On Aug. 21, 1863, several hundred Confederate raiders led by William Quantrill rode into Lawrence while the town slept, gunning down its citizens and setting houses ablaze.

To commemorate the 141st anniversary of Quantrill’s Raid, a Lawrence resident has put together a rather unusual tribute.

Beginning Thursday, the city will provide the site for North vs. South: Hard-Pop Rock Band Music Festival. Guitars replace rifles as the weapon of choice in a musical battleground that finds seven bands from Minneapolis, Minn., and seven from Austin, Texas, (and a few Kansas stragglers) sharing downtown stages.

The three-day event is the brainchild of musician Mike McCoy.

“We had this idea just kind of gliding up and down I-35,” says McCoy, who credits pals Hunter Darby from The Wannabes and singer Baby Grant Johnson with putting the project together.

“You really see the cultural differences when you listen to the music. The Austin bands are (more casual) and warmer. And the Minneapolis bands are real tight and cold.”

McCoy, a native of Hutchinson, first became familiar with the distant cities while fronting the Kansas City band Cher U.K. (The group was originally called Cher until attorneys for the withered diva insisted the trio alter its name.) In the early ’90s, the punk act was signed to a subsidiary of Columbia Records and endured many cross-country tours.

McCoy actually recorded two records with Cher U.K. in Minneapolis, and also spent 1998-2002 living in Austin.

“I got to know so many people and bands in both places,” says McCoy, who currently plays guitar in The Black Rabbits. “The idea has been up in the air for as long as I’ve been going to each of those cities … I thought it would take a while for people to do it. But it really didn’t take much at all.”

Musical brethren

“We don’t know what to expect,” says Darby, bassist of the Austin-based Wannabes. “But I’m sure we’ll be underfunded like the South was in the Civil War. We’ll have the (crappier) vans and be more ragtag looking.”

Darby began seriously strategizing about putting the show together when he came to Lawrence to help produce McCoy’s Black Rabbits record. (The pair had been members in a band called The American People during McCoy’s tenure in Austin.)

There was never any question which two cities would represent the two regions in the festival.

“We’ve always sounded more like a Minneapolis band anyway,” Darby says of The Wannabes, who have performed hundreds of shows since forming in 1988. “We were actually fans of them. We had more crowd success up there than here. As a general rule, (Minneapolis bands) are a little more distorted and not quite as trippy. Maybe the sun down here makes people more psychedelic.”

In fact, McCoy has labeled the event a showcase for “hard pop.”

• Thursday – Saturday 08.19-08.2110:30pm :: North versus South: Hard-Pop Rockband and Singer-Songwriter Festival
• more info

“You can’t use ‘pop’ as a term to describe these bands, because they’re rock bands,” McCoy explains.

“But you can’t really use ‘hard rock’ either because of the state of music today. With pop, people have a connotation of Britney Spears or whoever the latest trash-pop person is. So I was trying to come up with a description of bands who were influenced along the Big Star vein. Minneapolis, Seattle, San Francisco and Austin in the mid- to late-1980s is generally the influence.”

Minneapolis singer-songwriter Baby Grant Johnson says of the North vs. South participants, “There are a lot of similarities for towns that are so far away. What stands out more are the similarities rather than the differences.”

Johnson falls toward the rootsier side of the bill — “but with pop sensibilities,” he stresses. The musician first earned the prefix “Baby” when working at a record store in the mid 1990s.

“They wanted me to have a nickname,” he recalls of his fellow employees. “Grant Hart from Hüsker Dü came in the store, and he’s like, ‘Hey, baby.’ So they said, ‘It’s Baby Grant. That will be the nickname.'”

Lawrence Musician Mike McCoy is the organizer of the North vs. South: Hard-Pop Rock Band Festival.

Coincidentally, the veteran Hart will be headlining one of the Saturday night performances during North vs. South.

Despite the lip service paid to the stylistic similarities between each metropolis, McCoy believes antebellum tendencies may take over when the two cultures meet on neutral ground.

“Once you mix them up on stage — and each venue and each night are evenly mixed — I’m not sure if the Southern guys are going to be poky and the Northern guys will get all uptight,” he says. “I don’t know if there will be (fist fights), but there may be some deep misunderstandings.”

Broadening the concept

The show will be split into two venues during three days, with acts mingled at The Replay Lounge, 946 Mass., and across the street at The Jackpot Saloon, 943 Mass. The festival culminates in a Saturday-night finale (Aug. 21), which falls on the anniversary of Quantrill’s Raid.

Ironically, both Minneapolis and Texas are among the central states that had the least amount of impact on Civil War history.

Faux Jean performs at midnight Thursday at The Replay Lounge, 946 Mass, during the North vs. South festival.

Did any of these bands even have an idea what Quantrill’s Raid was about?

“They do now, because I’ve been e-mailing them religiously,” McCoy responds.

Patrons can purchase a $15 button that will allow them access to every show, or they can just pay a standard cover charge for any single night’s bill.

McCoy claims he doesn’t know how this oddball concept will go over, but he hopes the roster of bands are treated well. If area audiences turn out for this debut event, he plans to expand the concept.

“I will probably keep North versus South until we exhaust that, like Chicago versus Dallas,” he speculates. “Then for the sidelines it would be Des Moines versus Wichita.”