This year's Trinumeral Music & Arts Festival boasts a heady lineup: World beat trio Bela Fleck, Zakir Hussain & Edgar Meyer headline, along with experimental jazz collective Sun Ra Arkestra, "new funk" act The New Mastersounds and Asheville's own rock/Afro-beat quintet Toubab Krewe. But, before you start comparing Trinumeral's extensive long-weekend lineup to that of […]

"It's a big world out there," says Harrison Stafford, the vocalist/guitarist of roots-reggae outfit Groundation. Stafford should know: Already this year the nine-member group has toured South America and Europe and headlined Tel Aviv's Open Air Festival in July. But it's not all jet-set vacation for Stafford and company. "We call ourselves road warriors," he […]

Think "bluegrass festival," and immediately the images appear: Rowdy cloggers, fiery fiddlers, hoedowns and hootenannies. That's all good, but the Mountain Song Festival — now in its fourth year at Brevard Music Center's Whittington-Pfohl Auditorium, puts a refined twist on all the pickin' and grinnin.' Sharing the stage: The Steep Canyon Rangers have been gigging […]

Speaking of fun, the best way to get into the spirit of LAAFF is to come in costume. Yeah, Asheville is pretty open to all manner of dress. Jeans and flip-flops are de rigeur, dresses are paired with boots, dudes wear skirts, wings and horns are perfectly acceptable accessories. Even so, why pass up a […]

Goombay fans have taken in a lot of eclectic world-beat sounds over the years, from African drums to Caribbean grooves. But here's something even the most astute world music fan might not know: The cowbell — that clunky but effective rhythm instrument — doesn't jive with the digital age. "You can take a cowbell and […]

The band name Drunken Prayer doesn't actually stem from the time singer/songwriter Morgan Geer and keyboardist Audra Fleming spent holed up in a cabin in California's wine country. It's also not about dogma, though Geer used to front Asheville-based blues-rock outfit The Unholy Trio. "Religious themes work as iconic imagery on an everyday level, without […]