“Take everything you think you know about country music and throw it out the window,” wrote one reviewer. “That pop rock crap y’all call country is nothing compared to what Rachel Brooke is laying down.” Based in northern Michigan, Brooke grew up with bluegrass fans for parents. Meanwhile, she played in a punk band. Somehow […]

Brooklyn-born, Asheville-based vocalist and composer Serpentine Arborvitae once said in an interview that she used to listen to early jazz and learn all the horn parts. Not that she plays horn, but her vocal — at turns rounded with longing and knife-sharp with power — is wielded like a brass instrument. After turning her attention […]

Subjects of past TED talks have covered all manner of business, art, technology and philosophy. CEOs, inventors, brainy fashion models and precocious kids have all presented unique thinking. Taking it one step further, the theme for this week's TEDxUNCAsheville is rethinking. "Topics include the parable of the pan, rethinking community gardening and activism, techniques for […]

"Get off the Internet and go see a rock show," says the Facebook bio of Athens-by-way-of-Nashville trio The Whigs. It's especially good advice if the show in question is a Whigs show. Julian Dorio, Parker Gispert and Timothy Deaux perform like men on fire. Men who really like being on fire. And, though they've put […]

"It may be cold outside, but the show is hot, hot, hot," says a press release for Asheville Vaudeville. The local variety show brings an array of new and original works to the stage. Performers include Madison J. Cripps (puppeteer), Sneaky McFly (magic/fire), Keith Shubert of Toybox Theatre (puppeteer), Sadye Osterloh (trapeze artist), Rigel 7 […]

There’s a lot to admire about Detroit’s Koffin Kats. They started out playing for beer. Like true troubadours, they took their show on the road full time. They write songs about sci-fi subject matter and real-world atrocities. And, though the band’s namesake, Tommy Koffin, has left the lineup “to pursue a normal life,” the remaining […]

Dirty laundry is at the center of the Sarah Ruhl-penned comedy, The Clean House. The “comic and surreal theater piece blends fantasy and reality to integrate conflicts of gender, class and the true nature of love,” says a press release about the show. It will launch the fourth season of Different Strokes Performing Arts Collective. […]

“There is a sort of visual excitement that happens when unlike things are pushed together,” says ZaPow gallery co-owner Lauren Patton. As Patton points out, the kids who grew up in the ’70s through the ’90s are now living in the adult world. “Much of this show is the result of artists taking images from […]

To create the more than 60 painted, collaged and mixed media pieces that make up Joshua Spiceland's latest installation, The Time Machine, the innovative local artist “sifted through recent and cherished vintage sketchbooks to create a world of pattern, rich color and metaphor,” according to a press release. The show is characterized by Spiceland's eclectic […]

"The legendary 1998 season, when Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire competed to break Roger Maris’ home run record, serves as an impeccable backdrop for This Dark Road to Mercy, the sophomore novel by North Carolina author Wiley Cash." So wrote Max Miller in his review for Xpress — read it here: http://avl.mx/04c. When sisters Easter […]

It's been a year and a half since Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, the king of kid-hop, left Asheville for sunny California. Where, perhaps surprisingly, his days are not filled with surfing and movie star spotting. Instead, he's kept busy playing shows (like New Year's Eve at Legoland for the third year in a row) and […]

Blue-collar Don is the father of the star pitcher and veteran coach; Michael is the timid newcomer who wants a special activity for his comparatively unathletic son. Scott Treadway and Charlie Flynn-McIver star in the pointed comedy Rounding Third, which makes use of the levity inherent in the Little League field to illustrate deeper life […]

Most of us have taken a tumble or two down the YouTube rabbit hole. We know how a seemingly innocuous, two-minute laughing baby video can turn into a two-hour time warp. The Found Footage Festival is like that — only way better. The bizarre assemblage of videos is curated by comedians Nick Prueher and Joe […]