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Welcome to the 18th album from this Weaverville native, Swannanoa resident, nationally recognized sage, and a true survivor. Shortly after his cancer diagnosis last year, Malcolm and Jared Tyler decided to get some new songs of his recorded, just the two of them, not knowing what the future held in store for them. Fortunately, it was a whole album’s worth of more great “Malcolmisms”. The songs here cover a variety of challenges we’re all vulnerable to: cancer, addiction, greed, hatred, inexplicable injustice… Malcolm helps us wrestle with them, as he has done for maybe a few lifetimes now. Bits & Pieces was produced by Jared and by Brian Brinkerhoff, and recorded mostly at Echo Mountain Studios in Asheville.

Celebrants is Nickel Creek's first release since its 2014 album A Dotted Line, which itself came after another lengthy hiatus during which the trio, Chris Thile, Sara Watkins, and Sean Watkins, worked on solo and other projects. It’s a deep, complex album, worthy of repeated listens in order to fully grasp where they’re coming from. As NPR’s Brittney McKenna observes in a recent interview with the three, the band wrote the LP as one might write a novel, ensuring that each track helped to contextualize those before and after it. Explore it some this Thursday night with Julian Booker!

Western NC’s band of bluegrass collaborators is back with another collection of 10 original tunes – plus a fan-favorite ‘grassed up version of a latter-day Elvis hit. Songwriter/bassist Charles Humphrey has teamed up with a number of other co-writers here, and his bandmates Sam Wharton, James Schlender, Gabe Epstein, and Mark Schimick. Guests Kyle Tuttle, Tommy Maher, and Darren Nicholson contribute as well. They’re payin’ their dues, all right!

Eilen Jewell’s music captures so much of what we love about new Americana these days. We hope you got to catch her live in our area last week, including here in Studio B on Friday! This album has Jason Beek (drums/vocals/percussion), Steve Fulton (Wurlitzer/vocals/organ), Fats Kaplin (pedal steel guitar), Jerry Miller (electric guitar), Matt Murphy (upright bass), and Will Kimbrough (electric, acoustic & baritone guitar/mandolin/keys/percussion/vocals/baritone guitar), and was co-produced by Kimbrough.

“When we are performing on stage, in composing mode or creating mode, we are basically having a conversation,” says renowned tabla player, Zakir Hussain, of his bandmates, banjo legend Béla Fleck, the great double bassist Edgar Meyer, and bansuri player Rakesh Chaurasia. “So the music emerges as we speak.” This dynamic group performs at the Wortham Center For the Arts in Asheville on Tuesday the 16th!

New Mexico is this singer/songwriter’s home, and these songs reflect her appreciation for family, home, and heart, in a time when those things have become essential to maintain sanity and decency. Robert Earl Keen, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and her guitarist brother Tony Gilkyson are among the guests joining her on this sweet one.

On Amatssou, their ninth studio album, Tinariwen set out to explore the shared sensibilities of African desert blues and American country music as banjos, fiddles and pedal steel mix seamlessly with the Tuareg band’s trademark snaking guitar lines and hypnotic grooves. The lyrics call for unity and freedom; there are songs of struggle and resistance with oblique references to the recent desperate political upheavals in Mali and the increasing power of the Salafists. The album’s title Amatssou is Tamashek for ‘Beyond The Fear’. This was produced by Daniel Lanois, and was recorded in Algeria, France, Los Angeles and Toronto. Guest musicians include Fats Kaplin on fiddle and Wes Corbett on banjo.

Out this month is this new album from 3-time Grammy winner Ben Harper, no doubt one of our favorite musicians at WNCW. This one can be described as more subdued, introspective, even minimalist, compared to his previous albums. Accompanied by mostly just his acoustic guitar or piano, he considers these 11 new songs part of a family: each one a close relative to the next in terms of the stories they tell.

For those not familiar with Fruit Bats, it’s mostly the songwriting, singing and musicianship of Eric D. Johnson, who has also been busy lately with the trio Bonny Light Horseman. This is the 10th Fruit Bats full length, and the first in which Johnson has produced it (along with Jeremy Harris.) Rounding out Fruit Bats on this one is Josh Adams on drums, percussion, pump organ, and synth; David Dawda on bass, Frank LoCrasto on pianos and synths, and Josh Mease on guitars, synths, and bass.