MURAL BY WILL TAYLOR, PHOTO BY DANIEL COSTON
One of the several
murals adorning the
club’s walls.
Powers and Billy Johnson have a big
impact on the atmosphere too. Powers generally works the door, and Johnson, when
he’s in the club, is the bouncer. Alcohol,
close quarters and testosterone do sometimes lead to trouble, Powers acknowledges,
but Johnson’s philosophy of bouncing is
basically preventive. He greets each person
who comes in the door, tries to convey
that they’ll be safe, and lets them know
they can have a good time. It probably
doesn’t hurt, though, that he looks every
inch the fullback — he’s a big, broad guy
with strong hands, massive upper arms and
a silver chain earring in his left ear. If tensions rise, he says, “I try to talk to people
rather than manhandle them, say, ‘Hey,
there’s more people here tonight besides
you.’”
Once the doors open, problems sometimes occur as they do in any club. A
patron gets disruptive, band members get
sick, vans break down, breakers blow. Once,
English says, a transformer behind the club
got struck by lightning and burst into
flames; he ran the show anyway, with a
generator and a sound system he brought
in from his house.
On other nights, though, all the stars
align. One of those was in October, when
the stylish Chapel Hill pop band The Old
Ceremony celebrated the national release
of its second CD with a party at the Cradle. Since it came out, Our One Mistake has
received good radio play across the country
and been chosen by Paste magazine as one
of the top 100 albums of 2006; in Febru-
ary, the band would
go on tour with a
reconstituted Squirrel
Nut Zippers.
That October
night, the members
of The Old Ceremony just hoped
they had something
special on their
hands. They had
additional release
parties scheduled in
New York and Wash-
ington, D.C., two of
the cities where
they’ve built devoted
followings, but the
Cradle was home
turf. Heath believed
in them — “Django’s just incredible, his
talent, his command of what he’s doing,”
he said of the band’s songwriter and lead
singer, Django Haskins. And at the Cradle,
they’d be joined by their great friends
Roman Candle, another rising local band
that had its own CD release at the club last
June. The Old Ceremony opened for
Roman Candle then; now Roman Candle
was returning the favor.
The afternoon of the show, The Old
Ceremony band members went in early to
decorate. Haskins, keyboardist James “the
Kid” Wallace ’05, Mark Simonsen ’ 89
(vibes, organ, marimba), bass player Matt
Brandau ’01, drummer Dan Hall, fiddle
player Gabriel Pelli ’ 98 and cellist Josh
Starmer ’ 97 hung dozens of tin foil stars
from the ceiling and put up backdrops
their friends had made.
They knew pre-sales had been good;
MySpace and their local network of friends
and family had helped there. But as they
adjusted their suits and ties in the green
room adjacent to the club’s front door, they
realized people were streaming in. Roman
Candle, which includes Jeff Crawford ’03
and brothers Skip Matheny ’00 and Logan
Matheny ’04, got the near-capacity crowd
pumped up with a high-energy opening set.
The lights went down for a short lull, and
then, says Simonsen, “there was this feeling
of electricity as we stepped out on the
stage. People were screaming and yelling as
if we’re the Beatles or something.”
Haskins led off, alone with his guitar
and his plaintive, intelligent voice:
‘A scene can’t
survive without
a club like the
Cradle. It takes
a cool college
station like
WXYC and it
takes people who
want to go to a
lot of shows, and
somehow the
Cradle is the
lifeblood of that
around here.’
— Tift Merritt
’00
