Calendar of Events

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.

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

“It’s not a regular musical. It’s a Cool Musical.” (Entertainment Weekly)

Direct from Broadway, Mean Girls is the hilarious hit musical from an award-winning creative team, including book writer Tina Fey (30 Rock), composer Jeff Richmond (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), lyricist Nell Benjamin (Legally Blonde), and director Casey Nicholaw (The Book of Mormon).

Cady Heron may have grown up on an African savanna, but nothing prepared her for the vicious ways of her strange new home: suburban Illinois. Soon, this naïve newbie falls prey to a trio of lionized frenemies led by the charming but ruthless Regina George. But when Cady devises a plan to end Regina’s reign, she learns the hard way that you can’t cross a Queen Bee without getting stung.

New York Magazine cheers, “Mean Girls delivers with immense energy, a wicked sense of humor and joyful inside-jokery.” USA Today says, “We’ll let you in on a little secret, because we’re such good friends: GET YOUR TICKETS NOW!”

Official Website

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.

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

“It’s not a regular musical. It’s a Cool Musical.” (Entertainment Weekly)

Direct from Broadway, Mean Girls is the hilarious hit musical from an award-winning creative team, including book writer Tina Fey (30 Rock), composer Jeff Richmond (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), lyricist Nell Benjamin (Legally Blonde), and director Casey Nicholaw (The Book of Mormon).

Cady Heron may have grown up on an African savanna, but nothing prepared her for the vicious ways of her strange new home: suburban Illinois. Soon, this naïve newbie falls prey to a trio of lionized frenemies led by the charming but ruthless Regina George. But when Cady devises a plan to end Regina’s reign, she learns the hard way that you can’t cross a Queen Bee without getting stung.

New York Magazine cheers, “Mean Girls delivers with immense energy, a wicked sense of humor and joyful inside-jokery.” USA Today says, “We’ll let you in on a little secret, because we’re such good friends: GET YOUR TICKETS NOW!”

Official Website

“Life evolves; musical expression endures.”

The Blue Ridge Orchestra ends its six-program season with a contemplative, diverse, expressive production. Designed and conducted by Milton Crotts, this performance will provide its audience members a therapeutic space of emotion and healing. The BRO will convey that the good times in life can only be fully appreciated if we acknowledge the hardships from COVID, world conflict, and daily struggles that arise. Deb Kenney, BRO’s President notes, “As a community orchestra, we are fortunate that our Music Director is a talented programmer always looking for ways to bring new experiences to our audience.”

ASHEVILLE BAROQUE CONCERTS Whirlwinds, Baroque chamber music for oboe, flute, recorder, viola da gamba and harpsichord

Forrest Ransburg, baroque flute • Sung Lee, Baroque oboe • Gail Ann Schroeder, viola da gamba • Jennifer Streeter, harpsichord
Works by GP Telemann, G Finger and JS Bach

Sunday, May 29, 3 PM St. Giles Chapel, Deerfield

ABCs, an affiliate of PAN HARMONIA, is pleased to offer donation-based, pay-as-you-can concerts. Seating is limited to 50. Advance reservations strongly encouraged.

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/

“It’s not a regular musical. It’s a Cool Musical.” (Entertainment Weekly)

Direct from Broadway, Mean Girls is the hilarious hit musical from an award-winning creative team, including book writer Tina Fey (30 Rock), composer Jeff Richmond (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), lyricist Nell Benjamin (Legally Blonde), and director Casey Nicholaw (The Book of Mormon).

Cady Heron may have grown up on an African savanna, but nothing prepared her for the vicious ways of her strange new home: suburban Illinois. Soon, this naïve newbie falls prey to a trio of lionized frenemies led by the charming but ruthless Regina George. But when Cady devises a plan to end Regina’s reign, she learns the hard way that you can’t cross a Queen Bee without getting stung.

New York Magazine cheers, “Mean Girls delivers with immense energy, a wicked sense of humor and joyful inside-jokery.” USA Today says, “We’ll let you in on a little secret, because we’re such good friends: GET YOUR TICKETS NOW!”

Official Website

Celebrating 30 years as a band, Toad the Wet Sprocket is still making music and touring with the same spirit of unwavering independence that started it all over three decades ago.

The band is thankful for the continued help and enthusiastic support of their fans, which helped spur the release of All You Want and also serves as inspiration for the band to tour and play live. They also continue to support their most recent releases, New Constellation (2013) and The Architect of Ruin EP (2015). Toad the Wet Sprocket share in the kind of musical chemistry that can only come from meeting in high school and writing, recording and touring on albums over the course time. After Bread & Circus, they followed with Pale in 1990, fear in ’91, Dulcinea in 1994, and Coil in 1997, as well as some compilations along the way. While most will still feel the comforting familiarity of the Billboard-charting hits, “Walk on the Ocean”, “All I Want”, “Something’s Always Wrong”, and “Fall Down”, fans will also be well familiar with tracks with lyrics that resonate for so many life milestones like “The Moment”, “I Will Not Take These Things for Granted” and so many more.

Click here for more information on Pressing Strings.

• May 30, 2022, will be the next festival. Follow us on social media or check back here for more details as we plan the 36th Carl Sandburg Music Festival in 2022.

The music festival began in 1987, to honor Carl Sandburg’s efforts to document the history of American music in his American Songbag. Carl Sandburg published the American Songbag in 1927 after spending years documenting and researching early American songs. As Sandburg said, “The American Songbag is a ragbag of strips, stripes, and streaks of color from nearly all ends of the earth. The melodies and verses presented here are from diverse regions, from varied human characters and communities, and each is sung differently in different places.” His publication does not focus on one genre of music, but rather on the human experience. “It is an All-American affair, marshalling the genius of thousands of original singing Americans.”

Sandburg enjoyed all American musical genres. He spent years interviewing musicians and singers, documenting their songs, including folk, gospel, jazz and blues. Carl Sandburg said, “the American Songbag comes from the hearts and voices of thousands of men and women.”

Compiling and publishing the American Songbag was one of the most difficult writing projects Sandburg took on during his life. Today, the Carl Sandburg Music Festival celebrates his work and the work of modern singers and songwriters to share diverse and original American music.

Music Festival is supported by:
Friends of Carl Sandburg at Connemara, Inc.
America’s National Parks, the non-profit partner that operates the park store
A grant from the North Carolina Arts Council; administered by the Arts Council of Henderson County.

Crawfish Boil, live music, proceeds go to Mountain True

Rapidly rising on the bluegrass scene, Billboard-charting artists Liam Purcell & Cane Mill Road perform internationally and stateside winning both industry awards and the hearts of fans who turn out to see them at some of the industry’s most iconic venues.

Named Momentum Band of the Year by IBMA in 2019, Liam Purcell & Cane Mill Road have been recognized as one of the fastest growing bands in the industry. Their latest release “Roots” debuted at #6 on the Billboard Bluegrass Album Charts, joining their three previous albums for a total of 12 weeks in the Top 10.

Growing up just down the road from Doc Watson, Liam Purcell leads Cane Mill Road as they rock the traditional bluegrass standards they were raised on, yet boldly write original music with roots in the fertile grounds of bluegrass, old-time, and Americana. Their powerful arrangements and dynamic stage presence have landed them main stage slots at legendary festivals across the country.

Multi-platinum artists Fitz and the Tantrums have quickly grown from independent upstarts to bonafide hitmakers. The LA-based band
recently released their much-anticipated, fourth full length album “ALL THE FEELS,” featuring singles “123456” and “I Just Wanna
Shine.” “ALL THE FEELS” follows the band’s 2016 release “FITZ AND THE TANTRUMS,” which spawned the group’s biggest hit to
date, “HandClap.” The RIAA-certified 2x Platinum single has logged more than 400 million global streams, went top 5 on both the Hot
AC and Alternative Radio charts, and also enjoyed major airplay across the country at Top 40. The band has brought the infectious
energy of their live shows to the small screen, with nationally televised performances of “HandClap” on ABC’s “Dancing With The
Stars,” “Good Morning America,” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” NBC’s “TODAY,” “Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” “America’s Got
Talent,” and Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the syndicated “Ellen DeGeneres Show” among others.

Fitz and the Tantrums’ eponymous album followed their breakout major label debut, “MORE THAN JUST A DREAM,” which featured
back-to-back Platinum-certified, #1 Alternative Radio singles in “The Walker” and “Out Of My League.” Both singles also enjoyed Top
15 success at Hot AC. The band has performed countless, sold out headlining shows and is always a standout at music festivals
around the world, including Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, and more.

Fitz and the Tantrums are: Michael “Fitz” Fitzpatrick (vocals), Noelle Scaggs (vocals), James King (saxophone, flute), Jeremy
Ruzumna (keyboards), Joseph Karnes (bass), and John Wicks (drums, percussion).

A fever dream in sonic form, St. Paul & The Broken Bones’ new album The Alien Coast represents the most adventurous and original
output yet from an ever-evolving musical powerhouse. In a profound shift for the Alabama-bred eight-piece—Paul Janeway (vocals),
Jesse Phillips (bass), Browan Lollar (guitar), Kevin Leon (drums), Al Gamble (keyboards), Allen Branstetter (trumpet), Chad Fisher (trombone), and Amari Ansari (saxophone)—the band’s fourth full-length and first for ATO Records strays far from the time-bending
soul of past work like their 2014 debut, arriving at a convergence of rock & roll, R&B, psychedelia and funk. At turns explosive, elegant,
and unhinged, that sound makes for a majestic backdrop to St. Paul & The Broken Bones’ visceral exploration of the strangest
dimensions of the human psyche.

Produced by Matt Ross-Spang, The Alien Coast is the first album St. Paul & The Broken Bones have ever recorded in their hometown
of Birmingham. In creating the ultra-vivid dreamscape threaded throughout The Alien Coast, the band’s chief lyricist drew inspiration
from such disparate sources as Greek mythology, dystopian sci-fi, 17th century Italian sculpture, and colonial-period history books.

for tickets go to

FITZ & THE TANTRUMS and ST. PAUL & THE BROKEN BONES at Rabbit Rabbit on Jun 1, 2022 6:00 PM (etix.com)

Join us for a 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. Weekly event takes place at Oklawaha Brewing Company.

Discussion led by music journalist/author Bill Kopp with special guest Bill Altman

Music to Your Ears will explore significant albums, artists and movements in popular music. The event is held at the Asheville guitar Bar in the River Arts District on the first Wednesday of each month. The first installment is Wednesday, June 1, and the topic will be Pink Floyd’s 1972 album Obscured by Clouds. It’s the little-known precursor to The Dark Side of the Moon, one of the most popular albums in the history of recorded music