The Kraken, a Chapel Hill bar located in a 1973 roadhouse venue, is now hosting a weekly residency series on Wednesdays to bring musicians from all over the country to the Chapel Hill community.
Jonathan Byrd, the master of ceremonies and originator of the Shake Sugaree Americana Residency, performs at the series every week and invites different guest musicians to join him on stage each time.
Byrd, who grew up driving past the building now inhabited by The Kraken, said hosting the residency series at a venue he had known his whole life just made sense to him.
“The Kraken, that little roadhouse, has been there since I was a kid and I lived out in Western Orange County,” Byrd said. “It went through various ownership, and then I noticed a couple years ago that Jody and Kirk bought it and that there were real bands playing there on the weekend — and it wasn’t just a local watering hole, it was becoming a destination for music.”
Byrd performs a genre known as old-time music, which he discovered when he began playing acoustic music. He said he was drawn to the genre because of its songwriting forms.
“Old-time is social music — it’s music that people would get together and play on the weekends,” Byrd said.
