“The Four Artists of the Apocalypse,” painted simultaneously by Bethann Shannon, Peter Symons, Stewart Prather, and Leah Brown. Artists tend to have strong opinions. And thus collaboration for them is about as easy as daylight for Dracula. Nonetheless, some do collaborative work on a temporary basis, like Warhol and Basquiat. Others begin a work and […]

Local news Aaron Price becomes a Tuesday tenant at Stella’s Local piano prodigy Aaron Price has taken up residency Stella’s (in the downstairs of Stella Blue). Every Tuesday, starting around 9 p.m., Price will hold what he calls “a loose workshop performance.” The sounds will be similar to the “lab coat ventures” format Price used […]

Eighty-eight-year-old Nelia Hyatt is an Asheville native, through and through. Thirty-five-year-old Rod Murphy isn’t. That fact is abundantly clear when Murphy speaks. His accent clearly has its roots in the South — the south of Boston, that is. When Mrs. Hyatt speaks, however, it’s all Appalachia. Out come phrases that are equal parts maxim and […]

After finishing art school, Montreal-based Susanne Wesley and Meredith Carruthers found themselves toiling in post-grad purgatory — with lots of work, no place to exhibit, and little community support. Here’s where their road diverges: Wesley and Carruthers decided not to be-whine their fate, but to take charge and create exhibits themselves, their way, in their […]

Skeletons in the jukebox “Skeletons” provides a forum for local musicians, artists, record-store owners, etc., to erase cool points by expressing their unseemly affection for an unhip album from their past. Tchaikovsky – Nutcracker Suite, by Ian Reardon of MarsupiaL “When I was a little kid, my parents would bring me to see Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker […]

Though they’d already established alt-country flagship status by their second album, 1996’s Being There, Wilco’s explosive creative transformation just six years later, exhibited on their 2002 masterpiece, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, would make the band a hip-households name synonymous with artistic exploration and change. Yankee Hotel is a shimmering, sometimes haunted, genre-defying record that propelled the […]

Music News One man band takes second place at Piedmont Blues Challenge. Eight is better than one … barely. Local guitarist Patrick Fitzsimons (whose album Hoo Daddy was featured in Earful last week) almost bested the eight-piece band Mighty Lester for top prize at the 19th Annual Piedmont Blues Preservation Society Blues Challenge in High […]