Theoden Janes

3 days ago | charlotteobserver.com | Theoden Janes

In less than three years as president of Livingstone College in Salisbury, Anthony Davis has proven enormously successful at getting people to give to the small but increasingly mighty HBCU he helms. $42 million in just the past 12 months - an amount that would top the school's best-ever year for contributions by more than double.

1 week ago | charlotteobserver.com | Theoden Janes

As the last of the fans were vacating the premises on the last day of the 2025 Lovin' Life Music Fest in uptown Charlotte, organizers sent out the last email blast of the weekend, making it official: Lovin' Life is returning for a third year in 2026 - on May 1-3. That means this is official, too: They have 361 days to figure out what went wrong this year. And very clearly something very big went very wrong.

1 week ago | charlotteobserver.com | Theoden Janes

There are two things that caused Kendrick Lamar's big co-headlining show with SZA at Bank of America Stadium to get off to an inauspicious start. One was a relatively minor screw-up (in fact, many might not have even caught it), but still something altogether out of character for Lamar; we'll explain in more detail in a minute. The other thing, meanwhile - which we had a much-bigger, much-longer cringe over - was, of course, that stupid weather.

3 weeks ago | charlotteobserver.com | Theoden Janes

Noah Lazes knows a little something about struggling to find the right place for a major music festival in Charlotte - and about achieving lasting success with one, as well. For seven years, from 1998 to 2004, the annual spring music festival he founded called CityFest Live! bounced around a pre-development-boom uptown grid as Lazes lassoed a laundry list of major acts, including Bob Dylan, Foo Fighters, The Roots and The Black Crowes.

3 weeks ago | charlotteobserver.com | Theoden Janes

It sure feels like something of a music equinox, next Saturday night's impending convergence in uptown of Kendrick Lamar's Charlotte tour stop and the Lovin' Life Music Fest. Or, like something of a live-music-heavyweight showdown. In one corner - the western corner of Center City, over at Bank of America Stadium, where the NFL's Carolina Panthers play - we have in Lamar, a 37-year-old rapper who is currently one of the most celebrated musical artists on the planet.