Nov 19 Thursday
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.
Experience Handel’s Messiah in the intimate setting of St. Luke’s United Methodist Church. This historically informed Baroque performance has been meticulously curated by Maestro Matthew Troy to bring renewed clarity and beauty to a cherished holiday tradition. Featuring the Masterworks debut of The Symphony Singers, a select ensemble of professional vocal artists from our region, performing alongside a Baroque chamber orchestra. Audiences will be surrounded by soaring voices and the warm acoustics of the sanctuary as they experience one of classical music’s most inspiring, enduring, and recognized masterpieces.
I'm People TourHiss Golden MessengerThursday, November 19Show: 8 pmThe Orange PeelAges 18+
Nov 20 Friday
Make it yourself! Join us at our downtown Asheville metalsmithing studio to make this silver + brass + CZ star charm. You'll solder, set, stamp, and polish your charm. Leave with your finished piece!
*Brass Charm, Sterling Silver Chain/Jump Ring/Setting included
**Silver charm upgrades and additional gemstones available upon request
Live Bluegrass with The Sons of Ralph band at Jack of the Wood in Asheville NC, Fridays at 7:00
THE CHAIN pays homage to all the greatest hits of Fleetwood Mac, featuring the talents of Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie and John McVie. The Chain is comprised of five seasoned, talented musicians who have been performing in many musical projects over the years both local and national.
STANDING ROOM ONLY
KING BUFFALOKing Buffalo is the trio of vocalist/guitarist Sean McVay, bassist Dan Reynolds, and drummer Scott Donaldson. Since forming in 2013, the self-proclaimed “heavy psych” band has made its name via 4 Full-lengths, 4EPs, and tours with Clutch, Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, All Them Witches, The Sword, and Elder.
L.A. WITCHL.A. Witch have always exuded an aura of effortless cool, whether it manifested as the Americana noir and laconic back-to-basics rock n’ roll of their self-titled debut or the blistering austere adventurism of their sophomore album Play With Fire. The band—comprised of Sade Sanchez (guitar/vocals), Irita Pai (bass), and Ellie English (drums)—began as an informal affair, but the sultry and beguiling reverb-draped songs they created caught on with the public, moving the project beyond the insular space of the band’s friends and peers in Southern California into the broader world. On their latest album, DOGGOD, the trio push their craft beyond their previous creative and geographical confines, opting to craft the material in Paris, recording the tracks at Motorbass Studio on the Rue de Martyrs. DOGGOD explores broader swaths of sonic terrain, employs a greater arsenal of tones, and probes larger existential and cosmic themes, all while retaining the band’s signature sense of the forbidden, the forsaken, and the foreboding.DOGGOD is a way of tackling the universal riddle tangled in the spiritual nature of love and devotion. “I feel like I’m some sort of servant or slave to love,” says Sanchez. “There’s a willingness to die for love in the process of serving it or suffering for it or in search of it… just in the way a loyal, devoted servant dog would.” The album title is a palindrome fusing together DOG and GOD—an exaltation of the submissive and a subversion of the divine. It’s a nod to the purity of dogs and an acknowledgement of their unconditional love and protective nature that’s at odds with the various pejoratives associated with the species. “There is this symbolic connection between women and dogs that expresses women’s subordinate position in society,” Sanchez explains. “And anything that embodies such divine characteristics never deserved to be a word used as an insult.”
These conflicted explorations of love and subservience manifest themselves in L.A. Witch’s fusion of their trademark smooth and smoky garage alchemy with a newfound utilization of post-punk’s disciplined reserve and icy instrumentation. Album opener “Icicle” captures the band journeying out of the proto-punk, psychedelia, and gritty riffage of the ‘70s into the chorus-drenched guitars and forlorn minimalism of Joy Division and early The Cure. A parallel is drawn between romantic suicide and martyrdom that carries over into the second song, “Kiss Me Deep.” Here Sanchez describes a love so pure that it transcends time and carries over into multiple lifetimes. It’s a song about passion delivered in the worldly and wounded stoicism of early goth pioneers. From there, the band segues into the lead single “777,” a song about devotion to the point of death. A propulsive beat, a driving distorted riff, and Sanchez’s ethereal vocals come together to create a song that’s both dire in its fatalism and sensual in its faithful passion.
Nov 21 Saturday