Like a large family whose grown children have left the fold and made lives for themselves, Mike Craver, Bill Hicks, Jim Watson and Joe Newberry stay busy with solo projects and a variety of collaborations. But if the bonds are strong enough, a family always makes a point to be together at Thanksgiving, that most familial holiday. Thus, we have this quartet's traditional circa-Turkey Time gathering. And when this foursome—agile musicians and ace storytellers all—congregates, you have, oh, about 75% of the Great American Songbook covered. The music starts at 10 p.m. —Rick Cornell

Howdy howdy folks - A melancholy happy trails to the Cave, the bar in Chapel Hill that is closing after about 50 years in business.  A long, narrow room with a ceiling low enough that I could touch it without jumping, no official stage - just an area at the end where people played, and an atmosphere that you took with you, particularly in the years when the blue haze of cigarette smoke would be visible all the way to the back.  My wife and I would come home, go out on the screen porch and take our clothes off and leave them out there for the night.  When I started playing there in the mid '80's it was an all-acoustic music bar, and after leaving the Red Clay Ramblers I made my living there for several years, playing with the Next Zenith String Band (with Bill & Libby Hicks and Tom Holt), the Green Level Entertainers (with LeRoy Savage, Tony & Gary Williamson, and Jerry Brown), Duke LaCrosse and Pinky Wyoming, and doing solo shows.  Meg Rose Sorrell and Bo Porter were the owners then, and it was in conversation with Meg that the idea of me doing a Christmas show came up.  From 1986 through 2017 I've gone in there and led people in singing carols - there are people who've been coming for years now with grown children who come to that show.  I still think that my mother was the oldest person to ever drink beer at the Cave when she was last there at age 90.  I had a lot of great times in there and it's sad to think it's closing.  I'll long remember the sign that was posted behind the bar - SERVICE WITH A SNARL.  You've got 10 more days to get in there, drink a beer (or a mixed drink now) and toast Meg, Bo, Mr. Mouse, and Mark Conner and his partners who have kept the Cave going all these years.       Jim Watson 

(Craver, Hicks, Watson, and Newberry played their last show at The Cave in 2010, as this webpage documents.  Jim performed his Christmas shows at The Cave from 1986 to 2017. Many memories.)