Here is a Special Edition of Music Monday - on Tuesday, delayed due to the holiday.

I don’t know about you, but when I go to music shows, I always notice the hair of the people playing the music.

Jenni Snyder

 Jenni Snyder, 39, a co-owner and stylist at Rock Paper Scissors Salon & Gallery – a place where many musicians go to get their coifs in stage-worthy condition – understands this all too well. Snyder, a musician herself –has played music for more than 20 years, with Grand National, Whiskeytown, Calico Haunts, Jimmy and the Teasers Spiderbags, Neil Diamond Allstars, Grinder Nova and more, she says.

A few interesting tidbits from our conversation recently about Durham musicians and their hair:

  – A lot of musicians travel, so they need low maintenance hair that doesn’t require the use of many products – but is still fun and edgy, which Snyder does by doing a lot of texturing in a haircut. “I have Jon Wurster who drums for Superchunk. Jon Wurster, a client of Snyder's, is third from the left.Superchunk,” she says. “He’ll come and get his haircut; it has to last to him. It has to be stylish and hold it.”

- Snyder says the genre of music can dictate the style of hair musicians ask for. "In Chapel Hill, there's a heavy metal music scene,” she says. “They are wearing their hair longer, with beards.” She’s also been noticing more mod hair cuts. Nick Williams, a co-owner of The Pinhook who also plays with Free Electric State, came into the salon recently asking for that type of style – choppy and short with almost no bangs, she says.

The salon also does art shows, so check it out.

Now, on a personal note: This is my last music blog post. I’m moving to Columbia, Md. this month – and am very sad to say good-bye to Durham. I've had some great times here - at The Pinhook, Broad Street Cafe, American Tobacco District, and the Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill. I’m told a replacement for Music Monday will be found soon. In the meantime, if you have music ideas, e-mail Editor Matt Dees at mattdees@durhammag.com

I had an interesting conversation last week with Joel McCauley, who grew up here and is part of the Durham-based hip-hop group Relative-T, composed of Joel and his sister, Krystin.

Joel, who is finishing up his MBA at Central, says Durham could be doing more to advance the music scene – in terms of marketing and showcasing a variety of music.

Specifically, Joel notes that although festivals showcase many different genres, weekly live music events fail to attract that variety. He says there should be more of an effort to combine genres.

“My sister and I are hip-hop artists, but it’s suitable for a variety of places, not just hip-hop clubs. … Why can’t there be a rock concert/ hip-hop concert mash up?”

That sounds like fun to me, and a great way to get to know many different genres.

What does everyone else think? Does Durham need to embrace and feature more musical genres?  Do we have a dearth of one kind of music and not another? Ideas are welcome. lisarossi@durhammag.com

Here is a clip of Relative-T's music here:

In this latest issue of Durham Magazine, we profiled the seven women of Stella, the a cappella group that modifies songs in a myriad of styles, ranging from folk, to gospel to R & B. An outtake from Stella's photo shoot with Briana Brough: Julie Woodmansee, Betsy Levitas, Stacey Anderegg, Liz Wing, Alison Jones, Julie Mooney and Marya McNeish.What's remarkable about Stella is that they have managed to stay together for 10 years with no leader.

Here is an excerpt from an interview I, and Chapel Hill Magazine Editor Andrea Griffith did with Julie Woodmansee, Betsy Levitas and Julie Mooney recently at a Panera in Duham.

What is it like governing in a group like this?

Mooney: This is the mystery of Stella. Periodically when we are in a happy and reflective mood, we sit back and think this thing is really almost beyond belief. I say that sort of seriously. It's really hard to imagine that seven people have managed to hold a group together with no one in charge. And with various strong personality styles and disagreements over the years.

Woodmansee: And nobody's been added and nobody's left.

Stella practice at Julie Mooney's home. Photo by Briana Brough.Mooney: People have left rehearsals.

Levitas: Not mentioning any names ....

Woodmansee. I did. I had to walk around the block. I had to give myself a little timeout.

What precipitated it?

Woodmansee: I can't remember.

Is it sort of a democracy? Do you vote?

Mooney: Every once in awhile we vote. Most times we make a decision by consensus. One recent vote was on whether to do a recent performance at The Mansion on a Tuesday night.... We would never vote on a huge issue. 

Woodmansee: Like what's our CD cover going to be? If everyone hated what our CD cover was, we'd want to agree on that.

Mooney: So – another governance thing -- when there have been real issues with somebody that have made enough of us crazy, when someone has done something that makes you go, “Come on. This can’t be.” You get taken to lunch.

[here is a video of rehearsal here]

Levitas: It’s the modern day taking you to the woodshed. We haven’t had to do this too much. It’s to avoid the ganging up. The six on one.

Woodmansee: It's to avoid the breaking up of the group. You have to bring stuff up, or the group will die. The group will explode. I’ve said to Julie recently- it’s like a seven-way marriage. There are like 42 relationships in this group. Seven times six. We have to take care of all of those relationships in order to do this creative work, and we have to be – it would be so hard to get on stage and perform effectively if you hated the people you were up there with, and were mad at somebody. I think we’ve been able to stick together and do interesting fun work and have fun doing it, because we … take people to lunch.

Want to hear more? Stella's latest CD can be purchased at CD baby. Follow this link.

There's a cool new video circulating the Web of two 20-something guys who run and chase each other through the back alleys and beside the landmarks of Durham.

Eli McDuffee, 23, and Jon Le Sueur, 25, are the two guys, and they are the hip-hop band LiLa. Ned Phillips, a friend of theirs, made the video, they said.

I sat down with McDuffee and Le Sueur recently at Parker & Otis to talk about their music. They want to depict what it was like to grow up in Durham, a city that has changed dramatically since they were children.

  “It was more freedom than I’ve experienced since,” says McDuffee, of his childhood in Durham. "It seems like those summers [from age 10-years-old on], your parents push you outside, you come back, maybe before dinner.”

 McDuffee and Le Sueur say their parents, who live in Trinity Park always encouraged them to go out and play, which they did, preferring to run through alleys and backyards than on main streets. Le Sueur’s mother, Pattie Le Sueur, is a teacher at George Watts Montessori School and his father, Jack, is retired and worked at the N.C. Arts Council, Jon Le Sueur says. His music roots also come from his parents --- they have folk music group called Pattie & Jack Le Sueur and the Cedar Creek. McDuffee’s father, Robert McDuffee, was a computer programmer at IBM and his mother, Kathi Sippen, works at the Durham County Library, he says.McDuffee and Le Sueur.

 Their connection to this city plays out in the video, Out with a Bang. You see them bound through places that are unmistakably Durham – they start at the house at the gazebo at Trinity Park, then take an alley down to Durham School of the Arts. From there, you see them at the train tracks, crossing the American Tobacco Historic District, then Sarah P. Duke Gardens and finally on some rooftops in the city.

My favorite part of the video of how light-hearted and childlike it is. I also love how it makes Durham look – it honors both the new parts of the city that have blossomed and made it sleek and cosmopolitan, as well as the grittier parts, such as the old buildings and parking garages. And intermingling the two really highlights how the city’s different parts coexist during this crucial time of rapid progress.

“People say, ‘Oh, Dirty Durham,'” McDuffee says. “It’s really something we say with pride. It’s got those dirty roots, and we want to stay connected as we can.”

Unfortunately, Le Sueur tells me this video may be the last splash LiLa makes for awhile; McDuffee is moving to LA, which means no performances from these guys in the immediate future.

Have an idea for Music Monday? You know what to do.... E-mail me at lisarossi@durhammag.com

I’m going to use this Music Monday as a plea to my readers to get off their couches, close their laptops, send their kiddos to a babysitter and go out. Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt at The Pinhook. Photo by Briana Brough.

You know what convinced me this is more than a good idea? Going to The Pinhook last Wednesday night and seeing the Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt. The band has received some pretty good press in the New York Times, which zeroed in on a few key details that really got me excited.

They hand out cupcakes at their shows, and have been known to wear costumes that are made entirely of stuffed animals.

I wanted to see how Durham music fans reacted to such a spectacle.

To start, I noticed the crowd at The Pinhook was a lot cooler than I am. Which initially made me want to judge them all so I didn’t feel like a loser for not being their friend. But then I met a few people, and really started to warm up to the scene as the band started to set up.

First, they lined the stage with plastic snowmen reminiscent of a holiday-loving grandmother’s apartment. Then, they started passing out costumes to members of the audience. Buried in my notebook, I didn’t notice until it was too late that they had managed to get my husband, an MBA student, to wear an elf hat and leopard print jacket. And our friend Amy –– she wore what looked like some bee-keepers netting festooned with craft-store flair.Amy Cox, donning one of the costumes handed out by the band. Photo by Briana Brough.

And then the music started - some jumpy, up-tempo stuff with feel-good lyrics.

The singers walked amid the crowd, a strategy one band member told me ensures everyone feels a part of the experience. At one point, one of them dressed up in a green M & M top chanted, “I like you. I like you. I like you.”

As he punched out the affirmations, he pointed to different people whose faces broke into smiles. How could they help it? It may have been a gimmick, but it was all so simple, dumb and weird that it worked.

And that’s when I started dancing, right in the middle of these sweaty guys in the band (They did the majority of their performance on the floor, not the stage). I felt happy. I felt like I belonged. I felt like it was OK to bust out of the bore of daily life and emerge jubilant and re-inspired.It's OK to dance at The Pinhook! See, I do it and you can too! (Bri Brough's photography)

Is that enough convincing for you? Go out! Pinhook Co-owner Nick Williams told me this show was not atypical of the kind of performances they attract there, and as you all know, there are multiple places to see people share their music, art and thought throughout the city.

Click here to see more pictures of the night. 

Have a story idea? Think I should attend a show or feature a band? e-mail lisarossi@durhammag.com

Broad Street Cafe recently almost lost its ability to be a late-night music venue here after a neighbor to the cafe complained about the noise. The cafe salvaged its role when the Board of Adjustment voted unanimously last week to allow it to play music after 10 p.m. The following is a condensed interview with one of the co-owners, John Hite, reflecting on Durham's music scene.

What did this most recent debate about the special use permit and noise levels at Broad Street do for the perception that Durham is city that supports local music? John Hite at Broad Street.

I think for the most part, it ended up being a positive thing. I think a lot of folks paid a lot of attention and read what was written in the press and actually came down to see the place.

I wonder if it prompted more people to speak out more forcefully in support of local music here?

I think for every comment I saw from somebody who believed the negative connotations, there were probably six or seven responses that said, ‘No, no , no, no. You don’t understand. You need to take a look. …. I think maybe some folks who maybe wouldn’t see music - have either already come out, or thought about it. Now, it puts us or Durham on the radar.

I've heard Broad Street treats musicians really well.

Whoever is in the band gets dinner – which I think they seem to appreciate as much as getting paid. We give them a modest bar tab and they get reimbursed based on a percentage of what we make. Some places either don't pay at all. The only thing the musician gets is what is in tip jar. Some places offer guarantees of "x" number of dollars. We played around with the current model ... there were some guarantees going on. What we found was when you guarantee a band "x" number of dollars, they kind of lose the incentive to promote the show.

You often don't charge cover either, right?

At least in Durham, I think we’re still blooming as a music community. A lot of folks who go out are still learning about the bands. To throw a cover charge -- I think discourages people.

What more needs to be done to make Durham a music destination?

I think that one of the turning points we had recently was the Troika Music Festival. That was the first big weekend where I started seeing more than a few folks from outside of Durham coming in. …. If we could pick up another event like the Troika, that would be fantastic. 

Got an idea for Music Monday? Send it my way! lisarossi@durhammag.com

Durham Magazine Photographer Briana Brough and I met The Old Ceremony frontman Django Haskins, 36, recently at Rue CDjango Haskins at Whiskey. Photos by Briana Brough.ler. The interview followed a particularly embarrassing and gushy blog post I wrote about never wanting to wash my arm again after he touched it following a recent performance at Cat’s Cradle. He denied remembering that moment, which broke my heart a little, but quickly redeemed himself with an interview about how he juices Durham (where he moved from Carrboro recently) for songwriting and musical inspiration, why his band members wear vintage suits, and how a vibraphone, one of the more interesting instruments in TOC, sounds.

Briana: Here’s the question of the day - Why would you leave Carrboro and move to Durham?

Django: I lived in Brooklyn for seven years before I moved here. Durham has a similar kind of energy. There’s a lot of possibility. Every fourth house [in my Lakewood neighborhood] is an artist of some sort, which is exciting for me, which means there’s a community reaching a critical mass that will draw more creative people, and people that will appreciate the creative stuff they are making.

Lisa: Talk about a specific inspirational moment around town.

D: Every year [my neighbors, a Mexican family], has a birthday party [in their yard for their kids who have similar birthdays]. And this last year, it started pouring. And then we all crammed inside into the living room. There were 50 people there, half spoke Spanish. It was really fun, and really humid, and it’s pouring outside. And then – the mariachi band shows up. A full mariachi band, 9-piece with the sombreros, trumpet, violin, guitar and bass. And you know, they are not going to send the mariachi band away, so they perform in the living room. There are very few places I could think of where that kind of thing could happen, and it was across the street from my house.

L: I want to talk about clothes. I like the clothes you guys wear, especially the guy who plays the violin  - Gabriel [Pelli]. Some bands wear jeans and T-shirts, which is fine, but I like the suits.

D: At the beginning, we consciously decided that is what would fit with the music we’d make. [It] was not just rock. We like rock 'n' roll, and we play some, but it was drawing from a lot of …influences, from some jazz, to European music. I think I had one suit when we started. Now, I’ve raided thrift stores all over the whole country and I have a stupid collection of clothes. Yeah – it’s fun. We all kind of enjoy it. Most of us.

L: Do you guys go shopping together?

D: We have.
 

L: And do you drink margaritas after?

D: We usually buy shoes because that makes us the happiest. And watch Sex and the City.

L: And cry?

D: Naturally. Tissues are never more than a few feet away.

L: Tell me about the song you played recently at the end of a Cradle show that everyone loved so much.

D: It’s a song called Whither On The Vine. We decided to turn off the PA and step to the front of the stage and see how it goes. And it was kind of a leap of faith. We didn’t know if people were going to be able to hear us, if they’d be quiet enough to listen. And we definitely didn’t know if people would sing along, which was really awesome. And it was our favorite part of the show too.Photos by Briana Brough.

L: This is the short answer part of the interview.  Favorite baked good?

D: Fudge

L: Signature drink?

D: Jameson, neat (At Whiskey if they would go non-smoking).

L: How does the song Rocky Raccoon from the Beatles The White Album make you feel?

D: Young. I listened to it as a kid. And it’s kind of a kid song. It has murder ..

L: You’re talking too much!

D: If I had a dime for every time a woman told me that…

L: Ok, try this one. What does a vibraphone sound like?

D: Like dropping golf balls into a bathtub.

L: Summing up, this interview was so…..

D: It was fun, but I don’t want to say ‘fun,’ because that’s lame. This interview was so…. delicious. It was delicious. The food was delicious.

 Want to be in Music Monday’s? Know someone who should be? E-mail lisarossi@durhammag.com

Jaimee Paul, whose album, At Last, hit No. 1 on the iTunes jazz charts in August, will sing at The Cotton Room’s V-Day party.

 Check out this video of her here:

I love how Paul’s mass of curly hair somehow matches the drama of her voice, which is a little Aretha and a little Madeleine Peyroux.

John Pelphrey, at LabourLove Art Gallery, gets the credit for bringing this musician, who has performed with Lyle Lovett and Wynonna Judd, to Durham. He tells me that he and Paul attended Belmont University in Nashville together, where they were both music business majors. Paul grew up in southern Illinois.

The two recently reconnected on Facebook, and John convinced Paul to add Durham to the list of places she’s performing this month, which includes The CBS Early Show in Manhattan, and several gigs in London, Ontario.

“It’s a great opportunity for people in the city to get exposure to some of the young talent that’s happening nationally,” Pelphrey says. “She’s definitely worth coming to watch.”

The 7 p.m. Cotton Room party costs between $65 and $80 per person and also includes a solo trumpet performance from Paul’s husband Leif Shires, a three-course tapas menu and a bottle of champagne per couple. Visit here to get tickets.

 Got any ideas for stories that should be featured in this space? This is Music Monday’s, and I like to write about Durham music stuff. E-mail me at lisarossi@durhammag.com.