Carolina Chocolate Drops hit the Cradle

Dom Flemons is excited, and he thinks you should be too.

After years of intensely studying Piedmont string music, often at the side of wizened veterans, Flemons and his two bandmates Justin Robinson and Rhiannon Giddens, together known as the Carolina Chocolate Drops, are coming to play the Cat’s Cradle for the first time on Saturday.

“We were too small-time,” Flemons said, explaining why the band has never played the venue. “And now we’ve come around the block and we’re coming to Chapel Hill.”

The Carolina Chocolate Drops are an old-time string band, and a household name among fans of folk and bluegrass in the Triangle. And considering their meteoric ascent in the string music community, which includes three studio albums in as many years, spots on the soundtrack of 2007’s “The Great Debaters,” multiple appearances at the Shakori Hills Festival, opening for the legendary blues guitarist Taj Mahal, and a guest spot on A Prairie Home Companion, it’s surprising that the Chocolate Drops have never played the Cradle before.

But just because they’re new to the Cradle doesn’t mean they’re new to Chapel Hill. The Chocolate Drops, based out of Durham, have performed at Carrboro’s ArtsCenter, and have even been spotted around campus, picking away at their unique style on the stone walls of Polk Place.

That style, according to Flemons, is pretty simple. “When most people ask us what we play, I just tell them old-time fiddlin’ banjo music,” he says. “But we also do old-time blues and country, and old-time jazz as well. I try to keep it really simple.”

Specifically, though, the Chocolate Drops have revitalized a style of African-American string music that originated in the Piedmont of North and South Carolina, centering on the banjo. They learned many of their tunes from mentor Joe Thompson, an African-American fiddler from Mebane who is one of the last of the original Piedmont string musicians.

They also learned from Durham blues legend John Dee Holeman, a guitarist largely responsible for the prominence of “Carolina blues,” a style showcased in the annual Bull Durham Blues Festival. Holeman will be opening for the Chocolate Drops at their Cat’s Cradle concert.

“By that point I was already starting to play the old-time styles,” Flemons says of the first time he played alongside the legend.

“And you know, playing with people like John Dee, I learned a lot from standing next to these guys.”

Flemons, like the two other members of the band, is a multi-instrumentalist. When asked how many instruments he could play, Flemons kept a running list, eventually totaling six or seven, including “the guitar, the banjo, the jug, the harmonica and the bones” (also known as the spoons).

As a result, their shows are often rollicking events that never stagnate, encouraging the audience to get up and dance even if they don’t know the traditional clogging techniques that accompany the music.

“It’s good time music,” Flemons concludes.

“And they should come in with open hearts and open minds and open bodies ready to dance. It’s community music, so I hope that people will want to sing along, they’ll want to dance, they’ll want to clap their hands with us, of course.”


Contact the Diversions Editor at dive@unc.edu.