Celebrating John Prine with The Knotty G’s
– ALL AGES- PARTIALLY SEATED SHOW THE KNOTTY G’S The Knotty G’s will be joined by some of the finest musicians from the “big ‘ole goofy” town of Asheville to celebrate the music and legacy of one of America’s most influential and beloved songwriters, John Prine, on his birthday, October 10th. This incredible lineup features Felix Pastorius on bass, Lyndsay Pruett on violin, Jackson Dulaney on pedal steel, Daniel Combs on organ and keyboards, Kent Spillman on drums as well as other special guests throughout the evening. The Knotty G’s- Gillian Francis H.E. Knott (vocals/guitar) and Charles Knott (vocals/guitar): The Knott’s goal is simple: to create music and an experience at their shows they feel is genuine. Gritty yet funky performances fuse with the band’s jovial nature and invite audiences to take part in the revelatory power of music while still managing to tap into plenty of fun. In the short time they’ve been a team, they have amassed an impressive list of stages and festivals, including: the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, The Blue Ridge Pride Festival, Strangecreek Campout, Wormtown Music Festival, and The Ladybug Festival. In December 2021, they released “Set Sail,” their first full length studio album recorded with award winning producer Matt Williams at The Eagle Room located just outside of Asheville. The album showcases genre jumping compositions tied together with the same singular soul-soaked thread that weaves its way through all of their music.
Hannah Kaminer & The Wistfuls: “Heavy On The Vine” Album Release Show
– ALL AGES- SEATED SHOW- LIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLEHANNAH KAMINER Hannah Kaminer makes modern American roots music that blurs the boundaries between genre and generation. As a songwriter, storyteller, and producer, she nods to the Appalachian traditions of her native North Carolina while creating a contemporary sound that’s woozy, wistful, and evocative of the landscape where it was created. She turns a new page with her third record, Heavy On The Vine. Written and recorded in Kaminer’s adopted hometown of Asheville, it’s a reflective, resilient album that finds the artist making sense of her new world—a place where boutique hotels block the view of the Blue Ridge Mountains, childhood habits have given way to adulthood realities, and the Christian faith that once offered easy answers to life’s big questions has lost its magic. Heavy On The Vine isn’t just a soundtrack for Kaminer’s loss of faith; it’s a battle cry of hope and defiance, delivered by a songwriter who’s learned to live with uncertainty. “The idea of estrangement shows up everywhere,” says Kaminer, who kickstarted her career with 2015’s Acre By Acre and expanded her sound with 2018’s Heavy Magnolias. “These songs are about estrangement from myself, from family and old friends, from the Christian faith of my childhood, and from the world as I used to know it.” Kaminer’s world began taking shape in the small towns of western North Carolina, where she grew up singing hymns in church. Later, while living in central Texas as a college student, she heard a bluegrass song on the radio and found herself pining for the home she’d left behind. “I heard the banjo and thought, ‘That’s the sound of home!'” she remembers. “It took me moving halfway across the country to realize how much I gravitated toward those sounds.” Those sounds took her back to North Carolina, where Kaminer settled in Asheville and found a supportive musical community that prioritized collaboration over competition. “It was a great place to try something different,” she says. Inspired by Gillian Welch, Iris DeMent, and Patty Griffin—three artists who nodded to the old-school folk singers who came before them, yet still made modern music that balanced gorgeous melodies with grit, hard truths, and haunting arrangements—she started writing her own songs. The Grammy-winning audio engineer Julian Dreyer became one of her earliest champions, engineering her 2015 debut album and co-producing its 2018 follow-up. By the time Kaminer began writing material for Heavy On The Vine, though, she’d become more than a sharp songwriter. She’d started to think like a producer, too.THOMAS KOZAKThomas Kozak’s writing pulls myth and religion through the split-open skull of an obsessive-compulsive, anchoring the past to a new body and giving it voice through and beyond the conventions of folk and Americana.
Margo Cilker
– ALL AGES- SEATED SHOWMARGO CILKER MARGO CILKER is a woman who drinks deeply of life, and her debut record Pohorylle, released in November 2021 on Portland label Fluff and Gravy, is brimming with it. For the last seven years, the Eastern Oregon songwriter, who NPR calls one of “11 Oregon Artists to Watch in 2021,” has split her time between the road and various outposts across the world, from Enterprise, OR to the Basque Country of Spain, forging a path that is at once deeply rooted and ever-changing. As Pohorylle traverses through the geography of Cilker’s memories—a touring musician’s tapestry of dive bars and breathtaking natural beauty—love is apparent, as is its inevitable partner: loss. For what bigger heartbreak is there than to be a fervent lover who must always keep moving? Cilker seems keenly aware of the precarious footing upon which love stands, and at many turns, the record circles something that is staggeringly beautiful and slipping away. “I am a woman split between places,” Cilker sings on the album’s wistful closer, touching for a brief moment upon the vast dichotomies of her selfhood and her profession, and the negotiation that she conducts between them. “I’m just very inquisitive. I’m a very curious person. Why are things this way? Do they have to stay this way? You know, how can things change?” Cilker asks. It is this part of her nature that expands Pohorylle into the complex journey that it is: her ability to crack open a moment of desperation and lay it out on a table to catch a careful light. Pohorylle, which carries gentle nods to Lucinda Williams, Townes Van Zandt, and Gillian Welch, shines under the instincts of producer Sera Cahoone, whom Cilker first came across in 2019 while planning her first full-length. “I was trying to pin down what kind of sound I wanted and stumbled across a video of Sera and just loved how she performed. I then listened to her last studio record and thought, that’s the sound.” Cilker says. “I found out Sera had produced that record herself with John Askew. My friend put me in touch with her and she liked my demos enough to produce the album. It felt very auspicious—It was truly just a gut feeling.” Cahoone quickly got to work assembling a first-rate band: Jenny Conlee (The Decemberists) on keys, Jason Kardong (Sera Cahoone, Son Volt) on pedal steel, Rebecca Young (Lindsey Fuller, Jesse Sykes) on bass, Mirabai Peart (Joanna Newsom) on strings, Kelly Pratt (Beirut) on horns, and the album’s engineer John Morgan Askew (Neko Case, Laura Gibson) on an array of other instruments. The record also prominently features effortless harmonies from Sarah Cilker, Margo Cilker’s sister and frequent touring partner. Over the last six years, Margo Cilker has toured extensively across the US and internationally, and is a staple in the independent festival circuit. (written by Maria Maita-Keppeler)GABE LEE Nashville-based songwriter Gabe Lee is becoming increasingly known for his ability to detail the intricacies of everyday life, the small distinctions that leave some on the fringe and others in the mainstream, and the particulars that stick around long after a lover leaves.
Bob Dylan’s 82nd Birthday Celebration: Hosted by George Trouble and The Zealots
– ALL AGES- SEATED SHOW- LIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLEGEORGE TROUBLE AND THE ZEALOTS CELEBRATE BOB DYLAN’S 82ND BIRTHDAYThe Zealots and friends will pay tribute to Bob Dylan ahead of his 82nd birthday at the Grey Eagle, Sunday, May 21st at 7pm. To salute the work of one of the most influential and complex artists of our times, the Zealots are drawing from their roots. Asheville based singer/songwriters and rockers George Trouble and The Zealots, with special guests, bring their exuberance, strong craft and diverse range of styles to the Dylan songbook, promising a night of celebration. Wear your leopard skin pill box hat!
WellSpring: Album Release Show
– ALL AGES- SEATED SHOW- LIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLEWELLSPRING Molly Hartwell and Laura Boswell of WellSpring met in early 2019 at a brewery in Asheville, NC where Laura was performing at a songwriter’s event on International Women’s Day. Both accomplished singers, songwriters, and performers in their own right, they quickly discovered a mutual love of folk music and duo-centric, harmony-driven songs. In their own words… ”Finding our voices in harmony was like slipping on the most well-worn, comfortable pair of jeans; as natural as if we’d been doing it forever. Our singing chemistry seemed to have a life of its own and before long a committed collaboration began, deepening immensely during the onset of the pandemic and throughout 2020. We sang with no purpose but for the joy of it and to find our voices in the delicious dance of harmony that is so healing all in itself. We sang through hard days and better days, we sang to the neighbors and we sang to the birds. Mostly we sang to our own hearts, to help ourselves through the hardest year.” After sharing a few of these songs on social media, they quickly gained a loving and loyal following that requested (demanded!) more music from them. Seeds were planted for a recording project and in 2021 they launched a successful crowdfunding campaign to record their first full-length album. With the help of their amazing supporters, producer & engineer Daniel Shearin (River Whyless), and nearly a dozen exquisitely talented local musicians, WellSpring brought this album to life at Asheville studios Citizen Vinyl and Sleeping Dogs. Self-titled, the album memorializes the full spectrum of emotion that the first year of the pandemic contained, celebrates artists of many genres and eras, and has a couple of originals thrown in for good measure. Molly and Laura reside in Asheville where they plan to continue recording, writing, and sharing their music wherever there is a home for it. They look forward to premiering their album at The Grey Eagle with a full band that includes Bill Berg & Zack Page. ZACK KARDONZack Kardon is a multi-instrumentalist and song-writer that has been living in Asheville for the better part of a decade. As a sideman Kardon has collaborated with notable artists such as Indigo De Souza, The Dead Tongues and Midnight Snack. Kardon’s own music has a gentle intensity to it. He writes songs that look inward, rooted in a belief that the best way to touch upon the universal is to take a magnified glass to ones own experience. Kardon’s songs don’t seek to explain or preach, but simply, capture the essence of a feeling before it disappears into the ether.
The Moon and You, Ménage, Amanda Anne Platt (solo)
ALL AGESSEATED SHOWLIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLETHE MOON AND YOU At its core, The Moon and You is a charismatic husband-and-wife team. Melissa Hyman plays cello and bass, Ryan Furstenberg plays guitar and banjo. But whatever you might assume based on their gorgeous vocal blend and heartfelt lyrics, this ain’t your basic duo. With a rotating cast of talented friends to add unexpected instrumentation to their lineup, The Moon and You never plays the same show twice. This ever-evolving, expandable and collapsible model leaves the band constantly reinventing itself in ways both surprising and satisfying. Together, the two form a sound that is warm and inviting, atmospheric and playful. Each is a well developed songwriter with a distinctive voice, and their songs range in style from classic to quirky. Lyrics-driven and intellectual with a keen ear for arrangement, they make music perfectly suited to a listening room or a pair of good headphones. MENAGEAsheville’s original skirt and boots female trio returns to the Great Eagle stage after a 16 year hiatus. Rich and soulful three part harmony defines the sound of this fun and sultry group. Melissa Hyman (cello) from The Moon and You join original band members Sarah Roberts (guitar), and Mary Ellen Davis (bass) for this freshened up reunion-style performance which will include many original favorites from the early days of the band.AMANDA ANNE PLATTAmanda Anne Platt has been writing and performing her original songs in front of live audiences for almost two decades. With her band The Honeycutters she has released nine albums of her own original material and toured extensively in the US as well as Europe and Canada. In 2022 she released a double album, The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, which has been called “her finest work yet” by The Bluegrass Situation and landed on top ten lists across the globe. The much anticipated follow up LP, The Ones That Stay, which was co produced by Scott McMicken (Dr Dog) and Greg Cartwright (Reigning Sound), is slated for release later this year. Platt delivers a live performance as captivating as her songwriting and has been privileged over the years to share the stage with the likes of Guy Clark, Amy Ray, Billy Joe Shaver, Tift Merrit, and Radney Foster.
David Childers & The Serpents + Tin Roof Echo
– ALL AGES- SEATED SHOW- LIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLEDAVID CHILDERSSinger-songwriter David Childers is the proverbial study in contradictions. A resident of Mount Holly, North Carolina, he’s a former high-school football player with the aw-shucks demeanor of a good ol’ Southern boy. But he’s also a well-read poet and painter who cites Chaucer and Kerouac as influences, fell in love with folk as a teen, listens to jazz and opera, and fed his family by practicing law before turning in his license to concentrate on his creative passions.The legal profession’s loss is certainly the music world’s gain. Childers’ new album, Run Skeleton Run, releasing May 5, 2017 on Ramseur Records, is filled with the kinds of songs that have made him a favorite of fans and fellow artists including neighbors the Avett Brothers. Scott Avett contributes to four tracks, and Avetts bassist Bob Crawford co-executive-produced the effort with label head Dolph Ramseur. (Crawford and Childers, both history buffs, have recorded and performed together in the Overmountain Men).In fact, it was Crawford who kickstarted this album, Childers’ sixth solo effort, by suggesting he reunite with Don Dixon (R.E.M., the Smithereens), who’d produced Crawford’s favorite Childers album, Room 23 (done with his band the Modern Don Juans). Crawford also suggested tracking at Mitch Easter’s Fidelitorium Recordings.“I’ve made records in my living room and been perfectly happy with it. But I think ol’ Bob wanted to give it one more shot,” Childers says. “It’s kind of like the Wild Bunch at the end of the movie, on their last train robbery.”Not that he’s suggesting this is his “last train robbery.” Not with songs as rich as these. Sounding like literature and playing like little movies — several are under three minutes long — they’re populated by sailors, hermits, lovers and killers, facing off against fate, skeletons, good, evil, or simply the trials of everyday existence. Lust, virtue, guilt, innocence; alienation, desperation, sorrow, gratitude … he examines these conditions with such precision — combined with music that draws on folk, rock, rockabilly, country and Cajun influences — he doesn’t need lengthy exposition.TIN ROOF ECHOAlthough originally hailing from the musically rich city of Macon, GA, Joe Hooten has called Asheville, NC home for many years. Since his 2014 debut, “The Original Plan”, seven albums (six LPs and one EP) have been released under the Tin Roof Echo moniker-each album demonstrating the DIY recording style that ultimately allows his uniquely introspective songwriting & production style to be highlighted along with his varied influences. He’s shared the stage with a diverse range of talents such as alt-country hero Scott Miller (The V-Roys) and punk pioneers Agent Orange. His solo shows- whether in a festival setting, radio show, or intimate listening room- are not to be missed.He also makes a lot of noise with Asheville’s all-star punk band PINKEYE & the legendary outlaw Americana-tinged Dark City Kings.
The Dirty French Broads: Album Release Show
– ALL AGES- LIMITED SEATING AVAILABLETHE DIRTY FRENCH BROADSThe Dirty French Broads are an Americana Grass band from the mountains of Western North Carolina bringing you heart-stirring ballads and lively cut-a-rugs with the energy of a thousand golden retriever puppies in their first snowfall. Lead singer Kate Thomas draws the audience with her rich, smoky timbre and leaves them laughing beer up their noses, wishing they’d worn their dancing shoes. This lively crew plays just about everything that has strings, but usually graces the stage with a guitar, mandolin, fiddle, banjo, bass, and when the weather’s right – the occasional kazoo. Authentic and endearing with a little spice, they’re a few shades apart from the established Americana scene, and you’ll definitely want to join their book club.BARRETT DAVISBarrett Davis is a Western North Carolina singer-songwriter/guitarist who chose the life of a ragged troubadour. That small, glowing ember of inspiration and creativity, which has always remained at the core of Davis, is now a burning, eternal fire — bringing forth an honest sense of self through the prism of his perceptive lyrics and heartfelt melodies. His latest album “The Ballad of Aesop Fin” is a vibrant tapestry, meandering from modern Americana to classic country, indie-folk to the “high, lonesome sound” of bluegrass.
Pedal Stroke Benefit Concert for Asheville on Bikes and the United Stroke Alliance
– ALL AGES- LIMITED SEATING AVAILABLE Pedal Stroke Benefit Concert for Asheville on Bikes and the United Stroke Alliance Proceeds to benefit Asheville on Bikes, cultivating urban & commuter cycling culture through advocacy & events, and the United Stroke Alliance, dedicated to uniting and educating people about the prevention, awareness, and recovery of stroke for survivors, caregivers and their families. Several Dudes got together to write and play groovin’ music for a loyal following in Atlanta while most of the Dudes were in law school and medical school. Now lawyers, doctors, and musicians on the back ends of productive careers, the band has reformed to honor founding lead guitarist Nick Stevens after his tragic death in a cycling accident. The band will be releasing its tribute album of new original material, “Our Brother Nick” for this show. We are excited to raise funds for cycling advocacy and Stroke awareness, and to once again gig with the Karma Dogs! You can learn more at severaldudes.com Come on out for great music for great causes!! The event is sponsored by ARA Health Specialists- Committed to improving lives, creating value, and staying on the cutting edge of science.
I See Hawks in L.A. featuring Alex Meixner
– ALL AGES- SEATED SHOW- LIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLEI SEE HAWKS IN L.A.I SEE HAWKS IN L.A. are Southern California’s leading Americana/folk rock band, with ten critically acclaimed releases and consistently high Americana radio charting. Countless miles and bars and festivals from the Mojave desert to the Carolinas to UK and Europe have earned an enduring global following. “We thrive in the margins,” say the Hawks. They’ve emerged from pan isolation with a stronger live show than ever, with a busy 2022 including a headliner slot at fall’s Kerrville Folk Festival. Their latest release “On Our Way” has perhaps the best reviews of the band’s career:“Glorious.” — Nigel Williamson, UNCUT”The quartet is all breathing as one, and the clear night sky full of stars is the limit. Listen and hear not only what has come before, but what is also right around the next bend. See the Hawks.” — Bill Bentley, Americana HighwaysFormed in 1999 by Rob Waller and brothers Paul and Anthony Lacques during a philosophical discussion and rock throwing session on an East Mojave desert trek, I See Hawks In L.A. first gathered on the front porch in Echo Park, Los Angeles, drank whiskey and wrote their first batch of songs. They sought advice from local country rock guru David Jackson (John Denver, Dillard & Clark, Emmylou Harris). Jackson promptly joined the Hawks for their first recording, featuring legendary fiddler Brantley Kearns (Dwight Yoakam, Dave Alvin). The CD established the Hawks signature sound: dense three part harmonies, innovative telecaster and steel, and also unadorned all acoustic songs, musing on mortality, whales, and the geography of preapocalyptic L.A.ALEX MEIXNER (sitting in with I See Hawks in L.A.)Alex Meixner is a nationally acclaimed musician, performer, bandleader, educator and a leading advocate of polka music. Formally trained in classical, jazz and ethnic music, Alex has cross-pollinated his versatile playing styles through pop music, funk, jazz and polka. He is an active ambassador for polka music, revitalizing interest coast to coast resulting in sold out shows, renewed cultural interest, and growing mainstream acceptance. For Alex, it’s more than playing energetic shows; it is a mission to provide a much needed positive experience that pulls communities together to celebrate history, culture and genuinely good times.THE HAWTTHORNS An Americana band whose sun-kissed songwriting, versatile guitar work, and lush vocal harmonies evoke the California coastline as much as the Bible Belt countryside, the HawtThorns are rooted in the collaborative chemistry of husband-and-wife duo KP and Johnny Hawthorn. Both have had celebrated solo careers and were members of LA based touring bands. That chemistry reaches a new peak with Tarot Cards and Shooting Stars, which marks the band’s second collection of hook-driven country-rock and amplified Americana. Recorded in both L.A. and Nashville, it nods to both sides of the group’s geographic and musical roots.
