Richard Faulkner runs 21 Eleven and probably knows origami.
In the late 1600s a tricked-out Honda pirate ship with 20 inch rims and blown speakers sailed up the Tar River, landing in what is now downtown Greenville. The crew that survived the treacherous sea voyage founded the Pirate Nation, which preceded the United States by over a hundred years according to historical graffiti.
The original colonists spent their time playing grog pong with the local Tuscarora Indians and racing their horses. No, literally, they had footraces against horses. The horses always won. This has always been the curse of Greenville, ever since the original pirates landed. We're always very good at what we do (the original pirates were very fast runners) but we so often apply ourselves to the wrong field (the horses were much faster).
All the ingredients are here for a world class music scene... so where is it? Historically, we've consistently given big love to the Next Big Thing. The Attic was the CBGB of the south (minus the passé t-shirts), high fiving the Cat's Cradle and trading bands like baseball cards. Anybody could play there, but Somebodies often did. Down the street, the penultimate record shop, CD Alley. Now, tomorrow’s legends come through town quietly, way under the radar. They’re here, but the venues aren’t the ones booking them. At least for today’s scene, the showspace will be its home.
The Attic is dead and CD Alley is gone. I moved back to town a few years ago, horrified to find a gym in its place.
What happened? What drove novelty underground?
“You go to Chapel Hill to see a band that's about to play Walnut Creek next time they come through. I think Greenville was like that in the 70s and 80s. I think it was like, right before bands got really popular we were the regional spot when people came through here,” says Richard Faulkner, contemplating the Sheetz parking lot from the couches of 21 Eleven. He sells a six pack of Ska Brewing's Brown to an ECU professor before continuing. “I know the Allman Brothers loved Greenville and used to call it their home away from home. The Charlie Daniels Band, too. Then In the 80s it kind of turned into Hootie and the Blowfish, near the end of the 80s, and Dave Matthews Band back when it was just Dave Matthews, or whatever his real name is, would come through a lot.
“Then in '94 Backdoor opened. That got underground. You could have a show in a space that's not designed to do a music show. I don't know if people remember. Like Peasant's? They started the whole Homegrown Network thing? I don't think that people know that that was started in North Carolina, like the whole String Cheese Incident and all those hippie jam bands. They had live music four nights a week, so you were guaranteed that one night would not be jam bands. They sold it to the guy that turned it into Aqua. That dude promised them when he bought it, it was a couple of old hippies, that dude promised them that he would continue to do live music and the first thing he did was put $250,000 in renovations to make it Club Aqua, to make it another booty club, then he sold it a year later because it was doing terrible.”
So much more could happen, so much momentum spent like water leaking through the frat house roof. We're like Wake Forest's basketball team. We always give the other NCAA teams a few surprises, and they remember how much fun it is to play us, but at the end of the day Carolina is still the star.
It goes like this (and it happens in every town): the best bands never leave their home base! The rule (exceptions are welcome!) is that a really spectacular band will arrive on the scene. People get the “WHOA!” factor, people come out. Touring bands on decent independent labels come through town and play with said band, they'll want the band to come play their town! Holy crap! Nothing could possibly suck, success is guaranteed! This is when the trap is sprung, and only the nimblest can avoid it.
Our local heroes will do one of two things. They either do a minor tour or two and retreat to Greenville to lick their wounds (to the tune of big money per gig, but no valuable exposure on the national market) or never tour and eventually stagnate as the audience moves on. After all, there's always another Big Thing. Bands exist on a ruthless ladder, chasing the flightiest of creatures: fans. It's evolution, it's Darwinism. The next Big Thing could always come crawling out of the swamp, baby, and move in on your ecological niche.
“What always disappoints me is that there's a school of music with, like, a thousand or two thousand kids that are studying music from people that are supposed to be the best in the world, it's been an accredited music school since the '60s, and there are no good bands around,” Richard said. “There should be a ton of good bands, you would think, there's all these people that know how to play music really well, and can play any instrument, and there's not more people that can put it together.”
If that isn't a call to arms, I don't know what is.
Audiences and bands are passing like ships in the night. Tours are coming through, thousands of hip college cats are on campus. Why don't they know about each other? Why do underground crowds diminish while cover band crowds thrive? To be specific, where is the Peasant's crowd that would be so into what happens at 21 Eleven?
“Maybe it's the way Peasant's marketed, or just because there were more hippies in town and hippies will do anything because they don't care because they're stoned and wandering around. Maybe that was it. Maybe they came and kind of countered the whole frat boy scene that was being established, obviously with Hootie and the Blowfish and Dave Matthews Band. The hippies came and were like, 'Nah, we don't like that,' so they kind of tried to stomp that out. Then, after that is where we are now and I don't really know what's after that,” Richard watched Charles Boulevard's evening crawl for a few minutes, squinting a little from the glare. This guy opened a small beer store and, in less than a year, has hosted as many touring acts per week as a proper venue. If not for the love of music, there would not be places like this.
Richard connected his thoughts, smiled for a second, and continued. “Greg Allman is supposed to be one of the greatest guitarists of all time, some people say. We've gone from that, and I don't like Dave Matthews either, but he always had a lot of talented musicians around him in the early 90s. We went from music to punk shows where anything goes to artsy type things with electronics, fashion. Fashion's part of it.”
The dystopic '80s gave way to the decade of hope, the '90s. The bridge to the twentieth century was almost built, almost complete, before it toppled. Now it's years past the y2k. January 1st, 2000 hit with a crushing defeat as none of our movies came true. We're past the future.
What do we do now?
