For immediate release: Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2014
The Coastal Cohorts will present “King Mackerel and The Blues Are Running: Songs and Stories of the Carolina Coast,” Feb. 27-28 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The event is sponsored by UNC’s “Water in our World.”
Singer-songwriter Don Dixon (bass) is the legendary record producer of such musical groups as REM, the Smithereens, Marti Jones, Hootie & the Blowfish and more. Bland Simpson (piano) is a longtime member of the Tony Award-winning Red Clay Ramblers and is a Kenan Distinguished Professor in the creative writing program in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences. Jim Wann (guitar) is the principal composer-lyricist of Pump Boys & Dinettes, the Broadway hit that was a Tony and Drama Desk Nominee for Best Musical, an Olivier Nominee for Best Musical in London, and the longest running musical in Chicago theater history. All three are UNC alumni.
Performances will be at 8 p.m. in the historic PlayMakers Theatre on Cameron Avenue. General admission pre-sale tickets are available for $15 from the Memorial Hall Box Office (919-843-3333) or at the door on the night of the event. Both performances are free for Carolina students, but tickets are required.
“King Mackerel” has been performed by the trio all across North Carolina and the South, as well as at the Kennedy Center in Washington and in New York City, where its Off-Off-Broadway run was hailed by the New York Post as “a pure, salt-watered delight!”
For more information, visit http://jimwann.com/events/item/king-mackerel-the-blues-are-running.
College of Arts and Sciences contact: Kim Spurr, (919) 962-4093, spurrk@email.unc.edu
UNC News Services contact: Robbi Pickeral, (919) 962-8589, robbi.pickeral@unc.edu