During the month of May, buy one entrée and get a free dessert at Brixx Wood Fired Pizza in Biltmore Park. Mention that you saw this offer in the Town Square Reminder email newsletter and enjoy warm, friendly service over scratch made wood fired fare either in the dining room or on the spacious patio.

Join us for a screening of One Pint at a Time in celebration of BIPOC/BIWOC excellence in craft beer during AVL Craft Beer Week/GRINDfest!

Lifting Lucy is honored to invite you to join us for a screening of One Pint at a Time. In celebration of Asheville’s very own GRINDfest and Beer Week, Lifting Lucy is excited to kick off this extraordinary weekend with all of you as we witness the journeys various BIPOC entrepreneurs have embarked upon in craft beer.

Attendees to this ticketed event will also have the distinguished honor of being the first craft beer enthusiasts to taste Lifting Lucy’s collaboration beer Equity Over Everythang! Brewed in partnership with Burial Beer Co., GRIND (Asheville’s first black-owned coffee shop), Lifting Lucy, Resident Culture, and Salud Beer Shop, this Coffee Milk Stout, inspired by the rich legacy of BIPOC/BIWOC entrepreneurship, creativity, and community, is sure to be the perfect beverage to toast to this incredibly important documentary.

Additionally, all attendees to this 21+ event will have a choice of 1 of New Belgium Brewing’s iconic beers on tap.

Following the movie, we will host a brief Q&A session with the movie’s Producers Brigitte and Aaron Hose, the founders of Lifting Lucy, and local entrepreneurs.

We look forward to sharing an evening filled with good company, great beer, and even better conversation with you all! See you there, soon!

Parking Information

Parking for the Brewhouse is extremely limited with construction and being a holiday weekend. Attendees are encouraged to arrive early, carpool, take public transit or ride share.

At its core, The Moon and You is a charismatic husband-and-wife team. Melissa Hyman plays cello and bass, Ryan Furstenberg plays guitar and banjo. Whatever you might assume based on their gorgeous vocal blend and heartfelt lyrics, this ain’t your basic folk duo! With a rotating cast of talented friends to add unexpected instrumentation to their lineup, The Moon and You never plays the same show twice. This ever-evolving, expandable / collapsible model means the band is constantly reinventing itself in ways both surprising and satisfying.

Whatever the lineup, the Moon and You sound is always warm and inviting, atmospheric and playful. Both Hyman and Furstenberg are well developed songwriters with distinctive voices. Their songs range in style from classic to quirky. Lyrics-driven and intellectual with a keen ear for arrangement, they make music perfectly suited to a listening room or a pair of good headphones.

Since 2015 The Moon and You has put out two live EPs and four full-length studio albums. These range stylistically from summery rock and roll to dark and brooding, string-heavy arrangements to 2019’s Big Mystery, a sweet and earthy album of lullabies for people of all ages. Their most recent release Asteroids (digital only release, October 2020) really crystalizes their signature blend of sophisticated Americana, wild goofy romps and dreamy, psychedelic soundscapes. Check out their music on the usual streaming platforms, or at themoonandyou.bandcamp.com.

Furstenberg and Hyman are currently at work on a new, collaborative record with their besties in Fwuit! (former members of Moves, which was once a regionally beloved rock band called Holy Ghost Tent Revival), release date TBD. At once excitingly inventive and cozily familiar, the Moon & You never stops pushing the creative envelope and evolving a sound all their own.

Hailing from the gritty heart of the Industrial Revolution — Worcester, Massachusetts — the Ash & Eric (formerly ‘The Promise is Hope’) find consolation in discovering beauty from the challenges of being artists in the most stubbornly independent cities in the north east. Never shying away from life’s hard edges, their musings reflect the hope and pain we all experience sung in voices as vulnerable and honest as their lyrics. Their songs feel like a warm welcome, a shoulder to lean on and a hand to hold at the end of a long day. In addition to top tier writing that No Depression says will have you “…coming away from many of these [songs] cleansed,” their warm harmonies, swirling acoustic guitars, and easy stage presence have earned them a dedicated following in the folk scene.

Come enjoy an evening of live music, food and drinks at Isis Music Hall. Advanced Reservations are highly recommended.

Buncombe County Public Libraries will start offering in-person story times the week of May 24. There will be story times for all ages spread out across the library system so you can find one that works for your schedule. There will be two bilingual Spanish-English story times for any interested families.

Join us for a story time designed for children ages 3 to 5 years as we share books, songs, rhymes, and activities.

4th annual beer release Honig Gottin to raise funds for Pink Boots Society and women in beer.

During the month of May, buy one entrée and get a free dessert at Brixx Wood Fired Pizza in Biltmore Park. Mention that you saw this offer in the Town Square Reminder email newsletter and enjoy warm, friendly service over scratch made wood fired fare either in the dining room or on the spacious patio.

Asheville’s newest downtown restaurant offers 1/2 off all drafts for the entire Asheville Beer Week! 10 local taps to choose from, all 1/2 off with purchase. Come cheers with us!

Mon: 11:00 AM – 10:00 PM

Tue: 11:00 AM – 10:00 PM

Wed: 11:00 AM – 10:00 PM

Thu: 11:00 AM – 10:00 PM

Fri: 11:00 AM – 12:00 AM

Sat: 10:30 AM – 12:00 AM

Sun: 10:30 AM – 10:00 PM

Come hang with us as we kick off AVL Beer Week with our First Picnic Party of the

Are you ready to make a SPLASH with us?

Join us on Saturday, May 28th from 1PM-5PM to kickoff your summer at Splash! Featuring live music from DJ Jaze Uries, a fashion show and pop-up shop with Nest Boutique + DIY Studio, delicious ice cream from Gospel Ice Cream, beer tastings from New Belgium Brewing, and many more surprises! 

Daily Pool Passes are $15/person and Seasonal Pool Passes are $250/person. Both can be purchased at the front desk.

Let’s have some fun in the sun

Japan’s top-ranking representative in the Southeast, Atlanta-based Consul General Kazuyuki Takeuchi, will attend the American Craft Sake Festival hosted by Ben’s American Sake in Asheville, NC. The Festival is the largest gathering of North American sake brewers in the country and will include tastings and lectures on sake and sake brewing from over a dozen producers from across the continent. Craft sake is a growing industry, with almost two-dozen breweries cropping up across Canada, the United States and Mexico. North American sake draws from the Japanese tradition of brewing rice, water, yeast and koji mold to create an alcoholic beverage with roughly the same ABV as wine (typically 16%)

In addition to the sake tastings, the organizers plan to hold educational seminars for sake newcomers as well as experts on sake and sake making. Consul General Takeuchi’s participation in the event demonstrates the importance of the growing American craft sake industry in deepening the cultural and commercial ties between Japan and the United States.

The American Craft Sake Fest Educational Seminars will cover the following topics:

• “What is sake and how to drink it” with Michael John Simkin (Uka Sake)
• “Growing sake grade rice and brewing techniques” with Whitney and Jeremy Jones (Isbell Farms, AR) and Brandon Doughan (Brooklyn Kura)
• 3) “Koji making for American craft sake” with Andrew Centofante (NASB)
• 4) “Sake and food: A match made in heaven” with Michael John Simkin (Uka Sake) and Byron Stithem (Proper Sake, TN)

The participating breweries are:

• Islander Sake Brewery – Honolulu, HI
• Proper Sake Co. – Nashville, TN
• Tsuki Sake – Salt Lake City, UT
• The Void – Lexington, KY
• Sawtelle Sake – Los Angeles, CA
• Brooklyn Kura – Brooklyn, NY
• Den Sake – Oakland, CA
• North American Sake – Charlottesville, VA
• moto-i – Minneapolis, MN
• River City Sake – Louisville, KY
• Ben’s American Sake – Asheville, NC

The pre-pandemic brain child of JP “Jangles” Pennington and Sean “Bubs” Richardson, BadRabbit has grown by leaps and bounds in 2021. After recruiting rhythm-section veterans Jes “Clutch” Bradley, Brent ‘Dr. Detroit’ Fleury, and finally Cate “Don’t Call Me ‘Kate’ ” Bradley on the keys, JP and Sean quickly dropped all their pandemic songs on the others, and faster than a jackrabbit on a date, they got to work. The result so-far has been some of the most wide-ranging, satisfying and just plain fun songs they’ve ever collaborated on.

Songwriter and Arkansas son JP is all about three things – family, music and “doing redneck shit”. Oh, and whiskey. And he’s good at all four of ‘em! Inspired by the Beatles at a young age, his knack for innovative and authentic lyrics is remarkable, by any standard.

Put on the musical path by his own percussionist father (Edward Bradley), drummer and Tallahassee boy Jes keeps the rest of these guys in line and on time. Onstage and off, he’s the kind of guy who’s always got your back. A huge Stevie Wonder fan, he’s never at a loss for coming up with a killer beat.

Avowed Deadhead and songwriter, Sean learned to smoke some mean-ass ribs in his hometown of Memphis, which is also where he learned to shred that guitar! His taste in and knowledge of reggae is impeccable, and for the record… he’s pretty damn good at whiskey too.

Hailing from the one and only Motown, Brent first picked up a bass at age 13 and quickly and unexpectedly turned into a Metalhead. Exposed daily, growing up to jazz, classical, big band, folk and even opera by his father, he has developed a style the band likes to call… “interesting”.

Armed with an incredible voice and a really cool-ass keyboard, nobody works harder than Cate. Blessed with a natural talent for vocal harmonies and an abiding love for Patsy Cline, she is the linchpin of BadRabbit. Not to mention she makes the best damn cheese dip you ever tasted!

Spring in the Garden Music Series: Free concert with Jason Whitaker, Saturday Night May 28th, 2022 at the Hilton Garden Inn – Asheville South outdoor terrace! Come celebrate Memorial Day weekend with us. Jason is one of the top booked acts in Western NC. This is an outside show, weather permitting.

Imagine moving through your sun salutation on a mountaintop as the sky glows all around you (or stay in savasana for the full hour! No one here will judge you!) Marvel at nature’s light show, breathe in the fresh mountain air, and revel in the expansiveness of wide open spaces. This is our favorite version of our classic Yoga Hike here in Asheville and is offered in season (typically May – October) with start times planned approximately 2hrs prior to sunset. This mountaintop is on all of the “best places to view the sunset in Asheville” lists and we can’t wait to share it with you!

Want a more exclusive experience? Reserve a private Sunset Yoga Hike any day of the week with advanced notice.

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)

Nikki Talley

https://www.nikkitalley.com

Hardworking, energetic, mountain girl with a big voice…these could all describe Nikki Talley. Raised in Ruffin, North Carolina and hailing from Asheville, it’s only fitting that her music is as eclectic as the state that boasts the mountains and the sea. Trying to pin down Nikki’s style, critics and reviewers alike have compared her to Patty Loveless and Gillian Welch, but to leave the comparisons there would be doing a disservice to her fiery stage performance, hauntingly seductive and raw gritty lyrics, lifted by a voice that harkens back to the Appalachian roots from which she was born, and shores up on the edges of contemporary country, folk, and old time that has her audiences stomping and clapping for more.

Along with her guitar & clawhammer style banjo, Nikki Talley‘s musical partner & husband Jason Sharp adds resonant lush guitar tones as well as harmonies to round out this duo’s sound

The ASHEVILLE 8 STRING COLLECTIVE is a jazz/funk/blues/fusion group that features Dan Clare on 8-string hybrid guitar. A variety of local professional musicians bring their talents to the group in WNC for larger ensemble gigs

JPEGMAFIA is often praised for his ability to create music that seamlessly joins an array of emotions, sounds, and subject matter in a way that many haven’t heard up to this point. Though his approach might be new to some listeners, the LA-based rapper and producer’s journey through life, in many ways, predestined him for this kind of musical versatility. In his early years, Peggy was raised in Brooklyn, New York by Jamaican parents. Then, as a preteen, he moved to rural Alabama, a place where he’d have to face a type of racism that was unrelenting in comparison to his experiences on the East Coast. Those early, contentious encounters led a young JPEG to gravitate towards early Ice Cube records, which spoke directly to what he was dealing with at the time. Cube’s clever, intellectual, and militant approach led Peggy to making his own music in his early high school years, joining the LA rapper’s style with the flamboyance of artists like Cam’Ron back home in NYC.

After graduating high school, JPEG enlisted in the military, deploying to various corners of the world where he’d pick up a little bit of influence from each locale. None would prove to be more crucial than his move to Baltimore in 2014. A few months after he arrived, the city erupted in a fiery uprising in response to the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore City Police. The city’s passion and absence of fear when standing up to local law enforcement had a profound effect on Peggy, who’d only witnessed scenes like those while on active duty outside of The States. It led him to crafting two projects that helped him catch the eyes of people across the country and the internet. 2015’s Darkskin Manson, eerie in sound and content, was his first project as JPEGMAFIA and a direct response to what he saw happening on Baltimore streets between citizens and police. Songs like “Mask on the Masters” and “Cops are the Target” featured haunting vocals that channeled his anger and mind-twisting production that only bolstered those sentiments. That project’s follow up, 2016’s Black Ben Carson, featured even wackier production and satire, poking fun at people like Ben Carson and Stacey Dash, who, at the time, were making questionable political statements that felt detrimental to black progress.

Though he relocated to Los Angeles in late 2017 to further his music pursuits, Baltimore City is still the foundation and main source of inspiration for Peggy’s artistry. In a 2018 documentary by The FADER based around his relationship to the city, he said, “The music out of this scene, I felt it the most out of anything. It’s something deeper — it’s harsher, it’s more painful, it’s more soulful. It’s still something different about it to me.”

It was in Los Angeles that JPEG released his breakthrough album, Veteran, at the top of 2018. In comparison to his first two projects, which were conceptual pieces, Veteran essentially served as Peggy’s autobiographical introduction to the world and his most versatile display of his skillset up to that point. The album established JPEGMAFIA as one of the more exciting artists that rap has to offer, due to his ability to make political commentary and the concerns of American millennials engaging, humorous, and informative all at once. The album changed his life. In the year following Veteran, he became a mainstay in American media, the festival circuit, and soon would begin receiving praise and admiration from musical titans such as Rick Rubin and James Blake, among others.

Now, after one of the more impressive introductory runs for a new artist in recent memory, JPEG is mastering his ability to strip the music down to a point of being more transparent, all while maintaining what made people fall in love with him in the first place. That’s where his new album, All My Heroes Are Cornballs, comes in. The 18-track project follows in the footsteps of his earlier work, in that, as a listener, you step into uncharted territory whenever you press play on any of Peggy’s songs. The beautiful remnants of jazz piano in the first half of album cut “Keenan vs. Kel” serenade you to a relaxed state before pounding drums and bass come into play. He appropriately ends that song with an ominous declaration — “You think you know me” — which is a fitting way to frame the rest of the album.

“When I went into this I had a completely blank head. I didn’t want to think about anything,” JPEG says of All My Heroes Are Cornballs. “I didn’t wanna go into it with no preconceived anything. I just knew I wanted to make something in a space and time. When you just leaving it all out there, it kinda happens that way.” That creative approach may explain why the album has more naturally personal moments than last year’s Veteran, but even with that addition, in true Peggy fashion, it mostly shows up in spurts. “Prone!” spends the majority of its duration being a platform for JPEG to let off steam and frustration, but by its end, he slyly fits in interpolations of Jamaican singer Wayne Wonder’s hit “No Letting Go.” Directly after, 61-second cut “Life’s Hard, Here’s a Song About Sorrel” is a short love letter to a drink popular in Caribbean households. Both instances are a subtle nod to his heritage. Moments like these are sprinkled all throughout All My Heroes Are Cornballs and they suggests that, while JPEGMAFIA will remain the cerebral off-kilter jack of all trades (take the title track that goes from referencing Drake melodies to name dropping both Anne Hathaway and Ann Coulter), he’s entering a space where it feels necessary to bare more of himself to those who’ve gotten him to this point.

That way of thinking, he says, comes after finally breaking into an industry he’s been targeting for the better half of his life, only to realize that so many of the people he idolized are disappointingly disingenuous. All My Heroes Are Cornballs is, in some part, him grappling with that lightbulb moment, but more importantly, him making sure he doesn’t replicate their deficiencies. “When you put the scope of today — when we know more about people’s intentions — and you put it back on some of these people, you realize that they’re not really who you thought they were in any way, shape, or form,” he says. “This album is my real-life realization.”

jpegmafia.com

Come enjoy an evening of live music, food and drinks at Isis Music Hall. Advanced Reservations are highly recommended.

Born in 1980 in the nomadic Tuareg encampment Tidene, just outside Agadez, Niger, Bombino (born Goumour Almoctar, also known as Oumara Moctar) came of age during much political upheaval, fleeing with his family to Algeria by 1990, teaching himself guitar by watching videos of his heroes Jimi Hendrix, Dire Straits, Ali Farka Toure and Tinariwen, and returning to northern Niger’s largest city, Agadez, seven years later, when he took on music professionally. After years of honing his skills back home and spending time as a shepherd in Libya, he first left Africa and traveled to California in 2006 as lead soloist on tour with Tidawt. There he recorded a desert blues take on the Rolling Stones classic “Hey Negrita” alongside Keith Richards and Charlie Watts. The following year, filmmaker Hisham Mayet captured Bombino and his electric band for the recording Music from Niger: Guitars from Agadez, Vol. 2, released in 2009 on Sublime Frequencies, Bombino’s first official album release.

As the political landscape heated up in Niger again in 2007 and two of his friends and bandmates were accused of being ‘Tuareg rebels’ and presumed killed by the government, Bombino fled to Burkina Faso, where in 2009 he was tracked down by another filmmaker, Ron Wyman. Ron wanted to help the artist make a proper record. Released in 2011, that record, Agadez, showcased Bombino’s captivating vocals, his hypnotic, awe-inspiring guitar playing and evocative rhythms, cited as one of NPR’s best discoveries of the year. For his second album, 2013’s Nomad, Bombino traveled to Nashville to record with the Black Keys’s Dan Auerbach. The result was a marvelous set, full of grit and funky elegance that firmly established Bombino as a star on the world stage and one of the world’s best guitarists. Bombino went to upstate New York to record his third album, Azel, with his band and producer David Longstreth of Dirty Projectors. It was on Azel that Bombino introduced a new genre he dubs ‘Tuareggae’ – a blend of Tuareg guitar with reggae rhythm – to the world.

His next studio album, Deran, was recorded in Casablanca, Morocco in fall 2017 with just his band and his long-time manager, Eric Herman (who produced the album). The album received rave reviews from across the globe including a full page feature in the New York Times which dubbed Bombino ‘The Sultan of Shred.’ On December 7, 2018, Deran was nominated for a Grammy award (Best World Music Album), the first-ever Grammy nomination for an artist from Niger. Thousands of proud Nigeriens attended a parade to welcome Bombino home from the Grammy Awards upon his return to Niamey.

His latest album, ‘Live In Amsterdam’ was recorded at a performance in November 2019 and released in November 2020 (Partisan Records). Bombino dedicated the album to his dear friend and bandmate Illias Mohamed who tragically passed away just a few weeks before the release of the album. The concert in Amsterdam from which the album was made was one of Illias’ final performances. Regardless of the challenges life throws at him, Bombino marches ever forward on his mission to use music to spread love, understanding, and the beauty of Tuareg culture throughout the world.

4th annual beer release Honig Gottin to raise funds for Pink Boots Society and women in beer.