Upcoming events and things to do in Asheville, NC. Below is a list of events for festivals, concerts, art exhibitions, group meetups and more.

Interested in adding an event to our calendar? Please click the green “Post Your Event” button below.

Thursday, June 9, 2022
Game Room Standup Comedy at Asheville Pizza & Brewing Co
Jun 9 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm
Asheville Pizza & Brewing Co

Slice of Life Comedy Open Mic and Feature Comedy at Asheville Pizza & Brewing Co Game Room Comedy Show (must be 18+)
Cocktails, taps & menu available while you laugh the night away to some of the areas best Standup Comics in a ridiculously fun adult environment!! Comedy Open Mic plus at least Three Professional featured performers.

Open mic comics signup at door get 3-5m. [Free entry for performing comics, free pizza at comics table]

For more info contact Michele at [email protected]

Thursdays in May 2022 7:30p-till, 18+, $12Doors 6:30p: [Music before show provided by Buzz Radio Asheville, “All Asheville Music & Comedy, All the Time.”]

6/9 Hosted by Morgan Bost
Featuring: Becca Steinhoff, Moira Goree, Rigel Pawlak & Delise Nicholas

Destroy Boys
Jun 9 @ 8:00 pm
The Grey Eagle

Destroy Boys

8PM SHOW / 7PM DOORS

* ALL AGES

* STANDING ROOM ONLY

* A portion of each ticket sold will go to a local mutual aid organization

Friday, June 10, 2022
Red, White, and ‘Que with the Fox Brothers at The Farm at Old Edwards
Jun 10 all-day
The Farm at Old Edwards

Join us at The Farm at Old Edwards for the return of favorites Fox Bros. BBQ. This award-winning Atlanta restaurant is owned and operated by twin brothers and co-pitmasters Jonathan and Justin Fox, who will both be on hand to serve Texas BBQ, ribs, brisket, Texas-style sausage, and prepare all the fixings to go along with the ‘que. To round out the festivities enjoy a DJ, dancing, craft beer, and fine wines.

Fort Worth-natives, Jonathan and Justin are known for their unique Southern-style barbecue infused with Texas flair, serving up pulled pork, smoked brisket, and wings with original side dishes to Atlanta natives and visitors seven days a week. Fox Bros. BBQ has earned raved reviews from top publications including Southern Living, Travel + Leisure, USA Today, and Sports Illustrated. The restaurant was featured on national television programs including The Travel Channel’s “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern: Southern Barbecue Trail” and Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.” Jonathan and Justin Fox have cooked at the prestigious James Beard House in New York City on three different occasions. Fox Bros. BBQ is the Official BBQ of the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United and they serve up their famous fare to hungry fans inside the brand-new Mercedes Benz Stadium.

$155 per person, plus tax and gratuity.

Support RiverLink at Your Local Caffeination Stations
Jun 10 @ 10:00 am
3 Different locations--see below

RiverLink is honored to be the beneficiary of the community giving program at High Five Coffee in June and July! Stop by for a beverage and add a $5 donation at the register—100% of your gift goes to RiverLink! In addition, 10% of branded merchandise sales will support our efforts to restore the French Broad. Three locations to serve you: 13 Rankin Ave., 190 Broadway St., or (our favorite) the 2000 Riverside Drive location in Woodfin, offering coffee drinks, pastries and smoothies plus outdoor seating and walking trails on the bank of the river. Now that’s a coffee stop!

Of course, you can always donate directly from this newsletter. Thank you for considering a gift today!

YMCA Mobile Market at the Library
Jun 10 @ 10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Oakley/South Asheville Library

The YMCA Mobile Market will be set up in the lower library parking lot (adjacent to the playground) from 10:30AM-11:30AM. Bring your grocery bags and get fresh food for your family. The market provides fresh produce paired with healthy recipes and a Community Engagement Table.

While you’re here, stop in to get a library card if you don’t have one, pick up a cookbook or two to experiment with your bundle of groceries, or grab a DVD to watch while snacking.

Distributions are FREE.   ALL community members are welcome. 

Brews + Bears Summer Event Series
Jun 10 @ 5:30 pm – 8:00 pm
WNC Nature Center

Brews and Bears is an after-hours summer event series where you can enjoy the WNC Nature Center in the evening with a beer or cider in hand. There are also food vendors and educational programming, along with popsicle enrichment for black bears Uno and Ursa!

Brews & Bears happens the second Friday of the month on May 13, June 10, July 8, and August 12, from 5:30 to 8 pm.

The events will feature beer from Highland Brewing; cider from Urban Orchard; food from Gypsy Queen Cuisine and Cecilia’s Food Truck, Blunt Pretzels, and KONA Ice; and music by Mix 96.5, 98.1 The River, and 105.9 The Mountain.

 

PATIO SHOW: Matt Fassas
Jun 10 @ 6:00 pm
The Grey Eagle

PATIO SHOW:  Matt Fassas

Fassas was born in Eastern Kentucky and grew up in the rural mountain town of Irvine. His mother; a skilled artist and horse trainer. His father; a lifelong musician and entrepreneur. MF began to play guitar around age 10, and by age 15 was already teaching lessons as a part time job. The love of music in high school talent show bands became serious study in college. Fassas eventually found himself as a full time guitarist for hire in Upstate South Carolina.

 

Fast forward to now after 20 years of intense practice, songwriting, gigging with a wide variety of bands, recording, jamming, teaching, learning, being completely submersed in music every day. The once proclaimed “child guitar guru” is a true grit working musician, dues paid in full.

 

With guitar influences like Lowell George and Jimi Hendrix, paired up alongside songwriting influences like Jeff Tweedy and Paul Simon, Fassas brings you on a ride across dimensions of joy and pain, clarity and sarcasm. True musicianship and strength on an instrument, matched with honest, heartfelt songs written with the full intent of reaching your heart (and your booty) with a blend of Americana, jam, blues, and rock.

Comedy Night at Tryon Resort: Reno Collier
Jun 10 @ 8:30 pm – 10:30 pm
Tryon International Equestrian Center
JUNE_Comedy Night_Webslider_2022

Returning to the Ridge at Tryon International Equestrian Center & Resort, Comedy Night presented by Comedy Zone welcomes Reno Collier to the stage supported by Brandon Rainwater.


Comedian Bios:

Brandon Rainwater:Brandon Rainwater 2021

Energetic with great stage presence and the
ability to pull a room in with creative observations, Brandon Rainwater is not afraid of the truth.

 

The semi-proud father of two children, he gives audiences his brutally honest – yet always hilarious – take on parenting, marriage, and other absurdities of daily life. Born and raised in South Carolina, Brandon brings a sweet Southern flavor to his comedy that makes him hard to hate and easy to love.

 

 

Reno Collier:

A former P.E. teacher, Reno Collier has endeared himself to a wide0 (3) range of audiences. Reno’s journey began at the Punchline Comedy Club in Atlanta, GA where he tended bar to supplement his day job. One night he found himself on stage during the weekly open mic night. His unique outlook on life – mixed with a six-pack – was instantly popular and provided a platform to launch a career as a comedian.
Reno has built a reputation by selling out comedy clubs and colleges nationwide. In 2004 he joined Larry The Cable Guy on the hugely successful Tour of America. Following the success of that tour, in 2005 Reno taped his own Comedy Central Presents half-hour special.

Reno’s other national tours look more like a comedian’s wish-list than a resume, including theater and arena tours with the legendary Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall and Ron White. From January 2007-2016, he re-joined Larry the Cable Guy for his wildly successful arena tour currently spanning the United States and Canada.
Reno’s past TV credits include NBC’s Late Friday, The Martin Short Show, TBS’s Blue Collar Comedy: The Next Generation, his own Comedy Central Special, and The Roast of Larry the Cable Guy. He also appeared in CMT’S holiday special Larry the Cable Guy’s Hula Palooza Christmas Luau and the 2012 special Them Idiots. Reno also made appearances in the feature films Witless Protection (2008) and Jingle All the Way 2 (2014).

Through the years, Reno has headlined the Comics on Duty tour for American troops stationed in the Middle East, Africa, and all over the world. He is a regular cast member on the Bob & Tom syndicated radio show and Country Music Television (CMT), hosting various specials for the network. Reno has performed at prestigious comedy festivals such as HBO Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, CO, as well as Just for Laughs in Montreal where he just performed his third gala. Reno’s personable comedy makes him a hosting favorite, having hosted NBC’s summer family reality show Great American Road Trip, AXIS TV’s Gotham Live, multiple CMT specials and Animal Planet’s competition series, Top Hooker.

He can currently be heard on the Sirius Satellite Radio show Chewing the Fat that he cohosts with fellow comedian Leanne Morgan. Reno is also the national spokesperson for A Soldier’s Child, an organization that serves the children of fallen military personnel.

Gaelic Storm
Jun 10 @ 9:00 pm
The Orange Peel

This show was previously scheduled for February 3, 2022. If you have tickets for the February show, they will be honored at the rescheduled show.

New Madrid
Jun 10 @ 9:00 pm
The Grey Eagle

New Madrid

New Madrid has released 4 albums over the last 10 years. In that same time they’ve performed over 650 times letting people near and far into their world.

 

Their moods are glacial yet frenetic. They conjure wide space for their hypnotic churn to unfurl. Driving mass of sound. Music to move through you. Music as sonic landscapes.

 

New Madrid got closest to those feelings on their most recent album, the self-titled, ‘New Madrid.’ Soaring harmonies, guitars that lead, follow and surround. Glowing sparkles. Embers lay , breathing, till the wind blows them.

 

The rhythm is a driving glue pushing earthly melodies to the stratosphere. A sweet and understanding fury big and full as ever. Watch the earth turn small blue and green floating backward.

 

To date their space rock has been made on earth, but they have always studied their maps. They are always writing. They’ve been building machines to take them beyond. Something to carry the band to a new inner and outer space.

 

They are currently working on the follow up recordings to their fourth album.

Saturday, June 11, 2022
Winery Tour – Dahlonega, GA
Jun 11 all-day
Breedloves Deli

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Package Includes:
• Breakfast Box with Beverage
• Explore Downtown Dahlonega with Shopping & Lunch on your own
• Frogtown Cellars Wine Tasting
• Wolf Mountain Wine Tasting
• Family Style Dinner at The Smith House
• Snacks & Prizes
• Bus Transportation

$170.00 per person
Reservations required. Limited seating. Buy your tickets now!
Be sure to print and save your receipt, it will serve as your ticket.

Nantahala Outdoor Center 50th anniversary Celebration
Jun 11 @ 8:00 am – 9:00 pm
Nantahala Outdoor Center

50 Years Anniversary Logo

NOC started in 1972 as a small motel and gas station in the Nantahala Gorge offering whitewater rafting trips and kayak and canoe excursions to guests. We’re planning a party for the decades with live music, family-friendly activities, giveaways, adventure, and more!

Event Highlights:

  • Browse our Vendor village from 12 pm to 5 pm where you can hang in hammocks, try out backpacks and footwear with gear fittings, and enjoy boat demos.
  • Kids Fun Pass $20 – Kids can play in unlimited tree nets and on the climbing wall, face painting, bubble party, kids boat demo, t-shirt coloring, and more.
  • Shop the Artisan Village featuring local craftspeople and artisans.
  • Book signings by local authors.
  • Community booths with Leave No Trace and other Non-profit partners.
  • Live Music throughout the afternoon.
  • Giveaways, contests, and prizes!

Join in the fun at all of our locations:

NOC Roswell Outpost

  • From the Earth Brewing food & brewery truck
  • Ice Cream truck
  • Live Music
  • Local conservation advocates tabling
  • Giveaways, prizes, and more!

NOC Ocoee Outpost

  • Blue Grass Music with Blue
  • Grand Opening of our Beer Garden celebration
  • Yard games, giveaways, prizes, and more

NOC Gatlinburg- The Great Outpost

  • The North Face vendor
  • A Walk in the Woods – Gatlinburg Trail hike
  • Local conservation advocates
  • Giveaways, prizes, and more!

NOC Chattooga, French Broad, Pigeon Rivers, and Grove Park Inn

  • Local Conservation advocates
  • Giveaways, prizes, and more!

 

Support RiverLink at Your Local Caffeination Stations
Jun 11 @ 10:00 am
3 Different locations--see below

RiverLink is honored to be the beneficiary of the community giving program at High Five Coffee in June and July! Stop by for a beverage and add a $5 donation at the register—100% of your gift goes to RiverLink! In addition, 10% of branded merchandise sales will support our efforts to restore the French Broad. Three locations to serve you: 13 Rankin Ave., 190 Broadway St., or (our favorite) the 2000 Riverside Drive location in Woodfin, offering coffee drinks, pastries and smoothies plus outdoor seating and walking trails on the bank of the river. Now that’s a coffee stop!

Of course, you can always donate directly from this newsletter. Thank you for considering a gift today!

Asheville Outlets Hosts All About Safety
Jun 11 @ 11:00 am – 4:00 pm
Asheville Outlets in the parking lot in front of Gap Factory

The center is teaming up with The Western and Southern Life Insurance Company, to help families be more safety conscious, understand the risks their kids might face, and recognize the steps they can take to help avoid those risks.

The day will include valuable tips from several organizations including WNC Safe Kids. The non-profit will educate parents and caregivers on bike helmet safety. Attending children will receive free bike helmets (while supplies last). In addition, Child ID kits, fire trucks, free blood pressure screenings, self-defense exhibitions, disaster training and meet and greets with local law enforcement will also be a part of the day’s activities. Children can enjoy a complimentary cereal bar and hot dog giveaway.

All About Safety is complimentary and open to the public.

Dumplings From Around The World Cooking Class
Jun 11 @ 11:00 am – 12:30 pm
Asheville Mountain Kitchen

We will make, various Asian dumplings and steamed buns, pierogi. Vegetarians are welcome.

Free concert at Firehouse Subs: Cruise + Groove
Jun 11 @ 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Firehouse Subs

Super 60s performs a free concert at Firehouse Subs in Hendersonville. Classic cars will be on display from the Carolina Mountain Car Club. Free line-dance classes from Betty Busch from 5:30-6:30pm. Concert to follow from 6:30-8:30pm. Please note: no smoking, coolers or pets.

Summer 2022 Concert Schedule:
May 14 | Super 60s
May 28 | 3 Cool Cats
June 11 | Super 60s
June 25 | Fine Line
July 9 | Deano & The Dreamers
July 23 | Fine Line
August 6 | Sound Investment
August 20 | Fine Line
August 27 | 3 Cool Cats
September 10 | Deano & The Dreamers
September 24 | 3 Cool Cats
October 8 | Sound Investment
October 15 | Super 60s (Halloween event)

An evening with Shep Rose
Jun 11 @ 8:00 pm
The Orange Peel

Shep is a cast member of Southern Charm, which ranks among the top 10 original series on Bravo. The show is set to premiere its eighth season, filmed in the popular coastal town of Charleston, SC later this year. As a beloved character and fan favorite, he was given his own spinoff, Relationshep, where he traveled the country in search of love. In addition to appearing on these Bravo series, Shep is a successful businessman and restaurant owner. Launched in 2016, Shep Gear is an apparel brand sold online and in a growing number of retailers in the U.S. He is also the owner of the popular bar, the Commodore located in downtown Charleston. His first book titled, Average Expectation Lessons in Lowering the Bar was published by Simon & Schuster in 2021. The book features witty and an engaging collection of essays from the charismatic star offering rip-roaring stories and tongue-in-cheek advice on everything from relationships to travel to popular culture and beyond.

Cut Worms
Jun 11 @ 8:00 pm
The Grey Eagle

Cut Worms

Cut Worms visits Asheville NC to make their Grey Eagle debut with special guests John Andrews and The Yawns on Saturday June 11th at 8pm.

COVID-19 POLICY: The Grey Eagle requires all patrons attending performances to provide proof of vaccination or negative test within 48 hours prior to the event. We strongly suggest you mask up while indoors and interacting with TGE staff. Patrons will need to provide physical or digital documentation of COVID-19 vaccination or negative test. Professional negative test results must be dated no more than 48 hours prior to the event. At-home testing will not be accepted.

– 7PM DOORS / 8PM SHOW

– ALL AGES

– STANDING ROOM ONLY

CUT WORMS

Nobody Lives Here Anymore.

The shopping malls have closed down, the dressing rooms are filled with ghosts, and the carousel is covered in cobwebs. Nobody Lives Here Anymore, the latest and greatest from Max Clarke as Cut Worms, is the haunted reverie of an American landscape in-and-out of Clarke’s mind. Recorded between May and November 2019 in Memphis, Tennessee, the album is a snow globe of the mid-twentieth-century’s popular music filled with chiming guitars, honkey tonk pianos, and Telstar organs.

 

A constant creator – be it his Cut Worms alter-ego or his day-job illustration work (designing brand logos and beer labels with madhouse technicolor pictures) – writing and making records has always been Max’s driving force. So after an extensive eighteen-months of touring in support of 2017’s Alien Sunset and 2018’s Hollow Ground, he set about sifting through the fragment pieces and sketches of tunes he’d accumulated, along with a jet-stream of new compositions, mining his life-long devotion to the lost American songbook for inspiration. By the time he flew to Memphis to work with producer Matt Ross-Spang at Sam Phillips Studio, he’d stockpiled more than thirty new songs.

 

Unlike earlier works that were meticulously demoed, Clarke opted for rough drafts as he would with one of his drawings, seeking to capture something more immediate and honest. Most of the initial takes were tracked live with Noah Bond on drums, while Max sang and played rhythm guitar. He then built lush arrangements around these intimate performances. Max’s longtime partner Caroline (Gohlke) contributed backing vocals (she also shot the cover photo), and a skeleton crew of friends and Memphis all-stars were called in to lay down pedal steel, sax, and strings. When all was said and done, they had recorded seventeen songs.

 

With an overstuffed bag brimming with certifiable cosmic Americana gems and no shortage of new material in sight, Max saw no sense holding back – deciding to include the whole batch of recordings and release it as a double-LP. “It takes a lot to do this,” he explains. “If I can only say something every so often, I’d like to say a lot more if I can”.

 

Clarke sees this record as a figurative shot across the bow to the modern attention span. He says Nobody Lives Here Anymore is about “throwaway consumer culture and how the postwar commercial wet dreams never came true, how nothing is made to last.” He considers the golden years of a society on its last leg with poignant curiosity, suggesting not only that nobody lives the American dream, but that nobody lives here, in this moment, anymore. “It’s about homesickness for childhood, for a place that never really existed,” says Max.

 

A loss of innocence lingers through this 80-minute opus as Clarke attempts to harbor love and meaning inside a world that sold itself out. He explores the wistfulness of the past in search of answers for tomorrow. And while his grand anthems overflow with timeless pop charm, his ability to dig deeper than lollipops and holding hands sets his work apart from the days of 45s and Top of the Pops.

 

 

JOHN ANDREWS AND THE YAWNS

Beaming out from New Hampshire, John Andrews and his “band” The Yawns return with Cookbook, their follow-up to 2017’s Bad Posture, and an airy collection of laid-back country rock, gentle AM ballads, and breezy cantina instrumentals with more than a dose of Guaraldi-imbued jazz. Andrews is a communal artist: generally lending a hand in projects such as Woods, Hand Habits, Cutworms and Widowspeak. As such, his sound emits a close-knit, homespun warmth, not unlike the familial coziness that the album’s title suggests. Gather around the table and dig in, you’re amongst friends. ~ Aquarium Drunkard

Sunday, June 12, 2022
Support RiverLink at Your Local Caffeination Stations
Jun 12 @ 10:00 am
3 Different locations--see below

RiverLink is honored to be the beneficiary of the community giving program at High Five Coffee in June and July! Stop by for a beverage and add a $5 donation at the register—100% of your gift goes to RiverLink! In addition, 10% of branded merchandise sales will support our efforts to restore the French Broad. Three locations to serve you: 13 Rankin Ave., 190 Broadway St., or (our favorite) the 2000 Riverside Drive location in Woodfin, offering coffee drinks, pastries and smoothies plus outdoor seating and walking trails on the bank of the river. Now that’s a coffee stop!

Of course, you can always donate directly from this newsletter. Thank you for considering a gift today!

Gladheart Farm Fest Market
Jun 12 @ 11:00 am – 3:00 pm
Gladheart Farm - East Asheville

Every Sunday, Ashevillians and visitors from surrounding counties unite to enjoy one of the most unique Farmer’s Markets around!

Not only is Gladheart directly located on a community, organic farm, every vendor produces their own product.

Vendors offer organic produce, fresh made heritage grain breads, jewelry, grass fed tallow creams and broth, organic eggs and frozen quiche, chocolate, beef, and much, much more!

But wait! There’s More!

Gladheart Farm Fest Market is THE place to be on Sundays simply for it’s variety of hot, delicious, and nutritious food, Live music, and Kids Activities!

Wood Fired, Spelt Pizza
Nourish To Go Tacos
Vegan Sushi Rolls
Pasture Raised Scrambled Egg Bowls
(Don’t forget to bring a picnic blanket and an empty belly!)

Farm Tours and Hay Rides! Spend the day and visit with the goats!

Hops, Pigs + Plants- a Plant Sale!
Jun 12 @ 12:00 pm – 4:00 pm
12 Bones Brewing

What’s better than shopping for plants? How about wandering around the brewery while sipping on a delicious 12 Bones Brew!
Enjoy a fun afternoon of sipping and shopping a wide array of houseplants to take home.
Curated by The Artful Plant
Jazz Sunday Jam
Jun 12 @ 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
One World Brewing West

Jazz Sunday at One World Brewing West is a modern jazz jam held every Sunday afternoon from 1-4pm. Previously known as Jazz Monday, the jam has been running non stop since July, 2018 at the West Asheville brewery and is hosted weekly by The Fully Vaccinated Jazz Trio, consisting of Ray Ring on guitar, Jason DeCristofaro on drums, piano and vibraphone, and Connor Law on bass. Jazz Sunday typically features a guest artist for a short set and then welcomes jazz musicians of all levels to sit in for the remainder of the afternoon on One World’s spacious outdoor stage.

A Benefit Concert for Hawthorn+Fox Flower Montessori School
Jun 12 @ 6:00 pm
The Grey Eagle

A Benefit Concert for Hawthorn+Fox Flower

Hawthorn+Fox Flower Montessori School is a non-profit, community-based school that serves children 3-12 in Woodfin, NC. Being a teacher-led program, the teachers are also the administration and work hard to blur the lines of home and school and foster deep relationships with the children and their families. Hathorn + Fox Flower is proud to serve a wide variety of socio-economic groups while constantly working towards an anti-racist and anti-bias community.

JUAN HOLLADAY

Hailing from the desert southwest, Juan Holladay writes songs in the tradition of three chords and the truth, but with more chords and more truth. In 2001, he came to Western North Carolina to attend Warren Wilson College, and he stayed in the Asheville area, after graduation, to become a father, and form a much loved local band, the Secret B-Sides. In addition to working as a sideman for family entertainers Billy Jonas and Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, Juan has also been working on beat-driven, down-tempo, solo material. His latest solo album, ‘Beauty Sleep’ is available on most digital platforms, as well as Bandcamp.

HUSTLE SOULS

Hustle Souls is an Asheville, NC-based soul band who blend dust-covered-vinyl nostalgia with modern sensibility; recently named a Music Connection Magazine Hot 100 Live Unsigned Artists & Bands. Hustle Souls music has been called a “generation-jumping mashup of new school second line funk with old school vintage soul.” American Blues Scene and “intimate soul… with a Curtis Mayfield like warmth.” Bluestown Music. Roaring B3 organ, jubilant brass and ripping electric guitar are balanced with 3-part vocal harmony and a lust for songwriting that earned them spot in the 2020 International Songwriting Competition semi-finals and has been praised as “worthy of being included in that brilliant soul music canon, a heritage that features some of the greatest performers and writers that have ever graced this earth…” Aldora Britian Records. With relentless touring, sold out shows and major festival appearances it is no wonder why the band has earned a reputation as one of the East Coast’s most promising acts.

MANAS

MANAS is a duo comprised of guitarist Tashi Dorji and drummer Thom Nguyen. “As a duo, MANAS explores lots of improvisational ground, ranging from extreme sideways expansions of sonics texture — with Tashi’s guitar moving decisively outward while Thom’s drums explode in a mostly (but not entirely) parallel plane — to repetative reflecto passages that curl up into a tight ball before achieving escape velocity. The record is a blast, with deceptively arch liner notes by none other than Ben Chasny, who has been one of Tashi’s loudest cheerleaders for many a moon.” – Byron Coley

MIN XIAO-FEN

Few artists have done more to both honor and reinvent the 2000-year history of the pipa than renowned soloist, vocalist and composer Min Xiao-Fen. Classically trained in her native China, Min was an in-demand interpreter of traditional music before relocating to the United States and forging a new path for her instrument alongside many of the leading lights in modern jazz, free improvisation, experimental and contemporary classical music. The Village Voice has lauded her as an artist who “has taken her ancient Chinese string instrument into the future,” while the New York Times has raved that her singular work “has traversed a sweeping musical odyssey.”

Ms. Min’s expressive approach to the four-stringed lute has led to collaborations with such inventive luminaries as Wadada Leo Smith, Derek Bailey, Randy Weston, John Zorn, Christian Marclay, DJ Spooky and Björk. Her Blue Pipa Trio commingles legendary trumpeter Buck Clayton’s Kansas City swing with the music of Li Jinhui, the “Father of Chinese popular music,” in a project titled “From Harlem to Shanghai and Back.” Min’s 2012 album Dim Sum spotlighted the stunning scope of her original compositions, while her latest release, Mao, Monk and Me, is a deeply personal exploration of the music of Thelonious Monk combined with Chinese folk tunes and children’s songs remembered from her childhood in the ancient capital of Nanjing.

In May 2016, Min was the principal soloist with Washington D.C.’s PostClassical Ensemble for the world premiere of Daniel Schnyder’s “Concerto for Pipa & Orchestra,” written expressly for Min by the Swiss-American composer. Still a revered performer of traditional Chinese repertoire, she has been a featured soloist with a number of leading symphony orchestras.

In February 2018, Min premiered her original score, a duo with acclaimed guitarist Rez Abbasi, for the long-lost 1934 Chinese silent film The Goddess. In August, she premiered Alan Chan’s “Moon Walk” for pipa and Jazz Orchestra. That major event follows a fruitful 2017, when Min served as artist-in-residence with the Sound of Dragon Society at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, and was a guiding artists for the Creative Music Studio in New York, performing with founder Karl Berger and his CMS Improvisers Orchestra in the fall. She is the founder of Blue Pipa Inc. and currently lives in New York.

Monday, June 13, 2022
Coffee + Conversation YMCA: 7 Daily Habits for Optimal Health-Adapted’
Jun 13 @ 10:00 am – 11:00 am
Reuter Family YMCA
YMCA
Laura Richardson, Certified Health Coach and Group Fitness Instructor, will host ‘7 Daily Habits for Optimal Health-Adapted’ from the Whole Life Challenge, at the Reuter Family YMCA, MondayJune 13 from 10-11 a.m. These daily habits are scientifically proven to improve your health one day at a time. Learn about how you can adopt these healthy habits for yourself.

 

 

 

Support RiverLink at Your Local Caffeination Stations
Jun 13 @ 10:00 am
3 Different locations--see below

RiverLink is honored to be the beneficiary of the community giving program at High Five Coffee in June and July! Stop by for a beverage and add a $5 donation at the register—100% of your gift goes to RiverLink! In addition, 10% of branded merchandise sales will support our efforts to restore the French Broad. Three locations to serve you: 13 Rankin Ave., 190 Broadway St., or (our favorite) the 2000 Riverside Drive location in Woodfin, offering coffee drinks, pastries and smoothies plus outdoor seating and walking trails on the bank of the river. Now that’s a coffee stop!

Of course, you can always donate directly from this newsletter. Thank you for considering a gift today!

PATIO SHOW: Afton Wolfe
Jun 13 @ 5:00 pm
The Grey Eagle

PATIO SHOW:  Afton Wolfe

Afton Wolfe is Mississippi. Born in McComb, and growing up in Meridian, Hattiesburg, and Greenville, Mississippi, the roots of American music are in his DNA. Mississippi is the birthplace of at least three American art forms: country music, blues music, and rock and roll. Meridian is the birthplace of Jimmie Rodgers, while the Mississippi Delta is the birthplace of the blues, and the first rock n’ roll notes ever played according to intelligent music historians, came from Hattiesburg. Additionally, he spent his musically formative years in and around New Orleans, where the humidity of the Mississippi combined with the Cajun seasonings, the jazz, zydeco, creole, and gospel music and his Mississippi roots coalesce to add resonance and depth to his blues/country/rock influences.

 

Afton’s first band experience was back in the late 90s with Hattiesburg post-alternative pop outfit Red Velvet Couch (1998 to 1999) where he developed his stage presence and also was able to release his first album and learn a bit about sound, recording, mixing, and engineering. After a short break, Afton came back strong with the avant-garde, instrumentally diverse Dollar Book Floyd (2001 to 2002), which featured Amy Lott, Tim Keith, and Mike Stokes, and released a very pivotal album, Red and White. During this period Afton began to naturally incorporate country music and delta blues into his musical playbook. After the Dollar Book Floyd project ended, Afton moved to Nashville and formed The Relief Effort, a rock power trio, with whom he recorded two more records: Don’t Panic (2004) and At Your Mercy (2005).

 

After a hiatus from performing and recording, Afton wrote, composed, and sang all of the songs contained in Petronius’ Last Meal. This was recorded in 2008 with the likes of Charlie Rauh, Craig Schenker, and Dan Seymour. Alcohol, academia, the quest for a better mix and a perfect album cover, and a voyage across the country to live in Washington for a few years kept this project on hold for over a decade. Finally, after a dozen or so years, the project was released in the Summer of 2020. Dark, tense, and moody was the flavor of the 2020 summer season, and the EP along with its two singles “Slingshots” and “Interrogations” fit the season too perfectly.

 

Afton used the momentum of Petronius’ Last Meal and the tension of the pandemic and surrounding climate to fuel his creativity again. And his upcoming release Kings for Sale is the product of that. The new record defies genres while still being distinctly Afton. The new record, slated to be released in June of 2021, was produced by Oz Fritz (Bill Laswell, Tom Waits, The Ramones, Bob Marley, Ginger Baker and many others) and featuring an enviable assortment of great musicians, including but not limited to Cary Hudson (Blue Mountain, Taylor Street Grocery Band), Daniel Seymour (David Olney, Tommy Womack), Adam “Ditch” Kurtz (Great Peacock, Carrus and Kurtz), Ben Babylon (SpoBro, Sir Please), Laura Rabell, Kristen Englenz, Blaise Hearn, Rebecca Weiner Tompkins, and several more.

 

Afton and his team are planning regional, national, and international engagements in support of the new release.

Music Bingo Mondays
Jun 13 @ 7:00 pm – 8:15 pm
Down Dog Yoga Studio and Dog Bar

Music Bingo Mondays

Join us every Monday night for Singo (Musical Bingo)!

Singo will run from 7-8:15 pm.

No reservations needed, just get ready for a good time and a chance to win some Down Dog prizes!

The mewithoutYou Farewell Tour
Jun 13 @ 8:00 pm
The Grey Eagle

The mewithoutYou Farewell Tour

It is no mistake that mewithoutYou have become one of today’s most fascinating experimental rock acts. The last 15 years have borne witness to the Philadelphia five-piece exercising stylistic evolutions and aerial dynamics with humbling dexterity and untamed ambition. At their roots may be a theatrical progressive punk/post-hardcore band, but they’ve never been content to remain comfortably within a familiar genre. Their continuous multi-directional movements have left them increasingly difficult to classify, the growth of their branches impossible to predict. The group’s sixth full-length album, Pale Horses, is the best evidence to date of their eclectic agility.

 

The one constant in mewithoutYou’s storied career has been lead singer Aaron Weiss’ ability to sketch ornate, thought-provoking narratives. Seamlessly weaving his signature holler amidst whispered storytelling and stream-of-consciousness outpourings, his latest offerings vacillate between the emotionally wracked, vibrantly symbolic, and ambiguously metaphysical. His meandering, technicolor vision of a world apocalyptic—populated with werewolves and vulturemen, shape-shifters and apparitions, android whales and an Idaho bride—combines the fantastic opulence of the group’s recent albums with the vulnerable personal confessions of their earliest work.

 

Longtime band-mates Mike Weiss, Rickie Mazzotta and Greg Jehanian continue to craft dramatic, nightmare soundscapes which lavishly complement their singer’s ecstatic hallucinations. The addition of Brandon Beaver (of Buried Beds, the Silver Ages) allows the group as a 5-piece to revisit its earlier intricate, layered fretwork, while adding new depths of vocal harmonies and ever-peculiar arrangements. Musically, the group hearkens boldly to the raw intensity of 2004’s Catch for Us the Foxes, while building on the rich imagery of 2006’s Brother, Sister. Epic in scope, Pale Horses is mewithoutYou at their best, breathing fresh life into the end times, gloriously terrifying and hauntingly iconic.

 

Their latest album also marks a new beginning for the band, as it’s their first to be released on Run for Cover Records. Teaming with the rising Boston independent label was the outgrowth of their partnership with Will Yip, whose masterful production transforms the band’s transcendental musings into a widescreen experience. Drums and bass lines quake with the faults of the earth, as an army of guitars and multi-instrumental nuances ring in the paranoia, mass hysteria and peaceful exaltation. The result is a stunning collage—fitfully disturbing, steadily bizarre, uniquely celebratory—undoubtedly the grandest musical adventure yet conceived within mewithoutYou’s expanding tapestry.

’68

How much noise can two people make? ‘68 is the sound of simultaneous implosion and explosion, of destruction and creation unbound. These are songs that could almost fall apart at any moment, yet never do, devilishly dancing between life and death. It’s a primitive impulse delivered with postmodern purpose; a blacksmith’s resolve with an arsenal of electric distortion and raw nerve.

 

Josh Scogin kickstarted his small band with the big sound in 2013, naming the two-man outfit he modestly undersells as “a little rock, a little blues, a little hardcore” after his father’s old Camaro. And there’s a muscle car-sized rumble beneath the hood of what the Atlanta, Georgia native and his percussive partner-in-crime, Nikko Yamada, unleash with an array of guitar, bass, drums, keys, and pedals, careening between swinging barnburners, wild haymakers, and moody atmosphere.

 

Like a Delta Blues reimagining of Bleach-era Nirvana or the disgraced punkish cousin of The Black Keys, ’68 adheres to a single ethic: unbridled authenticity. There’s not a “plan” with ’68 so much as a ride, with the duo hanging on for dear life in the eye of the storm every bit as much as the audience. The obstacle is the goal. The journey is the destination. Inventive, disruptive, frantic; even when dipping into a bit of Otis Redding or James Brown style funk, ’68 sound urgent.

 

The ’68 roadshow has taken them from Moscow to Tel Aviv, across Europe and Australia and all-over North America, often splitting up 20-hour drives between the two guys. The passion, the hunger, the good humor, it all connects with diverse crowds. Deliciously stripped down and vibrant, ’68 excels in intimate environments, to be sure, but is no less unignorable on giant festival stages or on the road with Bring Me The Horizon, Stone Sour, Beartooth, Avatar, August Burns Red, The Amity Affliction, and Underoath, where they’ve earned new converts every day.

 

 

 

In Humor and Sadness, the first album by ’68, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard New Artist Chart. Two Parts Viper followed in 2017. “[‘68] bring the noise in the most righteous ways, caring less about the scene they came up through, the bloodless drivel that passes as ‘indie’ and the boring earnestness currently permeating ‘punk,’” declared Alternative Press. “Two Parts Viper is the best record of the year. Throw a copy in my casket, because I’ll never be done listening to it.”

 

Grammy-winning producer Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, Rush, Alice In Chains) became a believer after just a few songs of a ’68 set. On GIVE ONE TAKE ONE, crafted with Raskulinecz in Nashville, the band’s high intensity bombast threatens but never swallows the underlying groove.

 

 

With the same spirit of scrappy “winging it” and punchy minimalism that powered the Flat Duo Jets and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, ’68 push forward the pure rock traditions of audacity and disruption. Scogin gives everything to the microphone, as if singing to redeem his soul. He wields his guitar and keys like weapons, pulverizing away any false pretenses. It’s about the riff and the kick. It’s immediate. It’s alive. And it’s fun. Sweaty catharsis, cutting missives, surrendered by ’68 as if the world depends on them. Because in ’68, less is more. Oh, so much more.

Tuesday, June 14, 2022
Community Event: Fill the Cruiser Food Donations Needed
Jun 14 @ 8:00 am – 3:00 pm
Bon Secours Wellness Arena

Bon Secours Wellness Arena and the Greenville Police Department are teaming up with Project Host to fill police cruisers with food items for the Project Host Soup Kitchen. Stop by the arena on Tuesday, June 14th to drop off donations outside of the GSP International Airport Box Office.

 

Items needed include: chicken, vegetable, and beef broth/stock, canned chicken, fruit cups, Nutty Buddy bars, diced tomatoes, pudding cups, granola bars, individual-sized bags of chips, bottles of juice (apple, grape, orange), and plastic spoons

Support RiverLink at Your Local Caffeination Stations
Jun 14 @ 10:00 am
3 Different locations--see below

RiverLink is honored to be the beneficiary of the community giving program at High Five Coffee in June and July! Stop by for a beverage and add a $5 donation at the register—100% of your gift goes to RiverLink! In addition, 10% of branded merchandise sales will support our efforts to restore the French Broad. Three locations to serve you: 13 Rankin Ave., 190 Broadway St., or (our favorite) the 2000 Riverside Drive location in Woodfin, offering coffee drinks, pastries and smoothies plus outdoor seating and walking trails on the bank of the river. Now that’s a coffee stop!

Of course, you can always donate directly from this newsletter. Thank you for considering a gift today!