The circus is coming to town. But this isn't Barnum & Bailey. The Runaway Circus and the Loose Caboose performance troupe is a homegrown Asheville ensemble that incorporates "anything from unicycling to juggling to trapeze to acrobatics to slapstick, belly dancing and magic," says organizer/performer-extraordinaire Ingrid Johnson. "There's a lot of heart and soul involved, […]

Bagpipes have a distinctive sound — that reedy, pulse-racing, ear-splitting squawk; equal parts drone and melody — that make them hard to mistake and easy to classify. And, as Battlefield Band piper Mike Katz notes, "The standard dance forms for traditional bagpipe music, we're quite lucky in that there's probably about four or five different […]

Last year, Chris Gaspar had an inspired idea: to spotlight the diverse and thriving philanthropic movement in Asheville through the eyes of local artists, musicians, business people and activists. The result: PhilanthroPEAK, a documentary highlighting the efforts of local outreach programs and the people who drive them. The hope, Gaspar says, is not only to […]

Forty-three years after the release of the symphonic-rock classic Days of Future Passed, the Moody Blues are still at it, regularly touring their music to concert halls worldwide. Three members of the classic-era quintet still remain: Justin Hayward (guitar, vocals), John Lodge (bass, vocals) and drummer/vocalist Graeme Edge. The three men — all now in […]

"It's just such an uncool set of topics to write a record about," indie singer/songwriter David Bazan says, self-deprecatingly, of his latest effort, Curse Your Branches (Barsuk, 2009). Religion permeates the album, and while Seattle-based Bazan acknowledges that the subject can get "way up its own ass" and says it is not necessarily the "brand […]