Raleigh rock band The Veldt has always been both pioneer and outlier. They emerged 40 years ago as Black musicians playing “shoegaze,” a style of alternative music more closely associated with bands from England than the Southeast or even America. A genre descended from 1960s-vintage psychedelic rock, shoegaze is so-called because a lot of the bands lumped into the style tend to gaze down at their shoes while playing onstagnge. High-volume distortion tends to be the basic sound, with key shoegaze bands including My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins—and The Veldt, led by Raleigh native twin brothers Daniel and Danny Chavis.
More than 30 years after releasing their full-length debut LP “Afrodisiac” on Mercury Records, the 60-year-old Chavis Brothers have become something like wise elders on this particular circuit. In recent years, they have taken on curatorial roles by organizing a series of music festivals. Their latest festival project is called “I Have A Dream Pop Fest,” and the Chavis’ Raleigh hometown is one of three cities it will play in October, along with New York City and Richmond, Va.
The Raleigh edition happens the weekend of Oct. 16-17 at Neptunes Parlour, the basement club downstairs from Kings on Martin Street in downtown Raleigh. The way the Chavis brothers see it, this is as much about building community as starting a festival.
“We’re really trying to focus this on young people, who are the ones at the shows coming up to us afterward to ask us about our music,” says Daniel Chavis. “It’s like we’ve become the (hardcore band) Bad Brains of shoegaze now, which is hilarious. But I’ll take it. I’d rather get my flowers in my hand now than on my grave later.”
Dream Pop is the latest in a series of festivals that The Veldt has put together, going back to the North Carolina Festival of Psychedelia in 2016. Several years after that, they had plans in the work for another event with downtown Raleigh’s Holiday Inn as the venue, “Holiday Love Inn,” which the Coronavirus shutdown ended before it could begin.
Post-pandemic, they re-emerged with “Noir Bizarre,” a “black-centered, boho and inclusive” multi-media festival. Dream Pop’s name was coined by the late cultural critic Greg Tate, whose band Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber played one of the Veldt’s “Noir Bizarre” events shortly before his death in 2021.
The Veldt gets top billing in the second-night headline spot, closing out the festival on Sat., Oct. 17. The rest of the lineup has bands from as far away as Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., as well as North Carolina acts from Durham, Chapel Hill and Asheville.
“It seems like Raleigh used to be a lot more diverse than it is now,” says Chavis. “We’re trying to do something different. I’ve spent time in New York, time in L.A., but I’m not from there. I’m from here and I’d rather make something happen here than go somewhere else. We’re just trying to bridge the gap, get people together and let them know that this type of music is here.”
More than a dozen Raleigh-area restaurants received MICHELIN Guide recognition in the first ever guide to the American South in... View More
Author: David Menconi
2019 Piedmont Laureate David Menconi was music critic at The News & Observer in Raleigh for 28 years and has also written for publications including Billboard, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, SPIN, The Bluegrass Situation and No Depression. His fifth book, "Oh, Didn’t They Ramble: Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music," was published in October 2023 by University of North Carolina Press.
