A Points South essay from the Spring 2020 issue
When we weren’t whizzing through intersections, I was trying to read road signs, thinking that their letters, dimly lit by our headlights, would give me some kind of orientation on this ground, relative to other places I knew. The signs were not helpful; this was ground you had to feel to know. I don’t think I could find it again.
A short story from our Summer 2016 issue.
Danny Pocock was a prophet. He read omens and suffered what he called the burden of deep understanding. It showed in his posture. He said I was hopeless as a mystic, but there were other things he could teach me.
A Points South essay from the North Carolina Music Issue.
I heard voices down the hall and followed them into the recording room, where I found Soul Council producer Kash talking with Tia Watlington, Jamla’s director of product management, and songstress Heather Victoria about Heather’s new single “Japan.” I knew that this was just a taste of what any given day is like at Bright Lady—young artists honing their craft, label mates planning the next release, or your favorite artist in town looking for that signature sound for their new project. Anything is possible at the business and recording home of Grammy-winning producer and Jamla label head 9th Wonder.
One town shows its appreciation for its homegrown Olympian.
"It was the day after Easter, or as it’s known around here, Blue Monday. On King’s Bluff, a grassy shelf overlooking the lock and dam, a crowd of several hundred had gathered for the Blue Monday Shad Fry, an event celebrating the start of spring, and the shad runs that signal it."
William never intended for anyone to read these diaries. He kept his record in a cipher of his own design, fashioning shapes and symbols to conceal the terse fragments of his life. Presumably, he took the key to his coded diary to his grave.
A Southern Journey from the Summer 2017 issue.
These days—as the weather everywhere grows steadily stranger, storms stronger, seas higher—I worry about the Outer Banks, surrounded by water and just barely above the waves. What does it mean to be from, and of, one of the most vulnerable places on Earth?
A Points South essay from the North Carolina Music Issue.
The songs I heard growing up, sung at family gatherings, and later as I documented music in recordings at Lumbee churches, ring with longing and sometimes nostalgia. They were standard Protestant hymns, Southern gospel tunes, or shape-note classics, straight from the Broadman hymnal or from J. D. Sumner or the Gaither family: “I Feel Like Traveling Home,” “Hard Working Pilgrim,” “I Am His,” dozens more. The talented ones in my family often learned them not by reading the music but playing by ear, molding and adapting the arrangement and harmonies to suit our preference. Not so much the songs themselves, but the way we sing, especially the emphasis on harmony and blend—the need for every person to have a part but no one to stand out—is what demonstrates our togetherness and uniqueness.
This story was originally published on OxfordAmerican.org in 2012.
In underground music circles, Dex is a legend. During the late ’80s and ’90s he fronted North Carolina’s fabled Flat Duo Jets. They were a raw, influential two-piece who blended surf, rockabilly, blues, hillbilly, garage, and country into a savage, one-of-a-kind slurry that paved the way for twenty-first century roots-rock duos such as The Black Keys and The White Stripes.
