.
In an effort to change this, Replay Records is currently working on getting a solid base of musicians to come to The Basement on a regular basis, with hopes of eventually being able to put on bigger shows featuring acts from all over the country. The goal of this effort is to ultimately create a place where local musicians have a chance to play to a large audience.
Besides the lack of venues, Daye believes that another big obstacle for the Durham music scene may be a lack of widespread community support.
"I think there is a good scene, but it is completely untapped," he said. "There aren't enough local venues to give people an outlet to express themselves. There are a lot of people sitting around with nothing to do, but they would rather go get drunk than support local music." Judging by the looks of the crowd at Thursday night's show and the on-stage performance of a group of inebriated former Dukies (including former Recess Editor Kevin Pride), some people have successfully learned to do both.
Another option for live music in Durham is closer than you might think. The Coffeehouse on East Campus has some of the best live shows in all of Durham and consistently hosts student performers throughout the week. Entropy, a band formed in 1999 by a combination of current students and recent graduates including Taylor Pendergrass, Neill Wallis, Jim Iseman, George Spanos and Sunil Soman, plays there regularly. The band members agree that the Coffeehouse, besides being a cool-looking venue for putting on a show, does a great job of bringing in a wide range of acts, from rock bands to trip-hop and electronica. In a city with relatively few opportunities for local musicians to perform, the Coffeehouse is unique in its integration of artists from both inside and outside the Duke community.
Although Entropy admit that the local music scene is not huge, they agree that its small size makes for a close-knit community of musicians who support each others' efforts. According to the band members, the benefit of
Adding to the problem of finding places to play has been the fact that several of the local bars that used to host live acts have either been shut down or decided not to feature live music anymore, according to Entropy drummer Sunil Soman. "The Lounge, Down Under and The Kelt all used to be local music hot spots, and not much has been done with regard to replacing those venues," he said.
Entropy has responded to the problem of limited venues by taking their music to more unconventional arenas. "Besides playing on campus and in the few local clubs that host bands here in Durham, we have played everything from student functions to house parties, basically anything we can have fun doing," Soman said.
Although the City of Medicine's options for live music may be limited, Soman says the small size is deceiving. "There are a pretty good number of accomplished musicians from all over the country that settle down in Durham. One of the reasons is because of the [larger] Triangle music scene. Although Durham isn't the center, it is a real easy place to live and be really close to all of the clubs and studios in Chapel Hill and Raleigh."
But what about those of us who just want to hear good live music without traveling to either Chapel Hill or Raleigh? Is there any hope for a night of quality live music within the boundaries of D-Town? For now, The Basement and the Coffeehouse may be the only places with promise. Yet both venues suffer from less-than-optimal crowds, despite their virtual monopoly on the scene. Perhaps, rather than an issue of venues, Durham's live music problem is one of audience.
Given this community's noticeable separation between the local and university populations, integration of the two groups could be the key. Unfortunately, Duke students that do travel off-campus in search of a social scene rarely include places like The Basement in their nightly route.
To those students, Daye presents a challenge: "Give us a Thursday to change your mind about how the local scene in Durham is. We would love to have some Duke kids come in and add some element to what is going on and help create a new scene. There are a lot of Duke students with talent, and we want to give them a chance to come out here and perform, to help us create a community of music together and integrate as much as possible."
Sounds like a start, anyway.
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