Community Calendar

Beats Antique at French Broad River Brewery Outdoor Stage on May 29 + May 30.

Join local favorites, Steep Canyon Rangers for two nights of music in the outdoor amphitheater at Sierra Nevada Brewing to celebrate the release of their latest album, Next Act. Unspoken Tradition will be supporting the show on Thursday May 28th.

2024 International Blues Challenge Band Winner, 2025 Best emerging artist album blues music award for revelation
“Piper & the Hard Times combine the sensibility and flair of vintage blues bands with the entertainment savvy and edge of modern rockers … one of America’s premier new blues groups.” (Ron Wynn/Nashville Scene)

Piper & the Hard Times delivers intense, eclectic and rhythmically dynamic blues-based music flavored with R&B, soul and rock. The band has an instrumental prowess that enables them to improvise with flair, while still creating music that has a melodic appeal that can immediately connect with audiences who want both a high degree of musical competence and songs with strong grooves and catchy hooks. In January 2024 they took top honors in the band division at the prestigious International Blues Challenge held in Memphis, Tennessee. The core of the band, Al “Piper” Green, Steve Eagon, and Dave Colella have been playing and writing together for over 20 years. Over the course of three days in February 2024, Nashville-based Piper & the Hard Times held court in the legendary Ronnie’s Place at Soundstage Studios in Nashville to record Revelation. The album features a collection of 12 original songs deeply anchored in the blues from the New Orleans-flavored groove of “Trouble Man” to the Texas shuffle “The Hard Times”, the funk-rock “Heart for Sale”, and the slow ache and emotion of “Twenty Long Years.”

One of America’s premier blues-roots artists, Piper & the Hard Times has been delighting audiences across the South for nearly 20 years.. When you listen to their new album, you’ll hear poignant, inspired “from the soul” music from these talented players who love making music together. You can hear that energy and vitality in Revelation which debuted at #1 on the Billboard chart the week of August 27th, 2014.

Piper states, “I’ve never been prouder of anything we’ve ever done. The new album captured us in every way imaginable”

The Mountain Goats

Asheville’s automotive history will come to life this spring when dozens of classic Chrysler and other vintage automobiles line Coxe Avenue for the free Motor Mile Classic Car Show in downtown Asheville taking place May 30, 2026.
Taking place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on May 30, the show will stretch along Coxe Avenue between Hilliard and Buxton Avenues - once the city’s original “Motor Mile” and its first zoned automobile district. The free, outdoor event pays tribute to the dealerships and service centers that defined the street during Asheville’s early automotive era.
The car show coincides with the Spring Meet of the Chrysler 300 Club International, an organization dedicated to preserving the history of the 1955-1965 Chrysler 300 “Letter Series.” Club members will be joined by local and regional car clubs from across Western North Carolina and representing a wide range of makes and models, creating a diverse and visually striking lineup.

The Motor Mile Car Show is free to enter a car and attend.

It takes good clean water to make good tasty beer! Join MountainTrue for a cleanup on the French Broad River with an after-party at Big Pillow Brewing.

Please bring your boat, paddle, and lifejacket, water, snacks, sunscreen, gloves, sturdy water shoes or sneakers (no flip-flops), and a dry change of clothes.
We have some extra canoes and kayaks available only if you reserve them in advance.

Volunteers will receive a free t-shirt. Prizes awarded for the weirdest trash collected. Bring a friend and help us clean the river!

The exact meet-up address will be sent to participants prior to the event.

Reminders:
*Kids under the age of 18 are allowed as long as they are accompanied by a parent or guardian for the duration of the event
*All volunteers are eligible to receive a complimentary annual membership to MountainTrue. To activate yours, please email members@mountaintrue.org

Don't miss an afternoon of heartfelt Americana by Caleb Caudle and the Sweet Critters at Asheville's prettiest riverside venue, the Olivette Riverside Pavilion.

Caleb Caudle’s body of work is shaped from the ground up. His artistry has emerged through endurance and the steady momentum of a life in motion, carrying him from small stages in the North Carolina foothills he calls home, all the way to the Grand Ole Opry.

On his new album, Heavy Thrill, this personal evolution mirrors his artistic journey. He takes full creative control, self-producing for the first time while recording at the storied Cash Cabin in Hendersonville, Tenn., where reverence for tradition meets his singular artistic vision.“For this record, I wanted to focus on embracing the patina of life,” says Caudle. “Our plans rarely shake out the way we want them to. This record is about doing the most with what you’re given and weathering the storms.”Caudle has brought his music to stages across the world, with standout appearances at festivals including Merlefest, Luck Reunion, Kerrville Folk Festival, Bourbon & Beyond, Stagecoach, and Cayamo, alongside a run of critically acclaimed albums praised by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, No Depression, and Rolling Stone. He has made multiple appearances on NPR’s Mountain Stage and has been a guest DJ on Sirius XM’s Outlaw Country, where his songs are in constant rotation. In the fall of 2024, Caudle reached a career-defining milestone, stepping into the circle at the Grand Ole Opry for the first time.

A free lecture series at the tribal museum of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Cherokee History & Stories explores culturally significant sites, stories, and figures in Cherokee history. All are welcome to attend, and registration is not required.

For Tank and the Bangas, music is a vessel for unbridled joy and transcendent connection—forces as integral to their essence as their wildly original sound. On their new album The Last Balloon, the New Orleans-bred outfit channel those impulses into something celebratory yet profoundly human, exploring themes of frustration, resilience, and self-realization with equal parts raw emotionality and playful exuberance. A shapeshifting collective helmed by lead singer Tarriona “Tank” Ball and multi-instrumentalist Norman Spence II, the globally beloved group completed the LP after winning a GRAMMY for 2024’s spoken-word powerhouse The Heart, The Mind, The Soul, moving from incendiary poetry to a euphoric collision of soul and hip-hop and forward-thinking R&B. As the final installment in a trilogy of albums that began with 2019’s Green Balloon (a critical triumph that earned them a GRAMMY nomination for Best New Artist), The Last Balloon ultimately solidifies Tank and the Bangas’ legacy as one of modern music’s most steadfast voices of sublime exhilaration.

The Earl Scruggs Center presents Dom Flemons

PATTERSON HOOD Drive-By Truckers co-founder Patterson Hood’s fourth solo album and first in over 12 years, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams sees the veteran singer, guitarist, and songwriter exploring his youth and young manhood in a collection unlike anything in his ever-evolving catalogue. A baroque American song cycle spanning the time between early childhood and leaving his rural hometown in search of his musical dreams, the album gathers songs that have amassed over the remarkably prolific songwriter’s career, many of which provided him with distraction and creative sustenance during lockdown, others which have resided among his notebooks for years. “This record has all these kinds of unintended themes,” Hood says. “It’s all subconscious, because I didn’t really set out with an agenda, writing-wise. It really just kind of occurred to me when I was actually putting it all together, just how much it seems to have a theme to it.” The dozen years since his last extracurricular outing, 2012’s Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance, had seen Hood accumulate a cache of material which did not quite fit into the Drive-By Truckers canon, songs which he set aside for “if and when” he got around to another solo project. Kept off the road during the 2020 lockdown, he found himself recording demos in his Portland, OR attic, without a clear plan but thinking “maybe this might be worth pursuing at some point.” Hood had moved to Portland with his family in 2013 and swiftly found a place among the Rose City’s thriving music scene, including a friendship forged with producer/musician Chris Funk (The Decemberists). Having long discussed collaborating, in 2023 the two artists’ typically stacked calendars finally allowed them the opportunity to team up and they set to work recording what Hood intended to be “a bigger departure” from Drive-By Truckers and his previous solo efforts than ever before. “The band has been in such a good place that I hadn’t really thought in terms of doing anything outside of the Truckers anytime soon,” Hood says. “I decided if I ever was going to do another solo record, I wanted it to be pretty different than the band, as different as it can be.” Hood further took the occasion to explore sounds outside the boundaries and obligations of his day job, deviating from Drive-By Truckers’ traditionally guitar-driven palette to craft richly textured arrangements marked by the inclusion of strings, woodwinds, and vintage analog synthesizers. With its powerful textural clarity and Hood’s literary strengths at the fore, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams emerges as a staggering investigation into how time can shed light on the recesses of memory, revealing this exceptionally gifted songwriter’s resolute inclination to look back through the golden haze to grapple with the darkness and secret truths that perhaps weren’t understood or reckoned with at the time. As he has throughout his career – from Drive-By Truckers’ ceaseless investigation into American values and culture to his solo body of work’s autobiographical meditations – Exploding Trees and Airplane Screams sees Patterson Hood once again stripping away the facade of things to get to the core, lifting up life’s rock to see what lies underneath.

You’re invited to the 4th annual Trails & Trains Festival this June 4-6, 2026! Mark your calendar and help us celebrate the Great Trails State by joining us in downtown Old Fort, North Carolina. Come celebrate with us the rich history of our Blue Ridge Mountain community by focusing on its pathways and connections through the town’s notable railroad and Pisgah National Forest history. Keynote Speaker John Kelly, live music from renowned bluegrass musicians, and exhibitor booths from outdoor recreation brands. Vendor Village and Food Trucks.

Tour River Arts Studio tour, celebrating over 100 local artisans from Yancey, Mitchell and Avery Counties. Interact with local artisans in their studios and galleries. Celebrating 50 years of supporting the arts in Western North Carolina.