Richmond native Paolo Garbanzo — are you laughing yet? — started juggling at 12, gave up guitar at 16 (hoping an "athlete of the small muscles" would be even more appealing to women than a rocker), taught himself fire-eating at 18, cracked his first original joke at 19 or 20 and has since earned a […]

If the collapse of the traditional music industry teaches us anything, it's that those artists who've operated outside its gilded palaces have had the right idea all along. Future of tradition: Roots music may form the core of Sin Ropas' musical alchemy, but this is Delta blues as seen through the lens of Luis Buñuel, […]

Unless their last name is Jonas or Cyrus, few aspiring musicians get to blow off tenth grade for recording sessions, but Darien Crossley's debut album, Theorem, shows a maturity beyond her years. Apparently Asheville-based Alive and Well Records saw that, too, because the indie label signed Crossley as its second act (they also represent Dup […]

"I think it's really funny how the context of our band name has changed over the past two years," says Shane Conerty. "It went from Now You See Them, now you don't — a temporary thing — to Now You See Them everywhere you go." The band has just finished a set at the Mountain […]

Composer Brian Turner creates catchy, pop-savvy piano pieces based in classical and jazz genres. Pianist Richard Shulman's work, also based in jazz, often tends toward the meditative and even New Age realm. Still, says Turner, the two would "probably be stuck in the same bin in the CD store." That's due, in part, to the […]

Since the '70s, there's been a symbiotic relationship between skateboarders and the visual art world. The do-it-yourself ethos of the skateboarding subculture has influenced many counter cultural artists, such as Barry McGee and Shepard Fairey, who have gone on to gain popularity in the mainstream art world. Likewise, lots of notable artists — Jim Evans […]

Scenes in downtown Asheville on Friday, June 4.
Photo by Jonathan Welch