Why we build left917.net

We love the High Country, and we can’t imagine living anywhere else.My wife and I both grew up visiting Boone as often as our families could. She’s from Orlando, FL, and I’m from Lexington, NC. We met in 2010 when I moved to the Tampa Bay area. We lived there together for a few years and then moved back to Raleigh, NC, for my job. But as great as Raleigh is, we never truly felt settled there. We wanted more nature and less hustle and bustle. So we kept looking.

After a few moves between NC and FL, we were blessed with the opportunity to buy her family’s cabin in Fleetwood. We regularly miss all of our friends and family in Raleigh and Tampa, but we truly can’t imagine anywhere else being as perfect for our family as the High Country.

For the past six years or so, I’ve personally become more and more focused on building a life for our family that’s as much like my childhood as possible. My sister and I had an incredible childhood with very little technology, lots of friends, phone calls with no screens, and countless hours in the woods. That’s why we love it here. Our girls spend an incredible amount of time in the woods, by the river, climbing in their tree house, and just generally being kids. And that’s all we want for them—to truly be kids for as long as possible. The High Country is the best place for us to make that our reality.

We’ve lived here full-time for about three years now, and we’ve fallen in love with the vibe. There is a culture here that runs deep. It feels like a mix of rural North Carolina with a through line of progressive culture (which we very much appreciate), all with a twist of '90s grunge dipped in patchouli.

Anyway, over the past few years we’ve found an incredible network of friends here who are all doing amazing things. We wanted to build left917.net with no particular long-term goal other than bringing the culture we love so much into one centralized place. Although I’ve led a technology company for the past 20 years, we try diligently not to let technology run our lives. There are so many great things about it, but there is also something special about the analog aspects of life—about holding onto physical music media and having to make a choice about what song or album you’re going to play next.

A few weeks ago, I wanted to help my wife promote an upcoming dance party she’s throwing, and I realized the only place to do that was Instagram. That just made me sad. There are so many incredible artists, artisans, businesses, makers, restaurants, wineries, retail stores, and more in the High Country, yet I couldn’t find any centralized place to follow their events and updates.

So what is left917.net? I’m not sure, honestly. At the moment, if you can imagine turning a pirate radio station into an online newspaper, it’s something like that. We hope the vibe is somewhere between Radio Caroline and the alt-weeklies I grew up reading in the '90s and 2000s.

We wanted to build a place that captures our indie backgrounds so we can share our passion for all things local, mixed with our experiences as scene kids: club culture, hardcore, emo, and my personal roots in outlaw country, folk, and bluegrass. Left917 is the through line that brings together everything we love about who we are and what we love about the High Country.


The site is manually curated. We specifically search for and choose the music. We "pin" news stories and events that we appreciate, and we hope you do too. It’s not perfect, and that’s the point. There are so many great things about digital technology, algorithms, and the ease they bring to our lives. But there’s also something special about escaping them sometimes and being intentional about what you read, where you go, and what you listen to.

There will never be ads, algorithms, user accounts, or tracking of your individual data. We just wanted to build something that was useful and helped others find the culture we love so much about living in the High Country.


We hope you find it helpful. And we hope to see you at the countless local events happening every day here in the mountains of North Carolina.

If you see issues, have suggestions, or just want to tell us what you like or don’t like about the site, hit us up at studio@local917.net.


— Josh & Loreli