Saturday, October 11, head to Saxapahaw for Sleepy Fest, an all-day music festival hosted by local music label Sleepy Cat Records! The festival starts at 11:00 a.m. with a free outdoor arts market and music on the Haywagon Stage until 4:30, then continues at the Haw River Ballroom with ticketed performances inside and outside from 2-10. The lineup includes Alice Gerrard, Joseph Terrell, Slow Teeth, a DJ set from Magic Al, and many more.
Conversation presented by Sleepy Fest. Click here to get more information and buy tickets to the festival.
Among the artists on the Sleepy Fest lineup is Ancestor Piratas – the solo project of Renzo Ortega, a Peruvian musician who’s been active in the area since 2016 after 16 years in New York.
“I’ve been playing music since I was a teenager,” Ortega says. “I started to play a solo set with my keyboards at Nightlight (and) the Carrboro Music Festival, and that’s how I started this new project.”
Ortega’s last full-length album was 2019’s “Camino de Grillos,” but he’s dropped multiple singles in the last few years; he says he recently started building a studio in his new home, with plans to record a new album in 2026.
Ortega has also recently taken up painting, and he says that experience with visual artistry has given him new ideas for his live shows.
“I’ve (been) planning ways to make shows like ‘American Utopia’ by David Byrne,” he says. “It’s not just the concert, it’s more of a performance…taking care of my presence on the stage, taking care of the visuals.”
Follow Ancestor Piratas on Instagram.
Renzo Ortega stopped by Live & Local this week to promote Sleepy Fest and play one song, “A Dieta.” Listen:
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