Calendar of Events
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.
Sing with our Choir at a progressive church
Come join us! Contact Mark Acker for more information ([email protected]).
Rehearsals on Wednesday’s, 3:30-4:45
Beginning & Intermediate youth music classes on traditional and ol’ time instruments including but not limited to, fiddle, mandolin, banjo and guitar. Students will attend 40 minutes of music enrichment, including multiple flat-footing sessions led by Alice Kexel, story-telling, visits from guest musicians, as well as learn about the heritage of the music and the region. They will have 40 minutes of group music classes, and 40 minutes of singing or JAM rehearsal.
Advanced students will have 40 minutes of group instrument lessons, followed by 30 minutes of advanced singing including harmony and shape-note singing, and finish with 50 minutes of coached, small-ensemble rehearsal.
Classes are $15/session, for a total of $210 for the first student, and a 20% discount of $168 for each additional sibling. Parents may choose to split payments when registering. Inquire with Julie Moore at [email protected] or 864-420-6407 about scholarships.
Youth Classes
Wednesdays, 4-6 pm
Grab some dinner and a pint while enjoying our long-running Old-Time jam! Featuring many talented musicians from the local WNC area, our traditional Appalachian mountain music jam runs from 5-9pm every Wednesday night at Jack of the Wood!
Join us for Citizen Swing, our new twice-monthly Wednesday jazz nights. Come through for a night of excellent, curated local jazz talent and classic cocktails. The fun starts at 6pm when we spin up some cool, old jazz vinyl, and then continues at 7pm with live sets by Connor Law and Will Boyd. Free!
CONNOR LAW:
Connor Law is a freelance bassist, bandleader and composer based in Asheville, NC. He got his start in the music business after graduating from UNCA in 2017 by going on the road as a tour manager for the progressive bluegrass band, Jon Stickley Trio. After leaving that position he realized his passion was in performance, and more specifically, jazz performance. He began working as a full time musician in Asheville in 2018 and has been performing with many of the top musicians in the area since then.
WILL BOYD: Multi-reed instrumentalist, composer, and educator Will Boyd hails from the soul-sax tradition of artists such as Eddie Harris, Hank Crawford, David “Fat Head” Newman, King Curtis, and Yusef Lateef. Originally from Orangeburg, S.C. by way of Queens, N.Y., Will currently resides in Knoxville, Tenn. He is an adjunct music faculty member at UNC Asheville and Warren Wilson College and member of the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra. He has released three solo albums: Live at the Red Piano Lounge, Freedom Soul Jazz, and Soulful Noise. Will also co-leads a group with his wife Kelle Jolly who is a jazz radio host and founder of the Knoxville Women in Jazz Jam Festival.
Weekly mountain music JAM with
players in a round, where the session is focused on regional fiddle tunes and songs, You are welcome to come and listen or to
learn and join in. This event supports the Henderson County Junior Appalachian Musician (JAM) Kids Program, Free but
donations are accepted.
Legendary singer, songwriter and storyteller, Stevie Nicks has announced additional tour dates and is coming to Bon Secours Wellness Arena
16-time Grammy® award-winning musician, composer, and producer DAVID
FOSTER and acclaimed singer, television, and Broadway star, KATHARINE
MCPHEE are bringing their viral Instagram show on the road.
Coming directly from the Living Room to the stage, this intimate show with
the powerhouse duo will be packed with David‘s hits from Chicago,
Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Josh Groban, Michael Bublé, etc. and Kat’s
biggest songs from American Idol, Smash, and Waitress. Plus some of their
favorites that they just love!
About David Foster
Few other individuals can claim to have their fingerprints on more major moments in all of popular music than David Foster. He has created hit songs for a diverse array of artists including Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Andrea Bocelli, Michael Bublé, Josh Groban, Rod Stewart, Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind & Fire, Diana Krall, Natalie Cole, Michael Bolton, Seal, Chaka Khan, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Chicago, Hall & Oates, Brandy, ’N Sync, Boz Scaggs, and Gloria Estefan.
Foster is gearing up to take on Broadway with several projects including writing the music for a new musical about the iconic animated character “Betty Boop.” He is also writing the music for a musical based on the Amy Bloom novel and New York Times bestseller Lucky Us.
About Katharine McPhee
Katharine McPhee can most recently be seen starring in the Netflix Original Series Country Comfort. Previously she starred as “Paige Dineen” on the CBS’ spy drama Scorpion and was featured in NBC’s award-winning musical series Smash, executive produced by Steven Spielberg. Her other television credits include CSI: NY, Community, and Family Guy.
McPhee appeared on the big screen in Columbia’s romantic comedy The House Bunny. In addition to her acting career, she finds great success in the music space after her turn on Season 5 of American Idol. McPhee’s first single debuted at #2 on the Billboard’s Hot Singles Sales chart. Her debut album landed on the Billboard 200 chart and went gold in 2008.
McPhee also has a presence in theater, having recently starred in both the U.S. and U.K. productions of Waitress.
What began as an all-female festival collab quickly morphed into a serious passion project driven by sisterhood, harmony and humor…along with the shared desire to rage fiddle tunes and smash the patriarchy.
Big Richard is a neo-acoustic super group made up of four well established Colorado musicians: Bonnie Sims on mandolin (Bonnie & Taylor Sims/Everybody Loves An Outlaw/Bonnie & the Clydes), Joy Adams on cello (Nathaniel Rateliff/Darol Anger/Half Pelican), Emma Rose on bass + guitar (Sound of Honey/Daniel Rodriguez/Whippoorwill) and Eve Panning on fiddle (Lonesome Days).
Formed in late 2021, the band gained immediate notoriety for their charismatic stage presence and their vocal/instrumental prowess. After selling out all of their club shows Big Richard quickly started confirming festival appearances across America.
CODY HALE
Cody Hale is a singer/songwriter from Penrose, North Carolina. He began writing music in 2010 after a career ending injury kept him off the basketball court. He currently travels and performs with his wife, Jonlyn Linville, who plays fiddle and sings. The duo has crafted their own sound through years of performing live music. You will hear popular, classic songs mixed in with clever and capturing original tunes if you attend one of their shows
“We sing because we love to… and we sing because we can… and we sing for those who can’t… and we sing to honor the beauty of life within and around us!” -Althea Gonzalez, former Artistic Director
We welcome all who may be interested in joining and want to get acquainted!
Auditions for the Spring 2024 concert season are available through the end of February. For more information or to arrange a visit, please contact us here or by email at [email protected].
Interested in why our members chose to join Womansong? Hear testimonials from several of our members here.
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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!
The boys are back in town! If you enjoyed our past Music on the Rock shows like The Music of Queen, The Eagles, or The Beatles, you won’t want to miss Mixtape! Eric Anthony, Dustin Brayley, Paul Babelay, Ryan Dunn, and Ryan Guerra return to bring you the biggest hits of the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s in one unforgettable show.
What goes better with amazing free live music than great beer & BBQ? Phenomenal banjo player Rudy Cortese will join with Asheville Junction Band’s hot fiddlin’ and harmonies 6-8 pm at 12 Bones South in their taproom on Thursday, Feb 22. C’mon out and don’t miss this one!
ashevillejunctionband.com
https://12bones.com/location/taproom/
BLUEGRASS JAM
Hosted by Drew Matulich
Don’t miss your chance to check out some of the best pickers from all over WNC at our amazing Bluegrass Jam curated by the talented Drew Matulich — every Thursday starting at 7:00 pm! A real show-stopping performance only at Jack of the Wood! Open jam starts at 9:30 pm.
Join us for Jazz Jam Thursday every Thursday from 7-10. There is a suggested donation of $10 and local craft beer and wine for sale. Come as you are or bring an instrument! Open jam starts at 8 after a House Band set guaranteed to fill your soul with groove and joy.
Public parking is available at Marjorie Street, across from Packs Tavern.
It’s February, which means ‘the boys are back!’ From the same outstanding musical talent who brought you the Music of Queen, the Eagles, and the Beatles, welcome to Mixtape! The Best of the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Come shake off the winter blues with this red-hot rockin’ playlist featuring tunes you know and love. It’ll be ‘a gas,’ ‘far out,’ and ‘totally tubular!’
Multi-instrumentalist Sally Anne Morgan’s rich, intimate and modern music is cultivated with the seeds sown by folk, contemporary music and psychedelia. Her work exists in conversation with the living tradition of reinterpreting folk practices, from her music to her letterpress artwork to her microbrewery Leveller Brewing Co. Alongside new interpretations of traditional songs, Morgan also composes her own pieces drawing on her a vast knowledge of folk forms, and experience with her work as part of The Black Twig Pickers and House and Land (with Sarah Louise). Her music is traditional in the sense that she continues the practice of folk songs’ rich history in social and emotional narratives yet remains completely unbound by traditional song structures and forms. Infused with her singular perspective, Morgan’s music is elevated by her deft musical skills and her remarkably expressive voice that together create wholly new folk forms, familiar in their instrumentation yet distinctly her own. Carrying tills the rich soil of Appalachian traditions and Sally’s rural North Carolina surroundings into warm, reflective songs about navigating challenges, as well as the most joyous and personal emotions surrounding Morgan’s own pregnancy and recent birth of her first child. “The process of creating this album was intimately connected to the process of conceiving and birthing and raising a child,” says Morgan. RITKA is the music project of Rita Kovtun, a multidisciplinary artist based in Asheville, NC (unceded Cherokee land). Kovtun was born in Moscow, Russia, but moved to the U.S. at age 3 and grew up in Minnesota. These places and experiences inform Kovtun’s worldview and songwriting. Her songs revolve around our relationships with the human and more-than-human world, touching on themes of memory, connection, and belonging. Her music trends toward dreamy, trancey folk-pop, sometimes in English, sometimes in Russian.
Undeniably the reigning virtuoso of the violin, Itzhak Perlman enjoys superstar status rarely afforded a classical musician. Beloved for his charm and humanity as well as his talent, he is treasured by audiences throughout the world who respond not only to his remarkable artistry, but also to his irrepressible joy for making music.
Having performed with every major orchestra and at concert halls around the globe, Mr. Perlman was granted a Presidential Medal of Freedom – the Nation’s highest civilian honor – by President Obama in 2015, a Kennedy Center Honor in 2003, a National Medal of Arts by President Clinton in 2000, and a Medal of Liberty by President Reagan in 1986. Mr. Perlman has been honored with 16 GRAMMY® Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Kennedy Center Honor, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Genesis Prize.
In the 2022/23 season, Mr. Perlman conducts the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl and the Houston Symphony on Mozart’s Requiem, and is joined by an illustrious group of collaborators — Emanuel Ax, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and the Juilliard String Quartet — in a special Itzhak Perlman and Friends program appearing in only three locations: Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall, UMS Ann Arbor and Carnegie Hall. He continues touring An Evening with Itzhak Perlman, which captures highlights of his career through narrative and multi-media elements intertwined with performance, to Boston, Philadelphia, Long Island, Akron, Austin and Naples (Florida). He plays season-opening concerts for the Colorado Symphony, Vancouver Symphony and Florida Orchestra, and recitals across the United States with longtime collaborator Rohan De Silva.
He currently serves as Artistic Partner of the Houston Symphony in a partnership that commenced in the 2020/21 season and culminates at the end of 2023/24. He performs 9 programs across three seasons that feature him in versatile appearances as conductor, soloist, recitalist and presenter.
Mr. Perlman has an exclusive series of classes with Masterclass.com, the premier online education company that enables access to the world’s most brilliant minds including Gordon Ramsay, Wolfgang Puck, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Helen Mirren, Jodie Foster and Serena Williams, as the company’s first classical-music presenter.
James McMurtry is a Grammy-nominated folk-rock singer-songwriter, guitarist, bandleader, and occasional actor. A luminary in the Americana space, he weaves stories that resonate with gritty authenticity and emotional depth. His songwriting is celebrated by critics and fellow artists alike, with John Mellencamp raving, “James writes like he’s lived a lifetime,” and Jason Isbell lauding, “I don’t think anybody writes better lyrics.”
In August 2021, McMurtry released The Horses and the Hounds, his first collection in seven years. The album showcases his seasoned songwriting, seamlessly blending personal narratives with elegance (“Canola Fields”) and high energy (“If It Don’t Bleed”), and his ability to inhabit characters from various walks of life, as noted by critics who describe his work as subversive, funny, vulnerable and always poignant.
The release follows in the footsteps of McMurtry’s albums Complicated Games (2015), Just Us Kids (2008) and Childish Things (2005), all of which scored endless critical praise. Just Us Kids earned McMurtry his highest Billboard 200 chart position in two decades (since eclipsed by Complicated Game) and notched Americana Music Award nominations. Childish Things spent six full weeks topping the Americana Music Radio chart in 2005 and 2006, and won the Americana Music Association’s Album of the Year, with “We Can’t Make It Here” named the organization’s Song of the Year. Other accolades include a 1996 Grammy nomination for Long Form Music Video for Where’d You Hide the Body and an American Indie Award for Best Americana Album for It Had to Happen (1997).
Touring year-round, McMurtry consistently throws down powerhouse performances backed by his band.
McMurtry will be joined by opening act BettySoo.
– STANDING ROOM ONLY
LAMONT LANDERS
Born and raised in Alabama, Lamont Landers grew up absorbing the soulful sounds of the South that surrounded him. At the age of 14, he taught himself how to play guitar, and, at the age of 19, began singing. He spent years quietly honing his talents behind his bedroom doors, listening to records by Stevie Wonder, Al Green, Sly & The Family Stone, and Ray Charles on repeat. At the age of 22, a candid video recorded by his sister of Lamont performing the Ray Charles’ classic “Hit the Road Jack” went viral on YouTube and garnered over 400,000 views overnight. In the summer of 2023, history repeated itself with similar enthusiastic fan response propelling five Lamont Landers TikTok videos to over 1,000,000 views each. A feature on the Bobby Bones nationally syndicated radio show and shoutouts from music tastemakers ranging from Snoop Dogg to Questlove soon followed. No longer a secret of North Alabama, Lamont will be touring throughout North America in 2024.
“We sing because we love to… and we sing because we can… and we sing for those who can’t… and we sing to honor the beauty of life within and around us!” -Althea Gonzalez, former Artistic Director
We welcome all who may be interested in joining and want to get acquainted!
Auditions for the Spring 2024 concert season are available through the end of February. For more information or to arrange a visit, please contact us here or by email at [email protected].
Interested in why our members chose to join Womansong? Hear testimonials from several of our members here.
|
|
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!
Plan to collaborate with other musicians at Sideways Farm & Brewery in Etowah. Bring your instruments and voices and enjoy making music and networking with other artists, while enjoying the beautiful scenery. Food truck is on site and beverages available for purchase from Sideways (small
batch craft beers, hard jun, ciders, wine, and non alcoholic drinks). Family, fans, friends, and leashed dogs are all welcome!
During winter months enjoy playing under the covered, sheltered, heated porch! And during the summer months enjoy
collaborating in the fields, on the stage, or under the patio
It’s February, which means ‘the boys are back!’ From the same outstanding musical talent who brought you the Music of Queen, the Eagles, and the Beatles, welcome to Mixtape! The Best of the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Come shake off the winter blues with this red-hot rockin’ playlist featuring tunes you know and love. It’ll be ‘a gas,’ ‘far out,’ and ‘totally tubular!’
ABOUT SKYLAR: With her luminous voice and captivating songcraft, Skylar Gudasz has won the admiration of some of the most distinguished artists in music. In the past few years alone, the Durham, North Carolina-based singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist has shared stages with the likes of Ray Davies, Cat Power and Sharon Van Etten as part of the Big Star’s Third tribute concerts, opened for Television and toured from the US with Teenage Fanclub to Europe with the Mountain Goats, and appeared as a background vocalist on albums by Superchunk and Hiss Golden Messenger, making her TV debut with the latter on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
World Vision presents the Winter Jam 2024 Tour, founded by Newsong and produced by Premier Productions. Christian music’s biggest tour with performances by Crowder, Lecrae, CAIN, Katy Nichole, Seventh Day Slumber, Newsong, including Speaker Zane Black.
Suggested $15 donation at the door. No ticket required.
with:
There’s a double meaning to the title of What Now, the revelatory new album from singer/songwriter Brittany Howard. “With the world we’re living in now, it feels like we’re all just trying to hang onto our souls,” says the Nashville-based musician and frontwoman for four-time Grammy Award-winning Alabama Shakes. “Everything seems to be getting more extreme and everyone keeps wondering, ‘What now? What’s next?’ By the same coin, the only constant on this record is you never know what’s going to happen next: every song is its own aquarium, its own little miniature world built around whatever I was feeling and thinking at the time.”
With five Grammy® wins and sixteen nominations, Howard follows up her massively acclaimed solo debut Jaime—a 2019 LP that landed on best-of-the-year lists from the likes of Pitchfork, the New York Times, and Rolling Stone – with What Now, drawing an immense and indelible power from endless unpredictability. Over the course of its 12 tracks, Howard brings her singular musicality to a shapeshifting sound encompassing everything from psychedelia and dance music to dream-pop and avant-jazz—a fitting backdrop for an album whose lyrics shift from unbridled outpouring to incisive yet radically idealistic commentary on the state of the human condition. At turns galvanizing, cathartic, and wildly soul-expanding, the result is a monumental step forward for one of the most essential artists of our time.
Like Jaime (whose celebratory single “Stay High” earned a Grammy for Best Rock Song), What Now finds Howard taking the helm as producer and working closely with engineer/co-producer/co-mixer Shawn Everett (Beck, The War on Drugs). Recorded at the legendary Sound Emporium and the historic RCA Studio B in Nashville, the album emerged through a deliberately free-flowing process, with Howard doubling down on the unfettered creativity that’s long defined her work. “I don’t ever plan too deeply, but usually I show up with the songs almost fully formed,” she says. “With this record there was a lot of exploring sounds on the spot, and trusting that the right thing would come to us.” Despite that highly exploratory approach, many of the songs on What Now unfold in intricate and hyper-inventive arrangements rooted in complex rhythm patterns, achieved with the help of musicians like Paul Horton (keys), Lloyd Buchanan (keys), Brad Allen Williams (Guitar), drummer Nate Smith (Fearless Flyers, Vulfpeck, Paul Simon), and Alabama Shakes bassist Zac Cockrell. “All the sounds on this album are analog, all the drums are real drums,” Howard points out. “There’s so many different structures and tones happening within the songs that it ended up being a real monster to mix, but we figured it out. In a way it’s shocking to me how it all came together.”
Anchored in Howard’s inimitable and infinitely commanding voice—a supreme vessel for channeling raw emotional truth—What Now opens on a slow-building and rapturous track called “Earth Sign.” An intimate meditation on the limitless nature of love, “Earth Sign” immediately envelops the listener in its quietly symphonic convergence of musical elements: Howard’s frenetic piano work, barbershop-quartet-inspired harmonies, otherworldly textures formed through an ingenious bit of in-studio experimentation. “We were playing keyboard sounds through a speaker, and on top of the speaker was a trash can with different metal objects attached, and we recorded the resonance of those objects to bring into the song,” Howard reveals.
A departure from the dreamy languor of “Earth Sign,” What Now’s title track takes on a potent urgency fueled by its syncopated grooves, blistering guitar riffs, and fiercely honest lyrics (e.g., “I’ve been making plans that don’t include you anymore/My heart wants to stay but I don’t know what for”). “‘What Now’ is maybe the truest and bluest of all the songs,” says Howard. “It’s never my design to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I needed to say what was on my mind without editing myself. I like how it’s a song that makes you want to dance, but at the same time the lyrics are brutal.” Next, on “Red Flags,” Howard offers up a gloriously brooding reflection on love’s darker dimensions, echoing the stormy intensity of her emotional state by continually pulling the track into strange new directions. “In my past relationships, I’ve had a tendency to see red flags as part of some parade just for me—something for me to run right through without paying any attention,” she says. “To me ‘Red Flags’ sounds very dystopian, which makes sense for a song that feels like end-of-times as far as me emotionally maturing. It’s like a big tower fell and now I have to create something new.” Later, on “Prove It To You,” What Now bursts into a more euphoric mood as Howard delivers a four-on-the-floor dance track spiked with her explosive guitar work. “I wanted to write something fun that captured the joy of a new relationship, but also tell the truth about how I always feel like I don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to love.”
An album deeply informed by the chaotic climate of modern life, What Now looks outward on songs like “Another Day”: a soulful and sublimely uplifting track preceded by an interlude in which Howard samples Maya Angelou’s reading of her poem “A Brave and Startling Truth.” “The poem talks about how as humans we’re all powerful beings with the capacity to do so many wonderful things for the world and for each other, even if that’s not what we usually focus our attention on,” says Howard. “‘Another Day’ is my way of agreeing with Maya Angelou and trying to see the good in others, trying to change my outlook despite what’s shown on the news, trying to stay strong in how I live my life.” And on “Every Color In Blue,” What Now closes out with a gorgeously sprawling reverie graced with a spellbinding performance from trumpet player Rod McGaha. “That song has to do with depression and how it can be such a horrible, heartbreaking thing but also bittersweet,” says Howard. “Within that depth of feeling, when you’re as low as you can go, that’s also where you find your capacity for love and for empathy. It’s a heavy subject for me, but I’ve gotten to the age where I realize that it’s a part of life and something that a lot of people deal with. So why not talk about it, and why not encase it in a beautiful frame?”
In putting the finishing touches on What Now, Howard reached out to two friends from the Nashville Center For Alternative Therapy and recorded their performance on crystal singing bowls, then used those hypnotic tones as a transition between each song. “This record’s definitely meant to be listened to alone so you can really meditate with it,” she says. “At the end of the day I hope people use the album however they need to, but I do think the gift I bring is to help people to be more introspective and ask themselves questions. And I think with a little self-examination, we can learn to be kinder, more compassionate, more understanding of each other. We can see that a lot of us are going through the same shit, and we all just want to be seen for who we really are.”
The grass isn’t always greener on the other side, or bluer in this case, which may be why Dwight Yoakam hadn’t thought of doing a bluegrass album over the years. It was always already implicit in his music, from “Miner’s Prayer” on his first album 30 years ago to his one-off collaborations with Ralph Stanley and Earl Scruggs. If you listened hard, you could even hear that strain of mountain music in the melodies and harmonic sense of his most rocked-out country hits. He wasn’t consciously thinking through the years that he could bust out the mandolins to confirm his Kentucky bona fides – “Melodically, it’s just part of my nature,” Yoakam says, “part of the birthright, I guess, in my DNA.”
Yet here he is, releasing Swimmin’ Pools, Movie Stars… in the same year that he is celebrating the 30th anniversary of Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.. Swimmin’ Pools, Movie Stars… harks back to that landmark debut in its obviously cheeky title, while otherwise looking even farther back by recasting some of Yoakam’s most classic songs in a style that not only predates cowpunk but antecedes his beloved Bakersfield sound. Yoakam even remakes “Guitars, Cadillacs” in the style of “Man of Constant Sorrow.” No one is ever going to mistake a star so renowned for favoring snug jeans with a Soggy Bottom Boy, but here, he clinches his status as at least an honorary Clinch Mountain lad. “And then Chris Lord-Alge, who has mixed my last 2 studio albums, entered the picture in LA and agreed to add a further edge of Beggars Banquet-esque rock and roll mystique, completing the journey with a masterfully unique sonic framing of the entire project. I believe it was the first bluegrass album that Chris has ever mixed.”
RoC (Roots of Creation) has taken on a unique new project: Grateful Dub: a Reggae-infused tribute to the Jerry Garcia & The Grateful Dead. Combining their longtime love for Reggae-Dub style music and the Grateful Dead, RoC reworked some of the world’s favorite Dead tunes into a new studio album. RoC had the pleasure of working in the studio with the legendary 5-time Grammy winner Errol Brown who was Bob Marley’s sound engineer for this project. Grateful Dub is also being performed live in its entirety at festivals, theatres, and clubs around the country, and features rotating live special guests that has included Melvin Seals (Jerry Garcia Band), Scott Guberman (Phil Lesh), Zach Nugent, RyMo, AG, & Paul W. (Slightly Stoopid), G. Love (G. Love & Special Sauce), Mihali (Twiddle), Dan Kelly (Fortunate Youth) and others. Grateful Dub captures the spirit and magic of the Grateful Dead, while laying it down Reggae-Dub style.