Avey Tare

You remember how it was, don’t you, back in the Spring of 2020? Knowing so little about what any of us should do, so many of us crawled inside our quarters to find new obsessions or indulge the familiar ones, unencumbered by anything else we could do. At home in the woods on the eastern edge of Asheville, N.C., Avey Tare took the latter path, sequestering himself in his small home studio to sort the songs he’d written and recorded with friends in the instantly distant before times — Animal Collective’s Time Skiffs, of course, their astonishing document of communal creativity a quarter-century into the enterprise. He often worked there for 12 hours a day, tweaking mixes alone, save the birds and bears and his girlfriend, Madelyn. By Fall, though, it was done, so what next? How else should Avey now occupy himself in his cozy little room? The answer became 7s, his fourth solo album (and first in four years), an enchanting romp through the playground of his head. He wasn’t, however, going to do it alone.

During the first week of January 2021, Avey began making regular drives to his friend Adam McDaniel’s Drop of Sun Studios to give guts and flesh and color to the skeletal demos he’d made at home. They turned first to “Hey Bog,” a tune Avey had been tinkering with since he wrote it to have new material for a rare live performance years earlier. The inquisitive electronic meditation — all tiny percussive pops and surrealist textures at first — slowly morphs into a gem about surrendering cynicism and accepting the world a bit more readily, the call buttressed by trunk-rattling bass and spectral guitar. It feels like a lifetime map for new possibilities, encapsulated in nine absorbing minutes. The plot for 7s, then, was set: trusting, intuitive, exploratory collaboration among friends, after a Winter without it. These songs are like overstuffed jelly jars, cracking so that the sweetness oozes out into unexpected shapes. Still, the sweetness — that is, Avey’s compulsory hooks — remains at the center, the joy inside these Rorschach blots.

If Animal Collective has forever been defined by its charming inscrutability, Avey surrenders to a new intimacy and candor with 7s. Take “The Musical,” a bouncing ball of rubbery synths and wah-wah guitars that contemplates what draws someone to sound and how turning that calling into a profession can alter the source. “I can hear the mountains singing,” he counters with an audible smile wiped across his face, painting a postcard of his home amid one of the United States’ folk hubs, “and I do believe they could do that forever.” Obligations aside, this is a self-renewing love, he realizes, the source as captivating as it was the first time. “Have you ever felt a thing and known that’s how you felt about it all along?” he ends this guileless love song for everything.

Geologist

As Animal Collective’s resident sound manipulator, Brian “Geologist” Weitz has played an integral role in one of the most innovative bands of the 21st century. Weitz’s earliest musical forays were with fellow Animal Collective members Dave “Avey Tare” Portner and Josh “Deakin” Dibb as Auto Mine, a high school indie rock project that predated the formative jam sessions with Noah “Panda Bear” Lennox a couple years later. The quartet formed Animal Collective in NYC in 2000, with Weitz joining Portner and Lennox for live shows and first contributing to the band’s recorded catalog on 2001’s Danse Manatee. He split time in the early 00’s between playing in Animal Collective and working in environmental policy, getting his degree in the latter while studying at the Biosphere 2 Center in Oracle, AZ. After completing an ocean policy fellowship with the US Senate in 2005, he turned his attention to Animal Collective full time.

You can hear his love of sound collage and horror film soundtracks in the band’s creaking-door ambience, and his appreciation for natural soundscapes in their use of field recordings. He’s performed internationally as a solo artist, and released the Live in the Land of the Sky cassette, and the New Psycho Actives Vol.1 split release with Portner. He has scored Coral Morphologic’s short film Man O War, as well as sound installations at Desert Daze in 2017 and Iceland’s List i Ljosi festival in 2018 with visual artist and director Danny Perez. In 2018 he collaborated with artist Kyle Simon on The Sirens, a live performance/art installation at Joshua Tree’s Integratron, in which the duo converted moonlight into sound through Geologist’s modular synthesizer. Weitz’s collaboration with Coral Morphologic, as well as his own background in ocean conservation and environmental policy, played a role in Animal Collective’s latest album, 2018’s Tangerine Reef, an audiovisual collaboration with Coral Morphologic that drew attention to coral reef preservation. He also drew inspiration from his environmental studies while creating the original score to Marnie Ellen Hertzler’s film Crestone, using his time at the Biosphere and the sensory memories of the Sonoran Desert to guide the sounds.

Deakin

Josh “Deakin” Dibb has explored a variety of sounds in his work as part of Animal Collective and in his own solo material—shaping the band’s directional shifts he’s been a part of and consistently contributing a unique flavor to their boundary-breaking career. Growing up in Baltimore with future bandmate Noah “Panda Bear” Lennox, the pair began writing and recording songs together in middle school. In high school, Dibb met Dave “Avey Tare” Portner and Brian “Geologist” Weitz, later joining the pair’s band Automine. By the end of high school, Dibb had connected Lennox to Portner and Weitz and the foursome began to collaborate. By 2000, Dibb was running the band’s record label, Animal, which released their first album Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished. He first appeared musically on the band’s 2003 releasesCampfire Songs and Ark; his guitar-centric approach played a pivotal role in the freaked-out rock of 2005’s Feels and the experimental pop of Strawberry Jam in 2007. While sitting out the Merriweather Post Pavilion (2009) album and touring cycle following the sudden death of his father, Dibb stayed involved in studio projects (Water Curses, 2008) and the development, filming, music, and sound design of the band’s first visual album ODDSAC (2010). In 2010, Dibb began playing his first solo shows, worked with Portner to engineer and produce three albums (Avey Tare’s Down There, Tickley Feather’s 123, Prince Rama’s Shadow Temple), and was involved in the band’s collaborative performance with Danny Perez at the Guggenheim, which lead to the 2012 release of Transverse Temporal Gyrus. After a temporary stent away from the band, Dibb returned to begin writing and touring for Centipede Hz (2012) before stepping back again to focus on his solo album Sleep Cycle (2016), a meditative collection of experimental pop songs and his first solo effort since contributing to the band’s Keep cassette mixtape in 2011. Along with mixing and production work on solo albums from Lennox (Young Prayer) and Portner (Down There, Eucalyptus, Conference of Birds EP), and contributing a variety of remixes to artists ranging from M83 and Phoenix to Tinariwen, Steve Spacek, and Goldfrapp, Dibb’s recent projects as part of Animal Collective include 2018’s Tangerine Reef, an audiovisual collaboration with Coral Morphologic that drew attention to coral reef preservation, a 2018 performance at the Music Box Village in New Orleans which inspired the music the band is currently making, and last year’s Bridge to Quiet EP, a selection of improvisations from 2019 and 2020 that the band remixed, collaged and built into songs. Most recently, Dibb and

Weitz scored Marnie Ellen Hertzler’s debut film and documentary Crestone (2021).

All ages

With rich harmonies, powerful vocals and an electrifying stage presence, this contemporary gospel group creates an unforgettable and uplifting musical experience that’s gained them viral success, amassing millions of fans and followers from all corners of the globe. Whether performing traditional standards, hits from musical theatre or their own original music, these prolific singers deliver jubilation as they transcend genre and speak to the heart of every listener.

The performance by Trey McLaughlin & the Sounds of Zamar is funded in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council.

Lee Mills, conductor
Simone Porter, violinist

Program:
Mary D. Watkins: Soul of Rememberance
Philip Glass: Violin Concerto No. 1
Robert Schumann: Symphony No. 2

To learn more about the conductor and guest artist, please visit www.greenvillesymphony.org.

Lee Mills, Conductor
Simone Porter, Violinist
Mary D. Watkins: Soul of Remembrance
Philip Glass: Violin Concerto No. 1
Robert Schumann: Symphony No. 2

Philip Glass and Robert Schumann are composers separated by two centuries.  One, an American from Baltimore whose music defies genre: it’s two parts driving rhythm and one part rich string texture.  You could even say it’s got a hint of rock n’ roll.  Add a true rockstar of the violin, the one and only Simone Porter, and the fear of missing out factor is on another level.

Robert Schumann, best friend of Johannes Brahms and husband of the legendary Clara Schumann was a musical celebrity in 19th century Germany who struggled with mental illness. He found relief and sanctuary in music and the result is some of the most complex and fascinating compositions of the German Romantic period. Despite the composer’s depression, this symphony cuts through the darkness and leaves us feeling hopeful and uplifted.  This energetic and elegant second symphony turns the traditional structure on its head by opening with a quiet first movement. Don’t take it from us—come hear this revolutionary and redemptive work for yourself.

CLICK TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CONDUCTOR & GUEST ARTIST

The 4SCO is pleased to present an exquisite program featuring influences of Spanish and Latin American cultures. This dance inspired concert is titled “Danzón,” and features works by Arriaga, Márquez, and Piazzolla.

Jack of the Wood : Sunday-Irish Session 

Sundays

1 till who knows when?

Traditional Irish music is kept alive at Jack of the Wood with our unplugged Sunday session.

Jack of the Wood

95 Patton ave

Asheville, NC 28801

(828) 252.5445

http://www.jackofthewood.com/

Lee Mills, conductor
Simone Porter, violinist

Program:
Mary D. Watkins: Soul of Rememberance
Philip Glass: Violin Concerto No. 1
Robert Schumann: Symphony No. 2

To learn more about the conductor and guest artist, please visit www.greenvillesymphony.org.

Lee Mills, Conductor
Simone Porter, Violinist
Mary D. Watkins: Soul of Remembrance
Philip Glass: Violin Concerto No. 1
Robert Schumann: Symphony No. 2

Philip Glass and Robert Schumann are composers separated by two centuries.  One, an American from Baltimore whose music defies genre: it’s two parts driving rhythm and one part rich string texture.  You could even say it’s got a hint of rock n’ roll.  Add a true rockstar of the violin, the one and only Simone Porter, and the fear of missing out factor is on another level.

Robert Schumann, best friend of Johannes Brahms and husband of the legendary Clara Schumann was a musical celebrity in 19th century Germany who struggled with mental illness. He found relief and sanctuary in music and the result is some of the most complex and fascinating compositions of the German Romantic period. Despite the composer’s depression, this symphony cuts through the darkness and leaves us feeling hopeful and uplifted.  This energetic and elegant second symphony turns the traditional structure on its head by opening with a quiet first movement. Don’t take it from us—come hear this revolutionary and redemptive work for yourself.

CLICK TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CONDUCTOR & GUEST ARTIST

Kate Steinbeck flute • Katherine Haig cello • Andy Jurik guitar

Dana Wilson Luminescence
Vivian Fine Canciones y Danza
Radamés Gnattali Sonata for cello and guitar
Dana Wilson Sing to Me of the Night

Doors open at 2:30
Music starts at 3

We appreciate your advanced reservation!

Pan Harmonia offers donation-based, pay-as-you-can community concerts. All are welcome.

Legendary artist Graham Nash, as a founding member of both the Hollies and Crosby, Stills and Nash, is a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee. He has seen rock history unfold at some of its seminal moments – from the launch of the British Invasion to the birth of the Laurel Canyon movement a year later. An extraordinary Grammy Award® winning renaissance artist – and self-described “simple man” – Nash was inducted twice into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, for his work with CSN and his work as a solo artist.

Towering above virtually everything that Graham Nash has accomplished in his long and multi-faceted career, stands the litany of songs that he has written and introduced to the soundtrack of our lives for nearly six decades.

Nash’s remarkable body of work began with his contributions to the Hollies opus from 1964 to ’68, including “Stop Stop Stop,” and “On A Carousel,” among others.

The classic union of Crosby, Stills & Nash (& Young) yielded songs that are lightning rods embedded in our DNA, starting with Nash’s “Marrakesh Express,” “Pre-Road Downs” and “Lady of the Island,” from the first Crosby, Stills & Nash LP and his iconic “Teach Your Children” and “Our House” from CSNY’s Déjà Vu.

Nash’s career as a solo artist took flight in 1971, beginning with two landmark albums, Songs For Beginners and Wild Tales which further showcased the depths of his abilities as a singer and songwriter, yielding such favorites as “Chicago/We Can Change the World” and “Military Madness”. His latest effort, “Now”, will be released worldwide on May 19.

Graham Nash will be joined on stage by his longtime musical partners, Shane Fontayne (guitar and vocals) and Todd Caldwell (keyboards and vocals), performing favorites from across his sixty-year career.

RUNNNER

For the last five years, Los Angeles-based musician Noah Weinman has been Runnner, and for much of those five years, Runnner has been working. Working on his 2021 collection album, Always Repeating; working as a producer on the Skullcrusher records; and, of course, working towards his debut full-length, Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out. From LA to Ohio and the Northeast and back, he’s been deep in the craft of sound. This is music made at home, using anything and everything: cell phones and handheld tape recorders, the hum of an a/c unit, voicemails from friends. Rubbing cardboard together, stretching acoustic sounds out to near liquid, or stacking delay pedals at random to scramble the smoothness of a song can make something known into something unknown — something ordinary into something cosmic. These are songs where the edges have been left deliberately rough because perfection invites predictability, and imperfection imbalances, and those imbalances ask the listener to listen again, and again. And in that listening, the sound can become earnest, can ask a question, can hold a conversation.

“I was sifting through my demos trying to decide what songs would go on the album, and I sort of started to notice this theme about the limits of language,” explains Weinman. “You’re trying to articulate something to someone, and it either doesn’t come out right or you end up not saying anything at all. It’s a pattern I see in my life, just having a hard time expressing myself to the people I’m close with.” So it’s no surprise that from a young age, Noah was drawn to other modes of expression: first studying trumpet and jazz, then falling into guitars, banjo, pianos and synths, and along with them discovering a love for stitching together songs and recordings. “It wasn’t until I got out of the studio environment and started recording at home that it became something I really love doing,” he says.

Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out is the result of years of writing, recording, and tinkering in Weinman’s home, a lovingly crafted patchwork of organic instrumentation and otherworldly digital manipulation. The unexpected sounds and lush production elevate Weinman’s already impressive skill for melody and warm vocals, always pivoting between sparse intimacy and sweeping grandeur at the right moments. “I think I just want to try to make sounds that are a little original, that you couldn’t easily identify,” he explains. “But I get there by keeping my options pretty limited. I only have one input, so I don’t record things in stereo; I only have about three microphones and a few instruments, and I try not to use MIDI. I keep the ingredient list short, but that pushes me to be more creative in the genesis of certain sounds.”

This musical approach is reflected in Runnner’s lyrics as well, where the familiar is made unfamiliar, and then familiar again. With humor and heart, Weinman sifts through isolation and anxiety in the everyday: ruining the rice, buying shampoo, the way boredom and loneliness are tangled up together. And from these fragments, he makes something new, but also something already known and felt at once. “A lot of the songs have this narrative arc of rising tension that just leads to me not saying or doing anything,” he says. “It’s like there’s a signal loss between thought and speech.” Tracks like “I Only Sing About Food,” “Raincoat,” or “Chess With Friends” explore these different mental and sometimes even physical barriers to communication, while skittering drum beats and scrappy acoustics guide the listener through Weinman’s crowded thoughts. On mid-album standout “Running In Place At The Edge of The Map,” Weinman likens his catatonic self on the couch to a video game avatar stuck at the end of its digital space with nowhere left to go — tying the image to our desperate attempts to be who we want to be, despite knowing that our attempts will fall short.

Often Like Dying Stars, We’re Reaching Out sounds like life caught inside a moment, unsure of what comes next, but there is hope and lightness here too. The album’s final track “A Map For Your Birthday” closes with the lines “like dying stars, we’re reaching out / so much i can’t say / but you nodded anyway.” Despite our inability to be what we want to be, to know where we are going, feel we belong, to be present, and to present ourselves fully and completely to the world, Runnner offers that perhaps it’s this longing to know one another, to understand each other when we’re incoherent or when the words just don’t come, that just might connect us.

SUN JUNE

The five members of Sun June spent their early years spread out across the United States, from the boonies of the Hudson Valley to the sprawling outskirts of LA. Having spent their college years within the gloomy, cold winters of the North East, Laura Colwell and Stephen Salisbury found themselves in the vibrant melting-pot of inspiration that is Austin, Texas. Meeting each other while working on Terrence Malick’s ‘Song to Song’, the pair were immediately taken by the city’s bustling small clubs and honky-tonk scene, and the fact that there was always an instrument within reach, always someone to play alongside.

Coming alive in this newly discovered landscape, Colwell and Salisbury formed Sun June alongside Michael Bain on lead guitar, Sarah Schultz on drums, and Justin Harris on bass and recorded their debut album live to tape, releasing it via the city’s esteemed Keeled Scales label in 2018. The band coined the term ‘regret pop’ to describe the music they made on the ‘Years’ LP. Though somewhat tongue in cheek, it made perfect sense ~ the gentle sway of their country leaning pop songs seeped in melancholy, as if each subtle turn of phrase was always grasping for something just out of reach.

Sun June returns with ‘Somewhere’, a brand new album, out February 2021. It’s a record that feels distinctly more present than its predecessor. In the time since, Colwell and Salisbury have become a couple, and it’s had a profound effect on their work; if Years was about how loss evolves, Somewhere is about how love evolves. “We explore a lot of the same themes across it,” Colwell says, “but I think there’s a lot more love here.”

Somewhere is Sun June at their most decadent, a richly diverse album which sees them exploring bright new corners with full hearts and wide eyes. Embracing a more pop-oriented sound the album consists of eleven beautiful new songs and is deliberately more collaborative and fully arranged: Laura played guitar for the first time; band members swapped instruments, and producer Danny Reisch helped flesh out layers of synth and percussion that provides a sweeping undercurrent to the whole thing.

Throughout Somewhere you can hear Sun June blossom into a living-and-breathing five-piece, the album formed from an exploratory track building process which results in a more formidable version of the band we once knew. ’Real Thing’ is most indicative of this, a fully collaborative effort which encompasses all of the nuances that come to define the album. “Are you the real thing?” Laura Colwell questions in the song’s repeated refrain. “Honey I’m the real thing,” she answers back.

They’ve called this one their ‘prom’ record; a sincere, alive-in-the-moment snapshot of the heady rush of love. “The prom idea started as a mood for us to arrange and shape the music to, which we hadn’t done before,” the band explains. “ Prom isn’t all rosy and perfect. The songs show you the crying in the bathroom,, the fear of dancing, the joy of a kiss – all the highs and all the lows.”

It’s in both those highs and lows where Somewhere comes alive. Laura Colwell’s voice is mesmerising throughout, and while the record is a document of falling in love, there’s still room for her to wilt and linger, the vibrancy of the production creating beautiful contrasts for her voice to pull us through. Opening track ‘Bad With Time’ sets this tone from the outset, both dark and mysterious, sad and sultry as it fascinatingly unrolls. “I didn’t mean what I said,” Colwell sings. “But I wanted you to think I did.”

Somewhere showcases a gentle but eminently pronounced maturation of Sun June’s sound, a second record full of quiet revelation, eleven songs that bristle with love and longing. It finds a band at the height of their collective potency, a marked stride forward from the band that created that debut record, but also one that once again is able to transport the listener into a fascinating new landscape, one that lies somewhere between the town and the city, between the head and the heart; neither here nor there, but certainly somewhere.

Greg Freeman

Greg Freeman deals in biblical deluges, apocalyptic fever dreams, Floridian miscreants, and green mountain malaise. On his excellent debut LP “I Looked Out,” Gregs’s voice takes center stage, creaking, crooning, and cutting through clouds of static. The songs are linked together by a palpable urgency, whether it is the punch-in-the-face, careening momentum of “Tower,” the country-gazing guitar squall of “Souvenir Heart,” or the singalong finale of “Palms.” Careful arrangements and production choices bring out the best of the 7-piece band that ornament the album with pedal steel, horns, eerie strings, and tape warbles. Greg’s strong narrative songwriting is equally effective chronicling the demise of a 1920s ocean liner as it is documenting his own interpersonal uncertainties. The sounds on the record conjure up the feeling of driving around Chittenden County in the middle of winter, high beams on, slush on the floor mats. It’s hard for me to imagine a more promising debut record, and I can’t wait to see where this band goes next.

This is an 18+ event

Sigal Music Museum’s current special exhibition, Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred, highlights items from the JoAnn and Frank Edwinn Collection, which hails from all over the world. Showing November 2023 – May 2024, Worlds Apart uses a diverse range of historical instruments, objects, and visuals to bring together musical narratives from seemingly disparate parts of the globe.

 

Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred aims to increase public access to historical instruments from around the world and improve visitors’ understanding of musical traditions at the global level. Expanding beyond the typical parameters of the Western musical canon, Worlds Apart seeks to expose audiences to musical instruments and customs that are often overlooked or exotified. The instruments and other exhibit materials will offer visitors new perspectives on global music and a chance to consider how music is used for prayer and leisure in cultures around the world. By celebrating these stories, the museum intends to further its mission to collect and preserve historical musical instruments, objects, and information, which engage and enrich people of all ages through exhibits, performances, and experiential programs.

 

Displaying various objects from the JoAnn and Frank Edwinn Collection, Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred focuses on international musical instruments and cultures, celebrating rites and traditions with ancient histories and contemporary legacies. Frank Edwinn, a successful basso in the mid-20th century, studied and toured internationally, eventually settling in North Carolina, where he taught music at the University of North Carolina Asheville. Throughout his life, he purchased various objects from around the world, aiming to expose students, and himself, to the wide and wonderful world of musical instruments. This impressive collection occupies a unique position for educating audiences unfamiliar with the vast scope of global music.

And, UNCA’s Ramsey Library Special Collections is now processing the Edwinn’s papers and a few recordings that will be accessible next semester!

LEAF isn’t just for kids! Join us in the Mezzanine while you wait for your youth to finish their class or just to hang out!

Ice Nine Kills & In This Moment

With special guests Avatar, New Years Day

Sigal Music Museum’s current special exhibition, Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred, highlights items from the JoAnn and Frank Edwinn Collection, which hails from all over the world. Showing November 2023 – May 2024, Worlds Apart uses a diverse range of historical instruments, objects, and visuals to bring together musical narratives from seemingly disparate parts of the globe.

 

Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred aims to increase public access to historical instruments from around the world and improve visitors’ understanding of musical traditions at the global level. Expanding beyond the typical parameters of the Western musical canon, Worlds Apart seeks to expose audiences to musical instruments and customs that are often overlooked or exotified. The instruments and other exhibit materials will offer visitors new perspectives on global music and a chance to consider how music is used for prayer and leisure in cultures around the world. By celebrating these stories, the museum intends to further its mission to collect and preserve historical musical instruments, objects, and information, which engage and enrich people of all ages through exhibits, performances, and experiential programs.

 

Displaying various objects from the JoAnn and Frank Edwinn Collection, Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred focuses on international musical instruments and cultures, celebrating rites and traditions with ancient histories and contemporary legacies. Frank Edwinn, a successful basso in the mid-20th century, studied and toured internationally, eventually settling in North Carolina, where he taught music at the University of North Carolina Asheville. Throughout his life, he purchased various objects from around the world, aiming to expose students, and himself, to the wide and wonderful world of musical instruments. This impressive collection occupies a unique position for educating audiences unfamiliar with the vast scope of global music.

And, UNCA’s Ramsey Library Special Collections is now processing the Edwinn’s papers and a few recordings that will be accessible next semester!

Join us at Keynote Speechcrafters and

Discover the
Joy of
Public Speaking!

It’s natural to enjoy things you do well,
and you will get good at this.

Our members are committed to meeting each week because

steady progress
requires
steady practice.

Our motto:

When you show up
You speak
Every meeting
Every week

So come join us at the South Buncombe Library on Wednesday evenings and prepare to become a better you.

Please Click here to let us know you are coming.

Guests are always welcome. We look forward to speaking with you!

BULLY

Lucky For You is Bully’s most close-to-the-bone album yet. It’s an album that’s searing and unmistakably marked by its creator’s experiences, while still retaining the massive sound that Alicia Bognanno has become known for over the last decade. Her fourth album draws from personal pain and the universal struggle that is existing, learning, and moving on — and it’s all soundtracked by Bognanno’s rock-solid melodic sensibilities and a widescreen sound that’s impossible to pin down when it comes to the textures explored. These ten songs are simply the most irresistible Bognanno’s put to tape yet, making Lucky For You her greatest triumph to date in a career already packed with them.

Work on Lucky For You began last year, when Bognanno brought some in-progress demos to producer J.T. Daly in his Nashville studio to see if they could strike creative kismet. “Authenticity is always on my mind, without even knowing it,” she explains while discussing their recording process together. “If I’m doing something that doesn’t feel natural or right, I’m quick to shut it down. So it was great with J.T., because I could tell he was a genuine fan who wanted to emphasize what’s actually good about my writing instead of changing it. I could tell how much he cared about the project and it meant alot to me.” The album came together over the course of seven months, the longest gestation process for a Bully record to date: “I was freaking out about it at first, because taking my time was so new for me. But a few months in, I realized how crucial that time ended up being. I got songs out of it that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

“With every record, I feel more and more secure in terms of doing what I want,” Bognanno continues. “For this one, I wanted to be as creative as possible with these songs.” She got her wish: A kaleidoscopic rock record spanning punk’s grit, the crunchy bliss of shoegaze, explosive Britpop, and the type of classic anthems Bully has been known for, Lucky For You’s thematic focus also zooms in on grief and loss. The record is largely inspired by Bognanno’s dog Mezzi passing away, at a time when her life already felt as if in metamorphosis.

“Mezzi was my best friend,” she explains. “She made me feel safe and empowered, she showed me that I was worth loving and never judged me or viewed me as a let down. I always felt accepted, understood and so much less alone. Mezzi was living, breathing proof that I was worthy of being loved.” And the oceanic first single “Days Move Slow” was written shortly after Mezzi’s passing, reflecting the persistence of Bognanno’s incisive wit even while facing adversity. “There was nothing else I could do except sit down and write it, and it felt so good.”

“Hard to Love” stomps and lurches with awesome abandon, resembling one of the most sonically left-field tunes Bognanno’s put to tape as Bully; and then there’s the passionate opening track “All I Do,” which kicks in the door Bully-style with huge riffs atop her lyrical reflections on three years of sobriety. “I’ve been living in this house for seven years,” she says while discussing her current Nashville abode. “Once I stopped drinking, I felt like I was still haunted by mistakes and things that had happened when I was drinking, and it’s still taking me a long time to forget about that while existing in this house. How do I shed the skin from a path I’ve moved on from?”

In that vein, Lucky For You is a document of perseverance in the face of the big and the small stuff. “I’m so overly emotional and sensitive, it’s a blessing and a curse” she says with a laugh, but there’s no downside to her expressions of vulnerability on this record; it’s the latest bit of evidence that nothing can hold Bognanno back.

All ages

Fans of legendary folk icons The Kingston Trio can re-discover their timeless music all over again. All three current members, Mike Marvin, Tim Gorelangton and Buddy Woodward have intrinsic links to and experience with the original group: Mike is the adopted son of founding member Nick Reynolds, who was also his musical mentor; Tim, a close friend since boyhood, is one of the few musicians outside theTrio who has recorded with Nick Reynolds; and Buddy, who has performed with longtime Kingston Trio member George Grove. Many of their personal memories recall the iconic trio’s performances and journey as folk music made its extraordinary ascent to the pinnacle of popular culture – and the top of the music charts.

Back in summer 2021, Grace Potter took off on a solo cross-country road trip that would soon bring a life-saving reconnection with her most unbridled self. Heading out on Route 66 from her home in Topanga Canyon, the Vermont-born artist spent the coming weeks crashing in roadside motels and taking time each night to deliriously transcribe the song ideas she’d dreamed up behind the wheel, often scrawling those notes onto the backs of postcards and motel notepads. After completing two more trips across the U.S. on her own—and partly navigating her way with the help of hand-drawn maps from self-styled historians of Route 66—Potter flew to Nashville for a series of recording sessions that quickly gave way to her most magnificently unfettered collection of songs to date. Equal parts fearlessly raw memoir and carnivalesque fable, the result is a body of work that goes far beyond the typical album experience to deliver something much more all-enveloping: the original motion picture soundtrack to a profoundly transformative moment in Potter’s life, a fantastically twisted odyssey populated by the hitchhikers and outlaws and other lifelong wanderers who roam through the wonderland of her psyche.

The follow-up to Daylight—a 2019 release that earned GRAMMY nominations for Best Rock Album, and Best Rock Performance—Mother Road marks the start of a thrilling new era of a career that’s included turning out seven acclaimed albums, sharing the stage with the likes of The Rolling Stones, Robert Plant, and the Allman Brothers Band, and playing nearly every major music festival (in addition to launching her own festival, Burlington’s Grand Point North). Over the course of its 10 larger-than-life tracks, the album fuses elements of soul, blues, country, and timeless rock-and-roll with masterful abandon, thanks to the vibrant musicianship of Potter and her collaborators: legendary keyboardist Benmont Tench, guitarist Nick Bockrath (Cage The Elephant), bassist Tim Deaux (The Whigs, Kings Of Leon), pedal-steel guitarist Dan Kalisher (Fitz And The Tantrums, Noah Cyrus), Potter’s longtime drummer Matt Musty, and her husband Eric Valentine (a multi-instrumentalist who plays everything from African lute to synth bass on Mother Road). Produced by Valentine (who’s also worked with Queens of the Stone Age, Slash, and Weezer) and recorded at RCA’s famed Studio A, Mother Road fully echoes the ecstatic catharsis of its recording sessions, a process that Potter alternately likens to a tantrum and a haunting. “I didn’t have any real intention of making a record; I just thought I’d get into a room with some friends and mess around with these unfinished ideas I’d been gathering,” she says. “But then an entire album fell out of me, including all the lyrics—the blanks had been filled in, like my subconscious had created finished sentences spoken distinctly from the perspective of all these characters that were living inside me.”

As she reveals, that explosion of creative energy followed a period of emotional crisis for Potter, a turn of events partly triggered by moving back to her hometown with her husband and young son a year into the pandemic. “There was a big piece of my heart that wasn’t ready to go back to Vermont—it all happened about 10 years earlier than I’d expected,” she says. “California had always felt like a new beginning, a place where I was able to step into a community of like-minded weirdos, and through that first winter I started to feel trapped.” After suffering a miscarriage (a particularly brutal medical experience compounded by the fact that she’d unknowingly been carrying twins), Potter began treatment for clinical depression and soon decided to seek the solace and release she’d always found on the road. “I used the rental-car shortage as an excuse to go get our car in Topanga, but the truth is I was going to probably have a full mental breakdown if I didn’t step away from the pressure cooker of judgment, I’d placed on myself and my environment,” she says. “At first, I thought of what I was doing as escapism, and I felt ashamed of that. But eventually I realized I was giving myself permission to do what needed to be done for me to get better.”

Within days of that first road trip, Potter was overcome by memories of past adventures and began piecing together stories set in parallel realities and alternate timelines, each rooted in the unvarnished truth of her emotional experience. “Mother Road is a reframing of my understanding of my history,” she says. “It’s an important and powerful perspective I’d never had until this record, and the heart of it is my journey to self-reliance and a sense of worthiness.”

Named for a line from The Grapes of Wrath—in which John Steinbeck refers to Route 66 the “the mother of all roads…the road of flight”—Mother Road opens on the soulful swagger of its sublimely rowdy title track. “That song is my way of saying I’m not okay, and I’m hoping that the road will at least be my partner-in-crime on this journey, if not a healer,” says Potter, whose powerhouse voice lends the track a certain incandescent grit. A world-weary plea for redemption (from the chorus: “Wherever I’m headed/Mama, don’t let it be down”), “Mother Road” also makes for a prime introduction to the album’s ingenious use of background vocals. “All of those vocals are me, but each voice is a different character I was manifesting in the album,” Potter explains. Mother Road’s motley cast of characters includes the ghost of Waylon Jennings and an enigmatic road warrior named Lady Vagabond. On “Good Time,” meanwhile, Potter inhabits the role of a hellraiser called Brigitte as she serves up a groove-heavy sizzle reel of her real life’s wildest moments (e.g., “I breastfed a stranger once at an In-N-Out Burger/Stripped down to my skivvies and danced across the boulevard”). “Writing that song, I was thinking about all the times when there were no boundaries between me and the world at large,” says Potter. “As you get older there’s this expectation that you need to fall in line, that you can’t keep living in a fantasy your whole life. But I don’t know about that. Maybe we can.”

At the heart of Mother Road lies two back-to-back tracks that together speak to the transcendent power of bending reality and creating our own myths. Co-written by Potter and the Highwomen’s Natalie Hemby (a Grammy-winning songwriter whose credits include tracks by Kacey Musgraves and Maren Morris), “Little Hitchhiker” brings Potter’s delicate piano melodies, luminous acoustic-guitar work, and gorgeously longing vocals to a tender reflection on her experience as a nine-year-old runaway. Next, “Lady Vagabond” unfolds with spaghetti-western bravado as Potter immortalizes the lawless superhero within. “To me she represents complete self-reliance and strength, and the permission to be as mischievous or as benevolent as you want to be,” says Potter. “She may not have a great grasp on everything else in the world—she may not even have the greatest grasp on herself—but that’s okay.”

For the closing track on Mother Road, Potter offers up an epic piece of cabaret-pop touched with both theatrical flamboyance and devil-may-care attitude. A bit of coming-of-age autobiography in song form, the piano-led “Masterpiece” paints a picture of her libertine young adulthood in irreverent and dazzling detail (“I was the long-lost daughter of disco/Dancing thru my jock-strap dreams/In my funky little Fiat/Chasing down my Masterpiece”). “One of the silver linings of going back home was driving by my high school every day and having all those memories come rushing back,” says Potter. “The kids I’d grown up with were there with a million stories about me, and every story got weirder and wilder than the last. But I love that that’s how they remembered me, and I love that I’m still living those stories out through my songs.”

Even in Mother Road’s most outrageous moments, Potter infuses her songwriting with essential insight into the endless nuances of life and love and belonging. True to the cinematic nature of Mother Road’s storytelling, she’s also immersed herself in creating the album’s elaborate visual components, an undertaking that’s involved expanding her talents as a filmmaker and multimedia artist. “I know now that there’s more depth to my expression, and I feel ready to bring everything into focus under a much larger circus tent than I have in the past,” she notes. And after thousands of miles on the road, countless nights at seedy motels, and a heartrending return home, Potter has made her way to the kind of creative freedom that leaves both artist and audience indelibly altered—a freedom that’s undeniably led to her masterpiece.

Sigal Music Museum’s current special exhibition, Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred, highlights items from the JoAnn and Frank Edwinn Collection, which hails from all over the world. Showing November 2023 – May 2024, Worlds Apart uses a diverse range of historical instruments, objects, and visuals to bring together musical narratives from seemingly disparate parts of the globe.

 

Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred aims to increase public access to historical instruments from around the world and improve visitors’ understanding of musical traditions at the global level. Expanding beyond the typical parameters of the Western musical canon, Worlds Apart seeks to expose audiences to musical instruments and customs that are often overlooked or exotified. The instruments and other exhibit materials will offer visitors new perspectives on global music and a chance to consider how music is used for prayer and leisure in cultures around the world. By celebrating these stories, the museum intends to further its mission to collect and preserve historical musical instruments, objects, and information, which engage and enrich people of all ages through exhibits, performances, and experiential programs.

 

Displaying various objects from the JoAnn and Frank Edwinn Collection, Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred focuses on international musical instruments and cultures, celebrating rites and traditions with ancient histories and contemporary legacies. Frank Edwinn, a successful basso in the mid-20th century, studied and toured internationally, eventually settling in North Carolina, where he taught music at the University of North Carolina Asheville. Throughout his life, he purchased various objects from around the world, aiming to expose students, and himself, to the wide and wonderful world of musical instruments. This impressive collection occupies a unique position for educating audiences unfamiliar with the vast scope of global music.

And, UNCA’s Ramsey Library Special Collections is now processing the Edwinn’s papers and a few recordings that will be accessible next semester!

Students will receive a solid foundation in beginner Ukulele skills for vocalists. Chords, Rhythm patterns, and basic theory will be introduced through songs with an uplifting message. Students will also learn to play the song that the Songwriting Class will be writing and get to record it in the One Mic Studio.