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Morning, gang.
The new year is underway and we’re already hard at work on a few big stories you won’t read anywhere else in 2025.
If your family is anything like mine, movies are a holiday tradition. This year, we were among the many people who saw A Complete Unknown, the new film that follows a young Bob Dylan from his arrival on New York City’s folk revival scene in 1961 to his controversial electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
The film is a box office hit and already generating tons of awards buzz. It led me to go pick up the book on which it’s based, the terrific Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties by Elijah Wald.
The book got me thinking about the Newport festival’s struggle over what is and isn’t folk music, and who did and didn’t belong. As a long-time fan of Greensboro’s own North Carolina Folk Festival, I’ve heard that same grumbling decades later over acts like Grandmaster Flash, Parliament-Funkadelic, and The Psycodelics.
I got in touch with Jodee Ruppel, executive director of our festival, to talk about the movie, the legacy of Newport, and the ongoing conversation about folk.
This week we’ve also got a report from P.R. Lockhart on East Greensboro residents going public with their fight to get their apartment complex owners to fix some dangerous problems. What the conflict says about city code enforcement and housing in Greensboro is a conversation worth having.
Let’s get into it.
– Joe Killian
If you like what you see, please consider telling a friend to sign up.
East Greensboro Residents Rally for Apartment Repairs, Code Enforcement
In recent months, at least 17 other residents at the New Garden Place Apartments have complained of substandard living conditions.
They’ve pointed to leaking ceilings, mold, and pest infestations. They’ve alleged housing discrimination and said their landlord refuses to do maintenance. They’ve gone before the Greensboro City Council to demand action.
Instead, they say, property management has met the complaints with increased rents and retaliatory threats of eviction.
Read the full story here.
Read this newsletter online or contact The Thread team with tips and feedback at greensboro@theassemblync.com.
“Folk is Friction”
At the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Bob Dylan’s rock-infused electric set exploded a long-smoldering controversy over what counts as folk music and what a folk festival should be.
The new film “A Complete Unknown,” now in theaters, dramatizes the historic controversy. It is, in many ways, one still raging today. This week The Thread sat down with Jodee Ruppel, the executive director of Greensboro’s own North Carolina Folk Festival.
“It’s something that we still reckon with,” Ruppel said. “That question, ‘What is folk?'”
Ruppel took the reins of the free festival last year, as it celebrated a decade in downtown Greensboro. But one of her fondest early memories of the festival was the DJ set by hip-hop legend Grandmaster Flash in 2016.
She and her husband had just moved back to Greensboro and weren’t sure what to expect from the festival.
“Would I have gone to a folk festival that was three days of bluegrass, or Appalachian old-time music?” Ruppel said. “Probably not. And that’s what I thought folk was. But then I see Grandmaster Flash and I’m like, ‘I can get down with this.'”
Ruppel sees folk as music for and by the people—wherever it comes from and wherever artists take it. The modern string band music of Mipso is just as valid as the Tejano rock of Los Lonely Boys or the hip hop meets roots music vibe of Demeanor. At last year’s festival, Elias Alexander —a multi-instrumentalist who marries bagpipes and fiddles with electronic dance music—was a breakout star, drawing huge crowds by word of mouth.
“That’s something most people have never seen, and I love that,” Ruppel said. “Maybe they come to see something they’re familiar with—a blues act, bluegrass, whatever it is. But then they discover this whole other element of folk music. Things are always mixing. Nothing is pure.”
The line-up for this year’s festival, September 12-14, won’t be nailed down until at least May. But people should expect the unexpected.
“Folk is friction,” Ruppel said. “It was true at Newport and it’s still true today.”
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What We’re Reading
New Era for Triad City Beat: With founder and publisher Brian Clarey leaving the publication, Triad City Beat is planning its next incarnation. It’s looking to raise $30,000 by the end of February to keep going this year.
Welcome Back: When beloved columnist Jeri Rowe left the News & Record ten years ago, local media lost an important voice. After a decade at High Point University, Rowe is returning to journalism this week as editor-at-large for Our State magazine. He’ll be bringing his award-winning journalism to stories all over the state—including here in his home city. Great news in the new year.
Around the State
How a Disaster-Relief Package Constrains N.C.’s New Governor
The Republican-led legislature’s hurricane relief bill took away a number of executive powers.
‘The Best Job In Politics’
We asked four former governors for their advice to Josh Stein as he becomes the state’s next chief executive. They agreed that he should focus on rebuilding Western North Carolina—and […]
Our 10 Most-Read Stories of 2024
These are our stories that made the biggest waves this year, from beach shades to porn shop allegations to mushroom tourism.
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