What began as just a solo outing for Greenville native-come Asheville resident, Ryan Sheffield, has quickly turned into a full band, Ryan Sheffield and the Highhills, who have been touring the Carolinas with increasing frequency. The first LP, Head for the Coast, was recorded primarily by Sheffield and Bryan Highhill (hence the Highhills moniker), mixing rock, acoustic ballads and folk-punk leanings into their full-band sound. His first solo recording The Shadowbox EP,  saw Sheffield pulling back the reigns with a much quieter and more introspective sound, leaving behind many of the punk and rock influences displayed on his first outing in favor of more intimate storytelling.

Not to be confined to one preconception, the new Telescope LP sees Sheffield once again reinventing himself with the addition of new members,  wife Brenna Sheffield on stand-up and electric bass, Jason Waller on guitar and Adam Lavinsky on drums. Shuffle’s Wes Gilliam caught up with Sheffield via email to discuss the new album, new instrumentation and signature adult beverages.

Shuffle: The new album, Telescope is a much fuller and band-centered album than your last outing, The Shadowbox EP. Was this a conscious choice or was it just the way the songs unfolded?

Ryan Sheffield: After recording The Shadowbox, I knew that I wanted the next album to have a bigger, more dynamic, full-band sound.  The idea wasn’t necessarily to get rid of the softer, lyrical bits entirely, but to add a counterpoint to those parts on the other end of the dynamic range, i.e. to get loud as shit when it feels right.  Working up the songs with the rest of the band definitely had a big impact on the final sound of the album, but many of the songs were written from the outset with the intention to fully utilize the whole band.

Shuffle: Lately there has been more and more different instrumentation making it’s way into the band’s live show, how has that process been? Were you ever worried that it might be weird for a guy with ties so close to the punk community to whip out a saxophone on stage?

RS: Since Bryan Highhill and I recorded the first album released under the name Ryan Sheffield and the HighHills, we’ve approached the recording process with the idea that we should make the best recordings possible regardless of whether they can be reproduced live. But I’ve always wanted to include as much instrumentation in the live shows as possible! With the addition of the other band members, specifically another guitar player (Jason C. Waller), I’ve been able to fill in some of the horn lines myself, which has been really exciting – and I owe the band for pushing me to work up those parts for the shows. As far as the punk community goes, I think good music can stand-up to any audience, so I try my best to focus on my end and not worry too much about who’s listening or what they’re expecting.

Shuffle: What is the meaning behind the title of the album?

RS: It was important to me that the album should have a name that wouldn’t sound tired or clichéd, and while I was writing the songs that ended up on the recordings, I was getting interested in astronomy and the history of discovery.  Initially, I just liked the sound of the word ‘telescope’, and that it didn’t carry any sort of baggage with it. It’s just a word, plain and simple. A few days later I came across an epigraph by a French writer in a book I’m working through, that read: “Music is another planet.” It seemed like a happy coincidence, so I decided to roll with it. I even started a new title track for the album, but didn’t finish it in time for recording.

Shuffle: What are you the proudest about with the new album? 

RS: I am very proud of and thankful to, the musicians that contributed to the recordings and the writing process. Brenna Sheffield, Jason C. Waller, Adam Lavinsky, and Bryan Highhill were all instrumental to the arrangement and refinement of the songs. The album wouldn’t be the same without them, and in my opinion, it wouldn’t be nearly as good.

Shuffle: Why did you choose the Jam Room out of Columbia to record the majority of the album instead of a studio closer to home?

RS: I chose the Jam Room for a number of reasons.  I recorded the guitar and vocal parts for The Shadowbox there with Zac Thomas engineering, and happened to mention to him that I was hoping to assemble a full band for the next album.  He was immediately interested in being involved and stayed in touch during the writing process for Telescope. I was excited to record with someone enthusiastic about the band, and I knew the studio was set up with tons of gear options. Recording in Columbia also meant that everyone in the band had to travel to get there, which made it feel like a good, neutral territory where we could all sort-of get lost in the record. And Brett J. Kent and Greg Slattery work there, duh.

Shuffle: You mention some strong drinks in the lyrics for this album such as Scotch and Whiskey, is there a HighHills signature adult beverage yet? If not what would it be?

Kenny Roby leads a host of Carolina bands turning to country sounds and storytelling for inspiration again

Kenny Roby. Photo by Sandlin Gaither.

Like pilgrims to hallowed ground, they come to country music by many roads: via the vintage catalogs of forebears Carter, Cash and Williams, and through earlier generations of punk rockers like X, Jason & the Scorchers or Social Distortion, who found like-minded kin in outlaws Waylon, Willie and Merle. Some arrive via Exile on Main St., or the dope-smokin’, nudie suit longhairs of the 60s and early 70s; others were sent by CCR, Doug Sahm or Uncle Tupelo. Some came via canyons Topanga and Laurel, others from “Up On Cripple Creek” or “Tecumseh Valley.”

Still others get there in more idiosyncratic ways. An 8-year-old gets hooked on television’s The Monkees, falls for Mike Nesmith’s twangy pop, and eventually builds a honky tonk catalog to rival his heroes; two brothers hear the unspoken links between the Louvin Brothers and Big Star harmonies and their tragic songs of life, and form a “rural rock” band; a bisexual Southern woman puts aside her early disgust and decides to reclaim what is just as much her musical heritage.

Naturally, many come via the Carolinas’ own rich legacy: Charlie Poole’s Piedmont country blues, the old time-y protest songs of textile mill workers, or Appalachian bluegrass. And, increasingly, younger generations arrive courtesy of the state’s mid-90s status as an alt-country epicenter thanks to Whiskeytown and the Backsliders, Lou Ford and Jolene, 6 String Drag and the Two Dollar Pistols.

Whatever the routes and results, one thing seems certain: In rock’s eternal cycles, whenever synthesizers and dance beats pile up in popular music, the pendulum will swing back to the music’s blues and country roots in new and (hopefully) interesting forms. Judging by a bevy of new and upcoming Carolina releases, that’s happening again. From the Overmountain Men’s trad narratives and Mount Moriah’s countrified folk-rock to The Dead Tongue’s cowboy garage, JKutchma & the Five Fifth’s twanged-up punk angst, and Kenny Roby’s luscious countrypolitan textures, the needle’s pointed at rock’s country roots once again. Throw in a generation waiting in the wings — from Charlotte-via-Rock Hill outfit Elonzo and the Queen City’s more raucous Pullman Strike to Pittsboro honky tonkers Sara Shook & the Devil Music and Columbia’s Say Brother — and you’ve got the nascent makings of a movement.

“I’ve been doing it so long you kind of tell when it seems like you’re out there alone in the weeds, as opposed to where there are more groups doing it,” says 43-year-old John Howie Jr., whose Two Dollar Pistols have morphed into the more countrypolitan honky tonk of John Howie Jr. and the Rosewood Bluff. “It seems like there are more bands to play with right now, and that’s kind of the main way I judge it. It’s really cool to hear people in their 20s talk about Hank Williams right now — I’m always excited when that happens.”

. . .

Fundamentalists might blanch at the suggestion that Kenny Roby’s first record in seven years, the remarkable Memories & Birds, would be considered country-rock at all. And it’s true, “Me and the Monkey,” with its skeletal beats and minimalist arrangements, or the clarinet blurts and widescreen string textures of the haunting hit-man-on-the-run epic “Colorado,” don’t fit the traditionalist’s bill. For every slide guitar and countrypolitan string section, there’s a Randy Newman-esque orchestration or Nick Cave-like ballad pulling the music in other directions.

But then, orthodoxy does what it usually does; ignores the more interesting gray areas and winds up missing the point entirely. Because the defining characteristic of — and descriptor for — Piedmont country-rock cited by almost every artist interviewed for this story is eclecticism. For Roby, who’s seen this wheel roll around more than once now and was, via 6 String Drag’s 1997 breakthrough High Hat, a key spoke in one of its revolutions, all roads lead to the same origins.

“It went from simple chords, punk rock and straight rock & roll mixed with these country influences, to pushing it backwards,” says Roby. “Now I’m going to get more lush and start doing some of those arrangements on the slicker side, or the more metropolitan side of the country equation. Which I love.”

Like many disparate songwriters pegged to the post-Nirvana marketing tag “alternative-country,” Roby came to High Hat’s honky-tonk rock via punk after fronting the Lubricators as a teenager. That particular synergy — country music Hall of Fame songwriter Harlan Howard called it “three chords and the truth” — attracted Roby then, and remains a bridge for others now.

“That’s what drew me into that kind of stuff, was bands like the Uncle Tupelo incorporating it — ‘that’s cool, they kind of tie it into the same stuff that I like’ — and that’s why they did resonate with people,” Roby says. “It’s just simple music and trusting your feelings. Just like the blues, for people who don’t seem to have another outlet.”

The outlaw status of many country titans still seduces musicians who’ve grown up with defiance as a sin qua non. The hurdle, of course, is getting past the CMT/Music Row/Clear Channel death grip on country music. But while more pervasive now, it’s not that different from earlier country eras when Hank Williams, Willie Nelson or Buck Owens succeeded on their own terms by turning away from Nashville’s dictates. For fans of those songwriters, those legends turn out to be, well, punk as fuck.

“Punk rock is an idea,” says former Lou Ford co-leader Chad Edwards, who along with older brother Alan and band is finishing the first Loudermilks record, another iteration of their band namesake (the Louvin Brothers, nee Loudermilks) blended with Alex Chilton’s minor-key cynicism. “It’s not a ‘sound’ or a ‘look.’ Buck Owens didn’t need Nashville to tell him how to be a star, he made himself one, in sequinned pants and a bolero jacket. Punk rock.”

Supplementing the simplicity of three chords and trad country’s outsider strain are the stories, which might be country’s greatest legacy. The legend, retold by writer Nat Hentoff, goes that jazz giant Charlie Parker, when confronted by baffled bandmates about his fondness for country music in an era when it was associated with Jim Crow, replied, “Just listen to the stories.” For rockers attracted to the lonesome whine of a pedal steel or a fiddler’s reel, those human narratives about love, loss, weakness, hard times and redemption wind up being equally seductive.

Kutchma says that as his songwriting matured with his punk outfit Red Collar, the nuance of country’s murder ballads and love songs started to trump the “on the nose” nature of too many punk lyrics. When unforeseen circumstances sidelined Red Collar a few years back, Kutchma went out solo and saw his songwriting morph even more into storytelling. When he turned to record his solo songs, the country accents — such as Nathan Golub’s pedal steel — entered the equation organically.

“No matter what point you look at country music, no matter what they do with it, its defining thing is you can always understand what they’re saying, and they all tell stories,” says Kutchma, who’s putting the finishing touches on the Five Fifths’ follow-up to 2012’s country-tinged Pastoral. “What other genre can you say that consistently about?”

For Bob Crawford, who most recognize as one of the non-Avetts in The Avett Brothers, working with Charlotte’s hidden gem David Childers in the Overmountain Men is all about the storytelling. Crawford believes there’s a strict line between the bluegrass legacy that served as the Avetts’ foundation and the country that informs what he’s playing with Childers on Overmountain records, including the recently released The Next Best Thing.

“If I say to Dave, ‘let’s write a song about Alexander Hamilton,’ he’s game,” Crawford says. “I can’t say to Scott and Seth (Avett), ‘let’s write a song about Martin Van Buren.’ They’re going to look at me like I’m crazy — which I am. David can take something and make it intimate — he’s the guy who could open up the newspaper and write five songs, and you would think that he’d lived every single one of them.”

For Charlotte’s Elonzo, whose 2012 LP Salt in the Wound. Flesh on the Bone still features plenty of the band’s prior twang, lead singer and songwriter Jeremy Davis says he still finds inspiration in what he grew up listening to in rural South Carolina.

“My family were farmers who listened to country music,” he says. “I just want to take whatever seems the most natural and do that, and I want that to be what my record sounds like. I think that maybe that ideal comes from that kind of environment, and the music was at least part of that.” Still, there’s an immense gulf between Hank Williams singing about cheatin’ hearts or the Carter Family chronicling a drunkard’s lowest moment and Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw wanting to “Feel Like a Rock Star” or Lady
Antebellum air-brushing country into vapid pop. And for many young rockers who first hear country via the current Music Row flavor du jour, that gap can seem unbridgeable.

“It just wasn’t cool to listen to country music during my teenage years,” says BJ Barham, frontman for American Aquarium, a band who make no secret of the influential role 90s alt-country had on their sound, including their latest release, 2012’s Burn. Flicker. Die. “From the ages of 13 to 16, I ran from country music. Pop radio and hip-hop took over.”

As he got older, though, Barham expanded his listening beyond radio and whatever CDs Walmart stocked. He discovered seminal recordings by Whiskeytown, Uncle Tupelo and, most crucially he says, the Backsliders. Hearing that band’s 1996 live EP, From Raleigh, North Carolina sparked Barham’s move from rural Reidsville to Raleigh, and the formation of American Aquarium followed.

“Those bands broke the mold I had set for what a ‘country’ band had to be,” he explains. “It taught me that I could love rock & roll and still be a country songwriter.”

For Kutchma, the hurdle was even steeper. First exposed as a youngster through television shows like Hee Haw and Barbara Mandrel and The Mandrell Sisters Show, nothing Kutchma heard there sparked any interest. By the 90s, disinterest had gelled into distaste.

“In the 90s, I fucking despised it — I wasn’t in the mind-set of doing any research with this stuff,” Kutchma says. “Whatever was on the radio or what the popular culture listened to, I assumed that was the way it is, and that there was no underground. So the Billy Ray Cyrus, Shania Twain stuff — all these corny cheese balls — I went, ‘fuck country music, fuck what it’s become.’”

But for some, even the orthodoxy of 90s alt-country was off-putting. Howie Jr.’s “road to Damascus,” as he puts it, may have been paved by seeing one of the Backsliders’ early-90s shows, but the genre’s quick slide into “authenticity” bragging rights was a turn-off. The new arbiters of what comprised “real country-rock” — DJs, journalists and other musicians —even pushed Howie Jr. away from Michael Nesmith, The Monkees songwriter he grew up admiring.

“God forbid in the new orthodoxy you be seen as not being authentic by that group of people,” Howie says. “I stayed away from doing anything that was influenced by the Burrito Brothers or Michael Nesmith or The Byrds, and God knows I adore all of those groups and they had a lot to do with the sound I certainly have now, because you didn’t want to be thought of as the guy jumping on the bandwagon.”

Michael Rank was another musician who lamented that era’s fundamentalism. As a member of Snatches of Pink, Rank’s Rolling Stones fixation — including the band’s country leanings — inspired the twangy flavor of the outfit’s 1988 debut, Send In the Clowns. But within a year, on their sophomore release, Dead Men, Rank had done a conscious 180.

“I rebelled and went as far from that sound as I could,” says Rank, whose new release with Stag, In the Weeds, unapologetically re-embraces country-rock. “Shit just goes around in circles sooner or later.”

To good effect, In the Weeds parses the influences that spread so thinly over last year’s sprawling two-disc set, Kin. By concentrating on the country elements, Rank has honed his songwriting here to a much sharper focus. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s got some of the best players in the Triangle — including the ubiquitous Golub on pedal steel and banjo, Chatham County Line’s John Teer on fiddle and mandolin, Marc E. Smith on the Telecaster, and Howie Jr. playing drums. You’ll find those players bringing their country-friendly skills to a host of records, and that promiscuous sharing of musicians helps keep regional country-rock fertile with ideas. But even if that crew isn’t on your record, living in the Petri dish will have its effect.

Ryan Gustafson’s new record as The Dead Tongues, Desert, may be mostly the product of the work he did on his own and with co-producer James Wallace, but it’s just as much a catalogue of his time spent in the Carolinas since coming here from Western Massachusetts 16 years ago.

After 2009’s promising Donkey took Gustafson away from his alternative rock roots, Desert seems like a stop even further down that road. “I’ve listened to much more traditional and country music since that record, and that has definitely been a big influence,” the 27-year-old Gustafson says, adding that it’s “also a nice thing when you can just call up (Megafaun’s) Phil Cook and try and get him to help you figure out clawhammer banjo.”

That cross-breeding may be most fertile in the Triangle, where proximity and the sheer number of acts practically demand alliances. But it’s not exclusive to that area, and it’s not only intra-generational. In Charlotte, former members of Lou Ford team up with the drummer from former hometown rivals Jolene to form the Loudermilks; Kutchma brings Whiskeytown’s Caitlin Cary in to “Appalachian up” one of his new songs; Barham shares a stage with the Backsliders’ Chip Robinson, and American Aquarium covers the group’s “Abe Lincoln.”

“It was a pretty cool thing to be able to turn some of our fans onto a band that had such an impact on me,” Barham says. “Talk about things coming full circle.”

For some, though full circle isn’t far enough. Like most young Southerners, Mount Moriah’s Heather McEntire initially ran from the popular country force fed to her growing up. Being bisexual, McEntire suggests, raised the stakes above mere aesthetics or regional birthrights; she associated popular country with discrimination and suffering. So expropriating country forms and redirecting them into new and challenging areas — as she does on Mount Moriah’s excellent new LP, Miracle Temple — turns out to be healthy for both the genre and McEntire.

“It was never a conscious decision to reconnect with it, but it did start to happen, right about when I was turning 30. It’s in my blood,” she says. “Maybe I’m stubborn, and I don’t want them to own that style of music, you know, like, ‘To play country music, you have to have have these types of beliefs.’

Those beliefs aren’t exactly welcoming. They can range from the jingoistic (Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue”) and sexist (Trace Adkins’ “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk”) to the merely vapid. (Old school country didn’t exactly lack for misogyny, either.) But the bar is so low today that it becomes noteworthy when there are “songs that don’t involve using the word ‘party’ as a verb,” Edwards says.

For musicians who re-embrace three-chords-and-the-truth country-rock, the trick now is to take the music somewhere it hasn’t been since the mid-90s: someplace new.

“We’re trying to take this music and go deeper with it lyrically, or just go deeper with it as a form,” says McEntire. “It’s sincere, but there’s also an intentionality of wanting to challenge it.”

Jordan Lawrence contributed reporting to this article.

“Several months and three issues into the existence of this magazine, it’s becoming fairly clear to me that if indeed the No Depression community has a home base at the moment — a geographic region that seems unusually rich in alternative-country acts, in terms of both quantity and quality — it’s North Carolina.”

That was the first paragraph of a review I wrote for No Depression in early 1996 of Hell’s Half Acre, the debut album of an up-and-coming North Carolina band called Jolene. Their record fell within the same two-year window as the first albums by Whiskeytown, the Backsliders, 6 String Drag and Two Dollar Pistols, to name just the top tier of North Carolina’s mid-90s twang renaissance.

In retrospect, it seems fairly clear that the music we were covering in No Depression would naturally find a major breeding ground in North Carolina. Historically, the state has laid claim to quite a few icons of American traditional music, from the primordial acoustic blues of Elizabeth Cotten and Blind Boy Fuller to the archetypal mountain folk and bluegrass of Doc Watson and Earl Scruggs. This storied past contrasted with the circa-1990 rise of Chapel Hill as an indie-rock stronghold, with Superchunk and Merge Records at the fore.

Inevitably, some artists ended up drawing inspiration from both past and present. Whiskeytown was the most prominent of the N.C. twang nation, following their indie debut with two major-label albums that eventually spawned the solo careers of Ryan Adams and Caitlin Cary. Chip Robinson’s Backsliders and Kenny Roby’s 6 String Drag didn’t go as far, but both band leaders have persevered through down times and resurfaced with admirable solo works. (They also left an imprint on the next generation of Carolina twang acts, as American Aquarium’s cover of the Backsliders “Abe Lincoln” on their latest album attests.)

All the while, Two Dollar Pistols leader John Howie Jr. has continued to prove himself as the region’s foremost honky-tonk authority, from a 1999 duet album with Tift Merritt to three more Pistols LPs in the new millennium to his most recent stellar outing with the Rosewood Bluff. Merritt herself eventually became the brightest star to rise from the North Carolina alt-country crowd, with several major-label solo releases and a Grammy nomination, while a couple of her former bandmates became anchors of Chatham County Line, the Triangle’s most accomplished acoustic act of the past decade.

Others faded away, though they’re not so easily forgotten. Jolene leader John Crooke moved to Los Angeles, but Hell’s Half Acre still stands as the strongest record any of the ’90s N.C. alt-country bands ever made. Charlotte outfit Lou Ford surfaced around the time Jolene was disappearing; their single “How Does It Feel” might be the best single track any N.C. twang act has committed to tape, but the band never made the expected splash their three LPs suggested they might. Durham trad-country troubadour Thad Cockrell made a terrific record with producer Chris Stamey (2003’s Warmth and Beauty) as well as a duet album with former Whiskeytowner Caitlin Cary, but eventually moved to Nashville and formed the modern-pop band Leagues.

The recent mass success of the Avett Brothers notwithstanding, my sense of the N.C. roots community is that it’s a lot like the late-80s Austin scene in which I came of age — an aesthetic that was documented in Richard Linklater’s iconic film Slacker. If this means most of the bands are never going to rise above a certain level — whether for fear of success, or some combination of “velvet rut” and “big fish/small pond” syndrome — so be it.

I concluded that 1996 Jolene review by writing, “It’s enough to make me wish I lived in North Carolina.” A few years later, I realized that wish.

Peter Blackstock was co-founder and co-editor of No Depression magazine, which published from 1995 to 2008. He is currently associate editor at Durham’s INDY Week.

Gettys Arts Center. Photo courtesy of the City of Rock Hill.

As arts scenes go, Rock Hill is in a weird position. With just more than 66,000 people — according to the 2010 census — it’s the fifth largest city in South Carolina. But it’s spaced between two larger cities in Charlotte (30 minutes to the north) and Columbia (one hour to the south), meaning the burg’s population has ample options for seeking entertainment elsewhere. It’s a college town, the home of Winthrop University, but the small public university only enrolls about 6,000 students, hardly the influx brought in by larger state schools.

For a music and arts scene to thrive in such a place truly takes a community effort, focusing their efforts towards home and not eyeing the bigger towns nearby. Elonzo, now one of the most polished and passionate pop and country-rock bands in the Carolinas, sprang to life in Rock Hill five years ago. Singer Jeremy Davis now lives in Charlotte, but he is quick to sing his old home’s praises, emphasizing that the local scene helped Elonzo grow into the band it is now.

“There’s a community that’s really interested in being able to do things in Rock Hill and not having to leave to go to Charlotte,” he says. “That’s basically sprouted up since I moved there and gotten better since I left.”

Elonzo’s first gig was on Main Street at the Irish pub McHale’s. With frequent live music that includes appearances from up-and-coming local groups, the pub continues to be a place for new bands to get their start. With a solid beer selection and a comfortable atmosphere, Davis says it’s also a nice spot to grab a quick drink before heading off to other activities.

“The cool thing about that place is they do want the community of musicians who are doing original music to be playing there as well as whatever else they would normally have,” he says.

Davis says his favorite venue in town is The Courtroom inside the Gettys Arts Center. Mike Gentry — who also books bands at The Sweat Lodge, the town’s house-show headquarters (find Mike on Facebook to get the address) — books music in the renovated municipal space, which is complete with bench and witness stand. Making good use of the unconventional room, he has hosted exciting regional acts — Greensboro punk powerhouse Torch Runner, epic and energetic Columbia pop band The Sea Wolf Mutiny, Charlotte’s exuberant Yardwork — and a host of touring bands; Davis fondly remembers seeing Brooklyn’s rising Laura Stevenson and her polished folk-pop ensemble, The Cans. The music at The Courtroom is part of the Friday Arts Project, which programs diverse arts events on Fridays and other days of the week as well.

“It’s literally just this huge room,” Davis says. “The ceiling’s probably like 30-foot, so it’s a cavernous space. Everything’s marble; the floor is marble. It just has a lot of history, and it’s really cool.”

Other music venues in town include the hard rock-centric Money and the somewhat more diverse Firewater 110, both of which Davis says he hasn’t visited very often.

None of the local bands that frequent these clubs would be able to do so without gear. In Rock Hill, that means heading to Woody’s, which sells and repairs instruments and equipment in addition to its selection of used records and albums from local bands. Davis says the shop’s service is unbeatable, fondly recalling how they would rent — or sometimes simply loan — him a PA for gigs at venues without a proper sound system.

“I would actually just ride my bike up there all the time and see what was going on,” Davis says. “Most of the record selection was used, but we had our stuff in there and other people putting out albums around town were able to put them in there.”

As far as activities outside of the arts, Davis endorses expeditions to some of the town’s outdoor areas. Located on the university’s campus, Winthrop Lake is perfect for a quick round of disc golf; its course was used in the 1997 World Championships. For a less active afternoon, Davis recommends relaxing amid the beautiful flowers and fountains at Glencairn Gardens. He also advises that Confederate Park is a prime place for a nap.

After all this recreation, Davis suggests a few options for enticing Rock Hill-eats: He says the extensive menu at the family-owned Greek-style diner Old Town Bistro is filled with fare that can best any hangover. He’s a fan of the sandwich experts at the White Horse, too, which also boasts tasty salads and entrees, and he notes that McHale’s has great burgers to go along with its beer and music.

“What Rock Hill has to offer, much like Charlotte, is a strong community just under the surface,” Davis says. “[It’s] quickly adding some great eating establishments and groups that are interested in bringing life to the community instead of finding it elsewhere.”

Photo courtesy of Merge Records

“Telling the Hour” has been with Heather McEntire for a long time. She wrote what would become the epic closer to Miracle Temple, the stunning sophomore effort from Durham’s Mount Moriah, back in 2004. Since then she has played it at intimate acoustic gigs, tried to include it as a stripped-back changeup for her now inactive post-punk trio Bellafea, and finally resurrected it as a cathartic hallmark for her current folk-rock ensemble. On Miracle Temple, sheets of ominous strings, raw backing vocals and the biting guitar lines of Jenks Miller flesh out the the searing tale of love thrown away, closing the circle on one of McEntire’s most powerful compositions.

“Punish me with the cruelest summer!” she cries, desperate to hurt as much as the person she has betrayed. McEntire sat down with Shuffle to share the song’s history.

WRITING THE SONG

I was in Wilmington house-sitting for this writing mentor of mine. It was a familiar place, and I had it all to myself. I wrote the song in like a day. The chords are really basic, just kind of fucking around off of a D-minor chord. I had screwed up a relationship, and it was my way of taking responsibility for my behavior and sort of punishing myself. I wanted to remember what it felt like to really hurt someone. It was an unfaithful moment. It was definitely something out of character for me. I was young and stupid.

I wrote it knowing that I would have to sing it a lot. I remember wanting to really describe that night to myself and for myself, so I wouldn’t forget it. Of course now, it’s evolved. I went through that pain and that breaking-up process. I beat myself up about it all the time, but I think it was important for me to own that moment and be accountable.

It’s fairly cryptic. I’m not necessarily talking about being unfaithful. For me, it was depicting that dark time. I have sung it to that person. That person has heard me sing it many times. I think I also wanted them to be able to see a sort of apology. I wasn’t trying to prove anything to them necessarily, but it’s definitely part of my grieving process and growing-up process.

THE VERSION ON BELLAFEA’S CAVALCADE (2008)

It needed to be slow. It needed to be raw. I used a resonator guitar. It sounds really different and distorted. We put strings on that version too. I just had a couple friends over, and we were recording with Brian Paulson. You can hear my foot tapping out of synch with the kick drum. I didn’t want to over-think it. I wanted it to stick out to where you would have to pay attention to it in the context of that whole record that was so loud and had all that punk spirit.

INTRODUCING IT TO MOUNT MORIAH

We had been guaranteed some amount of money if we could play for three hours in this bar in Spartanburg. It was basically a sports bar. I was like born there, and my parents live 20 miles away. My friends were bartending, so it was like, ‘OK, can we come up with three hours?’ I remember being in rehearsal, and they were like, ‘What else you got? Do you have any Bellafea songs?’ We were just trying to just come up with three hours, which we never did.

THE VERSION ON MIRACLE TEMPLE

That was the first take we did of that song. Half of us wanted to put it on the record. Half of us didn’t. We played it like it was the last time we were ever going to play it, and I can hear it. We were just trying to nail it. I personally feel like we did. I feel like we tapped into something.

It had been done a certain way, and I wanted to re-imagine it. It was healthy for me to approach it with more of a team and experiment sonically. I listened to the Cavalcade version about a month ago for the first time in years. It’s a different person singing it. Just as a woman, I’ve grown so much. As a singer, the way I approach this Miracle Temple version is much more confident. To me, it’s a unique contrast. I think both are really important, not just in the chronology of my own personal life. I’m glad to have both versions. —Jordan Lawrence

Baobab
BAYOHBAHB
(self-released)

Rare is a second record that so purposefully builds on the strengths of its predecessor. Bolstering the percolating electro-folk of Baobab’s self-titled debut, Durham’s Phil Torres infuses his self-produced constructions with stronger melodic hooks and an even more meticulous array of charming effects. The instrumental offering “Thohoyandou” builds by way of Torres’ typical Graceland-inspired picking and afrobeat backing vocals, but soon twists with psychedelic reverb and a pillowy cavalcade of rhythmic samples. Sharper too is Torres’ lyrical focus. After painting an idyllic island landscape by similar means on “Loh Dalum Bay,” he poetically crushes the dream via human greed on the darker, fuzz-beguiled “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch”: “Most of us will meet our needs, but few are good at stopping there.” It’s just one perfectly crystallized sentiment on a record filled with them. —Jordan Lawrence

Charlie Poole & the Highlanders
The Complete Paramount & Brunswick Recordings, 1929
(Tompkins Square)

These recordings by North Carolina banjo maestro Charlie Poole are among the rarest of collector’s items; under contract to Columbia, Poole — who’d moved nearly a Gold LP worth of trio music for the label — wasn’t allowed to record his old-time orchestra quintet of twin fiddles, guitar and piano. So behind band moniker The Highlanders (The Alleghany Highlanders for Brunswick), Poole went elsewhere to varying effect. The hard-driving fiddles and pounding piano overwhelm Paramount’s notoriously poor hot mic — and Poole’s banjo and vocals — on chestnuts like “Tennessee Blues” and “Richmond Square.” So the real gem here is the Brunswick four-part skit-song “A Trip to New York,” a time-capsule chronicle of a typical trip North to record. This is a Golden Age of Radio nugget worth the price alone. —John Schacht 

Coma Cinema
Posthumous Release
(Fork & Spoon/Orchid Tapes)

The first three Coma Cinema LPs were self-produced, attacking listeners with intricate scuzz and an aggressive sense of depression. Posthumous Release, the fourth album credited to Mat Cothran’s Columbia-based project, abandons that approach without feeling alien from his previous work. Produced in Los Angeles by Trung Ngo and Brad Petering of TV Girl, the album peels back some of the fuzz, allowing Cothran to stretch out with patient acoustic odes and buoyant but bitter rock numbers. His imagery is still shocking — “Fuck me in the graveyard/ Confession’s always in my mind” — but his mood is one of simmering resignation. Showcasing newfound maturity, he exploits the full range of his fragile and expressive croon, finding wisdom and beauty within his scathing verses. —JL

The Dead Tongues
Desert
(FireAnt Music)

With Desert — Ryan Gustafson’s follow-up to 2009′s Donkey, released under his given name — the Durham singer applies his own nuance to classic songwriting touchstones. These 10 tracks waver between moments of nothing-left-to-lose freedom and love-lost misery; this is “fuck it” music in both incarnations of the phrase. The bulk are straightforward folk- and country-inflected rockers, recorded and played loosely but with obvious love. Opener “Call Out to Me” could be Blonde on Blonde-Dylan as done by Beachwood Sparks, piano and guitar lines chasing a compelling descending chord pattern to capture the narrator’s laid-back demise “on a bed of smoke.” On both “No Intentions” and the title track, he cranks up the tension with cathartic bridges using Al Kooper-like organ for fuel. There’s a tendency to tag “Ryan Adams” on any Triangle rocker accenting his sad songs with country and folk elements, but Desert never undercuts its dark themes with self-pity. And so far, Gustafson’s proved he’s a damn fine songwriter, too. — JS

Dear Blanca
Talker
(Post-Echo)

In recent years, old-school slacker rock has found new life, bands like Yuck and Cymbals Eat Guitars picking up the playbook passed down by bands like Pavement and Archers of Loaf and putting their own twist on those cherished sounds. At first blush, Talker, the debut LP from Columbia’s Dear Blanca, seems an obvious extension of this trend. The anxious snarl of leader Dylan Dickerson, once the drummer of the post-rock outfit Pan, packs claustrophobic aggression, and the songs’ dryly distorted riffs invoke a similar mood. But true to Dickerson’s espoused influences — The Minutemen and Townes Van Zandt — there’s more to Dear Blanca as the band indulges in bittersweet melodies, robust horn charts, and achingly personal songwriting. There’s nothing slack about it. —JL

The Kingsbury Manx
Bronze Age
(Odessa)

For 14 years, Chapel Hill’s Kingsbury Manx have managed a purposeful and patient evolution. The band’s comfortable but exacting pop exudes a kind of organic precision, like ivy woven through white-picket lattices. But these polished players have learned a lot over the years. Bronze Age — the Manx’s sixth LP and first in four years — reveals the full breadth of their mastery. The album includes a new element, Minimoog synthesizer, which matches coarsely distorted guitars on standouts like “In the Catacombs,” achieving a gritty sound that’s both polite and spacey; think indie pop as informed by Ray Harryhausen. The brisk and beautiful “Handsprings” is a jaunt of smooth harmony and tinkling piano, while the surging “Solely Bavaria” whirs with warming synthesizers and chugs with riffs that are rugged but rigorous, a manicured answer to Chapel Hill’s indie rock legacy. Bronze Age isolates and highlights the diversity of the Manx’s talents, stripping away the group’s occasional tedium and delivering some of its most thrilling songs to date. —JL

Deniro Farrar
The Patriarch
(self-released)

The ridiculously badass cover for Deniro Farrar’s new mixtape depicts Darth Vader dressed as a Pope, a pointed political jab and an embodiment of the N.C. hip-hop patriarch the Charlotte MC aspires to be. He’s not there yet, but the album proves that he has the potential. The beats inject the bone-chilling grime of Wu Tang classics with pointed synthesizer loops and aggressive syncopation, nodding to the past but clearly concerned with the future. Farar rarely seems to be pushing himself, but his charismatic confidence and luxuriously graveled flow make his mid-tempo ghetto histories feel profound. “These niggas out here singing like they on the choir,” he offers on “Snitches” as a choral sample emphasizes the morbid humor. He finds your lack of faith disturbing. —JL

Golden Gunn
Golden Gunn
(Three Lobed Recordings)

Sneaking in for RSD (and available digitally), this collab between HGM’s M.C. Taylor and Scott Hirsch and New York-based blues-guitar wiz Steve Gunn is loosely based around a Kerouacian character named “Dickie.” The nine tracks alternate between the two artists’ fingerprints but fold together in sublime fashion. “Vysehrad” slinks sexily into focus, synth and wah-wah guitar draping the acoustic melody in deliciously sticky textures. “The Sun Comes Up a Purple Diamond” digs a mile-wide, organ-washed groove that Gunn vamps over while conjuring a road vets’ weary sunrise. Horns buffer the greasy groove — part JJ Cale cocaine riff, part AWB low-rider rumble — of “From a Lincoln Continental,” while “Dickie’s Theme” corkscrews various guitar layers to morph trad-blues into psychedelic dreaminess. No mere throwaway, Golden Gunn cries out for future entries. —JS

The Holland Brothers
Dueling Devils
(Euramerican Soul)

The dual visions of twin brothers Mark and Michael Holland combined into a rootsy whole in 90s Triangle fixture Jennyanykind, locating somewhere between The Band, The Stones and Jon Spencer. Here, though, the Hollands divide the work down the middle and strip it back to the foundations: Michael’s five live songs feature originals, traditionals and old schoolers from Charlie Poole and WC Handy based loosely on Piedmont finger-picking; Mark’s five originals are rooted in Charley Patton’s Delta style. Michael’s sound like they were recorded by the Lomaxes; Mark’s exhibit higher fidelity, backing vox, hand-percussion and the occasional accent (harmonica, melodica), but they’re just as rough-hewn. Jennyanykind’s LPs had a tendency to wander, but here simplification reigns to the brothers’ overall benefit. —JS

Various Artists
Pet-Tich-Eye
(self-released)

An ambitious project striving to unite Triangle-based musicians, visual artists and nonprofits, the non-sonic aspects of Pet-Tich-Eye would take more than this blurb’s scant 100 words to explain. But the corresponding compilation is easy to enjoy. Featuring 10 songs written and performed by one-off triumvirates of area heavyweights, the selections are diverse and impressive. “East Coast/West Coast Time” reimagines the synth-lush arrangements once favored by The Rosebuds as the backdrop for Ivan Howard and Mount Moriah’s Heather McEntire to merge their sumptuous Southern coos. Better still is “Somewhere in Between (Breathe),” a stunning composition that uses imposing drones crafted by Horseback’s Jenks Miller and Megafaun’s Phil Cook to power Kane Smego’s smoldering spoken word. —JL

See also: Hearts & Plugs, Three Lobed Recordings, Paradise of Bachelors, and Sorry State Records

By Jordan Lawrence

The Foreign Exchange is a fitting name for the R&B duo of Phonte Coleman and Nicolay Rook. Respectively comprising a former member of Durham’s almost-famous rap group Little Brother and a Dutch-born, Wilmington-based producer, the collaboration famously took root on the hip-hop message board Okayplayer, leveraging their disparate talents to create modern and mercurial slow jams. Their 2004 debut, Connected, was constructed via e-mail and instant messenger. The two have often had meetings at a barbeque joint off I-40 equidistant to their respective homes. Their own creative bond is an unlikely connection, a stretch that somehow never strains their chemistry.

The Foreign Exchange Music — otherwise known as +FE Music — is the record label-end of their endeavor. But contrary to the random connection that fostered their collaboration, the imprint focuses on home-grown relationships, drawing mostly from the musicians that rotate through their eminently professional touring band.

“We have kind of taken the label and looked at it a little differently than most labels do,” Nicolay says. “It’s not like we have a P.O. box where people can send music, and we’re looking through that to find new talent. Anybody that’s ever been on one of our releases, it’s always started with a personal connection. There’s always something that brings us together. As a result, the roster is very authentic. It’s not a large roster, but it’s all people that we have a very personal as well as working relationship with.”

+FE was created five years ago with one goal in mind: releasing the second Foreign Exchange LP. Connected was handled by the Britain-based BBE, but Phonte and Nicolay decided to take things into their own hands for the follow-up. The gamble paid off as 2008’s Leave It All Behind garnered a “Best Urban/Alternative Performance” Grammy nomination for the song “Daykeeper.” Flush with the freedom of running their own imprint and suddenly blessed with a successful brand, +FE — which also includes director of operations Aimee Flint, with whom Nicolay briefly attempted to start a label a few years earlier — slowly began expanding.

Nicolay’s subsequent solo effort, City Lights Volume 2: Shibuya, was the label’s second release in 2009, but they soon expanded, incrementally increasing their output — now sitting at about three albums a year — as they began to include the works of collaborators and friends. The inherent connection to The Foreign Exchange’s music provides an easy marketing angle for each release.

“It gives us an advantage that we don’t have in other areas,” Nicolay explains, noting that a breakout hit for +FE sells between 25,000 and 50,000 copies. “There are other labels out there that have much bigger and wider resources. Because we are a smaller organization, we have to really think outside of the box. The people that are on our label, you will see them live with us. Outside of their own music and outside of the context of their own releases, you will see them on-stage with The Foreign Exchange, and that’s the most visible artist of everybody who’s associated with it. We are very consciously able to put shine directly to the people whose music we’re trying to promote.”

As one might guess given their close association with Nicolay and Phonte, much of the +FE roster lines up well with the outfit’s sound: The lively productions of the Maryland-based Zo! are supremely smooth despite their experimental edge; the sensual coos of L.A.’s Sy Smith are paired with techno-lush beats. But they also indulge their artists’ diversity. Raleigh’s Jeanne Jolly, a powerful singer with a keen country acumen before she began touring with The Foreign Exchange, released Angels, her generously twanged first LP, on +FE late last year. Accommodating the range of talent in their collective without alienating their core fanbase is the label’s never-ending balancing act.

“The Foreign Exchange itself is more or less the thing that got us started,” Flint says. “It’s the thing that gave us the opportunity to do what it is that we’re doing now.”

See also: Hearts & Plugs, Three Lobed Recordings, Paradise of Bachelors, and The Foreign Exchange Music

By Bryan C. Reed

Daniel Lupton is a reluctant tastemaker. “That’s a weird position to be in, and I’m not sure I like it,” he says. But for more than half a decade, Lupton’s Sorry State Records has been documenting — and perhaps influencing — the shape of punk today.

When a cursory glance at recent rock-critic raves finds accolades for punk-rooted acts like Fucked Up, The Men and White Lung, it’s not a stretch to wonder what’s been brewing in the less visible scenes that spawned them. And from his Carrboro house, Lupton has kept a keen eye on the development and divisions of hardcore. Sorry State’s first release, the Nuclear Tomorrow EP by Richmond crossover resurrectionists Direct Control, is still the label’s best seller (with figures Lupton estimates at 3,500), but it’s no longer indicative of the sound of Sorry State — or of contemporary punk.

“My tastes have always been wide, but that’s where the energy was in the scene for a few years. That’s what was exciting: pure hardcore,” Lupton says. “That’s not what’s exciting right now. Straight-up hardcore bands feel regressive and boring. It’s not what I listen to when I’m at the gym or driving around in my car.”

Sure enough, the label’s more recent output has varied wildly, embracing irreverent post-punk (Whatever Brains, Hygiene), edgy pop (Rough Kids, The Love Triangle) and burly metallic hardcore (Stripmines, No Tomorrow); and giving the genre room for more subtle evolution. Mob Rules injected shades of prog into blunt-force powerviolence on 2011’s The Donor; Double Negative continued to add textural nuance and rhythmic agility through their recent Hardcore Confusion EP series. Joint D≠ and Brain F≠ — both led, in part, by guitarist Nick Goode — share a nervous energy and trebly guitar tone that edges toward garage rock.

Unsurprisingly, the broader scene has started to take notice. Sorry State has grown enough to attract licensing offers and regional festival inquiries, and to require a proper legal incorporation, and even the occasional use of part-time employees. Lupton has also diversified the label’s output, adding a printing press for T-shirts and limited-edition upgrades for his almost entirely vinyl releases. “Doing a record label, a big part of it is having an excuse to do art,” Lupton says. “I want to push that further.” Sorry State records are usually released with special first-run editions including a screen-printed obi-strip and colored vinyl. He hopes to extend the idea further, adding extra-limited options that are even more handmade and unique.

Sorry State has already become financially sustainable, and Lupton hopes to make 2013 his first year of “on-the-books profitability.” Still, Lupton’s punk rock ethos comes first. “I think about how this gets viewed as a company through a capitalist lens,” he says. “And that idea of growth is really bizarre — the kind of growth that makes stock prices go up or whatever — the idea that a company has to grow constantly to be valued in a capitalist system. You can’t just have a company that makes the amount of money it’s going to make and earns at a good margin and stays the same size…I want to be more efficient, I want to waste less.”

That desire extends to the label’s output. After a February blitz featuring new LPs from L.A.’s Rough Kids, Chicago’s Broken Prayer and Charlotte’s Nö Pöwer, as well as a 7-inch from Double Negative, Lupton says he’s slowing down. “The only record I’ve agreed to put out recently is an LP by The Love Triangle,” he says. “I say no to everything, but sometimes stuff comes along that you just can’t say no to.”

He even passed on an offer from Massachusetts hardcore icons Out Cold, whose singer died shortly after recording one final album. “I told them I couldn’t put it out before the fall, so it’s going to come out on a different label,” Lupton says.

“That’s what I tell bands now when they write me, ‘I just turned down Out Cold.’”

See also: Hearts & Plugs, Paradise of Bachelors, The Foreign Exchange Music, and Sorry State Records

By Linnie Greene

On the table in front of Cory Rayborn is a beautifully packaged LP. The cover — a matchbook style sleeve with a silky screenprint of a cowboy on horseback — is a perfect fit for the wandering acoustic melodies found within. Rayborn gazes down and remembers assembling it by hand, along with several hundred of its counterparts, as the deadline loomed for last year’s Record Store Day.

“Despite thinking I had planned everything super early, I ended up driving things to (the distributor) the last possible day,” he recalls, visibly tensing at the memory. The record, Eight Trails, One Path, unites several of the label’s heavyweight regulars — Steve Gunn, Lee Ranaldo, William Tyler, and others, artists with names that record nerds bandy like well-polished swords.

The founder of High Point’s Three Lobed Recordings, Rayborn, a business lawyer by day, lines the inside of his home with the fruits of his labor. In a basement-turned-warehouse-turned-listening lounge, he stores the limited-run pressings of artists like Jack Rose, MV & EE, Sun City Girls, and Bardo Pond, the band whose 10-inch marked the label’s first release in the summer of 2000.

Three Lobed was built on Rayborn’s own status as a collector: “I want to put things out and have things look the way they’d look if I wanted to buy them,” he says. That means heavily weighted vinyl, pristine sound, and small runs of albums whose contributors run from relative unknowns to eye-poppers such as Glacial’s On Jones Beach, a 2012 LP of bagpipe-infused experiments created by Lee Ranaldo, David Watson and Tony Buck.

As such, balancing between a niche of vinyl fanatics and the general public has been important to the label’s longevity. “I don’t want to ever make things that are so small that people get frustrated and end up not getting them, but I don’t want to make them so big that people are like, ‘Oh, I can get this anytime, because it’ll be around for awhile,’” Rayborn explains.

The time it takes to move product from his basement warehouse to a fan’s home or neighborhood record store is Rayborn’s best indicator of success — a year from initial pressing to selling out means copies don’t gather too much basement dust, but fans still aren’t forced to hunt a release down in a matter of weeks.

Well-schooled by his day job in the pitfalls of business ownership, Rayborn makes sure the label is self-contained, reinvesting the profits of each release back into the next project. His financial successes materialize in release after release, a self-perpetuating model that’s served Three Lobed well.

But to say that this is a labor of love would belittle the boxes of vinyl stacked in the basement, and transform something physical into a wispy ideal. Rayborn’s work with Three Lobed is nothing if not real. The screen-printed matchbook packaging on the table before him testifies to that fact.

Calling him a hobbyist is equally trivializing. No release nails that point home better than 2011’s1 multi-LP box set, Not The Spaces You Know, But Between Them. The belated and star-studded celebration of Three Lobed’s first 10 years features Sonic Youth, Eternal Tapesty, Wooden Wand and others, and quickly sold through its 1000 copies.

But business-centric words like “entrepreneur” belie the chances he’s taken on albums from relative unknowns, or the label’s very ethos — that nothing is a cash cow, that the records worth doing are worth the ephemera of letter-press packaging or hand-numbering, despite the inefficiencies.

Fellow label-owners’ and fans’ response to that 2011 box set gave Rayborn a chance to contemplate the esteem his enterprise has garnered. “People talked to me about the label side of things; like, ‘I started this label a few years ago, and I really liked what you did,’” he says. “It’s been kind of weird the last few years realizing that I’ve created this big thing that I didn’t realize I’d created.”

Despite —or because of — Rayborn’s insistence on products worthy of repeated spins and a display place on a shelf, Three Lobed’s finances are solid. Collectors have given the label sea legs through a recession and the era of the mp3. Three Lobed gives the people what they want —even if that happens to be a 10-minute bagpipe instrumental on a limited vinyl run.

See also: Three Lobed Recordings, Paradise of Bachelors, The Foreign Exchange Music, and Sorry State Records

By Ballard Lesemann

It’s been less than a year since Charleston’s Dan McCurry put a simple business model into practice and began releasing records and promoting them under the name Hearts & Plugs. As a classically trained pianist and leader of the sleek pop-rock group Run Dan Run, McCurry had years of experience playing music, but none when it came to the machinations of a label. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t taking Hearts & Plugs seriously.

“I want to take it to a legitimate level,” he says. “I’m in the process now of setting up an LLC, getting tax IDs, and working out all of the business details. It’ll all be in place this spring and summer.”

Hearts & Plugs’ humble beginnings stemmed from Run Dan Run self-releasing its albums a few years ago. In 2007, Hearts & Plugs was a low-key collective of musical and visual artists, including musician/visual artist Nick Jenkins and songwriter Ash Hopkins (currently based in Chapel Hill). The name Hearts & Plugs came from a handmade T-shirt design Jenkins created for Run Dan Ran.

After an expensive radio campaign for Run Dan Run’s 2011 album, Normal, McCurry decided to dedicate more time, effort, and money into developing Hearts & Plugs. By the early part of last year he’d chosen to pursue it as a serious independent label. McCurry reached out to a handful of young acts he liked and respected, including Columbia-based electro-folk outfit The Lovely Few, Charleston’s own reverb-drenched pop-rock combo Elim Bolt, and fellow hometown up-and-comer Brave Baby.

Their agreements were informal and simple. Hearts & Plugs helped each band as needed, overseeing whatever design, manufacturing, or recording issues that required additional resources. The bands on the H&P roster funded most of their studio recordings and CD duplications themselves, although McCurry has engineered many of their songs at his home studio — dubbed Apartment A and nestled in downtown Charleston. McCurry’s girlfriend, Megan Elger, handles much of the design work and band photography for the label, also under the Apartment A moniker.

As a Charleston-based studio engineer and producer, Brave Baby drummer Ryan Zimmerman has also been integral in the making of Hearts & Plugs’ recent releases. He engineered and produced half of the songs on Elim Bolt’s Nude South and all of the songs on Brave Baby’s Forty Bells. Despite their relatively simple studio set-ups, Zimmerman and McCurry were able to create high-quality productions with clean, radio-ready sounds at a very low cost.

“Making these albums has been like earning an associate’s degree in rock recording,” McCurry says. “The nice thing about making these albums in-house so far is that we’ve developed pretty decent studio skills, and we know we can make professional-sounding stuff on the cheap. It’s been a key resource.”

As a result of this emphasis on in-house production, an elegant and modernistic Hearts & Plugs pop-rock style has begun to take shape. Elim Bolt brings a raw and rough-edged update on 50s pop, while Brave Baby’s synth-tinged guitar-pop comes with emotive fireworks and a cleverly arranged modern sound.

“I’m always listening for whether or not a band has strong songs,” McCurry says. “Even though Hearts & Plugs is only beginning to exist, we know what we’re looking for: something very current with a caliber of sound somewhere between indie rock, garage rock, and dream pop.”

Despite their low-budget situation, Hearts & Plugs’ bands have already garnered high praise from critics across the country. Elim Bolt’s Nude South landed on Shuffle‘s list of the 25 best 2012 LPs, and PopMatters described the collection as “seven songs that are all richly textured and informed by seemingly the entire canon of American music.” Brave Baby’s Forty Bells has also earned glowing reviews since its release this winter.

Thus far, Hearts & Plugs features a gallery solely comprised of S.C.-based artists, but McCurry doesn’t want the label to be Palmetto-centric.

“When I see somebody of a certain quality that I feel is relative to what we’re doing, I’d love to have them on board,” McCurry says, adding that he plans to sign two or three more bands before the end of the year.

If 2012 was a year of baby steps, investment and trial-and-error for the label, 2013 could be a year of brand establishment, creative collaboration, and even some mild profits. McCurry knows it will require more time, effort, and funding, but he’s intent on making the investment pay off — financially and artistically.

“From the beginning, I’ve been determined to make Hearts & Plugs more than just a label,” he says. “With Sub Pop, Saddle Creek, and other reputable indie labels, they had something going early on that was different. They might not have had much money in their infancy, but people related to the bands, the quality of the music, and the image.”