PATIO: Americana Troubadour Round ft Wyatt Espalin, Caitlin Cannon, Jack McKeon
ALL AGES LIMITED PATIO SEATING IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVEWYATT ESPALINIn 2022, Wyatt Espalin shakes things up with his new band the Riverstones and a collection of songs that invites his fans to examine his songwriting through a different lens. After returning to his roots to live at the rustic campground where he was raised by his grandparents in the North Georgia Mountains, he found a setting that would inspire “DIAMONDBACK”, a collection of mysterious songs released in 2020 that gave his audience a bird’s eye view of an artist rediscovering himself. Well, this fiddler/singer and champion clogger has discovered more and before the Year of the Rabbit, all may be revealed. Let the enlightenment begin! After releasing Songwriter/Singer” in 2015, Wyatt went on to win the 1st Annual New Song Songwriting Contest at North Carolina’s popular L.E.A.F. festival. He has also spent the last few years sharing the stage opening for some of his songwriting idols Indigo Girls, Jennifer Knapp, Kevn Kinney, Chely Wright, Michelle Malone, Shawn Mullins, Patty Loveless, to name a few. During his performances, the haunting, intimate songs juxtaposed with the hilarious stories that he sharesin the banter between them create a beautiful tension.CAITLIN CANNON“She’s not a songwriter for the winners. She’s a songwriter for the broken, the downtrodden, the losers, the motherfuckers. She sings about real shit that most other songwriters don’t have the guts to broach. A crack pool player and a hilarious person on stage that could have a second career as a comedian, Caitlin Cannon is one of those country artists that slides so criminally under the radar, it angers the blood”— SAVING COUNTRY MUSIC JACK McKEONA Nashville-based singer-songwriter with an honest, plainspoken vocal, an eclectic-roots sound and a knack for bringing crystalline characters to life, Jack McKeon is a different sort of musician. A student of the greats drawn to the timeless, rather than the trendy, he hails from Chatham, New York and harbors a deep love for the written word. First inspired by literary music icons from Hank Williams and Guy Clark to Tom T. Hall and John Hartford, McKeon arrived in Nashville in 2021 and has since established a reputation for his own message-drive lyricism – a value which shows up in its full sonic serenity on his 2024 album debut, Talking to Strangers.
Odie Leigh: Carrier Pigeon Tour
– ALL AGES – STANDING ROOM ONLYODIE LEIGH Odie Leigh would never have called herself a musician before the depths of the 2020 pandemic, when her rapper roomies made a bet: Whoever records a song that goes viral first, wins. Slightly ticked off that they hadn’t included her in the wager, she decided to hit them with her best shot, and Odie was crowned the victor when a track she wrote blew up on TikTok. “I was like, ‘I’m gonna show y’all. I’m gonna win,’” she recalls, laughing. “Then I woke up to a bunch of comments on TikTok being like, ‘Oh my God, release this. This is amazing!’ Now, I’m a musician.”Four years after posting what she calls “that silly joke song” on TikTok, Odie Leigh has continued to transform and evolve as an artist — from what she calls “acoustic, ethereal folk sad girl music” to a harder-edge tunes that flirt with early Aughts pop-punktivism. That trajectory culminates in her first LP, Carrier Pigeon. “All the music I’ve released up until this point can kind of be thrown into the indie folk acoustic genre,” Odie says. “But I never set out to make Americana music. I never set out to make folk music. I’m just a girl with an acoustic guitar.”The fact that Odie Leigh never set out to make music is key here. Unlike a lot of musicians who grew up picking out tunes on toddler guitars or belting it out in garages, Odie never pictured herself on stage. Born and raised in Louisiana, she sang in the church choir, sure — her grandfather built the building, after all, and her family attended three times per week. But after moving to New Orleans to study English, she fully intended on making her bones in the film industry. That 2020 wager changed things, though, when she realized that she could win hearts in addition to bets. Although she’d taught herself to play guitar as a child, Odie didn’t know that much about music from the get-go, but she was inspired by the likes of ‘50’s singer-songwriter Connie Converse and her out-of-the-box style. Coming from the film world, she found songwriting freeing, unbound from the rigidity of screenplay and discovered that simplicity can be a strength.After her early releases began gaining steam on social media, Odie Leigh started hitting stages hard — an impressive show of hustle for someone who never really dreamed of life on the road. Nevertheless, she toured Europe, North America, and played Newport Folk in 2023; she also has festival gigs like Shaky Knees and Kilby Block Party, among others, later this year. Odie eventually achieved many an indie musician’s dream when she signed with Mom + Pop in 2023, mostly due to their diverse catalog: Yes, she’s made Americana music in the past, but she’s no one-trick pony. She craved the room to stretch and change and scream. And for Carrier Pigeon, she did just that, teaming up with a producer/musician Derek Ted — and infusing the 10-track suite with a more hard-edged sound, and plenty of fun. “I wanted to call it Carrier Pigeon because as I was writing these songs I just kept on thinking how silly it is that I’m writing all these thoughts and feeling down about someone and for someone who is only going to hear it months if not years after I write it,” she says. “I was like ‘I might as well be putting letters in bottles and throwing them into the ocean or just strapping it to a pigeon and hoping it lands at the right house.’ This album is the carrier pigeon and the songs are the messages.” ANGELA AUTUMN
Jackie Greene
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYJACKIE GREENE Americana and roots singer-songwriter Jackie Greene is a jack-of-all-trades, and an artist who can croon over soulful piano ballads as much as he can shred a bluesy guitar solo (like he did as the lead guitarist for The Black Crowes in 2013). A road warrior and musician’s musician, Greene’s new EP ‘The Modern Lives – Vol 2’ (out October 2018 on Blue Rose Music) finds him at a new chapter in his life: his first months of fatherhood, time off his relentless touring circuit, and a cross-country move from Brooklyn to his birthplace of Northern California. This new collection of six original songs is a thematic extension of ‘The Modern Lives – Vol 1’ EP (released in 2017 on Blue Rose Music), imbued with a Brooklyn basement DIY feel and ethos. He is a student of American music, transfixed upon its progression through time, as well as how regional sounds fit in a contemporary context. Whereas ‘Vol 1’ saw Greene experiment with the Delta blues as a canvas for his examinations of modern society, ‘Vol 2’ sees Greene embrace the sounds of the bluegrass and folk tapes of his youth. Greene partnered with Academy Award-nominated “king of indie animation” Bill Plympton for a series of music videos for ‘The Modern Lives – Vol 1’ that would eventually become an animated short film titled ‘The Modern Lives’. The film is currently making the rounds at film festivals where it has already won the Jury Award at the USA Film Festival in Dallas, TX, and the Grand Remi Award / Best in Show at WorldFest in Houstin, TX. The short is also being exhibited at the 71st Festival de Cannes/Court Metrage, Melbourne International Animation Festival, and ASIFA-East Festival, amongst others. RAINY EYES “I really love “You Just Want What You Can’t Have”…It’s a great song, very well produced and Rainy’s an awesome singer -she really jumps out of the speakers! That track could easily be nominated for Americana record of the year. – DON WAS Norwegian-born, Lafayette, LA-based alt-country artist Rainy Eyes has released her second album, Lonesome Highway, via Royal Potato Family. The 11-track collection was produced by Dirk Powell and features appearances by Sam Grisman, Ric Robertson, Chris Stafford and Eric Adcock among an exceptional cast of accompanying musicians.Rainy Eyes was born and raised in Bergen, Norway. After fleeing a troubled upbringing and moving to Denmark at 18, she met and fell in love with an American free jazz musician. By 19, Rainy had eloped to San Francisco where she immersed herself in the local music community, befriending musicians like Peter Rowan, Sam Grisman and Ric Robertson while launching the West Marin Fiddle Camp.Following the demise of her marriage, Rainy and her son left the Bay area for South Louisiana, drawn by the music and culture of the tradition-rich region. Once there, Rainy forged a collaboration with acclaimed musician and producer Dirk Powell (Rhiannon Giddens, Loretta Lynn) who encouraged her to further develop the songs she’d been working on while in California. Together, they hunkered down in Powell’s bayou studio, determined to fulfill the promise of what she’d begun. It ultimately resulted in her second studio album, Lonesome Highway, a hope-filled and assertive collection of 11 alt-country and Americana-based songs that present Rainy breaking cycles, trusting the universe, and allowing her higher self to lead the way.
The Vandoliers
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYVANDOLIERSVandoliers are a uniquely Texas band, distilling the Lone Star State’s vast and diverse musical identity into a raucous, breakneck vibe that’s all their own. After spending much of the last three years furiously writing and recording music, this Dallas-Fort Worth six-piece is back with The Vandoliers, a new album that proves these rowdy, rollicking country punks are tighter, more cohesive and more sonically compelling than ever. Recorded with Grammy-winning producer Eric Delegard at Reeltime Audio in Denton, TX, The Vandoliers is an album interrupted. The band’s original two-week recording session ended abruptly in March 2020 as shutdowns began across the globe. The band didn’t get back into the studio until November, at which point they realized that, like many of the best-laid plans, their original strategy for the record had to change. “We wanted to make an album that had the same power as our live performance — a tight, big sound,” Fleming says. “Through trial and error, label closure, fatherhood, sobriety, relapse, the album grew on its own stylistically. After the hardest two years of my life, we created a collection of songs that push us as musicians, songs that reaffirmed my place as a songwriter and a faith in ourselves as a band I don’t think we had before.” Amid all that uncertainty, Vandoliers did what they knew best: they made music. First came “Every Saturday Night,” a pandemic-era appreciation of all the rowdy, late-night shows that we all missed while stuck at home. “I thought for sure that this would be the last song I would ever write. I missed all the little things about the life I lived up until that point,” Fleming says. “I missed the smells and tastes of a smoky dive bar, the long overnight drives listening to our favorite bands.” Those thoughts clearly struck a chord with listeners, earning the song heavy rotation on the radio, especially Sirius XM’s Outlaw Country, and jumpstarting the band’s plans to head back into the studio to encapsulate their electric live shows into the album that would eventually grow into The Vandoliers. MYA BYRNE Mya Byrne is a celebrated country-punk Americana rocker, singer-songwriter, and firecracker guitarist, combining influences from countrypolitan to glam-pop, blues, and ghostly incantations into a singular voice and vision. It’s been a banner year for Mimi. In 2023 she released “Rhinestone Tomboy”, produced in Nashville by Grammy-nominated songwriter Aaron Lee Tasjan. CURTIS McMURTRY Curtis McMurtry is a singer-songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist from Austin, TX. Influenced by Fiona Apple and Tom Waits, Curtis’ songs combine sinister lyrics with sophisticated orchestration. His new album, The Pollen & The Rot (May 2024) delights in depicting characters that are at once rebellious and seductive. Curtis specializes in writing “sad songs and mean songs” and considers his catalogue to be “music for people that like to read.” He frequently performs as a duo with cellist/singer-songwriter Diana Burgess.
Daniel Nunnelee
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYCLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE ARTIST PRESALEDANIEL NUNNELEEWith the arrival of his self-released breakout single “Pick and Choose” in 2022, Memphis-born singer/songwriter Daniel Nunnelee introduced the world to his sweetly offbeat and soul-baring form of folk/indie-rock. An instant viral sensation that amassed over a million streams in just ten days, “Pick and Choose” soon led to the making of June, Baby: a strangely enchanting debut album revealing both his old-soul sensibilities and wide-eyed perspective on finding your way in the world. With its title nodding to his birthday month and to the duality he embodies as a quintessential Gemini, June, Baby explores such emotionally heavy matters as anxiety and anticipatory grief, endlessly showcasing the graceful musicality he first developed by playing guitar in church as a kid. A lifelong nature lover who wrote much of June, Baby at his favorite park and at remote cabins in Mississippi and Colorado, the Nashville-based artist also sets his self-reflection to a one-of-a-kind sound matching its homespun charm with the unbridled energy he’s brought to the stage opening for artists like Madi Diaz and Shakey Graves (in addition to headlining his own tours). A truly gifted vocalist who brings an undeniably playful spirit to his existential questioning, Nunnelee ultimately hopes that listeners might take whatever they need from his songs — whether it’s a deeper communion with the natural world that incessantly inspires his music, or a monumental shift in their own outlook on life. Izzy Heltai Izzy Heltai creates moments you could hum to yourself in a moment of introspection or scream off the top of a parking garage at 2am – either would feel like a catharsis. His music is as nimble as it is grounded – walking the seam between confessional lo-fi musings and raucous basement rock. Sonically unpretentious and lyrically relatable, Izzy invites you into his world like a conversation with a best friend over a cigarette on the back porch – the moment of clarity you didn’t know you needed.
SUMMER RADIANCE: FEATURING THE JASPER AND OPAL STRING QUARTETS
– ALL AGES- SEATED SHOW Asheville Chamber Music SeriesCelebrate the laid-back mountain lifestyle this summer with a chamber music takeover at this iconic River Arts District venue. Bring your friends, grab a drink and bites from the on-site taqueria and enjoy a liberated listening experience with works from Dvorak, Bloch, Wiancko and Mendelssohn, among others.
Anya Hinkle & John Doyle: “Oceania” Album Release Celebration
ALL AGESSEATED SHOWLIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLEANYA HINKLE & JOHN DOYLE Asheville, NC-based Appalachian-Americana singer/songwriter Anya Hinkle and renowned Irish guitarist John Doyle team up for a celebration of OCEANIA, Hinkle’s new album released in 2024 on Red Parlor Records. OCEANIA, produced by Kevin Moloney (U2, Sinéad O’Connor), features Hinkle’s award-winning songs supported by Doyle’s celebrated sense of groove and melody on guitar. The result of their collaboration is a collection of songs that uses the vastness of the great Pacific as a metaphor for how our lives are often quite uncertain–uncertainty as wide and deep as the ocean itself–requiring more courage to voyage across it than we think we have at times. Expect an evening of songs and stories from across the globe from two master storytellers and musicians. Anya Hinkle tends to her craft with both personality and purpose. Based in Asheville North Carolina, she shares her songs with exacting detail, superb storytelling and an emotional honesty that reflects her rural roots in Appalachia and its surrounding environs. Nevertheless, she’s consistently expanded her musical parameters through regular touring throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia, soaking up the diverse influences of the sounds and cultures that she’s encountered along the way. With her new album, Oceania — due for release on Red Parlor Records this spring — Anya brings that inspiration to full flourish. Recorded at Citizen Vinyl studios in Asheville, and overseen by veteran producer Kevin Moloney (U2, Sinéad O’Connor), the album features an impressive group of players, including renowned Irish guitarist John Doyle on guitar, bouzouki, and mandola; acclaimed slide guitarist Billy Cardine on Dobro, lap steel, and chaturangui; Daniel Kimbro on bass; River Guerguerian on percussion; Mary Lucey sharing harmony vocals; and special guests Michael McGoldrick contributing Uilleann pipes and whistle; Mick McAuley on accordion; and Clark Rinard on organ and electric piano. Lauded as “a darling of the Americana scene” by Bluegrass Today, and described by PopMatters as “…a burgeoning force behind the Appalachian roots revival…,” Anya has reached a new peak in her career, one that’s yielded ten albums to date — including those on her own and several in collaboration with others. Oceania also marks the latest triumph in a trajectory that’s yielded a first place win in the 2019 MerleFest Chris Austin Songwriting Competition (courtesy of her song “The Ballad of Zona Alston”), a win at the 2023 USA Song Competition, and runner-up status at the International Acoustic Music Awards in 2022.
Wizard Fest Asheville
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYLIMITED NUMBER OF VIP TICKETS AVAILABLE: includes priority entry at 7pm when doors open, wizard fest scarf, wizard fest beanie, wizard fest t-shirt, custom wizard fest wand and miscellaneous wizard themed swag all in a wizard fest tote bag!WIZARD FESTYou may not be a wizard but this year, you’ll get to party like one! Wizard Fest is an interactive fantasy themed party that celebrates all things magic, witches & wizards, cosplay along with themed drinks (hard and soft!) and Wizard Games all spun into one spectacular event
Laura Cortese and the Dance Cards
ALL AGESSEATED SHOWLIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLELAURA CORTESE & THE DANCE CARDS“Everything is so heavy in the world right now,” Cortese says, who’s been living in Belgium the past two years. “When someone comes to our show, listens to this album, or hears one of the songs, I want it to feel like relief and release.” So how does one begin to chip away at walls of self-preservation and shame that create social confinement? For Cortese and company, one word came to mind: dancing. “When you dance, you let it all go,” she says. With that in mind, Cortese set off on a personal creative journey like none before — no rules, no restrictions, just the desire to create music that makes you move. Kassirer helped her sift through her cache of over 40 songs and encouraged her to form songs from her snippets, riffs, and ideas. For the first time, Cortese opened up the songwriting process to The Dance Cards collective. She exchanged ideas and songs with her bandmates remotely, and then enticed a few with the promise of Belgian delicacies to cross the ocean and flesh out arrangements. From recordings of the players beating on all sides of their instruments, Kassirer fashioned loops and created bass lines with members of the band. Lyrics were honed through group examination, with the goal of framing each story in the most impactful way possible to inspire empathy in the listener. The work was quick, but it was deep. Cortese explains that the song that inspired the album title, “Treat You Better,” is about the complexities of long-term love, obligation and healthy versus unhealthy dynamics. “I started writing this a few years after I got divorced and was pretty disillusioned about finding a partner. I was asking some older friends — couples that from the outside seemed to have healthy and lovely long-term relationships — questions about their relationships. I found this coincidental link between many of the couples. The morning person gets up and makes the other one coffee and brings it to them in bed. Ultimately the song is about examining personal barriers to treating your partner better—how critical and cynical we get, juxtaposed against images of your partner doing nice things for you.” “Belgium, my new home, is #1 for suicide in Western Europe. They keep a lot of distance socially,” she says. “People meet up with friends in bars instead of their homes. It takes a long time to make real friendships. Trying to integrate gave me new perspective on what it feels like to be an outsider”. CAROLINE COTTER Caroline’s Cotter’s sunlit songs honor the countless ways of being human. With her honeyed voice and disarmingly honest lyrics, Cotter sings about connection, nostalgia, gratitude, loss and wanderlust. Lyrics like, “Find me somewhere out on the road / Take me into your heart and into your home,” make perfect sense from a touring artist who has played over 1000 shows in 45 states and 16 countries. Cotter has released three records, Dreaming as I Do (2015), Home on the River (2018) and Gently as I Go (2023). Under the Radar magazine says her music, “brings forth an abiding sense of warmth and welcome, offering an uplifting reminder to make the most of every moment.” Everywhere she goes, her oracular songs elicit emotion and spark insight—medicine for our collective longing.
Erik Koskinen Band
ALL AGESSEATED SHOWLIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLEERIK KOSKINEN BAND He’s a lights-out guitar (player) and his band is as good as any band in the country. But he’s also a top-shelf writer, with a blade-sharp wit and love songs so real and tender they seem to transcend the form. I know of few writers whose relationship to their own landscape, in this case the rural north, is so elemental, and so integral. His songs feel like weather. People know him in Minnesota, where most bar bands seem to cover at least one of his songs, but otherwise he’s still one of the best kept secrets in the country. He sings about an America that doesn’t get much play anymore, the one where the people at the bottom can’t quite get ahead, and where working people aren’t cartoon props in a culture war, but shrewd human beings living hard lives, and hard loves. His songs have the diamond-hard clarity and simplicity of Tom Petty, and like Petty, Koskinen can sing a literal statement without metaphor or ornament, and make it move like poetry. The spiritual hunger in rock ‘n’ roll that came from blues and gospel is still a hunger in these songs, and if you listen hard, you can hear that lean coyote voice – wary, feral, full of fierce delight – lighting up the wee hours from somewhere out on the prairie. ~J Foucault CAROMIA AND RAHMRahm & CaroMia had a close musical friendship for many years through the lens of R&B, Funk and Neo-Soul before discovering a shared deep love of singer/songwriter music. This is a side of them seldom seen outside late nights on front porches. Over the last handful of years, they have crafted their own homage to their roots- Lush harmonies carried across dreamy soundscapes, songwriting that shines in this simplicity.
