Asheville residents Keelan Vinson, 17, and Lennon Medvick, 16, busk outside the Mountain Xpress offices on Wall Street. They haven’t come up with a name for their group yet, but they’re toying with “The Fagabonds.” … Photo by Michael Muller

The Laugh Your Asheville Off stand-up comedy festival started with a local comic showcase at Fred’s Speakeasy. The multi-venue event continues throughout the weekend with an outstanding line-up of local and national comics, including Saturday night headliner Jake Johannsen, who’s performed on the Late Show with David Letterman a record 32 times. On tap for tonight: performances at Diana Wortham Theatre by Josh Gondelman and The Beards of Comedy troupe, which features rising Asheville pro-comedian Joe Zimmerman.

You can play with John Payne’s dinosaurs again. Two years after the River District pioneer and sculptural innovator’s death, his metal marionettes have found a home at a new museum in Biltmore Park. Going Big: It’s the first time the late sculptor’s kinetic dinosaur sculptures have been in one place, open to the public. Photos […]

"I went to Orange Peel for Cirque de Murale in 2007. I'll never forget it. It was awesome because it was a very controlled circus," says Sonia Hendrix. "I want the fashion expo to have that element. Not overbearing, but not all black and white. Very colorful." She's talking about PUSH Asheville Fashion, the part-runway, […]

Eef Barzelay was born an outsider. Sure, that might sound like the typical country music cliché, but for the 40-year-old frontman and founder of Clem Snide, it's true. Inspiration in the Wal-Mart parking lot: “I like to take things that are kind of ugly or mundane and try to make them beautiful,” says Clem Snide’s […]

The annual Swannanoa Gathering is an ideal locale for interviewing the Twilite Broadcasters. Here, on the campus of Warren Wilson College, Adam Tanner and Mark Jackson are surrounded by fellow musicians obsessed with the myriad forms of archaic Americana. A killer multi-instrumentalist and mainstay on the Western North Carolina folk scene, Tanner is scheduled to […]

The Suspect: Rasputina This Brooklyn cello-driven band was founded by Melora Creager in the early ‘90s, and they’ve toured with Marilyn Manson, Porno for Pyros and Bob Mould. Their music has been described as dark cabaret meets steampunk; Creager writes highly original original songs, and the band delivers unique takes on covers such as “Barracuda” […]