Franklin’s Crow vs. Hawk and Crowhop unite tonight at Riverblaze Bakery for what is rumored to be the last Crowhop show on this side of the Atlantic Ocean for a while. Free show at 8pm.

Meanwhile in Sylva, Lily Savitsky opens an art show at Signature Brew Coffee at 8pm, followed by a performance from Ukele Me Down (a rather radical departure by former members of Elbow Deep). Also free!

So whichever side of Cowee you’re on, you’ve got Friday night plans.

Inside Dean’s you’ll find shelves stacked with CDs and vinyl records, antique furniture and random curios. But most likely your attention will be immediately grabbed by Williams’ artwork, hanging canvas-atop-canvas on the exposed brick walls. Ghoulish faces, serpentine figures nestled in labyrinths of geometric shapes, haunting images of devils and angels, dark wintery woods and olives with eyes that seem to wink at their own inexplicability loom from paintings stacked up to the high ceiling.

A Man About Town
If you try to view Dean Williams as a backwoods novelty or a misplaced artist living in loathed seclusion in a small mountain town, you will misunderstand him entirely.

“A lot of [tourists] are kind of shocked when they first find the shop,” Williams notes of his Andrews location. “They tell me ‘You should be in Asheville!’ And I say ‘If I was in Asheville you wouldn’t have found me.’”

The town of Andrews is very much a part of Williams’ identity and it is clear Williams has no interest in living anywhere else. His family moved to Andrews in 1968 when he was six years old. His wife is a teacher at the elementary school; his eldest daughter lives in the town’s oldest standing house; his storefront has been on Main Street for ten years now; and he’s already bought his cemetery plot.

Williams began drawing at an early age, a passion he attributes to “dealing with the isolation” of “always being sick in the winter time and stuck in the house.” When he was eighteen Williams began painting. By age nineteen he had sold his first piece and decided to start showing his work. At the time Andrews did not have an art gallery, so in order to have a show Williams says he had to “just make it happen.” His first show hung in the Andrews Public Library.

“I think I just walked in and said ‘Can I hang some art in here sometime?’” Williams recalls.

These days, Williams’ work has been featured in a number of shows throughout western North Carolina. On the day I visit Williams several of his pieces, along with work by his daughter Brittney, are hanging in a show opening that night at the Andrews Valleytown Arts and Historical Society building, one block down from Williams’ store front on Main Street. The building, purchased by the society through grant funding and community donations, was originally a Baptist church, constructed in 1923.

“I really like the idea of one thing becoming another thing,” Williams notes as we tour the space where local artwork is displayed under modern gallery lighting juxtaposed to the high tin ceilings, stained glass windows and wooden railings of the old church. Volunteer staff pace around the space as they set up for the exhibit’s opening night and a fundraising dinner for which they had expected to sell only fifty tickets, though that number quickly doubled.

Though Williams is clearly happy to participate in the art society fundraiser, by choice many of Williams’ shows have been in less traditional venues such as restaurants and offices.

“I don’t dislike art galleries but I would rather have my work in places where people don’t expect to see original art; whether it’s a blues club or a butcher shop or barber shop, it doesn’t matter,” Williams explains. “I don’t like the idea of art being esteemed as something that can only be in a gallery or a museum. I think it should be where people are on a daily basis.”

One such place is The Daily Grind, an independently-owned coffee shop, where Brittney works and also has art displayed. Like Dean’s and the art society building, The Daily Grind is another converted space in Andrews’ downtown. At one point it was a body repair shop and splatters of automobile paint still cover the walls along with Williams and Brittney’s paintings.

“Those two back there are mine,” Brittney says pointing to her canvases as we tour the café. “And the weird African acid-trip looking ones are my dad’s.”

At age 20, Brittney is a modest and friendly girl her father describes as “a reluctant artist.” She has shown in several shows with her father, but admits she wouldn’t pursue displaying her work without his urging. Many of her subjects are musicians, including Tom Waits, The White Stripes and Ian Curtis whom she depicts in her pieces on display in the old church. Like her dad, Brittney is a prolific and largely self-taught artist. She “took only two years of art classes and hated it,” but produces sketches nearly every day, often during down time at the coffee shop.

“I think she has the same fiber that I have that would never allow her to pursue art in a directed way,” Williams says of his daughter. “It’s more of an organic way where she’ll have to discover it herself.”

As a young artist in a town where the eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-old demographic is almost nonexistent, Brittney is in a very small minority. She can think of only two other people she went to school with who had any interest in art. Unlike her father, Brittney doesn’t see herself staying in Andrews and may choose to explore a career in tattooing or horror movie make-up. She plans to continue with her art, doing more painting and, like her father, veering away from realistic depictions in favor of what she calls “twists on reality.”

“My dad could draw some amazing things that looked like photographs,” Brittney notes. “There was a picture I found of a cowboy that looked so realistic, like he drew every single pore. But now he does olives with faces. I think that’s pretty neat.”

We’re Out of Peanut Butter
Save the space reserved for works by Brittney, nearly every inch of the record store’s immense walls is covered in Williams’ paintings. In fact, Williams has so many paintings that many more are stored in corners or remain in his old store front until he can find the space for them. He estimates that he’s completed six or seven hundred pieces, sometimes working on several at one time.

In many ways, Williams is a paradigm of an outsider artist. He not only didn’t attend art school, he never studied art at all, dropping out of Andrews High in the tenth grade. Instead of using traditional canvases, Williams paints on found materials, particularly plywood scavenged from alleys or donated by friends. Many of his paintings have other found objects attached to them—pieces of wooden knick-knacks, bottle caps, nails, and other reused bric-a-bracs.

“Sometimes I wish I had gone to art school just so I could learn how to manipulate materials, how to use certain techniques,” Williams notes. “But I think it can also be healthy not to have that knowledge. Sometimes making mistakes is a discovery in itself.”

In contrast to his affable and straight-forward nature in discussing almost anything else, Williams is reluctant to discuss his art, comparing it to the act of ruining a magic trick.

“I find it difficult to talk about my art. Have you noticed that?” Williams says with a laugh. “I don’t like it when someone comes in, looks at my art and says ‘What does this mean?’ My answer is usually ‘What does it mean to you?’ Or when people ask ‘What were you thinking when you did that?’ I don’t know. I might have been thinking ‘We’re out of peanut butter.’”

Williams doesn’t sketch out most of his paintings ahead of time, but rather “draws with a paint brush” on the canvas. He admits he usually doesn’t know what direction the piece will go.

“I start with eyes a lot,” Williams notes, pointing to a particular canvas where a group of complex geometric shapes are lumped together on a ghoulish face in a surreal version of an eye. “But sometimes my eyes end up being something else entirely.”

Williams frequently uses the eerie image of coffins, specifically toe-pincher coffins because he “saw them in old cowboy movies” and “liked their shape and wondered about their origin.” Many of his paintings have words or phrases written on them, sometimes discreetly, sometimes prominently, though Williams says he never knows when he’s “going to go that route.” Some of his paintings feature bees, which Williams attributes to a childhood fascination with the creatures. And of course there are the olives, though Williams assures “there is no deep meaning there other than I like olives.”

African Acid Trip
Though he may be cagey when discussing the meaning of his art, Williams will open up about the greatest influence on his work—music, in particular the blues.

“I’m more influenced by music than I am by art or other artists,” Williams says. “I don’t look at other artists that much.”

As a teenager, Williams discovered the blues through the genre’s influence on rock bands such as The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. But growing up in Andrews, Williams music collection was limited to what he could purchase at the five and dime store. There were no record stores in town, and the best place to buy records was twenty minutes away in Murphy, at a bigger dime store.

“Back then, dime stores in small towns just didn’t carry blues records,” Williams recalls. “I discovered blues like most white people did, which is the wrong way. You hear the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin and then find out later that they listened to Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. In my opinion, the Stones and Zeppelin are great but there’s nothing like the old blues singers.”

Blues imagery in Williams’ work shows in depictions of sad looking spirits holding guitars and whiskey bottles, through images of juke boxes and vinyl records, and through the lyrics that dance along some of Williams’ canvases. Scribbled on one painting entitled “Bob’s Chicken Neck Blues” are the words “Support blues artists on the Music Maker label” alongside a biblical reference: “And the serpent was crafty.”

“A lot of people ask me about religious themes,” Williams says. “I’ve never really done religious themes, but I use a lot of religious mythology to make other statements. I do a lot of angels and devils and pitchforks. But that goes back to blues music. That’s a recurring theme in blues music—conflict between good and evil. A lot of blues musicians were told they needed to play gospel music or they would go to hell. To me, gospel and the blues are flip sides of the same coin, like good and evil.”

Williams’ fascination with the blues led to his fascination with African culture, and his work also shows a heavy influence of traditional African art which can be seen in the shapes of his geometric figures, his preference for abstract rather than realistic depictions, and, Williams points out, his emphasis on faces.

“That’s why I do a lot of faces and why I don’t do paintings of particular people,” Williams says. “It’s more like painting spirits and occasionally one of them will become somebody.”

There are other symbols in Williams’ work which he admits are unsettling to some. There are images—fried chicken, beer bottles, watermelons, and pickup trucks to name a few— that could be seen as pejorative depictions of southern culture, particularly African-American southern culture.

“A lot of the themes I do connected with blues music and the whole culture are what people would call stereotypical,” Williams says. “I think it’s sad that people find that insulting. They’ve been trained that if you noticed that black people are different you’re a racist. I don’t see it that way. To me these things are part of the magic of their culture. Just noticing things about a culture doesn’t mean you hate it.”

Dean’s
Dean’s is the first specialty record store in Andrews and the only one in the surrounding area. A lot of William’s business comes from Murphy and Hayesville, as Williams notes Andrews is not big enough to support the store. Yet despite being smack in the middle of a small town whose Main Street is a testament to the high failure rate of small businesses, Williams’ store is surviving.

This may in part be due to the store’s focus. Williams’ business strategy is to offer things not available at Wal-Mart and other corporate stores. Williams himself attributes the demise of Andrews’ Main Street to Wal-Mart, noting that “it’s almost like they put the ply-wood in the windows themselves.”

“When I was a teenager, all these stores were full,” Williams notes. “You rarely saw an empty building for any length of time.”

Dean’s specializes in Afro-beat compilations, vinyl records, and of course, obscure blues albums. Ultimately, Williams store is a specialty blues store, if for no other reason than the blues are where his passion lies and what he most enjoys selling.

“I’m not going to be a fascist as far as dictating what music people can buy,” Williams says. “But what I enjoy the most is selling something that someone buys because they hear it and they like it. If I can turn someone on to John Lee Hooker, I feel like ‘Well, job done for the day.’”

People come to Dean’s to find records they won’t find anywhere else, and to talk to Williams about the music playing on the store’s stereo, music they probably haven’t heard before. For a time one of these people was the late Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse, who had set up his recording studio, Static King, in Andrews a block away from Dean’s.

“The first time Mark came in he looked like a guy who had rolled off the back of a bus,” Williams remembers. “He came in and usually I at least try to make eye contact and say hi, but he kind of avoided that. He looked at records for about thirty minutes and then just left. And I thought ‘What a jerk!’ The next time he came in I was playing The Replacements. He said ‘Is that The Replacements? I got to play with them one time.’ I asked ‘Were you in a band?’ and he kind of mumbled ‘Sparklehorse.’”

Linkous returned to Dean’s from time to time during the years he spent in Andrews, and once brought in Brian Burton, better known by his moniker Danger Mouse, the producer of The Grey Album and one-half of the duo called Gnarls Barkley.

“I didn’t know who he was, but I knew he was special by the way Mark was treating him like royalty,” Williams laughs. “He bought two big stacks of records, the most obscure things I had, things I thought ‘Gee, I’ll never sell this; I should just give it away.’ I saw him in Spin magazine about three weeks after that and thought ‘Oh, I know that guy.’”

Burton and Linkous recorded parts of their iconic album, Dark Night of the Soul, in Andrews. It was the last album Linkous completed before his suicide in March 2010. Williams shows me the empty building that once housed Static King, speaking of Linkous in the same warm tones he uses when discussing his daughter’s paintings. It’s important to note that though Williams’ affection for Linkous is clear, their acquaintanceship is not something Williams’ has ever publically advertised. There are no signed photographs of Linkous in Dean’s, undoubtedly out of respect to the musician who was known to be private and reserved. Williams’ notes the “last thing” he would have ever wanted to do during Linkous’ time in Andrews was expose him to a fame-thirsty public.

“I got to know him pretty well, but with him being here five years, he was still like a distant stranger,” Williams says. “If somebody else came in [the store] he would find a way to exit pretty quickly. Talking to him was like feeding berries to a deer. If you move too fast, he’s gone.”

Apart from being a specialty records store, Dean’s has also served as a renegade music venue in a town that Williams emphatically notes “needs more music venues.” Dean’s once hosted a local rock band in need of a place to play, despite lacking the permits required for such an event.

“They asked me if they could play [in front of the store] and I said, ‘Well there’s two ways to do it: we could either find out if we need to get a permit and plan a date for it, or we could do it this Saturday. You’ll probably get shut down but we can just see what happens,” Williams recalls.

The band set up, electric guitars and all, on the street in front of Dean’s but were quickly shut down by Andrews police after multiple noise complaints. Realizing lack of a permit only restricted street performance, Williams “pushed the shelves against the walls” and moved the band inside his shop.

“It’s like the Beatles playing on the rooftop,” Williams laughs. “The police thought they were going to harass the Beatles but didn’t realize that’s what they wanted. It would have been kind of boring if the police hadn’t shown up. It was the same here. It made a better story.”

Everything Is For Sale
Despite the fact that Williams sells most of his paintings through his store, he is reluctant to talk about his art with visitors, admitting that “at least half the time” he lets them leave without saying who created the art on his walls.

“Usually I don’t tell people it’s my art when they come in,” Williams says. “They’ll say ‘Is this a local artist?’ And I’ll say, ‘Well, yeah he’s local.’ I like to be a fly on the wall.”

It is important to note, should you ever find yourself in Williams’ store, that all the work in the store is for sale—Williams will never hold back a painting out of personal attachment.

“I don’t understand it when I meet artists and they say ‘This one is not for sale; I like it too much.’” Williams says. “If I like something, I want to pass it on more than if I don’t like it.”

This is perhaps not surprising for a man who favors showing his art in accessible public spaces and loves introducing customers to obscure musicians. For Williams the music he loves is meant to be heard; the art he creates is meant to be seen.

“I’m the same way about records,” Williams says. “There are always going to be records that I want to find, that I want to come across. But once I find them the thrill is gone and I want to pass them on.”

———

See more of Williams’ extensive catalog of work (as well as works by Brittney) at deanwilliamsart.com… or visit the store at 982 Main Street in Andrews.

Far-western NC is about to have a very musical Halloween weekend. To wit:

1) Prog-punks Solito will play a Rocky Horror Picture Show-themed set on Friday at Tuckasegee Tavern in Bryson City.

2) If you prefer to be simultaneously edified and terrified, an ensemble featuring members of the legendary Moolah Temple String Band and The Imperative will be providing a creepy soundtrack for the 1922 silent classic Nosferatu (pictured), showing at 8pm Saturday at the Jackson County Public Library.

3) Elbow Deep will provide a punk-rock horror show Saturday at 10pm at Guadalupe Cafe in Sylva.

4) And of course PMA will be mellowing out the 3rd Annual Cullowheen at Avant Garden on Saturday night.

Friday night: Noonday Sun — featuring the impressively busy stylings of official Sylva guitar heroes Tommy Dennison and Chris Cooper — blows up Soul Infusion starting at 8:30pm. As Cooper astutely puts it, that’s “approximately 1,321,483 notes for $3.00.” A true volume discount!

It’s also Mr. Dennison’s birthday celebration, so buy him a beer or something.

On Saturday, Cullowhee’s Avant Garden hosts the Cullowhee Local Art and Craft Show, featuring, presumably, the works of artists and craftspeople from the Cullowhee area. Admission is free, and there’s no telling what wonders and/or horrors visitors might encounter.

UPDATE: Admission may in fact be two dollars, because there will be live music of some sort. The grapevine yields no further information on the matter.

Joining them on Friday will be Wyla, an Asheville-based band that’s been generating quite a bit of that coveted “blog buzz” with their unusual brand of guitar pop. (Read their recent write-up in Shuffle Magazine here.)

Just guessing, but you probably want to check this one out.

Click here to view the Facebook event.

WCU and a brigade of lawyers are trying to wrangle the rights to broadcast at 95.3FM, which the FCC has tentatively awarded to the Sylva-based environmentalist group The Canary Coalition.

The Smoky Mountain News has done some interesting reporting on the issue from the Coalition’s side here and from the University’s side here. Of some interest to us is the notion that “local musicians [could be] featured” under the Coalition’s plan for the frequency, whereas WCU primarily hopes to expand coverage of its sports teams.

Our take: In a just world, WCU’s piss-poor use of the frequency they’ve already got would be grounds to deny them another swath of the radiation spectrum. “Power 90.5″ is a glorified Clear Channel training facility and an aesthetically bankrupt betrayal of the very idea of college radio.* For WCU to claim, as it does in the SMN article, that its programming is in any way “unique” or “locally-originated” is laughable.

It’s not a just world, of course. Fortunately no one listens to the radio anymore.

* This seems like a good time to mention that Two Hours With Ory is a near-miraculous exception to everything written above.

The Power at Absolem's Hookah Spot

File under “things Quiet should have covered but didn’t”: The Power will be playing their final show tonight (9/2) at Bubacz’s Signature Brew Coffee in downtown Sylva.

“And we in no way endorse USDA organic standards!” Bigelow continues. “Buy local from someone you know! We support the Jackson County Farmer’s Market—because we’re for real!”

At six foot four, with a distinctive baritone voice and seemingly permanent smile, Adam Bigelow is one of Jackson County’s most recognizable local musicians. He may also be one of the busiest. He performs every Tuesday night at Guadalupe Café’s “Old Timey Music Jam” and is also the bass player for local groups The Dan River Drifters, The Imperative, and Cooking with Quanta. In the last two weeks alone Bigelow has played eleven gigs, with several more still to go.

“It’s been a whirlwind because I’ve got school too,” Bigelow notes. “April was the busiest month. The busiest month I’ve ever been in. And you know, I’m really enjoying it.”

“Musician” is only one of Adam Bigelow’s many roles. He may be just as quickly recognized for his work in several Jackson County community and conservation groups. But apart from being a self-professed “plant nerd,” a rock and roll evangelist, and an active community member, very soon Adam Bigelow will have a new title—40-year-old college graduate.

On Saturday, May 7th, Bigelow will receive his bachelor’s in environmental sciences from Western Carolina University, an achievement that will be celebrated that night with a barrage of musical performances hosted at Sylva’s Guadalupe Café and featuring every single one of Bigelow’s current bands. The event, jokingly dubbed “Bigaroo,” will commence at 6:30pm and run until the early hours of the morning.

“I’m starting to get giddy,” Bigelow says, all smiles.

—-

Thursday evening finds a bare-footed Bigelow at downtown Sylva’s Community Garden “learning a hard lesson about winter ground cover,” as he struggles to rid his plot of some stubborn winter wheat. The Garden supplies organically grown produce to The Community Table, which serves meals to Jackson County residents in need. Every Thursday Bigelow coordinates a volunteer workday, but this particular Thursday also marks Bigelow’s last day of classes at WCU.

“This is exactly where I want to be right now,” he says. “In my happy spot.”

A native of Hampton, Virginia, Bigelow moved to Sylva from Goldsboro, North Carolina at age 22 intending to study radio and television production at Southwestern Community College, though these plans quickly changed.

“I dropped out of school, but fell in love with the mountains,” he says. “People come here, go to school, and leave. Or people grow up here, stay for a little while and leave. But then there are others that move here from elsewhere and say, ‘This place is amazing. Why would you want to live anywhere else?’ And they stay.”

These days Bigelow is involved with many community efforts, mostly centered on environmental conservation. This is his fifth season at the Community Garden, where he serves as an advisory committee member, assists volunteers, and, he proudly points out, makes the compost. He also serves on the advisory committee for the Cullowhee Revitalization Effort, is an “engaged participant” in the Jackson County Smart Roads Alliance, works with the Highlands Native Plants Conference, and is a member of the steering committee for the Cullowhee Native Plants Conference, which he calls his “proudest honor to date.”

“Unfortunately, I have to credit Wal-Mart with sparking my interest in plants,” Bigelow says. He worked in the garden center at the Franklin Wal-Mart for a few years before working for a local landscaping company and taking certification courses in horticulture. Seeking to “just learn more,” Bigelow returned to school and earned an Associate of Applied Sciences degree from Haywood Community College, an experience that he credits with turning him from “a person who liked plants into a horticulturist.”

“I never thought I was going to get a real degree.” Bigelow says. Then, with a characteristic grin, he adds, “It’s an A.A.S. degree, but I wish it was an A.S.S. degree to match my B.S. degree. “

—

As far-fetched as attaining a degree may have seemed to Bigelow at one time, being a performing musician must have seemed even more unlikely.

“For most people, when you get to your mid twenties, if you haven’t already become an artist, the chances are you’re not going to do it,” he says. “It was really a response to trauma and life changes that put me into playing music.”

Despite taking guitar lessons as a child, Bigelow had abandoned his musical ambitions, perhaps in part due to a disastrous elementary school talent show where a failed attempt at performing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” resulted in his fleeing the stage in an episode of stage fright that would seem entirely out of character today.

Bigelow didn’t perform in front of an audience again until he was 27, when with only a few basic lessons from his roommate, he began playing electric bass.

“You know, bass always appealed to me,” he says. “The drummer is working real hard, the guitar player is working hard, the singer is sweating, but then you’d see the bass player in the back and he’s just playing like, ‘Yeah, this is cool.’ And I thought, ‘That is the instrument for me!’”

Bigelow’s first group was a four piece jam and cover band named Mayor Pressley after the local barber and self-proclaimed mayor of Cullowhee. The band lasted long enough for two gigs, both at a fraternity house in Cullowhee. “We were really bad,” Bigelow laughs.

But sometime around August 2001 (the actual founding date is apparently a matter of debate), Bigelow was approached by his friend Greg Walker about joining a new project.

“That second band was Cooking with Quanta,” Bigelow says. “I have been in that band ever since and I will be in that band for the rest of my life.”

Bigelow describes Quanta as an “unpretentious, unapologetically not breaking new ground, rock and roll band.” Consisting of Bigelow, guitar player Scott Burns, guitar player Neil Lippard, and Walker, who plays drums, Cooking with Quanta became a landmark of Sylva music, consistently packing out gigs at local venues. Stickers reading “We Still Quanta” or simply “Q” can be frequently spotted on car bumpers, lampposts and newspaper bins throughout Sylva and Cullowhee.

After four years of playing electric bass, Bigelow, through Burns, was introduced to what would become his trademark instrument, the acoustic upright bass.

“The first time I ever held one of those things, I knew that was my instrument,” Bigelow says. “I play electric bass and I love it. I love playing rock and roll. But the music I hear in my head is that upright. When I grow up I want to be a jazz bassist. Smoky, bee-bop jazz.”

With the upright bass, Bigelow started attending the Old Timey Music Jams, then hosted at Spring Street Café, where he began playing with fiddler Ian Moore and guitarist Hal Herzog. However, the immediate results were not entirely encouraging.

“I played that first night and I didn’t know any of the songs,” Bigelow recalls. “Hal denies this but I remember. At one point, he looked over at me and said, ‘Boy, when you don’t know a song you sure do play it loud.’”

“I left and I didn’t come back to the jam for six months,” Bigelow laughs. “I went home and practiced. But I came back.”

Bigelow has been playing with Moore and Herzog for three years now. The weekly jam sessions, or for Bigelow “weekly therapy sessions,” made Bigelow a bluegrass musician and led to his recruitment into the Dan River Drifters, a group of younger “pickers,” with whom Bigelow has been playing for over a year.

Bigelow’s most recent project is The Imperative, the brainchild of Sylva musician Luke Webb. Bigelow’s involvement in The Imperative stems from a long standing friendship with Webb. The pair first met at former Sylva night-spot Crossroads where Bigelow was the bartender and Webb was “a geeky kid whose parents would bring him to all the cool shows.” Despite some discussion of creating an acoustic Clash cover band, The Imperative is the first musical collaboration for Bigelow and Webb. The four-piece band plays an extremely unusual brand of alternative folk, which will add a distinct style to the already eclectic lineup planned for “Bigaroo.”

“I don’t like listening to only one type of music,” Bigelow says. “I don’t even like playing only one type of music. You know, four hours of bluegrass will drive you insane. Four hours of any one type of music will. These bands jump around into all different types of styles. It will be interesting to see how many different genres and styles are going to be represented in one night.”

Though “Bigaroo” is Adam Bigelow’s graduation party, it is also an open event. This is, in part, why the show is being hosted at Guadalupe Café—in order to make the music available to the public and to foster a sense of community.

“I think a local music scene has a big contribution to the community,” Bigelow says. “It used to be back in the day that everybody entertained each other. But then entertainment became this thing that only a privileged few could do—a talented elite, who could get on the radio or television. And suddenly entertainment became a thing that was provided for us and we were passive.”

“Unlike other places, more populated areas, and I put this in air quotes, ‘there’s not much to do around here.’ There’s not much entertainment being provided for us, so we entertain ourselves and we entertain each other. And that’s really what a music scene gets down to—making your friends dance. In other cultures, dancing is a part of every celebration and every lamentation. I boogie. And that’s one of the reasons I started playing music in the first place.”

“Boogieing” isn’t the only thing Bigelow feels musicians can contribute to a community.

“Yes, [music has] this base level of art and performance and giving people something to do, enjoy and get excited about. But more than that, artists are bell-ringers of our culture and our time.”

This mentality can be observed in many of the songs Bigelow performs or has helped write, including many of Cooking with Quanta’s tunes, which Bigelow describes as “60’s-esque protest songs.” Even between songs, Bigelow has been known to deliver impassioned speeches on environmental issues such as mountain-top coal mining or topsoil erosion.

“Right now our culture needs some bells rung! And [music] is a way to do that without just being preachy.”

—

Following a Tuesday night Old Timey Music Jam, Bigelow discusses the logistics of “Bigaroo” over a round of whiskey and cheap beers—including design ideas for flyers to promote the event.

“I want one of me being carried up the courthouse steps by a crowd of people. And I’m holding a goblet with like mead or something. Because that’s how this is going to end. At least, that’s how I’d like it to.”

A second possible idea? “You could just draw me as a homeless person, living on the street and busking with my bass. Because that might happen too.”

Like most recent and soon-to-be college graduates, Bigelow seems nervous about his future. He admits his post-college plans are undefined, and the task of paying back student loans is daunting. He jokes about entering into “an experiment in poverty,” and adds that at this point graduate school is not a favored option.

“I’d like to enjoy some life out of school,” he says, adding that his hope is to work in garden-based environmental education “teaching people how to create a sustainable future.”

Trepidatious though he may be about the long-term, Bigelow’s excitement for his upcoming event is apparent. For one, this is the culmination of his “20 year college plan,” a day he gets to celebrate with his family who will be visiting from Washington and Virginia. This includes his mother, who he is sure will love the Old Timey music, and his sister (or as Bigelow says, his “oldest friend”), who has never seen him play. Also, the event serves as an early birthday party, as six days later Bigelow will be turning forty.

“I planned ‘Bigaroo’ so I wouldn’t have to think about turning forty,” he says. “I’m turning forty on Friday the 13th. You couldn’t have planned that.”

But perhaps most importantly, “Bigaroo” will be an opportunity for Bigelow to simply spend an evening playing music with his friends. “I was thinking, ‘What do I want to do for my graduation?’ and I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do more than play music. I feel like a hack, like there’s no way I should be playing music in all these bands. But I love the fact that I’m a musician. I’m so lucky.”

“Bigaroo,” or the Adam Bigelow Gratuitous Graduation Celebration, will be held Saturday, May 7th at Guadalupe Café, starting at 6:30 pm.

Follow this link to view the Facebook event.

Lost Trail (from Raleigh) – minimalist post-rock

Tall Fields (from Highlands) – chilled-out, atmospheric electronica

Watch The Skies (of the Sylva diaspora) – heavy, harmonic post-rock

Note: Watch The Skies features Matt Heisler of Libianca, about whom you may have read in Quiet Magazine #4.

(Click the image at left to view the Facebook event.)

Unawarewulves, Go Devils, and the Killbillies
at the Party Zone on Saturday, April 30th.

Crow vs. Hawk, Angela Faye Martin and Red Collar
at the Carl Slagle Memorial Building on Friday, May 21st.

Macon County represent!