Music for the Cuctails Party @ Bourgie Nights on Saturday! Read more about the Cuctails Parties and Workshops here.
Rebekah Todd
Growing up in the small town of Benson, North Carolina, Rebekah Todd has been surrounded by music for as long as she can remember. At 11 years old, Rebekah’s father, a musician himself, gave her a black acoustic Washburn guitar and taught her to play. Flooding the house with sounds of classic rock and folk, her father played everything from Pink Floyd to the Righteous Brothers, leading Rebekah to instantly find her musical niche somewhere between melodic soul and alternative folk rock. Growing into her soulful voice and and musical style, the singer-songwriter started to pull inspiration from a wide range of musical genres, citing passionate singer/songwriters like Lauryn Hill and Susan Tedeschi as her inspiration and shaping the music she writes and performs today. After receiving her bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from East Carolina University in 2012, Rebekah has been devoting her life to writing and touring. Currently based in Wilmington, North Carolina, Rebekah is a gifted performer with a natural, soulful, and effortless voice and two releases under her belt, releasing her debut EP, Forget Me Not, in 2011, first LP, Roots Bury Deep, in 2014 and most recent full length, ‘Crooked Lines’ in February, 2017! Playing over 170 gigs in just 12 short months, her band Rebekah Todd & The Odyssey won the On The Rise series for FloydFest 2016 and are set to play the mainstage in 2017 alongside acts such as St. Paul & The Broken Bones, Shovels and Rope, and Turkuaz.
Jenny Besetzt
Jenny Besetzt does not shy away from a cathartic release. Just listen to the title tracks from their two full-length records—Only and Tender Madness—and it’s clear that the lean economy of their post-punk underpinnings is bursting with a poignant vulnerability. Maybe it’s the history of Romanticism encoded in vocalist John Wollaber’s DNA—he was born in Germany to an opera singer—that explains the band’s affinity to soften the sharper edges of their sound with cavernous vocals and dreamy synth arrangements.
Live the band has honed their ability to shatter an audience with a devastating turn of phrase or instrumental climax, creating space for vocalist John Wollaber’s thundering voice to resonate. The rhythm section of bassist Nathan Price and drummer Thomas McNeely pushes and pulls with serpentine momentum through the delicate currents of Sara Bell’s synthesizers. And their ability to convey the frustrations of trying to understand ourselves and the world around us has never hit harder. As the world continues to search for answers to the confusing and uncertain times in which we live, Jenny Besetzt takes us on a much-needed trip inwards—a path they walk with both vigor and grace.
The Numbskulls
While most identifiable as a band performing as a device to entertain and give you music for your ears, the theatricality and pointed energy toes the line between performance art. The words are loud and the colors are bold, to entrance and entice, come and play with us. I’ll show you my gray parts, you think about yours, maybe we’ll all come back and look at the darkest parts of each other.