'Poor Pie' provides filling for Chapel Hill arts scene

It’s a band name based on a pie recipe.

Poor Pie, a rock ‘n’ roll band based in Chapel Hill, was started by UNC graduate Trevor Terris, and Ryan Hurley, who graduated from Christopher Newport University in Virginia.

They met through Hurley’s sister in 2009, Terris said, and became friends through their shared interests in music.

“He is really the creative genius,” Hurley said. “I saw that he was writing these really great songs, so I encouraged him to start a band together and I played the drums.”

Current Poor Pie drummer and UNC graduate Kyle Parker, who works as a garden assistant at the Carolina Campus Community Gardens, said Hurley is the creative force behind the band.

“He’s writing the songs and we are building upon them,” he said. “He has got a very unique point of view.”

Hurley was also the one who gave the band its name after seeing a recipe for Poor Man’s Pie.

“I thought we could be the ‘Poor Man’s Pie’ of rock music,” he said.

“There’s not really a story behind the name,” Terris said. “Ryan just threw it out one day, and he was like ‘We are Poor Pie’ and never really explained whether it was a stroke of genius or if he was riding a lawn mower and it just came into his head. I have no idea.”

Parker was into the name.

“We were like ‘Man, that’s great.’ He has got a logo, and it’s an original name. Band names are really hard, so we were like ‘Man, you’ve got it. We are not going to mess with it,’” Parker said.

The newly named band still experienced some bumps in the road when they were only half-baked.

“Ryan would write songs and bring them to me and I would give him feedback,” Terris said. “We knew we weren’t going to be ready to perform live for quite a while because he had never sung before.”

The band’s sound can be broadly described as rock ‘n’ roll, but the band members said there is much more to the music.

“We all kind of come from different musical backgrounds, so it’s kind of a mix of a lot of things,” Parker said. “We all come from pretty different places, so it’s kind of like a musical stew.”

Like all art, Parker said their music is all about emotion.

“It might make you happy or sad or get you in a certain mood,” he said.

One thing is for sure: While their styles may differ, they all share the same passion for their music.

“It started off mainly as a challenge to be creative and put something together,” Hurley said. “I really enjoyed working with people, playing with Trevor and the other members and also facing the fear of going through with it and showing other people.”

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