“I have noticed a dramatic loss of buskers in this town,” said Lyle Rickards, a leader of the Asheville Buskers Collective, a loose-knit group of some 300 street performers. “This year, I’d say there are 30 buskers in town for the season. Last year, we had 100.”
“Is there a particular community that might consider having me relocate there, for the mutual benefit that could be made in the future?”
“I point my speaker toward what used to be the Vance Monument. I find that I have to turn up the volume a bit just so that I can hear the music with which I’m playing. I may be violating a noise ordinance, and if anyone asked me to turn it down, I would do so.”
Buskers are visible ambassadors of Asheville’s artistic community, and some downtown businesses say street performances create a convivial atmosphere. But for others who live and work downtown, amplified sound is a daily cacophony.
The streets of downtown Asheville were free of cars on Sept. 17 — but that doesn’t mean they were quiet. Open Streets Asheville returned for its second year, filling the roadways with people and activities, including art, dance, sports and music.
On Tuesday, Oct. 25, Asheville City Council will consider new rules that would limit acoustic performances in two of the city’s most popular busking areas, the sidewalk on Haywood Street in front of Woolworth Walk and the Flat Iron at Battery Park Avenue and Wall Street. Also: a grant to support affordable housing development on Simpson Street and a change to the city’s signage ordinance.
Each week, Xpress highlights notable WNC crowdsourcing initiatives that may inspire readers to become new faces in the crowd. This week features a poet’s debut book, a wide-wheeled electric bike, Weaverville residents’ opposition to a housing development and Brother Wolf Animal Rescue’s flood aid efforts.
Americans love to celebrate the iconic “hobo” lifestyle, yet we’re often quick to stereotype or judge the modern-day iteration of the traveler. Despite the risk of legal repercussions and personal injury, contemporary traveling culture continues to attract people from all walks of life to the rails and the road in search of the next horizon.
Asheville city staffers, downtown stakeholders and local buskers turned out in force for the city’s monthly Public Safety Committee meeting Wednesday afternoon to discuss a city proposal for a pilot program regulating downtown public space. The meeting, which was preceded by a community forum with downtown stakeholders, came amid tensions over pilot program, which would add regulations to several […]
The city is seeking definition in its relationship with the busking community, and both buskers and businesses are speaking out about the issues that matter to them in hopes of fostering a healthy relationship in an area of the city where space is at a premium.
Taking notes from Spotify’s theorem that people are willing to pay more for on-demand music, two buskers have positioned themselves as Asheville’s ‘ Human Jukebox.’
Buskers, however innately transient, also boast a collective permanence in downtown Asheville. During his solo set, singer and guitarist Jason Brazzel paired his sturdy rasp with peppy strums, covers with originals.
It’s hard to say whether Midnight Snack’s infectious busking sets are more likely to add a bit of pep to the pedestrian pace or to halt it altogether. Either way, the self-described art rock quintet, which made the move from Boston to Asheville several months ago, has been steadily building a presence among downtown’s streetside stages.
As temperatures climbed into the low 70s on Tuesday, March 4, a steady stream of buskers and passersby took to the streets of downtown in appreciation of the day’s allusion to spring.
On Tuesday, Jan. 20, several members of the Asheville Buskers Collective met in the conference room above the French Broad Food Co-op for a post-holiday regroup, aiming to find consensus about what buskers do, who buskers are and whether (and how) enshrining their needs in city ordinances is a realistic possibility. Several weeks after a previous […]
In the years ahead, Asheville Downtown Association Board President Adrian Vassallo wants the nonprofit to help cultivate a “dynamic downtown of innovation, business and opportunity for all,” he says. “Not just a downtown playground for visitors.”
Murmurs and rumors of potentially onerous metropolitan emolument costs cause buskers to cluster and abjure future censure.
