Calendar of Events

The music of Andrew Wooten & Caroline’s Roost feels like a pine-covered moonshine still on a foggy mountainside somewhere in the Carolinas. Writing from the heart Andrew seamlessly blends ear-catching vocals and genuine lyrics into a song that will leave you wanting more. This last year has seen Andrew’s career kick into gear as he has signed with Roadside Music Management, was nominated for two Upstate Music Awards in South Carolina, and performed live on Charlotte Today.

The traditional music of the mountains of North Carolina traces its roots back to the Celtic music of Ireland and Scotland. Traditional Celtic music is still played on the porches and in the pubs of the Celtic lands… and also throughout the southern Appalachian mountains.

In true pub fashion, White Horse Black Mountain hosts a traditional Irish style session twice a month, on the second and fourth Wednesdays, starting at 7pm….

……..and there is NO COVER CHARGE.

Sessions are in many ways the heart and soul of Irish traditional music, a place for players to share tunes and socialize. It’s not a performance, but rather an informal situation in which listeners are welcome to participate, whether offering encouragement, singing along on a chorus, or asking questions about the music and instruments. White Horse sessions regularly draws players from as far away as Waynesville, Cullowhee, Rutherfordton and even Clayton, Georgia.

The sessions are hosted by Richard and Melinda Halford.

Drop by for a beer or a cup of tea and get uplifted by some great traditional tunes and a few new songs.

Come join us in a long musical tradition spanning hundreds of years.

The Jasper String Quartet collaborates with BMC Artist Faculty in a program of chamber music delights by composers who span two centuries of mastery. Jesse Mongomery’s playful Strum gives way to Florence Price’s epic string quartet. Mendelssohn’s youthful quintet illustrates the brilliance of the teenage phenom – only 17 years old when he started composing this gem

PERFORMANCE & ARTIST DETAILS

Jasper String Quartet
with BMC Artist Faculty

JESSIE MONTGOMERY Strum
FLORENCE PRICE String Quartet No. 2 in A minor
FELIX MENDELSSOHN Viola Quintet No. 1 in A major

Auditorium seating is reserved.

ACT welcomes Buncombe Turnpike for two nights of songs and stories on the Mainstage. As part of the concert, Buncombe Turnpike will celebrate the release of their latest album, “Good Measure”.

Buncombe Turnpike was founded in 1997 and is known for playing traditional and contemporary bluegrass, gospel tunes, and original compositions across Western North Carolina. The band members include Don Lewis, David Hyatt, Korey Warren, Tom Godleski, and George Buckner.

ACT audiences will remember Godleski as the creator of “Snowbound” – the “mountain play with mountain music”, produced by ACT in 2016 and 2018.

– ALL AGES
– LIMITED PATIO SEATING IS FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED

THE KRICKETS

• Live Music, 6:00 p.m. and $8 specialty martinis all day at Leo’s Italian Social

For this year’s Pritchard Park Songwriter Series, the Asheville Association is teaming up with Paloma Madre who are best known for bringing Asheville the wildly successful, international concept, Open Folk. Each week will feature two world class songwriters from our community playing introspective and honest tunes about life in the 21st century. Pritchard Park will once again be filled with the sweet sounding songs of heartbreak, true love, heavy loss, and lots and lots of goofin. It’s a guaranteed good time that won’t cost you a dime!!

Concert-goers are encouraged to bring their own lawn chairs or blankets to each show. The 2023 series is made possible by the following sponsors: Pisgah AVL, Mark Kleive DDS, Cup of Jomo, Dough House, LEAF Global Arts, Greybeard Realty, Four Sisters Bakery, Acoustic Corner, The Red Radish, and Sarah Sunshine Pottery.

Our jazz trio with Thommy Knoles on keys, Felix Pastorius on bass, and Paul Gladstone on drums will perform an opening set from about 7-8:15 pm.

An open jam session follows. Drop-ins are welcome and encouraged for a suggested donation of $10.

Jazz Jam will feature a diverse array of music from jazz’s rich history, ranging from 1940s bebop up to 1970s jazz fusion, as well as material from prominent present-day composers. Bring your instruments and jam with us, or just come and enjoy!

Making Music To Tell The Truth: Spencer is a folk/pop singer songwriter, and a vocal loop artist from Boston. They do music to return to their body as a queer person in recovery from American Christian evangelicalism. Their single, Plowshare Prayer, went viral among hurting and healing people worldwide. Delivering Broadway-esque melodies accompanied by a weathered dreadnought, their performances are equally confident quirk and elegant storytelling.

Tuxedo Junction has been entertaining a long list of grateful fans for
decades; showcasing soaring vocal harmonies, danceable tunes, and a wide variety of musical styles. Come and listen to pop
music styles from the 1930s into the ’90s! Please bring your own lawn chairs, blankets, and coolers. BaseCamp Grub food truck
will be there serving the best smash burger ever!

The “One Singular Sensation,” A Chorus Line, is coming to Flat Rock Playhouse for the first time and we are thrilled to share this award-winning musical with everyone! A Chorus Line is a celebration of those unsung heroes of the American Musical Theatre: the chorus dancers. The show follows 17 would-be dancers in their quest to make the cut for a new Broadway Musical. One by one, the dancers come forward to share the stories of their lives, giving it their all and putting themselves on the line to make the cut. Only eight will remain. Capturing the spirit, tension, and hope of an audition, A Chorus Line is the musical for everyone who’s ever had a dream and put it all out there to make it come true!

A Chorus Line once held the record as the longest running show on Broadway with over 6000 performances, and heralds nine Tony® Awards including Best Musical, Best Director and Best Choreographer, as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Conceived and Originally Directed and Choreographed by Michael Bennett. Book by James Kirkwood & Nicholas Dante, Music by Marvin Hamlisch, Lyrics by Edward Kleban. Co-Choreographed by Bob Avian. Original Broadway production produced by the New York Shakespeare Festival, Joseph Papp, Producer, in association with Plum Productions, Inc.

From Iceland to Italy, and all over the U.S., San Francisco based band Dirty Cello brings the world a high energy and unique spin on blues, rock, and Americana. Led by vivacious cross-over cellist, Rebecca Roudman, Dirty Cello is cello like you’ve never heard before. From down home blues and rock with a wailing cello to virtuosic stompin’ Americana, Dirty Cello is a band that gets your heart thumping and your toes tapping!

“Dirty Cello’s music is all over the map: funky, carnival, romantic, sexy, tangled, electric, fiercely rhythmic, and textured, and only occasionally classical.” Oakland Magazine

“The band plays every style imaginable, and does some fantastic covers. (Their rendition of “Purple Haze” is incredible.) But what is most spectacular about them is hearing the depth of soul in Roudman’s playing—it goes beyond what most people would expect from the instrument. She plays it with so much heart, you’ll wonder why more bands don’t have a cellist.” Good Times Santa Cruz​

“A five-piece string ensemble that truly pushes the envelope and breaks the barriers, they blend blues, bluegrass and world music sounds with roots in the world of European classical music in a style that is unique and refreshing.” Cloverdale Reveille

“The group seamlessly careens from blues to bluegrass and rock in a way that really shouldn’t make sense but somehow does.” LA Times

“The ensemble plays a range of eclectic tunes in ways you won’t hear anyone else dare to attempt.” – Argus Courier

“Anyone who’s been in an audience when the San Francisco Bay Area Dirty Cello takes the stage knows that something unique happens whenever cellist Rebecca Roudman and ensemble come face to face with living, breathing (and whooping and shouting) fans.”

– Strings Magazine

“Dirty Cello have been hard to describe, apart from saying that a cello (played in ways you won’t quite believe) is involved, and the range of music takes the word eclectic and supercharges it to meltdown levels of energy and invention.” – Argus Courier

CLICK HERE to visit the Dirty Cello website

Dirtycello.com

CLICK HERE for some amazing video footage of Rebecca Routman and DIRTY CELLO

– ALL AGES
– STANDING ROOM ONLY

CAITLIN ROSE
Nashville-based Caitlin Rose’s new album CAZIMI finds itself released into the world at the exact right time. We’re not quite post-pandemic but we’re certainly post-vibe shift. Things are falling apart, systems are failing in front of us; chaos and danger await us the moment we step out our front doors. The perpetual mood is that of a constant hum of anxiety as we try to cope, with varying degrees of success, with the collective trauma that has consumed us unrelentingly for the past few years.

THE KERNAL

It all started with a red polyester suit. The western-style outfit belonged to Joe Garner’s father Charlie, who played bass on the Grand Ole Opry for thirty years, famously backing ‘doodle-doo-doo’ star Del Reeves. After his dad passed, Joe went into the attic of his family home, looking for a keepsake. What he found was an alter ego and the beginning of a rich, cathartic ten-year musical journey that culminates with his latest release, Listen to the Blood.

“I thought, I’m going to put this old suit on and I’m going to be my own version of some of these country guys, like my dad and Del,” says Garner.  “That’s how the project began. I thought of the name The Kernal in terms of ‘kerning,’ as in getting the letters straight in a design. Aligning myself is kind of the idea behind the name. I obviously had the love of country music that I got from my dad. But there were definitely some loose ends in our relationship that weren’t tied before he died. That part of it drove me to put myself into this world and try to iron out some demons. Listen to the Blood is the last of a three-album arc, which has been about me trying to prove myself worthy in some ways in a game that my dad had ostensibly mastered.”

With a storyteller’s eye and sly sense of humor that echoes not only his “honorary uncle” Del Reeves, but Tom T. Hall and Roger Miller, Garner delves deep into everything from family dysfunction to road trips to matters of the heart. The music, which he describes with a laugh as “diet country,” embodies the spirit of that genre without any of the slavishness or self-seriousness of much modern Americana. Rolling Stone has called his style “sweetly subversive, intellectual and addictive,” while Lo-Down said “the songs have an air of nostalgia but they sound far from old – modern, yet timeless. ”

“I think a lot of people can probably relate to the ideas I’ve been exploring,” Garner says. “Even if you come from a good family, you inherit these negative qualities that your parents hand down to you And then they die, and here you are, left dealing with them. I’ve enjoyed The Kernal project, because it reminds me of the good things in my family and the ways that I’m able to conquer some of the negative aspects. That part is sometimes hard to communicate, and I’m not even sure people are interested in that. Otherwise, the album can be appreciated in a pretty straightforward way – let’s play some music and have a good time.”

From the local favorites to new regional acts, all live from the river banks of the Nantahala. Raft, dine, then jam with us with Live Music every Friday and Saturday from 5pm-8pm between Memorial Day and Labor Day!

Wanna hear the best local music ​and​ drink the best local beers? Hop aboard LaZoom’s Purple Bus and rock out with a local band while we take you on a journey to Asheville’s premiere local breweries.