Late Show The Old Ceremony - 10:30

Modern Skirts - 9:30

Early Show Lissie - 8:00

The Old Ceremony draws their water from a deep well of music ranging from the Beatles to Beck, Leadbelly to Led Zeppelin. Unorthodox instrumentation meets superb songwriting to create a unique interpretation of brooding, orchestral rock'n'roll. After two highly acclaimed albums and four years of touring, the Chapel Hill, NC band has built a large and loyal following both in their hometown and in major cities across the eastern US from NYC to Atlanta to DC to Nashville. Their live show is an incendiary experience that leaves concertgoers with a smile on their faces and a renewed belief in the power of rock music. TOC has performed with CAKE, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Chuck Berry, Polyphonic Spree, Mountain Goats, and Avett Brothers, and was included in PASTE Magazine's "Top 100 Albums of 2006." In 2008 they won the Best Band award in the Independent Weekly Reader’s Poll, which is no small triumph in an area renowned for its bustling music scene. TOC is fronted by songwriter/singer/guitarist Django Haskins, and includes bassist Matt Brandau, drummer Dan Hall, vibraphonist/organist Mark Simonsen, and violinist/keyboardist Gabriele Pelli. *****************************

Ordinary music tends to get classified by genre. Some of this stuff is quite exciting, really. It does what you expect it to, but it follows the formula well enough that its derivative nature doesn't matter. We call it indie, or pop, or modern rock, and we recommend it to listeners who enjoy those styles. But every now and then, a band reminds us that when the songs are good enough, and innovative enough, genre is the last thing that matters. You don't need to be a music major to recognize that the twelve tracks on Modern Skirts' sophomore album, All Of Us In Our Night, are unusually constructed. They have unexpected twists and turns, chords that startle with their novelty, and melodies that feel refreshingly original. And you don't need to be an aficionado to get excited by such infectious choruses – they'll get stuck in the heads of neophyte listeners and super-hipsters alike. So call it "pop", call it "rock", call it "indie", call it "classic" if you must. Better yet, call it what it is- a collection of fantastic, irresistible, entirely unclassifiable songs. *************************

Lissie Maurus is from here, this rounded part of the Land of Lincoln that most people still believe to be another part of Chicago because their mental map of Illinois ends at the suburbs, as that Aurora outlet mall fades into the eastern distance. Rock Island, Ill., probably gave her those carameled freckles that dot her cheeks. The blue collar town that shares the Mighty Mississippi River as a border with Iowa definitely fused into the young, natural blonde: her sass and her inability to be phony, to be anything other than a talker, a good hug, a warm and affectionate sweetie pie, a light-hearted sprite, a girl who hits the municipal pool or the freshwater lake frequently when the weather’s right, a girl who eats cheeseburgers, drinks when she’s happy and is sort of a son of a gun in sundresses and with a smoke between the fingers. Here is where the winters make you seek shelter for months because there are near unbearable situations like wind chill factors of 50 degrees below zero and summertime often brings with it such a thick humidity, fat with mosquitoes, that it melts people in half. It’s where the U.S. government makes a ton of bullets and guns and it’s a place that used to make way more farm implements that it does now. The floods that come down the river in the spring are epic. All of these details and more are Lissie and the songs that she writes, that she put on this debut EP, Why You Runnin’, on Fat Possum Records. Produced by friend Bill Reynolds, who just happens to be the bassist in Band of Horses, Lissie couldn’t be more enchanting, or more of a person explaining the mystery of how she came to be full of that muddy river water, which along with it come the whiskered muskies, the bass and the bullheads that all swim through her body like the dark clouds and the passing driftwood. The five songs are stacked with the kind of billowing and rustic sentiments that come from broken hearts that have been patched as well as they can be, gaining that scar tissue that never makes them like new again, but gives them a refined personality, one that’s subtle and powerful all in one fling. Lissie has all kinds of love in her heart and it comes out in resplendent and oaky waves, like the insides of a campfire doing a lot of talking, a lot of jumping – leaving its smoke burrowing into your skin and clothing, where it reclines for days.