IBMA's World of Bluegrass returns to Raleigh

(IBMA/YouTube)

Raleigh will host the largest urban bluegrass festival in the world this week.

The International Bluegrass Music Association's World of Bluegrass is an annual homecoming for the bluegrass music community. Taking place September 27 through October 1, it consists of three separate events: the IBMA Business Conference, the International Bluegrass Music Awards, and Wide Open Bluegrass. This is its fourth year in the Capital City.

In addition to the three main events, bluegrass-related shows and attractions can be found scattered throughout Raleigh all week. A mix of free and ticketed events are available for bluegrass players and fans to expand professional networks, learn the latest about industry practices, and discover new music.

Punk Rock Vanguards Antiseen Welcome all Head-Bangers in Raleigh

One look at Antiseen leader Jeff Clayton, with his chest-length graying beard and a forehead bearing the signs of one too many broken beer bottles, and it’s a safe guess that the band’s music is not used to soundtrack ballet recitals.

While there is no mistaking the punk rock group’s musical chops are as sharp as ever, it’s also easy to see by their tour schedule that the days of being the young upstarts booking hundreds of shows a year are well behind them. When they roll into a city these days, as they will Sunday night at The Pour House Music Hall in downtown Raleigh, they know that the area holds a fan base ready to receive them with open arms and banging heads.

Nine Music Festivals and Events You Can't Miss this September in Raleigh, N.C.

With the most live music in the state, you can find a show in Raleigh, N.C., every day of the year and from one end of the destination to the other. And the calendar hits a high note around Sept. as some of the year's biggest festivals and concerts are staged in Raleigh, creating the Raleigh M.A.I.N. Events, an initiative that celebrates a month of music, art, innovation and noise through 20 happenings. In addition to the Raleigh M.A.I.N. Events, the capital city's surrounding towns add can't-miss festivals to the mix—all the more reason to plan a road trip in Sept.! 

Rusty Knuckles Custom Leather Will Be At The International Bluegrass Music Association 2014

World of Bluegrass invades Raleigh, NC on September 30th to October 4th

What an honor its going in a few weeks, to be a part of the International Bluegrass Music Association here in Raleigh the first weekend of October. We will have our full booth for custom guitar and banjo shop setup and working to vastly expand our wholesale business for handmade in the USA, quality crafted music gear. If you are coming into town, looking forward to seeing many of the great bands here that week. We will be setup right across from D'addario Strings. One step closer to another milestone.

Find out more about the IBMA

Raleigh Eurobike 2013

Raleigh Eurobike 2013 looks to be a cool event this Saturday. Downtown Raleigh and great weather, what is not to like.

Find out more info on the event.

Wrench N' Roll Radio Live At The Berkeley Cafe, Raleigh

Not sure if yall have heard about the new radio show that we are affiliated with, Wrench N' Roll radio. If not, there is no one to blame except yourself for not being completely clued in to all that is Rusty Knuckles. We move like the wind and change course at will. 

The head honcho over at the radio show is Nick Manic and his cohorts that never fail to deliver an entertaining live broadcast. The show airs weekly on Thursday nights for roughly a two hour time slot then is available as a podcast for downloads. Damn stoked on how the show is growing in listeners and once we finish our huge new website overhaul it will become available as a showcase feed within our site also. 

Another aspect to look out for are the live broadcasts where Wrench N' Roll Radio invades shows for live broadcasts. Look out for them this weekend in Raleigh, NC at the Berkeley Cafe and then on March 1st at our new event series we are doing in Fayetteville, NC.

Check out all that is Wrench N' Roll Radio on Facebook

Go direct to the Wrench N' Roll Radio show page

Wrench N' Roll Radio live at the Berkeley Cafe In Raleigh, NC

Barb Wire Dolls Live Remote! Raleigh, NC - February 2013

Be sure to come out on February 17th and check out our first live remote with the Barb Wire Dolls, Yea(h), and Safe word! We will be giving away prizes out of the PigglyWiggly Grab-bag, as well as have the Nintendo 64 booth set up!  Tickets are $5 and the action starts at 7pm!

AND if you are a fan of the Barb Wire Dolls, and cant make it to the show, you can catch it LIVE STREAMING @ 8:00pm EST @ http://wrenchnrollradio.com/live

Wrench N' Roll Radio will be airing live at the new showcase on March 1st

Don't Be Lazy, Create Your Own Vinyl Records

The DIY spirit is what keeps us awake at night. Forever thinking on new projects or ways to conjure up an idea. After picking up some new items from our screen printer, we stopped over to grab some breakfast and read the new Indyweek here in Raleigh. While checking for the show listings at our local music venues, I ran across an article on a dude by the name of Wesley Wolfe and his lather vinyl record cutting machine. Intrigued I was and set off on a tear into the article to read about his endeavors. Luckily the same article is posted on Indyweek and now posted here for yall to check out. 

Link to that article on Indyweek


Find out more on Wesley Wolfe's custom short run vinyl record editions.

And you thought you liked records: Wesley Wolfe and his music-making machine

"There were wax cylinders and cassette tapes, compact discs and (at the very end) MP3s, but the 20th century's music belonged to the vinyl record. Despite more portable formats and vast technological advancements, that romance continues and grows: Americans bought 4.6 million records last year, up from 3.9 million in 2011, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
At a time when music feels intangible and oversupplied through the Internet, satellite and streaming radio and through the speakers above the grocery store aisle, LPs maintain a tangible link between artists and collectors. The archaic crackle of a stylus dragging dust through a spiral groove supplies a resonance of its own, unlike translucent and pristine digital formats. It's the difference between a silk purse and a Ziploc bag.

But like any other mass-consumed product, most records are duplicated in remote factories by the thousand, rolling from a large warehouse onto record shelves. But for locavores and similar connoisseurs, area musician Wesley Wolfe has a more rarified option. For the last three years, Wolfe's one-person business, Tangible Formats, has cut 7-, 10- and 12-inch records in runs as small as one. It's part of an obscure but evolving culture based around small-batch hand-lathed records, a laborious but potentially viable alternative to mass production in a fragmented music market.

After you send Wesley Wolfe your music, he opens it in ProTools for frequency analysis. The vibrations of certain high-end frequencies can upset the cutter-head of the lathe, while very low frequencies can make the record's groove so deep it collapses on itself and pops out the cutting stylus. For this reason, many hand-lathers, including Wolfe, are reluctant to cut harsh noise or other kinds of music where extreme frequencies are indispensible. After making the necessary adjustments to ensure that he doesn't snap the $300 industrial diamond stylus manufactured only by Souri in Germany, Wolfe converts the music into a wav file, burns it on a CD and takes it over to the main unit.

Wolfe, a musician, initially came to the idea of hand-lathing in 2009, when he released his first solo album on Odessa Records. A distant plant pressed 250 vinyl LPs, the smallest order most manufacturers will accept, at a cost of more than $2,000. Through researching the terms of art in order to speak knowledgably to the mastering engineer, Wolfe realized he was more interested in the process of making records than selling them.

"The reality is that I can sell 50 records and I don't have the closet space for the other 200," he explains in his Carrboro apartment. "By the time I sell 50, I'm bored of it and working on something else anyway. I'm not going to do the big promotion and tour, tour, tour."

To understand what Wolfe does at home, it helps to first understand what he doesn't do, or how the plastic-wrapped vinyl you might pick up at a record shop is made. Step one in mass-producing an LP is to lathe-cut the music into a manageably soft, lacquer-coated aluminum disc. This fragile master is electroplated in a nickel bath. The metal forms a negative-image mold, or a father. The fathers are electroplated to produce mothers, metal records that are again electroplated to produce more durable negatives—the sons of the fathers and mothers, or the stampers.

The main unit is a cobbled-together rack of audio equipment next to the lathe. It isn't actually called the "main unit," either. Because Souri's lathe is custom-made, the names of its parts are all either generic and technical or practical and informal. Wolfe puts the burned CD into the unit and begins to play it back. He toggles a switch to determine how many songs will be cut to each side of the record. He adjusts the master volume until he finds the peaking level, probably around 3 decibels. This tells him how wide to set the grooves of the record. More distance between grooves makes a record louder but reduces its playing time. Wolfe's 7-inches can hold about seven minutes per side at most, and that's at 33 1/3 rpm. That makes them quiet and low on bass, so he generally cuts only four minutes per side.

The lathe itself looks like a tricked-out record player. Basically, it is. Wolfe turns a carriage, like on a typewriter, to clear the cutter-head away from the turntable. Exposing the black vinyl blank, he lays it on the platter where it immediately starts to revolve. He positions the cutter-head at the outer edge of the record and lowers it. The needle bites into the blank and starts to cut. The cutter-head houses a pair of magnets, left and right for stereo, like an electric guitar pickup. They transmit the vibrations of the music through the diamond-tipped stylus, preserving every frequency and timbre in the shape of the groove. An arm with a regular record-player stylus provides simultaneous playback, monitoring the fresh-cut groove.

This plating and cutting happens twice, once for each side of the record. At last, using a hydraulic press, the stampers punch out retail discs from vinyl pucks, replicating the original thousands of times. The process requires a lot of space and an army of heavy machinery.

When Wolfe cuts a record, he eliminates every step except the first one. Instead of a copy of a master, you get the master itself, perhaps still warm from the lathe. Each record is cut individually: If you order 30 copies, Wolfe hears your music in full 30 times. Again and again, the lathe's diamond stylus traces the white thread of the music over the record's creamy blackness. Minute variations, from the music's peak volume level to the width of the groove that comes when the music has finished playing, ensure that no two are just alike.

This personal touch comes at considerable cost, with a single 12-inch going for as much as $50 and a 7-inch for as much as $25, with discounts for larger orders. But Wolfe isn't interested in listening to the same song for days on end, and the largest run of 7-inches he'll cut is 50, as he did for the local band Bombadil. More often, his services are employed for personal or novelty records.

Once the volume and groove width are set, Wolfe pulls a vinyl blank in a protective white film from a rack below the lathe. The manufacture of these sought-after "virgin vinyls" is another Souri exclusive. No one else is known to use this particular polyvinyl chloride, which has a surface-noise level competitive with pressed records when cut directly.

The concept of the hand-lathed record isn't new: Listeners widely used lacquer discs, or "acetates," before magnetic tape became the format of choice for semi-disposable storage. The dubplates of Jamaican sound systems are so-called acetates. DJs still get tracks cut on them for short-lived used, as their soft grooves degrade after a few dozen plays.

But the low sound quality and poor durability can be deal-breakers, even for record labels focusing on "small-run, intentionally collector's edition-type stuff," as Cory Rayborn recently described his label. If any local imprint seems like it should work with the sort of hand-lathed albums Wolfe makes, it's Rayborn's Three Lobed Recordings, based near High Point. But Rayborn said he could never get it to add up.

"It's been four or five years since I've really looked into lathed stuff," he explains, "and I haven't heard what Wesley Wolfe is doing. But I own some lathe cuts, and historically, I don't like how they sound, all glitchy and poppy. And they wear out. I thought about doing a Bardo Pond [a psychedelic rock band from Philadelphia] one years ago. At the time, it was really only Peter King over in New Zealand. Dealing with cross-continental shipping, it just didn't make sense."

Peter King is a legend among lathers, a scattered community that haunts online forums such as Lathe Trolls. In the town of Ashburton, New Zealand, King uses four tandem lathes to cut into polycarbonate plastic, not lacquer; the records are strong but lo-fi and monophonic. People lathe music into all kinds of plastics, including picnic plates, but cutting directly into sturdy, luxurious vinyl is the holy grail. And of the handful of lathes capable of doing so in the United States, two live and work in Wolfe's apartment.

When Wolfe was researching record manufacturing online ahead of his release, he found Souri's Vinyl Recorder website. Not only did this lathe cut straight to vinyl, but it was the only one Wolfe found that also cut in stereo. Because it cut deeper, wider grooves into the vinyl, this lathe produced slightly short LPs at 18 minutes per side. But the loss in space came with a boost in volume and fidelity.

The vinyl carved out by the needle, known as "chip" or "swarf," is simultaneously vacuum-pumped away from the record itself. "That's the music!" Wolfe exclaims, beaming and pointing at the canister of chip like a parent at a sonogram. After having tested and cleaned the new record, Wolfe peels a label from a die-cut sheet and affixes it around the spindle hole. He prints out the art, folds it into a sleeve, slips the new record inside, and repeats the process until the order is filled.

Wolfe was sold; now, however, he had to convince its creator, an enigmatic German known only as Souri, to sell one to him.

Souri's lathe costs €3,200, or a little more than $4,000, and you can't just drop one in your online shopping cart. It has no instruction manual. Prospective buyers who persuade Souri that they are serious must travel to Germany for a training course. Souri is very protective of his lathe, but Wolfe says what might sound like paranoia is justified: Souri had been pitching his lathe to DJs since the early 2000s, only to reportedly have it shoddily knocked-off by nefarious Russians and abused by feckless Americans. So in 2010, Wolfe flew to an obscure German village with more than $8,000 of cash, as Souri requested, in his pocket for his training and, he hoped, his equipment.

Wolfe is cheerful and earnest, with boyish hat-hair and friendly eyes that sparkle; it's not hard to imagine what Souri saw in him. He returned from Germany with one lathe and convinced Souri to visit America to attend South by Southwest in 2012, where the pair led a record-cutting demonstration booth. A second visit to Germany cemented Wolfe's role as Souri's U.S. liaison and technician (and earned him spare parts to restore a second lathe he'd bought in Arizona). In March, the unlikely transcontinental pair will reprise their SXSW demonstration.

Meanwhile, Wolfe has turned his machines into a thriving cottage industry. He used Souri's lathe to cut records for locals including Spider Bags, The Toddlers and The Rosebuds. And when the amphitheater-filling folk-rockers Mumford & Sons needed to cut a special song to vinyl for a member's wedding, United Record Pressing, a large plant in Nashville, sent the job to Wolfe.

But Wolfe's most frequent and enthusiastic client is John Harrison, a local songwriter, bandleader and visual artist who sees applications for lathe-cuts in all of his media.

"I didn't even really know this existed until I heard about Wes doing it," Harrison remembers. "I went to his apartment to check it out, and I was blown away. The fact that he had to go through so much to get the lathe impressed me even more."

For Harrison, Wolfe first cut a 7-inch record on transparent vinyl, with a unique demo from his band, jphono1, on one side. He left the other side blank, so Harrison screen-printed the image of a cassette tape on it in neon green. Matted and framed, the piece sold for $60 at a Minus Sound Research gallery show, proving that the high cost of Wolfe's one-by-one manufacturing doesn't rule out profit for the creative and resourceful.

Nothing quite like the sound of a vinyl record

"You can hardly twist people's arms to buy one 7-inch for $5 when your band plays," Harrison says. "It would take me multiple shows to make that much on sales with the band. And you can't even get a blank side pressed from a plant—I've called. They can do etchings and stuff, but they won't print a blank. That could only happen for me because of Wes."

Now Harrison likes to get demos of songs from all his albums and EPs cut by Wolfe, in very small quantities, creating unique artifacts for his supporters. He briskly sold through a preorder run of 10 lathe-made records for jphono1's new album.

Record lathes were once so large and expensive that only major companies owned them. As they get lighter, cheaper and more accessible, Wolfe won't be alone in finding ways to use them practically and even profitably.

The innovative company Lathe Cuts, for instance, recently carved an R. Stevie Moore/Ariel Pink split onto mirrored acrylic that was gradually collected from the bins of a plastic supplier, and the first run of 66 sold out quickly with prices topping $80. Meanwhile, old-school lathe aficionados still use the bulky, hard-to-maintain Prestos, tooling replacement parts from washing machines and Victrola needles. The trade's lingo alone summons images of artisanal elves with jeweler's loupes and tiny chisels.If the mystique of the mass-manufactured record is strong (and sales trends indicate as much), the mystique of the hand-lathed one is weaponized."

Carolina Still Plays Raleigh Friday November 9th

Carolina Still headlines the Harvest Hoedown in Raleigh, NC on Nov. 9th

Need another reason to get out and get loose on a Friday night? Well here ya go. Carolina Still will roll into town in a few days to work on some new video footage and also for a killer show down at Tir Na Nog, roll up!

Keep up with Carolina Still on Facebook

Flat Tires Invade DiveBar Raleigh on 4.21.12

Flat Tires invade DiveBar Raleigh on 4.21.12

Corrosion Of Conformity Releases New Self Titled Album Through Candlelight Records

Not sure if yall have been sleeping under a rock or maybe just worn out by being obliterated with the amount of albums being released, but damn if we aren't stoked for the new Corrosion of Conformity self titled release. As a fan of the band since the early 90's I missed out on their early hardcore albums, but have gone back and listened to their entire catalog numerous times over. Seeing them as a three piece, is a different beast, but does not feel as if they lose any steam. If anything, it has made them more feral and ready to claw their way back to the top with or without Pepper Keenan back in the band. 

Below is a great interview with Reed Mullin about the band, their history and where they are heading.The new album is coming out on the amazingly great label Candlelight Records and looking forward to picking up one of their cd bundles.

New self titled Corrosion of Conformity album being released by Candlelight Records

Link to article on Metalholic Magazine

Corrosion of Conformity‘s eighth studio album is self-titled, which is perhaps a metaphor for the band coming full circle three decades after its formation. Founders Reed Mullin (drums), Mike Dean (bass, vocals) and Woody Weatherman have been on a lifetime journey of friendship and music. Over the years each member has stepped away for a bit, but all have come home. The band’s newest release, which hits digital outlets and stores today on Candlelight Records, marks both a return to the band’s early days as a trio, and another example how much each has grown together and apart. The whole of C.O.C. is much stronger than the sum of its parts. There exists a dynamic, a synergy between these three men which allows them to bridge into any musical sub-genre and still retain the essence of their signature sound.

While many Corrosion of Conformity fans are sad that the band’s fourth member, Pepper Keenan is too busy with Down at the moment to partake in this joyous reunion, one listen to the new record should salve that wound. In fact, it feels more appropriate that the band made this album as a trio just as it began. For had Pepper been available, this three decade sonic celebration might simply have become a moment of nostalgia rather than a stepping stone for another decade of C.O.C.

The night before the album’s release I spent some time talking to Mullin about the band’s history, the new album, his hope for a special show with both Pepper and former vocalist Karl Agell, his list of best drummers, and the five albums that changed his life. We also spoke of conspiracy theories and men dancing naked with owls, how the band came to record this album at Dave Grohl’s new Studio 606, and what’s going on with his Righteous Fool project. Tune in for 30 minutes of C.O.C. and Roll with Reed Mullin.

Raleigh, North Carolina's favorite sons, Corrosion of Conformity

Get More: Corrosion of Conformity, The Moneychangers, Music, More Music Videos

BikeExif Featured Ducati From CAV America

There are a plethora of places online to view cool bikes online but one that never fails to deliver is BikeExif.com. Their keen eye to detail and showcase of quality machines propels them to the top of the charts for great new bikes. We also can't thank them enough for featuring our Cafe Bike last year. 

We saw this particular Ducati a few weeks back and several things caught our attention, first and foremost it was from a local builder in our neck of the woods and second is the absolute precision detail on this bike. Our new Buell street fighter and land speed racing build is slow going due to how busy we are with the music label but this bike is quite inspiring. Read on for the details on this ride and definitely check out more on Johann Keyser of CAV America as damn if he doesn't have some great things cookin' here in the south. 

Link to feature article on BikeExif.com 

Johann Keyser runs CAV America, one of the leading builders of Ford GT40 replicas. He’s also the only GT40 builder with the rights to replicate the official Gulf Oil livery. Keyser is a motorcyclist too, and describes his custom Ducati as “a bike that I had to build … It had to be very mechanical looking, naked and lightweight.” It’s hard to pin down the exact lineage of this aggressive-looking machine, because the donor parts came from several different bikes. The frame is from a 749S—modified to accommodate a torquey, air-cooled 900ie motor—and the single-sided swingarm is from a Monster S4R. The engine is running K&N air filters, an open clutch and Speedymoto covers, and it’s hooked up to a custom two-into-one system terminated with a lightweight SS muffler.




The forks are from a 916 SPS, upgraded with new springs and valves, and the wheels are also from a 916—but painted to mimic the BRM wheels fitted to GT40s back in the day. The brake system is Brembo and sprinkled with superlight titanium parts; the seat and seat frame are from Radical Ducati in Spain. The tank is a modified 999 fitment and the fairing is a modified glass fiber SS upper.



With just over 300bhp, the road going version of the GT40 could hit 60 mph from a standstill in around 5.3 seconds. I’m betting that this machine could knock at least a second off its bigger stablemate’s time.

PS: A big thanks to one of our favourite clothing brands, Aether Apparel, which has just come on board to support Bike EXIF. They have a terrific blog too: check it out here.

More images from the work of CAV America 

 

ANTiSEEN - Fuck All Yall - Live In Raleigh, NC

The most legendary band to come out of North Carolina, ANTiSEEN storms onto the stage with their encore anthem, Fuck All Yall. Lead singer and reigning supreme ass whooper, Jeff Clayton channels the Great Pumpkin for a crowd roar to which Raleigh fans will have forever etched on their memories.

Click over to ANTiSEEN.com for all that is the Boys From Brutalsville

Joe Buck Yourself - Rage In The South

More footage of Joe Buck from Dive Bar in Raleigh, NC

Rumble Fest Coming To San Diego And Raleigh

Later this week we will be announcing one of our major headliners for the Rumble Fest. These new events are growing out of the Rumble in Ramona due to the demand of the fans asking for it to be open to the public. Rusty Knuckles Music will be crucial in establishing the musical elements to the showcases and once the headliners are announced we know its going to be a game changer. All ticketing will go on sale through etix.com around mid May.

We will keep the updates coming via this blog and rumblefest.blogspot.com The photo below should be a solid clue as to what we have cookin'.

Flat Tires - St. Paddy's Day Raleigh Invasion

Not sure what else could be more of a beer slammin' punk rock of a good time tomorrow than catching the Flat Tires invasion of St. Paddy's Day in Raleigh. Get off your ass and move it to some real juke joint rock n' roll from the purveyors of beer soaked mayhem.