Local 506 show pushes pop boundaries, brings emerging acts together

For music fans who enjoy the catchy nature of pop, yet long for songs with additional dimensions that leave them immersed in the sound long after a performance, Local 506 will be hosting a night with three emerging acts in the music scene on Saturday, Feb. 3. 

Smoke From All The Friction, Ethan Lipscomb and Nevernauts will be combining their musical forces into a performance with dark pop, rock and indie-folk vibes, engaging audiences who are looking to expand their tastes beyond the superficiality of pop. 

Smoke From All The Friction (SFATF), a Raleigh-based duo with a growing Chapel Hill fan base, features East Carolina University School of Music graduates Cam Gillette and Ina Carino. The pair started playing shows in June of 2017 and have since booked shows in Chapel Hill, including those at venues such as The Cave. 

SFATF skillfully explores themes of vulnerability at the core of their songs, leaving audiences to unwrap each layer of sound and lyrics to uncover the ideas being sung. SFATF often finds inspiration from atypical subject matter, an example being their recent single “Schiz,” which deals with the struggles of living with schizophrenia. 

“One of their focuses is really to try to connect to the audience on a deeper level," said Victoria Shockley, publicist for SFATF. "They want it to be more than just a musical performance, they want to go up on stage and create something deeper, something more thought provoking and help the audience appreciate the music itself and the meaning behind the song, rather than just an entertaining performance.” 

On the calendar for SFATF is their album release show and party in downtown Raleigh in May, which will include supporting acts, raffles and giveaways. Gillette and Carino are in the process of planning a tour of North Carolina. 

Ethan Lipscomb reached out to SFAFT and the Nevernauts through social media after realizing an appreciation for their music, and had the idea for a show where their similar sounds would mesh well together. 

Lipscomb is a musician from Charlottesville, Va. who performs alongside a bassist and violin player. This will be his second performance in North Carolina after previously having performed in Asheville. Lipscomb describes his lyrics as being closer to pop than his sound, but also as metaphoric and lyrical. 

“You don’t always hear about deeper levels of love in pop music,” Lipscomb said.  

Lipscomb compares his music to a spectrum of emotions: “A beginning to end arc of a bunch of emotions — it’s a full experience rather than a bunch of really emotionally challenging songs.”

Having grown up around live music, Lipscomb attributes his love of intimate venues with his concert experiences from when he was younger. 

Lipscomb said live music to him is “being able to see other perform and being in the same room than them, and be close to each other rather than being in big amphitheater where you can’t touch the people, where they don’t feel real. The experience of being around live music is huge. For me it's about really experiencing music with people in the moment and connecting." 

The Nevernauts started as a duo in 2014 in Hope Mills, and expanded into a trio complete with lead singer Mikka Smith, a bassist and a drummer. After a traumatic car accident in January of 2014 that left her with countless injuries, Smith reflected on what mattered to her in life. 

“One of the biggest things that made me happy growing up was when I could put on my MP3 player or my CD player and just blast music and be in my own little world, where each little song was a gift, each little song was something that help me get through the struggles of growing up," Smith said. "But I wanted to give back to that feeling, more than anything. It’s that loyalty that I felt for music to give back to that world.”  

The Nevernauts is a space-inspired, dance and punk rock group that found its original name by drawing inspiration from its members' passion for space and adventure. 

“I wanted the band name to reflect the idea that we are explorers of the imagination,” Smith said. After brainstorming with astronauts and other types of -nauts, they landed with the phonetically sounding double negative. 

Smith studied science and art in school and manifests both of these passions in her work as a performer. 

“The idea that infinity is everything — absolutely everything which would also include nothing, the absolute nothingness, the absence of anything, the concept of always and the inverse of that is never, but always would have to encompass never,” Smith said. 

All acts will be speaking with fans after the show. 

Tickets are $5. Doors open at 8 p.m. and the show starts at 9 p.m. 

arts@dailytarheel.com