PATIO: Adrianne Blanks & The Oracles
– ALL AGES- PATIO SEATING IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVEDADRIANNE BLANKS & THE ORACLESAdrianne Blanks & The Oracles are an Asheville based trio, comprised of vocals, guitar, keyboard, and bass, often singing in tight three part harmony. Musical influences, Rhiannon Giddens and Dolly Parton, this trio plays folk and vintage country. After a fully funded Kickstarter, this witchy woman released her debut EP, “Words Are Spells” this August. She has had the good fortune to play all around Western North Carolina and beyond, including the Asheville, Chattanooga, and Nashville Vegan Fests, Arbor Evenings at the North Carolina Arboretum, and Asheville FM 103.3. Her song “Tell me You Love Me” has been played on WNCW 88.7. Follow her on Spotify to hear her latest releases, and head to www.adrianneblanks.com to sign up to the Adrianne Blanks email list for upcoming show dates.
PATIO SHOW: Doss Church & The Unholy Noise
– ALL AGES- LIMITED PATIO SEATING IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVEDDOSS CHURCH & THE UNHOLY NOISE Doss Church & the Unholy Noise is an Asheville based, Alt-Country quartet with Doss on vocals/acoustic guitar/harmonica, Jay Moye on keys/guitar, Ed Ransdell on percussion, and Alex Beldon on bass. Doss was a 2019 finalist in Asheville’s esteemed Brown Bag Songwriting competition, was selected to perform at Asheville’s Open Folk in November of 2021, and regularly plays festivals, house concerts, and venues large and small across the southeast.
POSTPONED: PATIO: The Black Twig Pickers
– ALL AGES- PATIO SEATING IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVEDTHE BLACK TWIG PICKERSThe Black Twig Pickers are a group defined by their forward thinking approach to a type of music most often associated with times gone by. Over the course of eight full-length records, including collaborative releases with Jack Rose and Charlie Parr, a split LP with Glenn Jones, and numerous EPs and singles, the group has established itself as a collection of dedicated practioners of old time music re-cast and shaped by their appreciation of modern improvisation, drone, and punk. While not at odds with the experimental scene that has fostered them or the old time circles they travel in, The Black Twig Pickers thrive in the in-betweenness of those two worlds, proving that the exploration of the outmost bounds of sound and the exploration of decades old tradition and community aren’t as different as one might think.Rough Carpenters, which was recorded in the same two-day session as 2012’s Whompyjawed EP, can be seen as an inward-gazing foil to that EP’s long-form hoedown epics. With the addition of Sally Anne Morgan on fiddle to the trio of Mike Gangloff, Isak Howell, and Nathan Bowles, dance has become a more prominent part of the group’s formula. It wasn’t until Morgan joined the band that the band actually began to dance onstage. Also, on this album the group strays a bit farther outside their intensely local Southwest Virginia tradition than earlier records, incorporating a few more tunes with origins in Kentucky (“Banks of the Arkansas”) and West Virginia (“Little Rose”). The group’s repertoire is constantly growing as they turn to first-person sources, older musicians that were brought up in the old time scene and in some cases the children and families of deceased respected practitioners, and unreleased archival recordings passed among musicians. And while local and regional history is ever present in the music The Black Twig Pickers play, they turn songs that are many decades old into living artifacts, released from the restrictions of era by the personal convictions of the musicians.This spirit of ecstatic abandon is conveyed through the percussive elements of The Black Twig Pickers’ music and more importantly, through a spontaneity and an unrehearsedness the band wears as a badge of pride. As Gangloff explains, “It’s not the melody, it’s the moss.” The sharp twang of the banjo, a spontaneous holler, a foot stomping along in time, and other seemingly incidental sounds become all important. Like the band’s previous Thrill Jockey full-length Ironto Special, Rough Carpenters was recorded with absolutely no overdubs and in as few takes as possible. The Black Twig Pickers are indeed rough carpenters, building unpolished but finely crafted records that embody the spirit of a timeless old-time scene.Isak Howell — guitar, mouth harp, vocals Mike Gangloff — fiddle, banjo, vocals Nathan Bowles — banjo, washboard, bones, fiddlesticks, banjosticks, vocals Sally Anne Morgan — fiddle, hambone, vocals With Joseph Dejarnette — bass and vocals
PATIO SHOW: Darrin Hacquard
– ALL AGES- LIMITED PATIO SEATING IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVEDDARRIN HACQUARDDarrin Hacquard writes songs that connect. He’s funny, tortured, melancholy, and joyous. Sometimes he’s all of these at once. It’s an uncanny gift for empathy. He can see characters for not just what they are, but what they hope to be. His sonic landscapes are as diverse as the lyrical subjects that populate his songs. From Old Time, to Psyche-Rock, to Country, to Spaghetti Western, Darrin builds stories in a way that only he can, and tells them with unflinching vision and kindness.
CANCELED: PATIO SHOW: Drunken Prayer
– ALL AGES- LIMITED PATIO SEATING IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVEDDRUNKEN PRAYER Drunken Prayer transcends the bounds of Americana music. Morgan Geer writes songs that could emerge from a highly blissed-out biker bar or a swampy ashram. The newest Drunken Prayer album is 2022’s The Name Of The Ghost Is Home. For the last year Morgan Geer has been working from his home studio in Asheville, NC with Paul Oldham (Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Royal Trux), building on tracks initially recorded in New Mexico at Empty House Studios, home of doom metal bands like OM and Sleep. The end result evokes an ominous Acid Western feedback-and-driftwood aesthetic. The latest Drunken Prayer releases have been 2019’s acclaimed LP Cordelia Elsewhere mixed by Mitch Easter (Let’s Active, REM) and the ambitious 17 minute long death-raga, Electric Daddyland from 2021. Over the past two years, before the pandemic, Drunken Prayer played hundreds of shows across 18 countries and across the US at venues such as the Newport Folk Festival, Pickathon and San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall. Geer’s music has been featured on AMC, NPR, WFMU and SiriusXM. On the side Geer is the lead guitar player for alt-country goths Freakwater and writes for different artists including the Brooklyn rock and soul phenom Bette Smith. Morgan has also been touring internationally, opening for and often joining the eccentric Handsome Family. Morgan Geer lives in Asheville, NC.
PATIO SHOW: Night Teacher
ALL AGESLIMITED PATIO SEATINGNIGHT TEACHERNight Teacher is the project of lead singer-songwriter Lilly Bechtel, whose haunting voice and poignant lyrics have combined with the sensibilities of producer and multi-instrumentalist Matt Wyatt to create a world that orbits between experimental folk, electro-pop, and alternative rock. Music writer Robb Donker writes of the group’s most recent single: “Wyatt’s percussive tones sort of feel like they are improvised, as if the group found things around the house to play with, which is what (for me) persists in making their texture so organic and interesting… Bechtel’s vocal aesthetic works perfectly as a storyteller; there is at once a sage presence in her powerful lilt, but it is also one that feels broken- as hopelessness and hope play a fierce game of tug of war.” Since the 2020 release of their debut record Night Teacher, the group has won the Music With a Conscience Series, been featured onWomen of Substance Radio, and noted by the music magazine Relix as an “artist to pay attention to.”
PATIO SHOW: AC Sapphire w/ Andy Dale Petty
– ALL AGES- LIMITED PATIO SEATING IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVEDAC SAPPHIRESapphire’s serpentine songs weave their way through dreamy desert landscapes. Simple subjects become complex observations in her poetic songwriting style. Reverb laden, densely layered rock ‘n’ roll -droning intricate guitar play and percussive drums make the album Desert Car as sensitive as it is exciting. Sapphire has been heralded in Pop Matters, Glide Magazine, Audiofemme, American Songwriter. She’s toured with Lauren Ruth Ward, recorded with Kyle Craft, and is always championing other women and non binary folks in the music industry. Her long awaited album Desert Car will be released July 16th on American Standard Time Records.ANDY DALE PETTY
[CANCELED] PATIO SHOW: Aaron “Woody” Wood
Due to circumstances beyond our control, this show has been canceled and the refund process is already underway via ETix. – ALL AGES- LIMITED PATIO SEATING (FIRST COME FIRST SERVED) AARON “WOODY” WOODAaron “Woody” Wood is quite the renaissance man, embodying the energy and mystique of American music. Carved from the foothills of the Piedmont, rolled and tumbled through the Delta mud and washed in The Mississippi, Aaron “Woody” Wood is straight up Cosmic Appalachian Soul. With a background as diverse as his music he consistently delivers the soul, power and energy that have gained him renown as a musician’s musician. Aaron ”Woody” Wood continues to carry his art farther by giving attention and respect to the artists that have influenced and shaped his music, allowing him to keep that Spirit burning forward. Focusing on songwriting and new styles of guitar playing, Aaron ”Woody” Wood’s inventive approach to musical style and the raw emotion he delivers in his songwriting creates a cohesive sound that is hard to find but heavily sought ought by music lovers everywhere.
[CANCELED] PATIO SHOW: William Matheny
– ALL AGES- LIMITED PATIO SEATING (FIRST COME FIRST SERVED) WILLIAM MATHENYLet me tell you an anecdote about William Matheny. And no, this is not the 5:15 AM drive to the Albany Airport when we both were drinking Genesee beer and black coffee because we were both thinking correctly at that hour. More on that later. It was before I really knew William, but the moment when I knew that he was great. Envision: A punk rock club in Washington, DC, its inhabitants and paid customers. Who knows why and how he had been booked? A songwriter from Mannington, West Virginia stepping into the lair of upper-crust, judgment-packed DC punks with their Fugazi-leftover orthodoxies in their wildly provincial scene. He had fifteen minutes, a Vox amp, a telecaster and no one interested in the audience. I live in DC and I would have fled. There was a 10,000% chance that the next band up was going to have a spiel about gentrification and then play “angular riffs.” Billy — I can call him that, you can’t — played a solo set. He played loud. He played “Out For Revenge” and “29 Candles” and “Teenage Bones” and the other great songs which you may not have heard on his debut LP. Over the course of that short set he first brought that crowd to heel and then brought the crowd around. By the end the applause was thick and the appreciation unmistakable. He did it in DC. He can do it anywhere.But let’s talk about the other thing with the beers and the coffee and Albany. You need to know that William Matheny and I have been through some things together. We’ve seen parts of the world that I was sure existed only in Elmore Leonard novels. When I needed to pull over on the Cross-Bronx Expressway to throw up in a plastic trash bag, he was my driver and bag provider. We made it to the Bowery Ballroom an hour later for soundcheck and everything went great. William Matheny is the lead guitarist in my band the Paranoid Style, in addition to his other obligations. William Matheny is a man that makes things happen.William Matheny may be the best songwriter working, and is at a minimum the best songwriter you might have never heard of. For those who haven’t had that good fortune, let’s go, as Warner Wolfe used to say, to the videotape. Consider his 2018 standout single “Christian Name,” which is like Tom Petty’s “Runnin’ Down A Dream” if it had been “Runnin’ Down A Nightmare.”Over the past four years, he has assembled a wondrous catalog which situates itself amongst the indelible tradition of roots-rock misfits like Guy Clark and Lowell George, with just enough Jackson Browne-craft and Springsteen-triumphalism to make the thing potentially huge. You can’t talk about Matheny without talking about West Virginia, although it is sometimes true that he would prefer not to discuss it. Matheny is from Mannington, population smaller than your average small town. Like most of the state, Mannington fought on the side of the Union in the Civil War and represented a crucial strategic stronghold as one of the stops on the B&O Railroad. The correct side, not that it helped all that much. They say history is written by the winners, but in spite of upholding the Union, history was not written by Mannington. Heavy industry: logging and coal. An oil boom in the 1910s. Comfortable lives and then the Great Depression. Bankers and foreclosures. History was written by Mannington and then history was written on Mannington. That grand old feeling, indeed.
PATIO SHOW: Todd Baker
– ALL AGES- LIMITED PATIO SEATING IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVEDTODD BAKERTodd Baker is a singer-songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist, writer and actor based in Brooklyn, NY. Writing and performing steadily since the late 1990’s, Baker has served as either front-man, bassist, guitarist or drummer for multiple bands including, most notably, Fountain Project, the Wicked Hemlocks, Featherweight and his own eponymously named solo project. He has also scored commercial projects for companies such as Condé Nast and Big Star NYC. With six studio albums to his credit, Baker will be releasing a new E.P. entitled Vampires in the Fall of 2022. This will be his third solo release, the follow up to The Disaster Handbook (2010) and When I Die (2015).
