The Carolina Cutups, a Triangle bluegrass band, are passing music along to the next generation — with their old fifth-grade teacher on fiddle
By David Menconi | Photographs by Charles Harris

Around 30 years ago, Tim Wells was an English and math teacher at Chapel Hill’s Carolina Friends School. He also played a lot of fiddle and banjo at school functions, and even in class. But while he played in bands, it was at school that he made the biggest impression — especially on a trio of students who “tumbled like so many puppies into my fifth-grade classes,” Wells says.

“All of us in school idolized him,” says Spencer Woodman, who had Wells in fifth grade, then as his middle school homeroom teacher in the late 1990s. “He was my original musical inspiration going to way back when.”

Eventually those students grew up, graduated and moved away. But Woodman, Dave Henderson and Matthew Rubin each eventually moved back, bringing with them a wide musical knowledge gained from playing in bands elsewhere. They started jamming together in the late 2010s, and thought to bring in their old teacher.

Thus were born the Carolina Cutups. Wells plays fiddle and sings, accompanied by Woodman on bass, Henderson on guitar and Rubin on banjo, with a repertoire of vintage bluegrass songs by the likes of Flatt & Scruggs, Stanley Brothers, Bill Monroe and Jimmy Martin.

They perform with raw emotion, especially when they put aside their instruments to sing a cappella gospel harmonies to the heavens. There’s also cowboy yodeling, Louvin Brothers-style vocal harmonies, and up-tempo folk songs perfect for square-dancing, all of which can be found on their 2024 self-titled debut album.

That mentorship angle links the Cutups to the old days, when music was an oral tradition handed down from one generation to the next. Wells is about 20 years older than his bandmates and nowadays mostly works teaching music in Hillsborough, which has been home for most of his life. Born in Pennsylvania, Wells came south with his family when he was 18 months old after his father took a teaching position at Carolina Friends School in 1969. Young Tim started playing harmonica as a teenager, moving on to most of the stringed instruments in a series of bands through high school and at Warren Wilson College.

Wells was fully immersed in bluegrass, country and old-time folk music by the time he got back to the Triangle in 1994. And while the Cutups play fast enough to call what they do “punk bluegrass,” they are proudly steeped in the verities of the old music.
“A lot of bluegrass these days leans into more of a rock jam-band vibe,” says Wells. “I do love that, used to be a Deadhead myself. But we’re a lot more focused on the elements of traditional bluegrass.”

Once Wells and his old students started playing together in the late 2010s, it was obvious that the quartet had ample chemistry. During the pandemic they started playing regularly outside at The Kraken, a low-slung wooden roadhouse west of Chapel Hill. Several months into their Kraken residency, they adopted the same onstage uniform — matching forest-green suits — as one of their big influences, an obscure 1970s-vintage bluegrass band from Virginia called the Shenandoah Cutups.        

“Shenandoah Cutups are like our North star,” says Woodman. “They’d have hard-driving bluegrass harmonies, four guys onstage just screaming their heads off. A really beautiful thing to try and replicate. Once we got the suits, it felt like the entire band really fell into place. It was almost like they gave us special powers.”

When it came time to record, the Cutups turned to one of Wells’ old friends, Music Maker Foundation executive director Tim Duffy. Music Maker released The Carolina Cutups, which the band recorded in the old style, gathered around a single microphone. On record as well as onstage, the track list is all classic covers of songs by their idols.

“I do write songs and some of them might be suitable for us to do at some point,” says Wells. “But there’s just so much good material already laid out like low-hanging fruit — Bill Monroe, Stanley Brothers, Jimmy Martin — so is the juice worth the squeeze to sneak in an original? One of these days, maybe. Just a matter of working ’em up. Until then, we’ll keep working hard at nice-sounding harmonies, trying to dress up and look good, be professional, arrive on time. Hit all the clicks.”

In the meantime, the Cutups are playing live where they can. One of their biggest shows this fall will be at October’s big Raleigh Wide Open music festival. The Cutups will also play Music Maker’s Fountain Fest on Oct. 17 at the R.A. Fountain General Store.

“Apart from playing shows, we don’t hustle much,” says Woodman. “We really like playing in front of crowds, although we’re not big on playing to sit-down audiences. It’s more like we want people to celebrate to it, hang out with friends and carry on. Being the background music to that is perfect.” 

This article originally appeared in the October 2026 issue of WALTER Magazine.