When I told the Uber driver that I had grown up in Greensboro but had moved away years ago, she said, “Greensboro’s not little Greensboro anymore!” and then turned onto Elm Street, where a line of people stretched down the block. They were all waiting to enter the Pyrle, downtown’s newest music hall, and as I stepped out to join them, my driver shouted, “I hope you get in!”

This is not how I remember things. Back when I was growing up, downtown in this midsize North Carolina Piedmont city was basically just tumbleweeds. We called it Greensboring. I was a young drummer then, and as soon as my band Athenaeum signed a record deal, I moved straight to Chapel Hill. These days, though? Greensboro has become a musical destination.

Eric Gales, who recently won two Grammys for his contributions to the Sinners soundtrack, moved here in 2012. Charlie Hunter, renowned for his guitar work with D’Angelo, arrived in 2019. And Sarah and Austin McCombie—the married couple who together form Chatham Rabbits, one of the region’s most popular Americana acts—relocated to a farm on the outskirts of town after living near the Research Triangle for years.

“Our friends in the scene there thought we were crazy,” Sarah says. “But Greensboro is my favorite place I’ve ever lived. It’s like the underestimated younger sibling who grows up and just blows your mind.”

Perhaps more than anyone, Greensboro’s homegrown talents have made their mark in recent years. Karly Hartzman, singer of Wednesday—one of the country’s most critically acclaimed indie rock acts—proudly reps her hometown. (I almost died when I saw her playing The Late Show with Stephen Colbert wearing a hat that said GRIMSLEY, Hartzman’s high school alma mater.) And Rhiannon Giddens, the most celebrated local of all, has seen her genre-spanning work recognized with two Grammy Awards, a MacArthur “genius grant” Fellowship, and the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

“For years Greensboro was a drive-past for every touring musician,” says Dominick Amendum, the Pyrle’s general manager. The night I was there recently, though, his venue, an immaculately renovated former theater housed within a 1936 Montgomery Ward, looked as if it had flipped that narrative. The room, which holds a thousand, was packed and rocking, adding truth to the Grateful Dead lyric printed on a wall: “Don’t tell me this town ain’t got no heart.”

With the Pyrle’s arrival, Greensboro now boasts a wide selection of performance spaces, including the three-thousand-seat Tanger Center and several smaller venues, like the two-hundred-person Flat Iron, owned by Josh King and Abbey Spoon, beloved figures who might have done more than anyone to cultivate the scene lately.

The Proximity Hotel, a sleek LEED-certified boutique, is perfect for music lovers. It abuts the excellent upscale restaurant Print Works Bistro and offers VIP ticket packages for events like Greensboro’s North Carolina Folk Festival. Its sister hotel, the O.Henry, features weekly jazz, as does the downtown café Common Grounds. Neighbors is the spot to catch a post-show beer and order a Chicago-style hot dog. In the morning, I recommend refueling with breakfast at the legendary Brown-Gardiner Drug Store.

Walking between venues later, I turned a lonely corner and heard a mysterious symphony. I looked around in confusion, trying to find the source, only to discover the actual Greensboro Symphony rehearsing right beside me, behind a bank of windows. No one else was around. I just stood there in shock, unsure if what I was seeing was even real, and for a minute I simply listened. There’s a special kind of magic in the sound of music coming from a place you least expected to find it.