Shows I attended in 2025

by Anton Zuiker on December 26, 2025

In my Vivid Vision, the five-year plan I wrote in 2024, I included this goal for a set of habits I’ll develop by 2030:

I find awe, beauty, and wonder from nature (hiking, camping, touring) and from people (music, arts, culture). I spend 5 full days outside and I attend 12 concerts, shows, plays, and other live entertainment each year.

This year, I met that goal with a handful of hikes with Erin in Ireland, a bike ride with Anna and my father in Rhode Island, and the following shows, some by myself and others with members of my family:

• In March: Patterson Hood, Abi Carter, and Sierra Hull, all at Carrboro’s Cat’s Cradle
• In April: The War and Treaty at Cat’s Cradle
• In May: Oliver’s high school jazz band
• In June: Telebox in Clonakilty and the Irish music-and-dance extravaganze Riverdance 30 in Dublin
• In July: Chirp at Byrdland and Ducks Ltd at DC9, in Washington, D.C., and Primo Arrasco at the amazing House on Fire dinner in Marfa
• In August, the musical A Good Boy at UNC’s Playmakers Repertory
• In September, Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram at Cat’s Cradle, the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle on the green at Southern Village, The Heavy Heavy at Durham’s Motorco, and multiple acts at the 28th annual Carrboro Music Festival
• In October, Salt & Smoke & Sound festival near Hillsborough, and Nation of Language at Cat’s Cradle (and we saw the biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere)
• In November, Vincent Lima at Cat’s Cradle, Ketch Secor at Haw River Ballroom, Ginger Jones-Robinson at the Snap Pea pop-up dinner, the dance performance Is It Thursday Yet? at Duke University, and The Beths at Cleveland’s Globe Iron
• In December, the North Carolina Symphony Holiday Brass and Raleigh Youth Choir for A Candlelight Christmas, and I finished the excellent podcast Fela Kuti: Fear No Man

The music category over at Wan Smol Blog has details on most of these shows. The best of those them? Certainly The Heavy Heavy, Kingfish Ingram, The Beths, and Ketch Secor. I’m fortunate that there are excellent music venues so close. I expect 2026 to be similarly filled with good music.

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