Hartley balances life as Alpine Bagel manager and musical saw player

Paul Hartley, UNC graduate and current manager of Alpine Bagel Cafe, is a bagel connoisseur by day and musical saw player by night.

Hartley, 24, said playing in the band Robobilly! and managing Alpine are both like theatrical performances.

“When you run a place like Alpine, it is like I am both the director and the lead of a play,” he said. “I open and close it like a curtain, and all of it is an act. It is the same on stage or in the crowd. We are being theatrical and are trying to give someone an enjoyable experience.”

Brian Singhas, guitarist for Robobilly! believes that in both locations, Hartley maintains his personality.

“He definitely puts on a different game face at Alpine and in the band but in essence, he is the same person,” Singhas said. “He has a unique style in the band and a unique style at Alpine, but I don’t think those are very far from each other.”

Hartley said the musical stylings of Robobilly! are hard to describe — primarily folk and bluegrass with elements of jazz and punk rock.

“A song will happen because of all of us putting in our little things,” he said.

There band consists of six members, all of whom are either UNC students or alumni. All band members have worked at Alpine.

The band includes the sounds of a trumpet, mandolin, trash can drums, violin, guitar and musical saw, which is played by Hartley.

“Once you learn something so strange and beautiful as the saw, you can’t help becoming infatuated with it," Hartley said.

Hartley got his first job at Alpine in January 2005, around the same time Robobilly! formed.

“We were just a bunch of friends deciding to play music together with no rules,” he said. “There is a saying in our band, ‘There is no vision but the vision.’ It means that there is no leader; we are all in this together.”

Hartley said an important part of the band is how they perform without amplifiers or microphones. Robobilly! shows this enthusiasm through the exclamation point after its name.

“Not using microphones and amplifiers forces you to play your loudest and take your sound to your physical limits — how hard your hands can pick, how loud your lungs can holler, how much you can bend that saw, how many people can you make dance,” Hartley said.

The original songs are strange in terms of content, Hartley said.

“It could range from a zombie’s ability to feel love after being bitten in sort of a pop rock sort of way down to really folksy tunes about robots destroying villages,” Hartley said. “We get inspiration from random stuff.”

Balancing between making bagels and screaming lyrics, Hartley said he has two different avenues to express himself.

“When people recognize me at Alpine, they don’t expect me to be the same person that I am in the band,” he said. “Bagels pay a little bit better than the band, though.”

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