Old-time band The Quiet American to perform Friday

Old-time music may be an ancient tradition, but Art Menius, the executive director of the ArtsCenter, wants people to know that it’s very much alive and well — and that it’ll be heard this Friday night at the center.

Adam Hurt and Beth Hartness, two locals close to Carolina string band tradition, will be opening for the husband-wife duo The Quiet American, the old-time band which Menius said produces string music that’s just as cutting-edge as what’s out there in other musical genres.

Menius, who said the string band community is a close-knit world although it’s very spread-out, said he’s particularly excited about this concert because while string music might have a wide geographical base, its revival began right here in Chapel Hill about 40 years ago.

“When the young people — the hippie people, if you want to use the shorthand — got into playing the old-time string band music, it was very much centered in Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh,” he said. “It all kicked off in the late ’60s on Erwin Road between Chapel Hill and Durham.”

He said it is very important for the ArtsCenter in the Carrboro-Chapel Hill community to present this music for new generations since it is in the very area where the music was revitalized.

Menius said The Quiet American is reconstructing and rebuilding folk music and old-time music in a whole new way by keeping the tradition alive as the band draws on resources from the older music of the previous generation but interprets it for theirs.

“That’s the way traditional music stays alive from one generation to the next,” he said. “If it just stays the same, then it becomes a museum piece. But a living music, like old-time music, stays alive by each generation adopting it and doing their own thing with the resources the music provides.”

And for Hurt, reinventing the music and breaking down old stereotypes is just what he plays for.

Growing up in a musical family in St. Paul, Minn., Hurt said music was in the background of his life before he can even remember.

His father played classical violin for the Minnesota Orchestra, and his mother played classical piano.

“Music was never not a part of my existence,” he said. “My parents tried everything they could to instill in their child a love for music.”

And they did just that, but in a different way than they initially hoped when their son began playing classical piano at the age of five.

“I didn’t dislike the instrument — I felt neither way in particular about classical music,” he said. “I liked it OK, but I didn’t love it. I was terrible at reading music — I was never good at that. I didn’t know there was any other way to play music because that’s all I saw my parents doing — reading music off of a page and playing what was written.”

But a fourth grade teacher in a Minnesota public school showed him a new way to play music that instantly captivated his attention.

“My primary teacher that year happened to be kind of folk-y. He wasn’t from the South either, but he played all of these traditional instruments in traditional southern styles,” he said. “The minute I heard those sounds, I was hooked. The fact that he was just playing the music and not reading anything off the page to make those compelling sounds was like icing on the cake.”

So Hurt started taking lessons on the mandolin with him during free periods at school.

Now he plays the mandolin, the banjo and an instrument he said he’s only recently begun to play seriously — the fiddle, which he’s been playing for 12 years.

Similarly, Aaron Keim, of The Quiet American, said he and his wife, Nicole, were also trained in classical music before they were drawn to the old-time music of Appalachia in their 20s.

“It’s simple and honest, but it has a depth to it. On the surface, it seems like simple music, but it’s endowed with so much history and culture that it’s really not as simple as you think,” he said.

Keim said he thinks his role in the world of music is to present some of the old, obscure folk music in a way that his audience can understand.

“We’re not trying to do it exactly as it was on the old records. We’re trying to do it our way.”

arts@dailytarheel.com