Ordinarily, a primary election happening after presidential nominations are set would be a low-key affair. But that's not the case in North Carolina this year, thanks to Amendment 1 -- which would write into the state constitution that the only valid legal domestic union is marriage between one man and one woman.

While numerous business and political leaders have weighed in against it, Amendment 1 still appears headed for passage with a solid double-digit lead in most opinion polls. And in a move reminescent of past campaigns against the late Sen. Jesse A. Helms, North Carolina's music community has taken up the cause of trying to rally voters against it.

One such event is Thursday night at Durham's Motorco Music Hall, a benefit for Protect NC Families.  Superchunk's Mac McCaughan, Mountain Goats' John Darnielle and Reigning Sound's Greg Cartwright will all play, with comedian Tara Defrancisco serving as host. Cover is $20; but if you want to shell out for the $100 VIP ticket, you get to request a song they'll play.

On April 27, Stu McLamb from The Love Language, John Howie and others will play at Carrboro Town Hall from noon to 4 p.m. This one is to raise awareness about early voting (which begins Thursday).

The biggest local anti-Amendment 1 show so far is the Concert to Defeat Amendment One May 6 at Haw River Ballroom, with Bob Mould, David Cross, Stu McLamb, comedian Tig Notaro, Superchunk in acoustic-duo format (!) and Amber Tamblyn. Tickets are $80 and include a silkscreened event poster.

There's also been at least one very fine new song inspired by this, "Vote Against Amendment One." Composed by Greensboro's Laurelyn Dossett (of "The Gathering" fame), it features Molly McGinn, Carolina Chocolate Drop Rhiannon Giddens Laffan and others.

Read more about the campaigns for and against the amendment here.

Sad but not unexpected news from the world of Piedmont old-time music: Fiddler Joe Thompson has died at the ripe old age of 93. If you've ever listened to Carolina Chocolate Drops, then you've heard some of his influence, and not just because their upcoming album leads off with one of the songs they learned from Thompson ("Riro's House").

The Chocolate Drops spent time woodshedding with Thompson in their early days, playing with him at his Mebane home as well as various festivals including Merlefest (where they recorded a live album together in 2008). Rhiannon Giddens remembers the first time Thompson heard Dom Flemmons playing a jug during an early Chocolate Drops jam session.

"Joe had never heard jug in a fiddle tune before and he would turn around while playing and just give a look," Giddens said, laughing at the memory. "He'd go back to playing, then turn around and look again. He finally decided it was o.k., and we knew without him having to say anything. That was Joe, always real subtle and gentle. He'd never say, 'You're not playing that right.' It was always, 'That might be just a little too fast.' Not saying it was good or bad, just nudging it along until we were where he wanted us to be."

The Chocolate Drops weren't the only youngsters to learn from the master, either.

"Nobody was too big or too little for Joe to sit down and pick with," said Larry Vellani, a musician from Mebane who often played with Thompson. "He never met a stranger. If you were into music, Joe was into you. Just that straightfoward. Everywhere he went, he left kernals of wisdom, good sense and good musical taste."

In recognition of his influence, Thompson was awarded an NEA National Heritage Fellowship in 2007, to go with a North Carolina Heritage Award he won in 1991. He was a peerless fiddle player, and also one of those rare people about whom unkind things are almost never said.

"Joe Thompson was a gentleman, and a gentle man," said Joe Newberry, another of Thompson's frequent playing partners. "To hear his legacy in a younger generation of musicians is very satisfying to all of us who play this kind of music. He really was a one-of-a-kind fiddle player, and we're all lucky and honored to have just walked in his garden."

(Thanks, Barry!)

Most of the time when Rhiannon Giddens is singing with her old-time stringband Carolina Chocolate Drops, you'd never know that she has a classical background. But she started out as an opera singer at Oberlin College, and she flashed some of those chops onstage Friday night at the North Carolina Symphony’s Holiday Pops show at Meymandi Concert Hall. She did a lovely star turn on "O Holy Night," which was the first high point of the evening.

Still, that was just a warm-up for the main event, the symphonic preview of "The Gathering" -- Laurelyn Dossett's holiday song cycle about the ups, downs, joys, tears and fears of holiday-season family get-togethers. It was truly lovely, with composer Aaron Grad's Americana-by-way-of-Aaron-Copland arrangements meshing perfectly with the stringband quartet of Dossett, Giddens, banjo player Joe Newberry and mandolin man Mike Compton.

On the outro to the high-spirited "Redbird," Giddens kicked off her high heels to dance and Newberry (a self-described "recovering clogger") was right there with her to do an impressive little soft-shoe number. All I've got to say is it was a far better way to kick off the holidays than a midnight Black Friday sale. "The Gathering" also plays two shows on Saturday, and it's well worth checking out. Hope they will perform it beyond this weekend, too.

Laurelyn Dossett has been a consistent presence in North Carolina old-time/folk circles over the last decade, in part because she's versatile enough to do a lot of things well. Among other things, that led to her collaboration with the NC Symphony on "The Gathering," a lovely piece of music about a prodigal daughter's holiday-season return that has its full-orchestra premiere on Friday.

"I keep finding myself in collaborations I didn't expect, whether in theater, this with the symphony -- or my next one, with Daniel Bernard Roumain. He's a classical violinist who plays like this hip-hop violin. As an instrumentalist, he's into telling stories people can connect to and he writes beautiful things, but he's always having to explain what they're about. So that's his desire to work with a lyricist."

That should be fascinating to hear. Meantime, "The Gathering" is right pretty and there's a story about it in Sunday's paper.

Nikita (8pm, CW) - Ryan has secrets to give Nikita regarding how Oversight is funded, but Amanda intercepts the messages between Ryan and Nikita, and Nikita and Michael race to get Ryan out of prison.

Chuck (8pm, NBC) - Chuck tries to get his freelance spy business off the ground as the team search for a vanished person and compete with a crafty business rival (Carrie-Anne Moss).

Grimm (9pm, NBC) - Nick and Hank investigate a breaking-and-entering case that leads them to a mysterious family with a cultural heritage of blurring the line between right and wrong. Nick also asks his blutbad buddy Monroe to help safeguard Aunt Marie.

Fringe (9pm, Fox) - An electrical engineer (Stephen Root) and his wife (Romy Rosemont), a theoretical physicist, pitch in during a frantic search for a pattern between time-loop anomalies.

Give Me the Banjo (10pm, UNC-TV) - Steve Martin narrates the history of the banjo, which dates back to colonial times. Includes comments and performances by Earl Scruggs, Pete Seeger, Mike Seeger, the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Abigail Washburn. Roseanne Cash hosts and talks with fellow country star (and former husband) Rodney Crowell about the influence banjo music has had on their musical styles.

Sanctuary (10pm, Syfy) - The team tracks an Abnormal fugitive, and discovers that Tesla is the head of a secret research lab for a Homeland Security agency that conducts tests on Abnormals.

Note: A Gifted Man, CSI:NY, and Blue Bloods are all new tonight, but I don't know if CBS will show the episodes they aborted last Friday in deference to the final game of the World Series, or if they'll show the ones they have listed currently online. Just tune in and you'll get new stuff.

So it goes. Today's paper has a preview of Saturday's Carolina Chocolate Drops show in Raleigh -- which has been canceled on account of the hurricane. I'll keep you posted on when and if a rescheduled date happens.

Justin Robinson's departure from the Carolina Chocolate Drops seems curiously timed, since there's every chance the group will win a Grammy Award next weekend. But the split has been brewing for a while. The Chocolate Drops spent 250 days on the road in 2010, a grind that was especially tough on Robinson.

"Some like to tour, some don't," Thompson's bandmate Rhiannon Giddens said recently. "Justin has other things in his life, he's a very outdoorsy guy. It's a very amicable thing. We were together five-and-a-half years, which is more than a lot. We hope he'll play with us some here and there, some shows with us next year, and on the next album. It's hard because we're having a lot of success with the Grammy nomination. It's hard to contemplate changes. But you don't want to hold someone against their will."

Meantime, plans for that next album continue apace. Guitarist Buddy Miller, who was just in Raleigh playing behind Robert Plant, is tentatively set to produce. And Robinson's new group, Justin Robinson and the Mary Annettes, will play Feb. 19 at Durham's Motorco Music Hall.

(Thanks, Wendy.)

ADDENDUM (2/14/11): Grammy victory!

The record industry is still dying, and yet very fine albums keep right on coming out. Here are my 10 favorites from 2010 -- that was the year that was.

(1) Arcade Fire, "The Suburbs" (Merge) -- Supposedly there aren't any "consensus" bands anymore, acts everyone can agree are worthy. Except for Arcade Fire, a Montreal band that's easy to love all the way around. Truly great.

(2) Laura Veirs, "July Flame" (Raven Marching Band) -- If you want someone's attention, whisper. Better still, murmur softly and set it to catchy, exquisitely crafted acoustic pop arrangements. Lovely.

(3) Doug Paisley, "Constant Companion" (No Quarter) -- Speaking of quiet, this is the sort of record that might have you holding your breath for fear of breaking the spell. It's sturdy enough to hold up, though.

(4) Robert Plant, "Band of Joy" (Rounder) -- Plant continues his Appalachian Mountain hop, this time with iconic Nashville country-blues guitarist Buddy Miller in charge of the proceedings, yielding wonderfully spooky results. Plant will bring this show to Raleigh in February. You'd be crazy to miss it.

(5) Titus Andronicus, "The Mointor" (XL) -- Screaming bloody murder also has much to recommend it, especially if one is obsessed with the Civil War and Bruce Springsteen in equal parts. Club-sized arena rock never had it so good.

(6) Kanye West, "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" (Roc-A-Fella) -- You have to give the guy credit for boundless ambition, as befits an ego of West's magnitude, and danged if he doesn't pull it off. West still ain't quite as good as he thinks he is, but he's getting closer.

(7) Carolina Chocolate Drops, "Genuine Negro Jig" (Nonesuch) -- In which the best new old-time stringband in America (not just the Triangle) graduates from cool novelty to serious contender. The aforementioned Buddy Miller is tentatively set to produce their next album, which should be fantastic.

(8) Sharon Van Etten, "Epic" (Ba Da Bing) -- It's only 32 minutes long, barely album-length nowadays. Nevertheless, the cheekily titled "Epic" packs a year's worth of obsession, single-minded determination and emotion into its seven songs.

(9) The Love Language, "Libraries" (Merge) -- Brian Wilson has nothing on Stuart McLamb, main man of The Love Language. "Libraries" is a sonic pop cathedral, both beautiful and terrifying, haunted by McLamb's dead-of-night howl.

(10) Alejandro Escovedo, "Street Songs of Love" (Fantasy) -- Love lost, found, squandered and thrown away is the overriding theme to Escovedo's rippin' new album, a great followup to 2008's equally stellar "Real Animal." Long may he roar.

Merge Records' year of living fabulously continues. The Durham-based label has picked up three nods in the latest round of Grammy nominations, for Arcade Fire's chart-topping "The Suburbs," including album of the year. That one's a longshot, but Arcade Fire looks to be the front-runner for best alternative music album. If that comes through, it will be Merge's first-ever Grammy. The album is also nominated for best rock performance by a duo or group with vocals.

The Grammys will be presented on Feb. 13.

Other Grammy nominations of local interest:

Carolina Chocolate Drops scored a nomination for best traditional folk album with their major-label debut, "Genuine Negro Jig."

Triangle gospel institution Shirley Caesar's "A City Called Heaven" was nominated for best traditional gospel album.

High Point "American Idol" Fantasia's "Back To Me" picked up nominations for best R&B album and best female R&B vocal performance. "Bittersweet," a track from her album, was nominated for best R&B song (a songwriter's award).

Monroe native Calvin Richardson's "You're So Amazing" got a nod for best traditional R&B vocal performance.

UNC-Chapel Hill alumnus Lewis Black's "Stark Raving Black' was nominated for best comedy album.

Carolina Chocolate Drops have always been a multi-media bunch. So they don't just have a new album out, but also a book -- a beautiful self-titled songbook subtitled "Twelve Songs to Sing and to Play." Rhiannon Giddens says the book was "my baby," something she put a great deal of work into. And if she has her way, it won't be the last book to emerge from the far-flung CCD empire.

"Next I want to do a cookbook," Giddens said in Austin last week during South By Southwest. "I make Irish soda bread, biscuits, a lot of things."

"My thing is fried okra," added her bandmate Justin Robinson. "Mac and cheese, too. It's a problem, actually, because my recipes would all be so simple: 'Take a pound of beans plus bacon, cook' for pinto beans, say. Or, cheese crisp: 'Take a tortilla and cheese, heat, eat.'"

"We're pretty fierce on food," Giddens said with a laugh. "It sounds like we're already working on that cookbook right now."

For more, see the story in Sunday's paper. The package also includes a South By Southwest wrapup; and there's also some CCD/SXSW content here.