Photo of the Day

In North Carolina, ‘round about the last weekend in April, some 18 to 20 bands from all over the country gather at the Cave, a tiny basement venue in downtown Chapel Hill, and play music for the crowd of eager patrons and each other. Musical styles range from rock, surf, soul, country, western, lounge, spacey, rockabilly, and few harder to define. What do these bands have in common? None of them sing!

Instro Summit 2011 is our third annual event, held from 7pm Friday, April 29th to 1am Sunday, May first. Currently the largest festival of its’ type in the Southeast, it features bands from as nearby as Durham to as far away as Ulm, Germany, all eager to share their lyric-free music with fans–and bands–that appreciate the genre.

Highlights this year include our three annual audience participation events. First is our “Can You Play as Wack’d as Link Wray?” contest, in which guitar players come on stage and try to out do and out-weird each other, playing their version of the buh-zarre solo from Link Wray’s song, “I’m Branded”. Second is “The Big Bass-Off!” Which works the same way, but with bass players trying to out-thunder each other with their interpretation of John Entwhistle’s solo from the Who’s “My Generation”. The winner of the former contest gets a suitcase full of Instro Summit swag donated by the band, the latter gets a prize package donated by BestBassGear.com. The third event, the "Rumble Jam", is when we encourage any and all guitarists who have a guitar, amp and know how to play "Rumble" to join us on stage and play said song in one massive, fuse-blowing multi-guitar wall of rockin' goodness. Last year we got 12 guitars players--11 male, one female--to join in the fun. This year, we're hoping for more--MANY more!

Of note to folks who are fans of Eastwood’s products is our first annual Instro Summit Raffle, in which our grand prize is a Brand-new Eastwood Saturn 63 guitar, donated by–you guessed it–Eastwood guitars. The Saturn is already a great-looking, great sounding guitar (as recently evidenced by several local musicians whose hands we literally had to pry away said guitar from after we got it set up at our local music store, the Music Loft of Carrboro), but this particular Saturn will be extra-special, as we’re having the Instro Summit logo custom-etched onto the underside of the Saturn’s clear pickguard, making it a unique one-of-one model. Other prizes include one of two Flip Mino HD video cameras, an Eastwood Classic 4 bass (part of a special raffle for folks who buy a ticket on Sunday, may 1st) and a 70 dollar gift certificate from the Music Loft of Carrboro, NC. All raffle proceeds go to the many hardworking, frequently underpaid bands and volunteers that make the Summit possible.