Community Calendar

The Jazz Showcase is curated by esteemed pianist, scholar, and UNC Asheville music professor Dr. Bill Bares; this showcase series is dedicated to bringing the region’s finest jazz musicians and most compelling sounds to our stage in a true listening room experience.

Maddie Zahm is dreaming of a world where curiosity matters more than anything, where feelings are treated as proof that you’re alive.

The LA-based, Idaho-born singer-songwriter first felt the need to slip into a comfy cardigan and tennis shoes as a childhood acolyte of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, but reaches that warm, kaleidoscopic idyll on new album Everything All the Time (due early fall). By embracing the strange, beautiful flood of becoming yourself on your own terms, the warm, candid, funny, and awe-inspiring record captures what it feels like to stop viewing growth as a final destination and start treating it as an ongoing act of curiosity, compassion, and coming home to yourself.

"Mr. Rogers gave me permission to feel deeply," Zahm beams. "I want my music to be welcoming in that same way, to create an inclusive world that people can be a part of." After years spent unraveling everything from body image to faith, sexuality, and identity in songs that connected with millions of listeners, Zahm now finds herself in a softer and more expansive chapter: one less focused on tearing herself apart to find answers or fitting into a box and more interested in celebrating the messy, ever-changing person emerging from the wreckage. Instead of trying to make some splash by fitting into a cookie cutter pop industry or fitting to the expectations of her community in a country or christian music lane, Zahm became determined to chase her own identity.

And in that way, Everything All the Time beautifully reinforces the lesson that first drew Zahm toward the gentle emotional honesty of Mister Rogers: feeling deeply is both a gift and a responsibility. Rather than flattening herself into a self-help slogan or treating vulnerability like a moral high ground, Zahm allows her songs to exist in their fullest nuance.

The Jazz Showcase is curated by esteemed pianist, scholar, and UNC Asheville music professor Dr. Bill Bares; this showcase series is dedicated to bringing the region’s finest jazz musicians and most compelling sounds to our stage in a true listening room experience.

Despite its title, Ratboys’ new album Singin’ to an Empty Chair is not defined by what’s missing. Rather, it’s the beginning of an important dialogue with a close loved one vocalist Julia Steiner finds herself estranged from. The music on the band’s sixth studio album – its first for New West Records – fills the space that person left behind with 11 songs showcasing Ratboys at the peak of their powers — twangy, effervescent, as confident as they’ve ever been, and perhaps more emotionally interrogative than ever before. The four-piece Chicago band followed up 2023’s highly acclaimed The Window by reconvening with co producer Chris Walla to begin tracking at a rural Wisconsin cabin before taking the songs to Steve Albini’s famed Electrical Audio studios in Chicago and later to Rosebud Studio in Evanston, Illinois. The results veer from bubbly power-pop on “Anywhere” to irresistible post-country on “Penny in the Lake, ” along with heart piercing ballads like “Just Want You to Know the Truth” and an exhilarating detour into the extraterrestrial on “Light Night Mountains All That, ” which Steiner dubs the band’s mammoth “wormhole jam. ” Singin’ to an Empty Chair also marks the first Ratboys album written since Steiner began therapy, which the singer/lyricist credits for the clarity found across the album’s unflinching examinations of relationship and self. Fittingly, as the album begins by extending a hand into the void, it concludes with a scene of serenity – all while weaving candid honesty, humor, chaos, and whimsy along the way. “It's not all doom and gloom, ” Steiner says. “The experience of making this record definitely gives me hope for whatever happens next.”

MTN VIBEZ Presents Latin Night every Wednesday. Dance Lessons 8:30-9 PM-All Skill Levels and All Latin Genres-Salsa, Bachata, Merengue, Cumbia, Reggaeton. Open dance is from 9 pm-midnight.

$10 cover

The Jazz Showcase is curated by esteemed pianist, scholar, and UNC Asheville music professor Dr. Bill Bares; this showcase series is dedicated to bringing the region’s finest jazz musicians and most compelling sounds to our stage in a true listening room experience.

A fearless storyteller with an unshakable sense of self, Alana Springsteen has built her career on telling the truth, no matter how messy or hard-fought. Across high-concept projects like her three- part debut album TWENTY SOMETHING and highly awaited sophomore LP I HOPE THIS HELPS (a boldly autobiographical body of work due out May 29), the 25-year-old artist songwriter has carved out a vital space for raw catharsis and unfiltered reflection. A multi-instrumentalist with uncompromising vision, Springsteen plays guitar and piano throughout her albums and co-produces all her material, shaping each song with a hands-on precision that underscores her identity as both author and architect. Rooted in Country but unbound by its edges, she pulls freely from Alt-Pop and beyond, building a sonic world as expansive as it is emotionally exacting. Born and raised in Pungo, Virginia (a one-of-a-kind region where farmland meets beach), Springsteen’s connection to music began in church, where she first found her voice as a child. By age seven, she was teaching herself to play guitar and writing her own songs; at ten, she began traveling to Nashville for co-writing sessions with industry heavyweights. After making her landmark debut with TWENTY SOMETHING — a 2023 release featuring her GOLD-certified smash “goodbye looks good on you (feat. Mitchell Tenpenny)” — Springsteen earned massive praise from the likes of NPR (“Few artists dissect and make sense of life in your 20s quite like Alana Springsteen”) and PEOPLE (“Everything about her says she was made for this wild, breathless — and, yes, high-risk — life of an artist”). A powerhouse live performer who commands rooms of any size, she’s now headlined her own TWENTY SOMETHING TOUR; performed at major festivals like Stagecoach; toured internationally across Europe, the U.K., and Australia; and supported superstars like Luke Bryan, LANY, Keith Urban, and NEEDTOBREATHE. With countless milestones to her name — including making her Tiny Desk debut in 2024 and scoring a No. 1 hit with “Hot Honey” (a collaboration with MULTI PLATINUM DJ/producer Tiësto) — Springsteen’s momentum is undeniable.

Live Bluegrass with The Sons of Ralph band at Jack of the Wood in Asheville NC, Fridays at 7:00

The Jazz Showcase is curated by esteemed pianist, scholar, and UNC Asheville music professor Dr. Bill Bares; this showcase series is dedicated to bringing the region’s finest jazz musicians and most compelling sounds to our stage in a true listening room experience.