Town Mountain hosts their 4th Annual Holiday Benefit on Saturday, December 19, 2015 at Isis Music Hall and will be joined by The Larry Keel Experience for the occasion! Tickets for the concert are on sale now and the event typically sells out, so get your tickets early.
Starting in 2012, local bluegrass ambassadors, Town Mountain, decided they wanted to initiate an annual holiday concert to help fight local hunger. Each year since, they have teamed up with another band and host Isis Restaurant and Music Hall to throw a holiday party featuring some of the best local and regional pickers rotating on stage throughout the evening. In sum total, the Holiday Benefit Concert has raised $7,500 enough money to provide food for 22,500 meals through MANNA FoodBank.
“The WNC music community has always been a strong support system for our work at MANNA FoodBank, whether it is through supporting our special events, our mission, or by raising money to end hunger in Western North Carolina. Over the past three years, this event has helped us provide the food for over 19,500 meals!” MANNA FoodBank, says, “When our community works together – a business providing the space for an event, musicians providing entertainment and a reason for gathering, and the people buying tickets to support it – we can accomplish so much. Thank you to every individual who makes this possible. With your help, we can end hunger in WNC.”
Town Mountain, Photo by Sandlin Gaither
Town Mountain’s banjo player and founding member Jesse Langlais decided that he wanted to make this an annual event because of the band’s ties to the area and their desire to give back to the place that has helped launch their music careers. In addition to providing the space free of charge as host of the event, Isis Music Hall has also waived many production costs and been generous enough to donate both in kind and cash contributors to the event each year in order to facilitate the event’s success.
“The need to provide a hot meal and shelter to those in need is ever present. Not only is it something we need to be aware of 365 days a year, it’s something that always stands out around the holiday season,” says Langlais. “This year, partial proceeds will be going to MANNA FoodBank, who work to help 1 in 6 people facing food insecurity in Western North Carolina.”
“We are honored to be part of this annual funding raising event that brings together musicians and community to provide for those that are less fortunate.” Isis’s owner Scott Woody says, “We deeply appreciate the efforts of FATE (Josh Stack) and MANNA for all that they do.”
Town Mountain will have some new tunes to ring in the season! They recorded an impromptu set of two of their favorite songs from the Grateful Dead’s catalog, “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo” and “Big River” at the widely acclaimed Echo Mountain Recording Studios in their hometown of Asheville, NC. The disc is called The Dead Session and comes out on November 13th. This is the Grateful Dead done in Town Mountain’s hard drivin’ style filled with a honky tonk edge and barroom swagger. They will put out their next studio album, produced and engineered by GRAMMY winner Dirk Powell, in 2016. Town Mountain is Robert Greer on vocals and guitar, Jesse Langlais on banjo and vocals, Bobby Britt on fiddle, Phil Barker on mandolin and vocals, and Adam Chaffins on bass.
The Larry Keel Experience will also be playing some new tunes for the celebration from their upcoming album due out in 2016. Larry Keel, widely known as a guitar legend and master fisherman, is an innovative and original acoustic flatpicking guitarist that had broken ground in the genre. Always offering an exhilarating performance, The Larry Keel Experience features Will Lee on soulful, blues-grass 5 string banjo, penetrating vocals, along with exceptional songwriting contributions, and Jenny Keel on upright bass with her impeccable timing along with solid and imaginative bass lines and vocal harmonies.
Alli Marshall has lived in Asheville for more than 20 years and loves live music, visual art, fiction and friendly dogs. She is the winner of the 2016 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize and the author of the novel "How to Talk to Rockstars," published by Logosophia Books. Follow me @alli_marshall
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