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I wish I'd seen The Magnolia Collective more times over the past few years, either playing late on a weekday at The Station or some other low-lit room in the Triangle. Saturday night at Local 506, they opened for Michigan's Frontier Ruckus. While the two bands have very different variations on Americana, the bill worked. Magnolia mixed several styles, from, alt-country and blues to psychedelic rock and just plain old rock ’n’ roll. As notoriously indifferent as Chapel Hill crowds can be, they bobbed their heads to the strums as though this was the band they came to see. And maybe next time it will be.

Saturday night offered an evening of beautiful music at the Haw River Ballroom. As the chilly fall wind began to blow through Chatham County, Cup 22 was firing out hot cups of coffee to the mellow crowd. The show began with the two-piece Prypyat, featuring Duncan Webster (Hammer No More the Fingers) and Leah Gibson (Lost in the Trees, Bowerbirds). While Webster's finger picking is a delight to hear, it was Gibson's often overlooked cello work that seemed to fill the ballroom in the best of ways.

Hiss Golden Messenger followed with a self-proclaimed set of the "Jesus tunes"; no surprise, it was a solid solo performance. Later in the set he was joined by Christy Smith of The Tender Fruit and The Bowerbirds themselves on "Brother, Do You Know the Road?"

The Bowerbirds then took the stage to close out the evening. They ran through several songs off their acclaimed latest release The Clearing and debuted a new tune called "Island Dweller." Before closing the show, The Bowerbirds expressed their love for Saxapahaw and this time of year in North Carolina. Indeed, all elements added to another perfect evening in Saxapahaw.

Prypyat playing a lovely instrumental, followed by "Twin Peaks"

Hiss Golden Messenger with Christy Smith (The Tender Fruit) & The Bowerbirds - "Brother, Do You Know The Road?"

Bowerbirds - "Stitch The Hem"

• Photo by David Fellerath
• Grant Hart, left, played Friday night with The Venables

“There’s no success like failure.” —some guy from Minnesota

As we approached the front door of Motorco, we saw that a singer/ guitarist was flailing away on stage. He had long, dark hair and for a few frantic moments, we thought Grant Hart had already begun his set. We hadn’t really seen recent photographs of the Hüsker Dü drummer, so the singer on stage—who turned out to be Erik Sugg of The Static Minds—was a passable doppelgänger for Hart two decades ago.

After The Static Minds’ tight, exuberant set of 1970s-style twin-guitar rock, I was standing alone in the still-lightly populated bar. I noticed an older and somewhat frail-looking man standing near me. He seemed to have a slight hitch in his gait. He had long stringy hair and a thinly trimmed mustache that made him look just a bit like a dissipated John Waters. This man was awfully thin but he seemed to be in a good mood.

“That’s not Grant Hart,” I told myself. But of course it was. How we’ve all gotten older.

I came late to Hüsker Dü, tuning in right as they released their 1987 swan song, Warehouse: Songs and Stories. Like people in the 1960s who saw the choice between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones as a deeply personal statement, American indie music fans in the 1980s faced an aesthetic dilemma when surveying the generation of angry white guys from Minneapolis who’d organized themselves into Hüsker Dü and the Replacements—two-thirds of that decade’s holy trinity.

Because I chose the Replacements, my tribal loyalties kept me from digging into the Hüskers catalog until the end of their career. And there, too, was a Paul-or-John dilemma: Do you like guitarist Bob Mould’s searing, self-lacerating sonic barrage? Or do you prefer the melodies and wordplay of the band’s sunnier drummer, Grant Hart?

I chose Hart. Mould had some wonderful songs—I especially liked his efforts on New Day Rising, like “I Apologize,” “Celebrated Summer” and “Perfect Example.” But I had little interest in his personal demons, and his sullen mien and melodic parsimony grew wearisome. I didn’t follow his solo career.

Hart, on the other hand, seemed as if he actually liked music. Even his contributions to the Hüsker’s destroy-the-furniture-and-burn-the-fucker-down canon had distinct hooks: “What’s Going On,” for example, or “Turn On the News.”

Both of those songs are highlights from Zen Arcade, the most famous Hüsker Dü album, but for me, the emotional apex of that album comes with another Hart composition, “Standing By the Sea”:

The waves kept on repeating
Each one crashing to the shore
And my footsteps nowhere leading
As they disappeared once more.

Your senses are bombarded
By the roaring that you hear
In a shell, you can hear the ocean
When you put it up to your ear.

Twenty-three years ago to the month, Hüsker Dü broke up. Hart’s heroin use was one problem, but Hart and Mould’s increasingly bitter songwriting rivalry—which had fueled five brilliant albums in four years—finally became unsustainable.