Charlie Brown Superstar
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYCHARLIE BROWN SUERSTAR Charlie Brown Superstar (Brett Fuller) is a DJ, producer, remixer, and artist from Huntington, WV. A veteran of the West Virginia DJ scene, playing at such clubs as Gumby’s, Gyrationz, and the V Club since the mid 90s, Fuller is known for playing a wide range of music with a focus on Nu Disco and house, and is also known in the Nu Disco/Disco Edit scene as a producer. He has released music with labels across the world, including Candy Beach Records in Spain, Thunder Jam Records in Israel, and Sound Exhibitions Records and Boutade Musique, both out of Italy, as well as American labels, Bent Ant and Fresh Farm Records. Fuller’s songs have charted on all three major DJ music sites: Traxsource, Beatport, and Juno Download. His track “Never Gonna Stop” with Alpaca Edits (England) spent weeks at #2 on Traxsource Lounge/Chill Out chart. Several of his songs have also been included on the Traxsource “Essential List.” In addition to his solo work, in the early 2000s, Fuller also released 2 full-length records and toured with the band Hyatari, and was also a touring member of the 90s band Chum. Currently, Fuller concentrates on what he calls Mountain Funk, an eclectic blend of jam, funk, and electronic, with elements of local flavor, that he has showcased at festivals such as Mountain Music Fest, Brew Skies, and Kickin’ It On the Creek, and, more locally, Huntington Music and Arts Fest and Funktafest. Fuller has played clubs across the Midwest, including in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio, and is part of the Rust Belt Alliance, which features DJs based in Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Huntington.
SUMMER RADIANCE: FEATURING THE JASPER AND OPAL STRING QUARTETS
– ALL AGES- SEATED SHOW Asheville Chamber Music SeriesCelebrate the laid-back mountain lifestyle this summer with a chamber music takeover at this iconic River Arts District venue. Bring your friends, grab a drink and bites from the on-site taqueria and enjoy a liberated listening experience with works from Dvorak, Bloch, Wiancko and Mendelssohn, among others.
Anya Hinkle & John Doyle: “Oceania” Album Release Celebration
ALL AGESSEATED SHOWLIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLEANYA HINKLE & JOHN DOYLE Asheville, NC-based Appalachian-Americana singer/songwriter Anya Hinkle and renowned Irish guitarist John Doyle team up for a celebration of OCEANIA, Hinkle’s new album released in 2024 on Red Parlor Records. OCEANIA, produced by Kevin Moloney (U2, Sinéad O’Connor), features Hinkle’s award-winning songs supported by Doyle’s celebrated sense of groove and melody on guitar. The result of their collaboration is a collection of songs that uses the vastness of the great Pacific as a metaphor for how our lives are often quite uncertain–uncertainty as wide and deep as the ocean itself–requiring more courage to voyage across it than we think we have at times. Expect an evening of songs and stories from across the globe from two master storytellers and musicians. Anya Hinkle tends to her craft with both personality and purpose. Based in Asheville North Carolina, she shares her songs with exacting detail, superb storytelling and an emotional honesty that reflects her rural roots in Appalachia and its surrounding environs. Nevertheless, she’s consistently expanded her musical parameters through regular touring throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia, soaking up the diverse influences of the sounds and cultures that she’s encountered along the way. With her new album, Oceania — due for release on Red Parlor Records this spring — Anya brings that inspiration to full flourish. Recorded at Citizen Vinyl studios in Asheville, and overseen by veteran producer Kevin Moloney (U2, Sinéad O’Connor), the album features an impressive group of players, including renowned Irish guitarist John Doyle on guitar, bouzouki, and mandola; acclaimed slide guitarist Billy Cardine on Dobro, lap steel, and chaturangui; Daniel Kimbro on bass; River Guerguerian on percussion; Mary Lucey sharing harmony vocals; and special guests Michael McGoldrick contributing Uilleann pipes and whistle; Mick McAuley on accordion; and Clark Rinard on organ and electric piano. Lauded as “a darling of the Americana scene” by Bluegrass Today, and described by PopMatters as “…a burgeoning force behind the Appalachian roots revival…,” Anya has reached a new peak in her career, one that’s yielded ten albums to date — including those on her own and several in collaboration with others. Oceania also marks the latest triumph in a trajectory that’s yielded a first place win in the 2019 MerleFest Chris Austin Songwriting Competition (courtesy of her song “The Ballad of Zona Alston”), a win at the 2023 USA Song Competition, and runner-up status at the International Acoustic Music Awards in 2022.
Wizard Fest Asheville
ALL AGESSTANDING ROOM ONLYLIMITED NUMBER OF VIP TICKETS AVAILABLE: includes priority entry at 7pm when doors open, wizard fest scarf, wizard fest beanie, wizard fest t-shirt, custom wizard fest wand and miscellaneous wizard themed swag all in a wizard fest tote bag!WIZARD FESTYou may not be a wizard but this year, you’ll get to party like one! Wizard Fest is an interactive fantasy themed party that celebrates all things magic, witches & wizards, cosplay along with themed drinks (hard and soft!) and Wizard Games all spun into one spectacular event
Laura Cortese and the Dance Cards
ALL AGESSEATED SHOWLIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLELAURA CORTESE & THE DANCE CARDS“Everything is so heavy in the world right now,” Cortese says, who’s been living in Belgium the past two years. “When someone comes to our show, listens to this album, or hears one of the songs, I want it to feel like relief and release.” So how does one begin to chip away at walls of self-preservation and shame that create social confinement? For Cortese and company, one word came to mind: dancing. “When you dance, you let it all go,” she says. With that in mind, Cortese set off on a personal creative journey like none before — no rules, no restrictions, just the desire to create music that makes you move. Kassirer helped her sift through her cache of over 40 songs and encouraged her to form songs from her snippets, riffs, and ideas. For the first time, Cortese opened up the songwriting process to The Dance Cards collective. She exchanged ideas and songs with her bandmates remotely, and then enticed a few with the promise of Belgian delicacies to cross the ocean and flesh out arrangements. From recordings of the players beating on all sides of their instruments, Kassirer fashioned loops and created bass lines with members of the band. Lyrics were honed through group examination, with the goal of framing each story in the most impactful way possible to inspire empathy in the listener. The work was quick, but it was deep. Cortese explains that the song that inspired the album title, “Treat You Better,” is about the complexities of long-term love, obligation and healthy versus unhealthy dynamics. “I started writing this a few years after I got divorced and was pretty disillusioned about finding a partner. I was asking some older friends — couples that from the outside seemed to have healthy and lovely long-term relationships — questions about their relationships. I found this coincidental link between many of the couples. The morning person gets up and makes the other one coffee and brings it to them in bed. Ultimately the song is about examining personal barriers to treating your partner better—how critical and cynical we get, juxtaposed against images of your partner doing nice things for you.” “Belgium, my new home, is #1 for suicide in Western Europe. They keep a lot of distance socially,” she says. “People meet up with friends in bars instead of their homes. It takes a long time to make real friendships. Trying to integrate gave me new perspective on what it feels like to be an outsider”. CAROLINE COTTER Caroline’s Cotter’s sunlit songs honor the countless ways of being human. With her honeyed voice and disarmingly honest lyrics, Cotter sings about connection, nostalgia, gratitude, loss and wanderlust. Lyrics like, “Find me somewhere out on the road / Take me into your heart and into your home,” make perfect sense from a touring artist who has played over 1000 shows in 45 states and 16 countries. Cotter has released three records, Dreaming as I Do (2015), Home on the River (2018) and Gently as I Go (2023). Under the Radar magazine says her music, “brings forth an abiding sense of warmth and welcome, offering an uplifting reminder to make the most of every moment.” Everywhere she goes, her oracular songs elicit emotion and spark insight—medicine for our collective longing.
Erik Koskinen Band
ALL AGESSEATED SHOWLIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLEERIK KOSKINEN BAND He’s a lights-out guitar (player) and his band is as good as any band in the country. But he’s also a top-shelf writer, with a blade-sharp wit and love songs so real and tender they seem to transcend the form. I know of few writers whose relationship to their own landscape, in this case the rural north, is so elemental, and so integral. His songs feel like weather. People know him in Minnesota, where most bar bands seem to cover at least one of his songs, but otherwise he’s still one of the best kept secrets in the country. He sings about an America that doesn’t get much play anymore, the one where the people at the bottom can’t quite get ahead, and where working people aren’t cartoon props in a culture war, but shrewd human beings living hard lives, and hard loves. His songs have the diamond-hard clarity and simplicity of Tom Petty, and like Petty, Koskinen can sing a literal statement without metaphor or ornament, and make it move like poetry. The spiritual hunger in rock ‘n’ roll that came from blues and gospel is still a hunger in these songs, and if you listen hard, you can hear that lean coyote voice – wary, feral, full of fierce delight – lighting up the wee hours from somewhere out on the prairie. ~J Foucault CAROMIA AND RAHMRahm & CaroMia had a close musical friendship for many years through the lens of R&B, Funk and Neo-Soul before discovering a shared deep love of singer/songwriter music. This is a side of them seldom seen outside late nights on front porches. Over the last handful of years, they have crafted their own homage to their roots- Lush harmonies carried across dreamy soundscapes, songwriting that shines in this simplicity.
An Evening With Vanessa Collier
– ALL AGES- SEATED SHOW- LIMITED NUMBER OF PREMIUM SEATING TICKETS AVAILABLEVANESSA COLLIER “There’s a young lady [Vanessa Collier] came onstage with me, I forget where I was, but she’s playing an alto saxophone, and man, she was amazing.” Those are the words of Buddy Guy in a recent issue of American Blues Scene, describing an impromptu performance with Vanessa Collier on the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise. If you haven’t been fortunate enough to meet Vanessa and witness one of her head-turning, fiery, and passionate performances, you should definitely make sure you do. As a master musician and multi-instrumentalist, Vanessa Collier, weaves funk, soul, rock, and blues into every powerful performance and she is downright impressive. With soulful vocals, searing saxophone, and witty songwriting, Vanessa is blazing a trail, racking up an impressive arsenal of honours, and has already singled herself out as an artist of distinction and one we would all do well to watch. It’s not simply the accolades she has accumulated so far, although they’ve been many — two Blues Music Awards for “Horn Player of the Year”, and a third BMA for “Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year”, eight Blues Music Award Nominations (BMAs), a Blues Blast Award nomination, the Jammingest Pro Award bestowed by the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise, First Place for lyrics in the International Songwriting Competition, Best of 2014 Blues Breaker on Dan Aykroyd’s BluesMobile — it’s the fact that she has accumulated all these honours even while her career is still in its infancy. A 2013 graduate of the prestigious Berklee College of Music, she’s toured nationally and internationally, released four critically acclaimed albums (2014’s Heart, Soul & Saxophone, 2017’s Meeting My Shadow, and 2018’s Honey Up, 2020’s Heart On The Line. Honey Up spent 9 weeks atop the Billboard Blues Album Charts Top 15, 3 months on the Living Blues Charts at #10 and #23, and continues to be spun on Sirius XM’s B.B. King’s Bluesville radio station! It’s not surprising that the press has been quick to commend her efforts as well. Blues Blast Magazine affirms, “Vanessa Collier is a fresh face on the American blues scene, and in addition to her soulful vocals, she brings a mighty sax to the table…” Blues Music Magazine proclaims, “Collier is a fresh face who comes to the blues stage carrying her reed instruments, a dual degree from Berklee College of Music in Boston, a major label debut, almost two years of touring with Joe Louis Walker, and a mature musical vision…Collier commands center stage with her vocals, soloing, and stage presence.” Midwest Record exclaims, “This bluesy singing sax player knows how to bring the slinking funk to her captivating, award winning sound that has echoes in young Bonnie Raitt/Maria Muldaur vocal sounds…Killer stuff on every level, this sounds like one of the reasons you first became a music fan. Killer stuff.” and AXS.Com declares that she “might as well go ahead and add another shelf to her trophy case because clearly, she’s going to need it. With a voice that often recalls that of blues-rock stalwart Bonnie Raitt, Collier turns up the heat…”
OUTPOST: Bluegrass Jam with Sam Wharton FREE SHOW
– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLY- RAIN OR SHINE Sam Wharton is a founding member of the SFTRB with one of the best voices in bluegrass. He is the ultimate ambassador for the music. Along with developing his own unique style of rhythm guitar, he is one of the finest harmony singers in the world! He grew up singing barbershop quartet in Alabama. He honed his chops in Telluride, but now calls Western North Carolina his home! Free Show! Sit ins are encouraged at this open Bluegrass jam.
OUTPOST: Bluegrass Jam with Sam Wharton FREE SHOW
– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLY- RAIN OR SHINE Sam Wharton is a founding member of the SFTRB with one of the best voices in bluegrass. He is the ultimate ambassador for the music. Along with developing his own unique style of rhythm guitar, he is one of the finest harmony singers in the world! He grew up singing barbershop quartet in Alabama. He honed his chops in Telluride, but now calls Western North Carolina his home! Free show! Sit ins are encouraged at this open Bluegrass jam.
OUTPOST: Will Hartz & The Midwives Vinyl Release Party with Santiago y Los Gatos
– ALL AGES- STANDING ROOM ONLY- RAIN OR SHINE Moving back to Western North Carolina after 13 years of working as a professional musicianin Maui, Will Hartz joined forces with The Midwives, a session band, at Echo MountainRecording in Asheville, NC. The band is a collaboration between Zack Page on bass,Nashville based Herschel VanDyke on drums, Muddy Welles on lead guitar and Jim Aaron onharmonica. Members of The Midwives have recorded and performed with artists such asElizabeth Cook, Casey Kristofferson, Amy Nelson, Krave Amiko and more. Hartz’s debutalbum, “Easy”, also features guest appearances from Jamar Woods on Hammond B3 (SleepAlone and Heavy Door) and Casey James on pedal steel guitar (Show Me).Over two days, they rehearsed and recorded eight tracks at Echo Mountain Recording inAsheville, NC with Grammy award winning engineer Julian Dreyer at the board (engineeringand mixing), Autumn Greenfield producing and Kenny Harrington assisting. The album will bereleased online and on a limited vinyl run, with digital and vinyl mastering done by Dave Harrisat Studio B Mastering in Charlotte. The songs on the album were tracked live in the studio,with minimal overdubs, and prerelease reviews of “Easy” have compared this LP to earlyBlack Crowes more than once.The album releases digitally worldwide on May 17, 2024 and a limited run of vinyl will beavailable for sale at the vinyl release show on June 20, 2024 with Santiago y Los Gatosopening the evening.
