Join us for the second Better Days live music event of 2025 at Hartwell Raleigh featuring Colin Cutler and The Rattletraps!

Better Days is a quarterly live music series that features musicians (local and beyond) who are dedicated to writing and performing original music. Better Days is hosted and sponsored in partnership with J Candeed Music and Hartwell Raleigh.

Come early starting at 5pm for food and drinks from the Hartwell Bar, then get ready for music starting at 7pm.

Admission is $10 and and you can purchase them at the link below and at the door to support future events and all of the musicians.

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About the Artists

Colin Cutler

"Colin Cutler is a Greensboro, North Carolina-based singer-songwriter, folk musician, poet, and storyteller toting a banjo and guitar. Whether solo or with his band, Hot Pepper Jam, he is a wide-ranging performer whose musical roots draw from the breadth of American folk music—from Appalachian oldtime to blues to gospel to country to rock’n’roll—to form what No Depression has described as “one magnificent tapestry of roots music.”.

While his first few albums were directly inspired by his background in oldtime music, his most recent effort was even more ambitious and electric. Tarwater was inspired by both life and the earthy characters of Georgia author Flannery O'Connor, achieving "...a juke joint energy coursing through it and a humidity that seems to sweat out the sins and the booze that these characters are often soaked in” (Paste).

The 2022 Winner of the Susquehanna Folk Festival’s Emerging Artists Competition, the last couple years have seen Cutler playing across the Southeast, with appearances at Merlefest, Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival, the North Carolina Folk Festival, Antlers and Acorns Songwriters Festival, and the Carolina Bible Camp Bluegrass Festival.

The Rattlertraps

Formed in Chapel Hill, NC, The Rattletraps is a band of songwriters who create a culmination of roots rock, country and blues music. With songs about bar fights, working dead end jobs and the streets of New Orleans, The Rattletraps find ways to create anthems that are bitter, cynical, and just the right amount of pissed off. In the process of recording their first album now, their eight-piece rock show careens between soaring saxophone solos and wicked steel guitar riffs, all set to hard driving rhythms and low-down grooves.

For more information and updates on Better Days, follow along at @j_candeed_music