The Old Ceremony celebrates new album with Cat's Cradle concerts

The Old Ceremony is making something new. 

The Chapel Hill legends are putting on a special two-night show to celebrate the release of their newest album, Sprinter, released July 14. The performances will take place in Cat’s Cradle’s Back Room and will feature different accompanying acts each night: Friday opens with Durham's Skylar Gudasz, while Saturday opens with Asheville's stephaniesid and closes with Direwolf. 

“We thought it’d be fun to do two nights where we could get really comfortable in the room and come back the next day and play a really different show,” The Old Ceremony’s front man Django Haskins said. “That’s not an opportunity we get on the road.” 

The band will play through the new album both nights and finish each set with a different mix of older songs from their other five albums. Haskins said it’ll be exciting for the audience to hear the flow of the album in a live setting and for the band to have a chance to reinvent them on the spot. 

These shows will kick off a two-week U.S. and Canada tour for The Old Ceremony. Starting a tour in the band’s hometown gives them “a whole lot of momentum to get on the road and take (the show) elsewhere,” Haskins said. 

“There’s no audience that’s as welcoming as your home audience,” he said.

There’s also nothing like performing with longtime friends, he said. Stephanie Morgan, vocalist and guitarist of stephaniesĭd, said her band has performed with The Old Ceremony for many years in Chapel Hill and Asheville. 

Morgan said part of what brought the two together was their mutual use of vibraphones.  

“There weren’t a lot of bands making similar kinds of music (at that time),” Morgan said. “And songwriting-wise, I feel like Django and I hit it off.”

Morgan added that stephaniesid is excited to play Chapel Hill again because of its liveliness.

Skylar Gudasz is also an old friend of Django’s; the two met touring with Big Star Third and traveled across the U.S. and parts of Europe. 

“Django has a clever, hilarious, brilliant mind that never stops,” Gudasz wrote in an email. “His guitar playing is incendiary and his songwriting is beautiful.”

Direwolf became involved in the record release because he initially approached The Old Ceremony with remixing one of the songs on Sprinter. His disc jockey set on Saturday night will close the show with a dance party. 

As far as Sprinter goes, the band’s sixth studio album and first release in almost three years is more fluid than previous albums. 

"It holds together as a narrative a lot more than some of our past records,” Haskins said.

The album was produced by Mitch Easter, which Haskins said made the album-making process different and fun, and features R.E.M’s Mike Mills. 

“We were thrilled to have Mike on the record,” Haskins said. “The stuff he added sounds like him but also really works with the band – it was a happy experiment.”

Regardless of the night attendees see, Haskins said they're guaranteed a high-energy show.

“We’ve done a lot of touring over the years, and always the best and most memorable nights are at the Cradle or the Triangle in general,” Haskins said. 

arts@dailytarheel.com