Live & Local Top 100 Countdown: 70-61

Aaron Keck’s Live & Local Top 100 Countdown continues! You can check out the complete series here, only on Chapelboro.com!

Celebrating Chapelboro’s great music scene, we’re continuing our countdown of the top 100 local songs of all time.

Reminder of the ground rules: Orange, Durham, and Chatham-based artists only; no more than three songs per artist; covers are allowed but originals are preferred; and the songs have to be radio-friendly.

Onward!

70. Archers of Loaf, “Web In Front” (1993)

“All I ever wanted was to be your spine…”

One of the seminal songs in Chapel Hill’s musical history, from one of its most beloved bands. (And one of its longest-tenured bands as well: the Archers released several new singles just this year, including the stellar “Raleigh Days.”) The opening track off their debut album Icky Mettle, “Web” has earned a lasting reputation as an underground 90s classic.

Just how ’90s is this song? It was included on the soundtrack of “Mallrats” and it got riffed in a Beavis & Butthead episode. Not sure you can possibly get any more ’90s than that.

69. Doug Clark & the Hot Nuts, “Hot Nuts” (1963)

“Get ‘em from the peanut man…”

We’re trying to stay away from covers on this list, and technically this is not a Doug Clark original: “Hot Nuts” originated with Lil Johnson, a dirty-blues legend from the ’20s and ’30s who disappeared into obscurity after 1937. But the Doug Clark version is its own beast: the Hot Nuts took Lil’s raunchy number, cranked it up to 11, and transformed it into a still-too-hot-for-radio classic that early-60s college students remember fondly to this day. Not as well known anymore, the Hot Nuts were legends in their time; among other things, they’re said to have inspired Otis Day & the Knights, the toga-party band in “Animal House.”

Most of the songs on this list could arguably go in other spots, but this entire project is invalid if I don’t put this one at number 69. Invalid.

68. Lynn Blakey, “Bloom” (2011)

“I want something beautiful, I want something true…”

Lynn Blakey has been a fixture in the local scene for decades. She might be better known for her work with Tres Chicas than her solo output – but in 2011 she released a little EP called Meadowview, a beautiful, melancholy chronicle of longing that’s just one gorgeous powerhouse song after another. I debated going with Meadowview’s opening track, the timelier-than-ever “Immigrant Heart,” but we’ll give this spot to “Bloom,” a gut-wrenching love song whose simple naturalistic imagery captures Meadowview’s whole vibe.

67. Stranger Spirits, “Made For Love” (2019)

“I’m overcome, I’ll overcome, I’ve overcome…”

As the proprietor of Carrboro’s Nightsound Studios, Chris Wimberley has been one of the local scene’s most dependable producers for the last two decades; we’ve already heard his work on this list and we’ll hear more of it later on. Here, though, we get to celebrate Wimberley as a musician: he and Chris Anderson formed Stranger Spirits about twenty years ago, added Aubrey and Taylor Herbert a few years later, and they’ve been making fantastic music ever since. They’re also that rare band that keeps getting better with age: their most recent album, 2019’s “All Is New,” is their best yet.

The highlight of “All Is New” (one of them, anyway), “Made For Love” has the feel of a doctoral thesis, an elder statesman imparting all their accumulated wisdom. World-weary but still optimistic (“I’m not the sum of my mistakes”), the song opens with a soft but supremely confident chord and builds over the next five minutes to an epic finale. Bonus points for the “overcome” refrain: with its simple and brilliant wordplay, it’s one of the best single lines I’ve ever heard.

66. Jo Gore, “Self Care” (2019)

“And you might just get laid, ‘cause I’ve been to Whole Foods…”

Some of the songs on this list have grown on me over time, but I literally applauded the first time I heard “Self Care,” and I was sitting alone in a room watching it on YouTube. This is one of the smartest songs I’ve heard in the last year: winking at you the whole while, Jo Gore starts with Doug Clark’s raunchy glee and overlays it with a biting message about the crass, corporation-enriching materialism embedded in our treat-yo’self approach to self-care. Oh, and it’s fun. And it’s funny as hell. (Don’t even get me started on the video – in fact there’s an alternate video too that’s simpler and equally great.)

A fantastic singer who was raised on a diet of jazz, blues, soul, and gospel, Jo Gore brings all of it to her music, which is simultaneously tongue-in-cheek and 100 percent sincere. At one of her last pre-pandemic live shows, she covered songs by Johnny Cash … and Tina Turner … and Lizzo. I can’t describe her any better than that.

65. Skylar Gudasz, “I’ll Be Your Man” (2016)

“Don’t ask me if I believe in God, I believe in Gibson guitars…”

Skylar Gudasz’s 2020 album Cinema is an instant classic, but I’m going back to this gender-twisting knockout from her 2016 debut Oleander – a star-studded album featuring contributions from folks like Mitch Easter, Django Haskins, and Rob Ladd (plus Brad Cook and Casey Toll, both of whom we’ll meet again in the next few paragraphs), and co-produced by the dB’s Chris Stamey. Sincere and heartfelt, “I’ll Be Your Man” is simply one of the best love songs the Triangle has ever produced. (Not for nothing, it also pairs nicely with Oleander’s other standout song, the wickedly funny “I’m So Happy I Could Die.”)

64. Megafaun, “Kaufman’s Ballad” (2009)

“And he will shine tonight…”

“Kaufman’s Ballad” opens with a simple banjo riff that’s a bit reminiscent of “The Chain,” but it’s not Fleetwood Mac you’re about to be reminded of: the second the vocals kick in, you’ll swear you’re listening to Crosby, Stills, and Nash. That’s just where it begins, though: Phil Cook, Brad Cook, and Joe Westerlund’s voices blend together beautifully, but they’re also consummate musicians, adding some demonic strings and Westerlund’s hypnotic percussion and building from that quiet opening to an explosive climax. “Explosive” is meant quite literally, by the way: the “Kaufman” in the title is Phil Kaufman, road manager for the late Gram Parsons, who stole Parsons’ body after he died, drove it to Joshua Tree, soaked it in gasoline and burned it in a spectacular ceremony. (Don’t get mad: Parsons apparently wanted it that way.)

Oh, here’s the Megafaun fact you ought to know if you don’t already: before Megafaun, Westerlund and the Cooks were all in another band called DeYarmond Edison with Justin Vernon – who split off in the mid-2000s to form some other project called Bon Iver.

63. The Dead Tongues, “Graveyard Fields” (2016)

“And I feel like I’m drowning in my own wishing well…”

Nomad, poet, and troubadour, armed with a harmonica and a guitar and a twangy, soulful voice, Ryan Gustafson is Bob Dylan drenched in North Carolina’s honeysuckle aura. “Graveyard Fields” is my personal favorite, with its driving melody and poetic memento-mori imagery, but it’s just one of many spectacular Dead Tongues numbers – even if you only limit yourself to this one album, 2016’s Montana.

The local music scene can be a small world sometimes: Gustafson has worked closely with Megafaun’s Phil Cook, whom we just met at number 64. And not only that, he’s also closely connected with the artist who checks in at number 62:

62. Hiss Golden Messenger, “Call Him Daylight” (2010? 2011? 2014?)

“Hey there, bad as night…”

I’m not sure MC Taylor has ever written a bad song, and he’s written a lot of them. Humanistic, contemplative, and spiritual, with a voice that finds its beauty in its own worldly grit, Taylor is both a brilliant poet and an extraordinary musician. You’re free to insert your own favorite in this spot – ask a dozen people for the best HGM song and you’ll likely get at least eleven answers – but I’ll go with the enigmatic “Call Him Daylight,” specifically the acoustic-only version Taylor recorded for the 2010 album Bad Debt. (As the story goes, Taylor recorded all the songs on a cassette player in his kitchen, with his year-old son sleeping next door. You can still hear ambient room noises in the background.)

Why the uncertainty about the year of release? Thanks in part to a fire that destroyed nearly all the existing copies, this acoustic version of “Daylight” didn’t come out until Bad Debt was reissued in 2014 – though Taylor did re-record “Daylight” with a band for his 2011 album Poor Moon. That version’s great too, but I think it’s better without all the production. (See also “The Long and Winding Road.”)

61. Mount Moriah, “Younger Days” (2013)

“…August is over, so when are you coming back?”

Individually, Heather McEntire, Jenks Miller, and Casey Toll are all giants in the local scene. (In fact Toll was just profiled in a terrific IndyWeek piece that also name-checks Skylar Gudasz and Chris Wimberley’s Nightsound Studios, as seen above.) Together, though, they’ve been one of the Triangle’s best bands of the last decade. Incredibly, Mount Moriah have only released three albums – but as with Hiss Golden Messenger, you could fight for days about which one of their songs to include on this list. (McEntire’s solo work is also worthy, especially 2018’s “Baby’s Got The Blues.”) I could go with several songs off 2013’s Miracle Temple alone – including “I Built A Town,” a standout featuring backing vocals from the Indigo Girls’ Amy Ray. But I keep coming back to “Younger Days,” MT’s opening track, McEntire’s queer, punk-inflected take on the classic country trope of nostalgically longing for a lost love.

Bonus: while Amy Ray lends her voice to “I Built A Town,” in “Younger Days” McEntire is joined at the mic by…one Ryan Gustafson, of The Dead Tongues. I told you the local scene can be a small world.