The 2025 Christmas Yarn Ball
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLY YARN You might expect a band that calls itself Yarn to, naturally, tend to spin a yarn or two. “That’s what we do, we tell stories, live and in the studio, truth and fiction”,singer/songwriter Blake Christiana insists. “We don’t always opt for consistency. There’s a different vibe onstage from what comes through in our recordings. There’s a difference in every show as well, you never know what you’re going to get.” Yarn’s ability to persevere ought to come as no great surprise, especially for a band that spent two years honing their chops during a Monday night residency at the famed Kenny’s Castaway in New York’s Greenwich Village. In effect, it allowed them to rehearse onstage, mostly in front of audiences that often ranged in size from five to a hundred people on any given night. 10 studio albums followed — Yarn (2007), Empty Pockets (2008), Leftovers Part One (2009), Come On In (2010), Leftovers Part 2 (2011), Almost Home (2012), Shine the Light On (2013), This Is The Year (2016), and Lucky 13 parts 1 & 2 (2019). The band then took to the road, playing upwards of 170 shows a year and sharing stages with such superstars as Dwight Yoakam, Charlie Daniels, Railroad Earth, Marty Stuart, Allison Krauss, Leon Russell, Jim Lauderdale, Leftover Salmon, Amos Lee, The Lumineers and many more. They’ve driven nonstop, made countless radio station appearances, driven broken-down RVs and watched as their van caught fire. They’ve paid their dues and then some, looking forward even as they were forced to glance behind. Indeed, the accolades piled up quickly along the way. They have landed on the Grammy ballot 4 times, garnered nods from the Americana Music Association, placed top five on both Radio and Records and the AMA album charts, garnered airplay on Sirius XM, iTunes, Pandora, CNN, and CMT, been streamed millions of times on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon, and also accorded the “Download of the Day” from Rolling Stone. Shine the Light On found shared songwriting credits with John Oates (the Oates of Hall & Oates fame), and when audiences expressed their admiration, it brought the band a populist cult following of diehard devotees, popularly known as “the Yarmy.” It’s proof positive that the Brooklyn and Raleigh based band have made their mark, and in dealing with their emotions, scars and circumstances, they find themselves in a position to share those experiences with others who have juggled similar sentiments The beginning of the journey to these 2 albums began around April of 2022 when Blake booked a solo show at The Down Home in Johnson City, TN (a nod to Townes Van Zandt’s 1986 live show there and ultimate release) with the intention of making a live record. But he wanted it to be songs none of the fans and attendees had ever heard before. The problem was he hadn’t written most of them yet. He was at his crossroads, uninspired, bored, exhausted and fairly insecure about his entire career up to that point. But he got to work, and got more inspired with each new song he wrote. These songs all tell a story individually but they also tell a story as a whole, a songwriter and musician ready to dive deeper into the music and the art for a greater result that he believes most anyone can appreciate, relate to and enjoy.
FREE SHOW – PATIO: Dave Desmelik
– FREE SHOW – ALL AGES- LIMITED PATIO SEATING IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVE DAVE DESMELIK “Desmelik delivers. He is reliable. He is tenacious, steadfast, and solid. His music is earthy and elemental, unpretentious and observational, and when he’s performing, his head is in the song he is playing for you and the rest of the audience.” -ashevillestages.com Dave Desmelik is a singer-songwriter and instrumentalist whose musical focus is on original compositions. What attracts listeners to Desmelik’s tunes, old and new, is the element of authenticity incorporated in them. There is no sugar coating involved. His songs are not wrapped in false smiles, rather they are stark and open and tend to settle on the pulse of everyday life. An unclosed and evolving journal of thoughts set to music and melodies in prose and instrumental performance. If you listen to Dave Desmelik’s songs, whether lyrical or instrumental, you may become pleasantly fixed in the simplistic realness of them and if you hear Desmelik in a live setting you may realize that there are no tricks, just a genuine venture into the highs and lows of life.
NewSong Music Performance & Songwriting Competition
ALL AGES 6PM DOORS / 7PM SHOW FULLY SEATED SHOW LIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLE In celebration of its 24th anniversary, the NewSong Music Performance & Songwriting Competition — presented by Citizen Vinyl — will welcome eight finalists from across North America to Asheville for an evening of songs and connection The event takes place at The Grey Eagle on Thursday, December 11. The internationally recognized event, previously held at the prestigious Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, has since found a home in the mountains of Western North Carolina. The finalists (TBA in early October), selected from advance online submissions, will bring their musical chops to Asheville to perform, compete, and connect with one another. A panel of music industry judges will select one grand prize winner who will receive a fully funded six-song EP, recorded and mixed at Citizen Studios, and a music vinyl package pressed at Citizen Vinyl.Citizen Vinyl, established by NewSong Music director and co-founder Gar Ragland, is North Carolina’s first vinyl pressing facility, and boasts a variety of amenities including a full-scale recording studio, high quality vinyl pressing and cassette duplication, direct-to-customer fulfillment, and more. Now in its 24th year, the NewSong Music Performance & Songwriting Competition is one of North America’s premier showcases of emerging performers and songwriters today. This crowd-sourced effort seeks to identify the truly exceptional artists within our communities and to work closely with them to develop their careers and introduce their music to a broader, international audience while building a supportive community of performers and songwriters across all genres of music and levels of skill.
Jordan Tice & Joseph Terrell
ALL AGES SEATED SHOW LIMITED NUMBER OF PREMUIM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLE JORDAN TICE Jordan Tice is a musical seeker of the most dedicated sort. Growing up in Annapolis Maryland, as a teenage rocker and student of jazz and music composition at Towson University, he has become among the most innovative acoustic guitarists of the modern age. Surrounded by a family of bluegrass musicians and opening for American music luminaries such as David Bromberg and Tony Rice at an early age, Tice found his musical center, one which he now channels into a refreshing approach to songcraft. Speaking to the components that fuel the progressivism intrinsic to some of his closest heroes, Jordan says, “Artists like John Hartford or Norman Blake chose to look beyond the idiomatic elements of the music and tap into where those things came from. They learned from literal examples, but they were working more off abstractions that they absorbed into their own work, creating something entirely new.” JOSEPH TERRELL Joseph grew up in a big Quaker family in the North Carolina Piedmont. He’s spent the last ten years writing and singing with folk band Mipso. “To call a howl “good for nothing” is a compliment. all of the best howls are. i got a howl stuck in my head a few years ago when i started noticing the trees. somehow they’d escaped my imagination since i was a kid in the woods. i welcomed them back. sycamores in particular captured my attention. their bark is a cousin to skin. i learned there are sixty-two types of oaks in north carolina. the water oak is my favorite. its waxy teardrops droop over creeks. i thought a good bit about hackberry and greenbriar, too, and when summer ended i fell in love with goldenrod. it felt good to pay attention. they had been there all along. i was moving around a lot at the time. i crashed with barry and susan, spent a while in alex and caroline’s basement. i quit trying to write all together, quit playing for a while too. then at the beginning of spring i started dragging a chair under a tree in the yard. wherever i was i would try to spend the morning outside with a guitar. i found a lot of songs that way, like they were already there, waiting for me to sing them out loud. i hope that sounds as strange as it felt.
The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLY THE REVEREND PEYTON’S BIG DAMN BAND Three time BMA nominee’s The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band are “the greatest front-porch blues band in the world”. They are led by Reverend Peyton, who most consider to be the premier finger picker playing today. He has earned a reputation as both a singularly compelling performer and a persuasive evangelist for the rootsy, country blues styles that captured his imagination early in life and inspired him and his band to make pilgrimages to Clarksdale, Mississippi to study under such blues masters as T-Model Ford, Robert Belfour and David “Honeyboy” Edwards. Their last record Dance Songs For Hard Times went #1 on the Billboard, iTunes and Sirius XM Blues Charts and was produced by Grammy winner Vance Powell. The record was critically acclaimed by Rolling Stone, Relix, Popmatters, Guitar World, American Songwriter, No Depression, Glide, Wide Open Country, Paste, American Blues Scene and many more! Their new record, Honeysuckle was produced and recorded by Reverend Peyton and mixed by six-time Grammy winner Vance Powell (Chris Stapleton, Jack White). The record features many special guests, including gospel music group The McCrary Sisters on the song “Manger,” Blues Music Hall of Famer and Grammy-nominated harmonica player Billy Branch who plays on the Blind Lemon Jefferson song “Nell (Prison Cell Blues),” Grammy award-winning and IBMA’s 10-time Fiddle Player of the Year Michael Cleveland plays on “Freeborn Man” and Colton Crawford from The Dead South plays banjo on “The Good Die Young.” CHRIS McGINNIS Chris McGinnis writes songs that exist somewhere between a hiccup and a heartache. His most recent EP, Songs For You, touches on the peculiarity of your hometown morphing beyond recognition. It tells the story of two Baby Boomers falling in and out of love across time zones and decades. It’s about connection and disconnection alike. With the release of his debut full-length album Mamaw’s Angel, Chris veers deeper into these familiar themes. Through tales of stolen Winnebagos and hip-shaking grandbabies, Chris’ music is Appalachian absurdity for the 21st Century.
Eilen Jewell
ALL AGES PARTIALLY SEATED SHOW (please note seated VS standing room only options at checkout) EILEN JEWELL Hailed by American Songwriter as “one of America’s most intriguing, creative, and idiosyncratic voices,” Eilen Jewell rises from the ashes on her captivating new album, Get Behind The Wheel, picking up the pieces of her shattered world and finding new purpose and meaning after watching her marriage, her band, and what felt like her entire career fall apart in a series of spectacular, heartbreaking implosions. Co-produced by multi-instrumental wizard Will Kimbrough (Todd Snider, Hayes Carll), the collection pushes the acclaimed singer and songwriter’s trademark blend of vintage roots-noir into more psychedelic territory, with spacious, cinematic arrangements complementing her revelatory explorations of grief, loss, resilience, and redemption. An Idaho native, Jewell built her career the old fashioned way, touring relentlessly with the kind of undeniable live show that converts the uninitiated into instant acolytes. Over the course of nine albums, she’s crisscrossed the globe countless times and shared bills with the likes of Lucinda Williams, Loretta Lynn, Mavis Staples, Wanda Jackson, George Jones, and Emmylou Harris. Rolling Stone lauded Jewell’s “clever writing,” while NPR declared that she has a “sweet and clear voice with a killer instinct lurking beneath the shiny surface,” and The Washington Post mused that “if Neko Case, Madeleine Peyroux and Billie Holiday had a baby girl who grew up to front a rockabilly band, she’d probably sound a lot like Eilen Jewell.”
PATIO: Beth Snapp
– ALL AGES- LIMITED PATIO SEATING IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVE BETH SNAPP Beth’s “Pop-Alachian” sound is a cross-over blend of country, bluegrass, pop and folk, a colorful variance where each element shines. Her silken, jazzy vocals are as delicate as a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, softly lilting over lush, acoustic instrumentation and stirring echoes of Southern hills into the smooth, caramel creamer of an uptown latte.
William Elliott Whitmore
– ALL AGES- SEATED SHOW- LIMIITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLEWILLIAM ELLIOTT WHITMORE A man armed only with a banjo and a bass drum can be a formidable force, especially if his name is William Elliott Whitmore. With his powerful voice and honest approach, Whitmore comes from the land, growing up on a family farm in Lee County, Iowa. Still living on the same farm today, Whitmore has truly taken the time to discover where his center lies, and from that he will not be moved. Whitmore has repeatedly carved his own path, honoring the longstanding tradition of folk music throughout his nearly 20 year career, while always allowing his blues, soul and punk rock influences to shine through. Getting his first break opening for his friend’s hardcore band with just a banjo in hand, he would discover bands like The Jesus Lizard, Bad Brains, Lungfish and Minutemen and soon learn to play his own brand of rural, roots music with that same DIY ethic. William Elliott Whitmore has been back and forth across the United States and to cities around the world. He’s toured with such diverse acts as Frank Turner, Trampled By Turtles, Clutch and Chris Cornell to name a few. He’s appeared on some of the biggest stages around the world including Stagecoach Fest, Byron Bluesfest (Australia) and End of the Road Fest (UK). His willingness to take his show to any playing field has proved invaluable as he turned strangers to diehards with every performance. DYLAN WALSHE Dylan Walshe is an Irish folk music singer-songwriter. Born and raised in southeast Dublin, he is based in Black Mountain, North Carolina[ He has toured with Flogging Molly, Avatar, The White Buffalo, The Mahones and recorded with James Fearnley of The Pogues.
PATIO: Reed Turchi World on Fire Album Release Show
– ALL AGES- LIMITED PATIO SEATING IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVE REED TURCHI Hailed by the Oxford American as an artist “beyond genre constraints,” Reed Turchi is a GRAMMY Award Winning, EMMY Award Nominated musician from Swannanoa, North Carolina, who first learned to play guitar in North Mississippi from RL Burnside’s longtime sideman Kenny Brown.Turchi’s signature “slide guitar & kudzu boogie” sound has been described as “a burst of blues rock…both spontaneous and crafted” by Rolling Stone and as “vital, live, and essential” by Living Blues Magazine. WORLD ON FIRE, Turchi’s latest album, was declared “a striking exercise in inspired simplicity” by No Depression, and explored a more intimate atmosphere, somewhere between Muddy Waters’ “Folk Singer” acoustic album and Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska.” American Blues Scene hailed the album as “a hypnotic blend of slide-guitar andsnare-brush rhythm,” while Pop Matters said listening to it is “like listening to an old 78rpm blues recording without the scratches and static.”
PATIO: The Two Tracks
– ALL AGES- LIMITED PATIO SEATING IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVE CHRIS MCGINNINS & MAMAW’S ANGELS The Two Tracks are led by Julie and Dave Huebner, with songs that explore emotional and natural experiences of life in the American West. Since 2015, The Two Tracks have crafted four albums worth of original material and toured the around the United States and beyond, with music spanning a wide variety of sounds that both hearken back to the 70s sounds of classic rock Americana to something that is altogether new and unique. The band really cares about creating a direct emotional connection between themselves and the audience with down-to-earth themes, and powerful imagery in their music. Hailing from the eastside of the Bighorn Mountains in Sheridan, Wyoming, they have brought their joyful, unique sound to stages big and small, including Americanafest (TN), Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival (CA), Albino Skunk Music Festival (SC), Red Ants Pants Music Festival (MT), and NewWestFest (CO) among many others. They have opened for artists such as Orville Peck, Eilen Jewell, Kitchen Dwellers, The Brothers Comatose, Shook Twins, The Fretliners, The Black Lillies, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades, and more. In 2022 they traveled to Dubai, UAE for performances at the World Expo. All seasoned musicians and good friends, The Two Tracks have knit their passions into a strong band family, and it comes across in their albums and on stage. Four-part harmonies, alongside Dave’s unique cello playing, driven by a tight rhythm section made up of Julie on acoustic guitar, Taylor Phillips on bass, and Fernando Serna on drums. Their latest album It’s a Complicated Life, is alive with vivid poetry. From deeply personal stories such as Julie’s “The Push and The Pull,” recounting a divorce and Dave’s “Momma’s Gone,” lamenting the difficult passing of his mom, to political tales of angst such as “Workingman’s Blues,” and fun rockers like “In the Morning” which reminds us all to “check on your friends please.” For their past three albums (Postcard Town, Cheers to Solitude, It’s a Complicated Life), The Two Tracks have worked with renown producer Will Kimbrough (Todd Snider, Rodney Crowell, Shemekia Copeland), and grammy-winning engineer Sean Sullivan (Sturgill Simpson, Molly Tuttle, Traveling McCourys). Kimbrough adds his multi-instrumental talent to their records and time has already been set to make album #5 this winter for a 2026 release.
