This Sunday, May 31, local artists and farmers will come together at Articulture’s first annual Art & Farm Tour. Art will be displayed in all different types of outdoor settings to give attendees a completely different experience than that of the normal “white wall gallery.”
New York Times bestselling author Karen White reads and signs copies of her newest novel, The Sound of Glass, at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe on Sunday, May 31.
At first glance, Thompson is of the David Wilcox/David Grey school of songwriting. Pop-savvy, thoughtful, rhythmically interesting. He’s also a good guitarist, a showman, and able to access his New Orleans roots for slashes of jazz and soul that elevate the songs above standard songwriter fare.
Unfettered freedom courses through Harvey Leisure’s repeato-psych compositions for Nest Egg. The guitarist, though, has some pretty stringent ideas about how to put on a show, all of which could come to bear when the band plays its free record release show Friday, May 29, at The Mothlight.
Nunsense is as much old school variety show as anything, relying on a mixed bag formula aimed at one thing: pure entertainment. And HART delivers with a perfectly cast, and tightly directed production.
The tailgate on Tom Riddle’s 19-year-old truck catches the attention of passers-by as he cruises the streets of Western North Carolina. The tailgate, custom-painted by Andrea Martin in February, features a replication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., altered to show the names of those veterans from the WNC region, as well as throughout the state, who died in the war.
“I don’t know that anyone has really written or produced a play about Asheville, per se — what [the city] is today, what the different populations are, what the economic situation is, how things are changing in relation to tourism and beer and everything else,” Magnetic Theatre’s artistic director Steven Samuels says. “That’s what this play is really all about.”
Cindy McMahon’s recently released memoir, Fresh Water from Old Wells, begins with the story of a conversation with a friend. That talk convinced the author to overcome the resistance she felt to writing a book about her personal history.
When Tarocco: A Soldier’s Tale debuts Friday, May 29 at The Orange Peel, it will mark the completion of a long and complex trail that began, appropriately enough, on a forest trail.
A veteran of the Pittsburgh comedy scene, Kleiber began his entertainment journey with childhood antics, eventually solidifying his place as a professional comedic actor, writer and film producer.
That the Swedish-born musician writes songs more eloquently in English — his second language — than most of us can communicate in our mother tongue is astonishing. Matsson’s newest release, Dark Bird Is Home, is described lyrically as “both comforting and alarming.”
The release performance for Relics and Roses, produced by Jon Stickley and engineered by Chris Rosser, takes place at Isis Restaurant and Music Hall on Friday, June 5.
Woody Pines, who returns to Asheville on Friday, May 29, for a show at Jack of the Wood, honed his craft on the streets of New Orleans. His new, self-titled album, released by Muddy Roots Music in June, delves even more deeply into the swing, ragtime, folk and jazz lexicons of the American songbook that gave defined his sound.
Author and poet Jessica Jacobs discusses her collection, Pelvis with Distance, at Malaprop’s on Thursday, May 28. She’ll also read as part the Altamont Poetry Series on Monday, June 15.
“A whistling girl and a crowing hen will never come to any good end,” says local musician and award-winning playwright Tom Godleski, reciting the mountain saying that inspired his latest play. The production, Godleski explains, “blends storytelling and music with mountain traditions.”
Each week, Xpress highlights notable WNC crowdsourcing initiatives that may inspire readers to become new faces in the crowd. This week features Hall Fletcher Elementary school’s outdoor learning space, Roots + Wings School of Art and Design’s expansion onto a new campus and local band The Circus Mutts’ quest to raise funds for a new tour vehicle.
The surf/blues/rock duo — guitarist Franklin Hoier and percussionist Moselle Spiller — not only live out of their van but also run an independent record label from the road. “We’re a true mom-and-pop outfit,” says Hoier. “We do everything ourselves.
In this issue, I take a look at some truly remarkable artists coming to town, in styles ranging from rock to avant-garde (but accessible) minimalism, from R&B/soul to a hybrid of jazz and trance/jam.
Part experimental, part indie-pop, Kisses to the Sky — the new release from N.C.-based collective Oulipo is as risky as it is dreamy. The album “takes inspiration from the studio pop melodrama of Talk Talk, Phil Collins, and the two Bruces (Springsteen & Hornsby)” says the group’s Bandcamp page.
Sketch comedy-based two-woman show Parallel Lives stars Neela Munoz and Nichole Hamilton, who give nuanced and broadly bodacious performances.
Helmed by story creator Christopher Gaspar and told by a number of local arts professionals and visionaries, the 12-minute video aims to embrace “healthy conversation between creatives, activists and entrepreneurs.”
