Welcome to A&E

Sad for us, good for them: Electro-anthem dance-partiers EAR PWR play their Asheville finale at BoBo on Friday, March 13. While our claim on the band is now tenuous (Devin Booze graduates from UNCA’s music technology program in May, and Booze and PWR duo-mate Sarah Reynolds are moving to Baltimore), we’ll take what we can […]

Everything turns out nothing like the plan

For Andy Herod, there was nothing like suffering through a good existential meltdown to get his creative juices flowing. A founding member of The Comas, Herod fled the successful indie rock band last year after a nine-year run, leaving his apartment in Brooklyn for several months of couch-surfing and soul-searching that eventually led him to […]

X-rays and Spectres

The mark of a brave artist is a willingness to take risks and challenge personal formulas. Often this evolution in creative process is as important to the work as its content. Such is the case with the latest assembly of artwork, entitled X-Rays and Spectres, by Asheville artist Lisa Nance. “I wanted to see what […]

Better homes

Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel, The Help (Amy Einhorn Books, 2009), is ambitious. It’s historical fiction, for starters. And it deals with race relations. And it’s 444 pages long. Momentous, important, warm, fun and quintessentially Southern: Stockett said she wanted to answer a question from her past that nagged at her: What did it feel like […]

SoundTrack­: Rosbach’s Ode to Winter

Singer/songwriter Eliza Rosbach recently performed for an intimate crowd at BoBo Gallery, marking the beginning of a new female-dominated singer/songwriters gathering to be held on the first Wednesday of every month. These showcases will be hosted by Rosbach and will feature various guest artists. “Yay, female vocal musicians,” cheered Rosbach at the show. “If you […]

Welcome to A&E

The news spread faster than a drunken two-step: That longtime Black Mountain institution the Town Pump tavern was for sale. What would happen to the historic bar and community gathering spot? Town Pump changing hands: It seems fitting that the Xpress file photo of the decades-old tavern was undated and sepia-toned. “Maybe it’ll get cleaned,” […]

Writer’s block

You can’t help but notice it when driving across the Smokey Park Bridge into Asheville: A bright wall of color in the middle of the River District’s industrial landscape. It started when local guerrilla outfit Eyesore Studios asked about filming a graffiti-writing scene on one of the property’s old silos. Modernist developer Whit Rylee gave […]

King Khan and the Shrines

There may be better bands than King Khan and the Shrines: bands with calculatingly unparalleled prowess, capable of bloodless technical precision. But King Khan and the Shrines aren’t interested in that fancy-pants conservatory graduate stuff. Their playing is expert, but balances right on the edge of chaos. Should-be classics like “(How Can I Keep You) […]

Back from the island

Julian Koster’s devotion to the singing saw borders on the religious. “The first time I heard it I thought it was magic in every way, like a magician’s magic. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so taken with the sound of a musical instrument, and I love musical instruments a whole lot. I was […]