How to 'split' content for a band website

Hi.

I’m doing up a website for a band at the moment, and I’d like to be able to have a news section and an upcoming concerts section. Ideally I’d like to do this without using plugins. Is there a way to ‘split’ the loop so that my front page would have, say, a central column full of news, with a smaller column of upcoming concerts, all of which are actually normal posts? Maybe through assigning categories or something like that?

Thanks.