Silo Songs

Guitar cases are stacked at the top of the winding stairs at the Silos, a bar and restaurant named for the two metal grain silos, each the size of a small two-story house, that make up the building. The popular eatery is situated on the edge of Oriental, where the village meets farmland. Situated on the Pamlico Sound, Oriental is full of people (local or not) who know boats—fishing boats, yachts, sailboats—large and small.


Tonight, like most open-mic nights at the Silos, the house is full and the bar is crowded. Records and record covers from the 80s adorn the walls like wallpaper, and 16 guitars, acoustic and electric, hang from the rafters along with a Beale Street sign. The entire rustic room is bright and lively with people, many with sun and wind-burned faces, who talk and laugh until the music starts. Some share a pizza at their parlor-like tables, but most are here to listen—or sing.


The music starts at 7 p.m., as it does every Wednesday, when Chris Daniels (who owns the Silos with his wife Kim Daniels) steps up onto the small stage “to get people warmed up,” he says. His duet partner for the night is 16-year-old Connor Daniels (no relation). There are two mic stands. The yellow stage lights look hot. Chris is 50, has shaggy blond hair and dresses like a surfer; only his reading glasses give away his age. Like most in the room, he wears boat shoes and no socks; Connor wears flip-flops—both are typical footwear for this coastal town. Singing his own songs, Chris accompanies himself on the guitar. Connor plays the sax; his mom and girlfriend sit at a table reserved for them.


They start their set with a song called “I Lost My Girl to a Man Who Drives a Septic Truck.” Most of Chris’s songs are similarly ironic. When they finish, Chris hangs his guitar on a wall and they take a break to do a sound check for the next performers.


Soon, two gray-haired men take the stage. Pat Nocera has a “kahone,” a box-shaped drum you sit on and play by striking the sides. Mike Bramble, who is wearing a T-shirt that reads “Don’t die with the music inside you,” sings and plays guitar.


They are the first of eight acts on the list for tonight. Each act is allowed two to three songs, first come, first serve—same rules since open-mic night started 10 years ago.


“Fifty-two years ago, I asked this cute little freshman to go to the homecoming dance,” says Mike Bramble at the mic. “She said yes. Anyone who knows me knows what is next.”


“That’s my guy,” says a blushing woman seated at a table next to me, smiling as we both photograph her husband.

Two love songs and a couple of acts later, Laura Beth Buckleiter, who lives on a boat currently docked in town, gets up from the long bar-like table where I’ve also been sitting and says, “This really takes more guts than it does skill.” She calls herself out as a Neil Diamond fan and dives deep into “Song Sung Blue.”


Regardless of whether the performers sing on key, everyone claps.


When Laura finishes, out of breath, she puts her guitar away and shrugs. Chris yells to her, “Improving every week!”


“Yes, and that happens only when you don’t care,” she tells Chris. “I am transgender; if I cared what people thought I’d still be in a closet somewhere.”


“This is the purest music,” Chris says to me, later in the evening. “People come here simply with a dream and a guitar or with something they need to say.”


Next, Mike Collins comes to the mic. He is a buttoned-down man. “We are all sailors here,” he says to the crowd. In this coastal town, really, most are.

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