“It’s the right thing at the right time. Everybody’s talking green,” says Lyndajoy Storer, resource-development director at local grassroots initiative Quality Forward. She’s referring to Quality Forward’s Earth Day Asheville, presented by Earth Fare—a community-oriented event slated for The Orange Peel next week. The sound of green: Ruby Slippers will perform at Quality Forward’s Earth […]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; any art collector knows that. But sometimes procuring beauty isn’t enough—if you’re going to surround yourself with masterpieces, why limit yourself to pieces affixed to walls and displayed on end tables? Many Asheville-area galleries offer artistic pieces equally at home in the exhibit space and in the […]

Though Kate Nash’s camp tried to talk her out of naming her debut album Made of Bricks (Polydor, 2008), she couldn’t be swayed. And if the dizzying selection of sometimes-bubbly, sometimes-biting songs on the album is anything to go by, Nash sticks to her guns—no matter how bad an idea those guns may represent. Potty-mouthed, […]

The Everybodyfields, the alt-country duo with the unwieldy name and the addictively melancholy songs, have come a long way. All the way from Johnson City to Knoxville, for starters. The brighter side of melancholy: Who says that The Everybodyfields are always glum? “I’d lived in Johnson City for so long,” says singer/songwriter Jill Andrews, who […]

If we had another band name, it would be ‘Normal,’” jokes Matt Call, front man for local pop group Lewis. As it is, “We don’t have that whole indie appeal, which makes it tough. We’re not hanging things from our nipples. We’re just four normal guys.” What is normal? According to this local rock group, […]

Now in its sixth year, the Spring Literary Festival on the campus of Western Carolina University boasts deep roots. The event is sponsored by WCU’s Visiting Writers Series, which has brought local luminaries (Fred Chappell, Kathryn Stripling Byer) nationally known authors (Li-Young Lee, Thomas Lux) and internationally prominent writers (Eavan Boland, Menna Elfyn) to Cullowhee. […]

On multi-instrumentalist Tim O’Brien’s Web-based tour journal, he tells the story of how an equipment malfunction worked to his advantage. The roots musician was playing Glasgow, Scotland’s Celtic Connections Festival with roots-fusion group the Duhks. During an encore that ended with Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love,” “the batteries on my mandolin preamp died, resulting in one […]