15 minute read
WNC bands aim even higher amid shutdown
A&E
Been a long time since I rock and rolled
Facing uncertainty amid the shutdown, WNC bands aim even higher
BY GARRET K. WOODWARD STAFF WRITER
In the depths of The One Stop in downtown Asheville on Saturday, members of the Travers Brothership and Abby Bryant & The Echoes were setting up and sound checking for that evening’s inaugural “Blue Ridge Blues Jam.”
The cavernous live music spot sits on College Street, right underneath its sister venue, the storied Asheville Music Hall on Patton Avenue. During the shutdown, The One Stop went through a massive renovation, from redoing its entire front dining area to incorporating a brand-new menu.
The beloved stage area in the back now has (semi-permanent, waist-high) fencing surrounding the musicians as a way to mitigate any issues amid an era of social distancing and state protocols.
Both the Brothership and the Echoes represent the next generation of popular rock acts emerging from Asheville and greater Western North Carolina. Though the Brothership are childhood friends hailing from Black Mountain and the Echoes formed as students at Appalachian State University in Boone, the groups call Asheville home — each now carrying the melodic torch ignited decades ago by rock guitar icon and “local boy done good” Warren Haynes.
The Brothership and the Echoes had an enormous 2019, gaining accolades and mainstage slots as major festivals in Southern Appalachia and beyond. It was a moment to parlay that hard-earned stage credibility into a juggernaut of sound and presence in 2020. But, that was not to be seen with the pandemic and complete halt of the music industry until further notice.
The “Blue Ridge Blues Jam” represents the first night members of the bands are dipping their toes into the unknown waters of live music in 2021, especially indoors and in front of an audience in real time (and not digitally streaming on a screen).
Outside of The One Stop, guitarist/singer Eric Travers leans against a wall, watching the fast-paced College Street traffic, readying himself for the impending gig. Upstairs in the stillshuttered Asheville Music Hall, Bryant sits on a couch and looks through her show notes, surrounded by ladders and equipment signaling another renovation.
Kyle Travers: It was very frustrating. I’d say it was strange for the [Travers Brothership] to be off the road, as well. We travel [extensively] and we’re used to playing 150 to 200 nights a year nationally. And we were just starting to sell tickets all over.
When you’re performing live that much, you really get used to releasing all your stresses and anxieties onstage. And we had to find another way to do that, whether it’s sitting by a campfire more often or jamming in the house — it still meant something. [But, we’ve] had to fight for survival quite often, that’s why we named the first record, “A Way to Survive.” So, we’re just used to overcoming whatever obstacles are thrown at us, even if they’re pandemic obstacles.
Abby Bryant: There was this grieving stage where you’re [a young band] and you’re energetic. You have all this output ready and you lose a whole year of that. You’re ready to tour. You’re enthusiastic. And you’re hungry for more opportunities and growth to put your art out there.
We started [Abby Bryant & The Echoes] in 2017. It took a few years to really get this off the ground to where we just [really] felt the stage, [where] we felt it happening. We felt it all working and we were so excited to share our songs.
But, we’re about to release our first full album [this year]. It was partially recorded before the shutdown. We’ve been hanging in here this whole time, just doing what we can every single day to write a song and finish the album. And it’s really what kept us going, because we had this focal point. This [past] year gave us the opportunity to put the detail and focus into an album.
Smoky Mountain News: But, I would surmise that you’re a band that decided a long time ago that this is what you’re going to do, come hell or high water — it doesn’t matter, you’re going to push through.
AB: Absolutely. I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel while we’re working every day and just trying to hold onto that silver lining of having this album to put out into the world. And I’m really trying to hold onto the positive parts of that. This is an unprecedented time. [With playing tonight], I’m seeing that light, even it was just a faint glimmer for a longtime.
KT: Growing up together, [the Travers Brothership] used to play football in the backyard. We’ve always stuck together, no matter what. Now this has happened, [we’re] amongst our families — in any way, shape or form, we just stick together and kind of get pushed through. This is just another time that we had to do that, you know?
It just comes with the brotherhood value of it. Brothers stick together. We work off each other. If one of us is confident, then it spreads like wildfire. If one of us feels like we can get through something, we can all get through it.
Travers Brothership.
(photo: David Simchock)
— Kyle Travers
BY GARRET K. WOODWARD
Ode to ‘Big Jack,’ ode to $100 felines
to this day, chasing after birds and meandering along the creek bed across the street. At one point in the quest to bring Sandy home, my father borrowed a squirrel trap
Rest easy, “Big Jack” (aka: “Jack from my late grandfather, seeing as he heard Kerouac”). Goodbye to my beloved cat, there was another orange cat in our neighwho passed away this week back in my borhood. But, this cat was elusive. My dad native Upstate New York. set up the trap with some cat food and
In the summer of 2007, right after I grad- caught the animal. It was definitely orange uated college in Connecticut, I returned and a female. back to Plattsburgh, New York, and lived But, it was a feral orange cat. Extremely with my parents for a period (until I could feral, as seen by the damage to my folks’ guefind a writing gig). Well, my little sister’s stroom bed when my dad let it out of the cat, Sandy, went missing one day. This small trap in their house. The cat ran through the orange kitty. house in a manic state, eventually out the
So, my parents placed flyers around the front door that we’d left open to persuade it neighborhood, put a notice in the newspa- to exit the living room. To this day, my per and offered a $100 reward. We got all mother still brings up my father’s stupidity kinds of leads. And one afternoon, my father in bringing a feral cat into the house. left to see if Sandy was at this house nearby. Well, the search continued. No Sandy.
An hour later, my father returned with We never did find her and hope she found a this fat orange cat. He walks in the house new home somewhere, anywhere. But, now and announces, “Sandy is home.” I go, “Dad, we had Jack (and Hunter). From 2007 until this cat is twice the size of Sandy. That, and this week, he lived on my parents seven-acre Sandy is a girl. This is a boy.” n farmhouse, spending his days roaming the f He shrugged it off that he hadn’t made a back fields and woods of the property. Total mistake (though later he said he felt bad for e freedom, with a meal always waiting for him the cat’s living situation and gave the owner t in the kitchen. $100 for Jack). From then on, Jack was also e I named him after my favorite writer, affectionately known as “C-Note.” Jack Kerouac, though he always felt like a l What’s even wilder is how my father “Jack” to me: this free-spirited, loving beast kept bringing home these orange cats: in d of a feline. He never met a stranger and was hopes of one being Sandy, or at least one n adored by little kids, seeing as he would let that would suffice my little sister’s sadness n them pick him up and he’d never get mad or of losing her cat. e scratch them, not once in all those years and , After Jack became a member of our fami- with all those wild kids. It was incredible. ly, a week later, my father brought home ] In all actuality, he was more of a dog another orange cat he paid $100 to a com-l than a cat, at least I think so. It was sad to plete stranger for. This time it was a girl. It leave him when I moved to Western North was Sandy’s size. And yet, it wasn’t Sandy. Carolina in 2012. But, he was in good hands -We decided to keep her, too. No sense in with my folks. I always looked forward to tossing her back out into the unforgiving g being reunited Jack when I would find my night. Anyhow, there was enough cat food , way back to the North Country. I’d pull up and love to go around. , in the driveway and he burst out from the
I called her “Hunter” after infamous barn and dart right towards me. He knew writer Hunter S. Thompson, a pillar of my e my truck. journalistic existence. As feisty and curious y The rest of my stay at home, he’d always -as ever, she still resides at my parents’ abode end up sleeping in my bed, purring away like e e g a a small car engine. I remember many nights when I’d be at my folks for the holidays. It’d be freezing cold outside, a roaring fire in the back den.
Entering the den, I’d come home from the local bars after a night out with old high school cronies. Grab a nightcap from the fridge and flop into my father’s trusty recliner. Flick on the TV. Lean back. Kick up the footrest.
And, like clockwork, I could hear Jack hop off the bed upstairs, his little paws trotting down the staircase, only to jump into my lap and hold court until I decided to head to bed. I loved that cat. He was something else, I tell you what.
To my dearest Jack, I hope wherever you are right now, that you’re roaming free. I hope someone is kind and attentive enough in the ether to turn on the kitchen faucet just so delicately (a pencil-thin stream) that you can get some water in the only way you preferred to receive hydration.
I hope there are plenty of birds up in trees to watch and observe from way down below underneath the bushes. And I hope there’s a recliner and a lap for you to jump up onto, once again holding court in the great cosmos.
Life is beautiful, grasp for it, y’all.
(photo: Garret K. Woodward)
Black Mountain College art exhibit
“Connecting Legacies: A First Look at the Dreier Black Mountain College Archive” features archival objects from the Theodore Dreier Sr. Document Collection presented alongside artworks from the Asheville Art Museum’s Black Mountain College (BMC) Collection to explore the connections between artworks and ephemera.
The exhibition is on view in the Asheville Art Museum’s Van Winkle Law Firm Gallery through May 17.
Displayed in this exhibition are archival objects shown alongside works from the museum’s Black Mountain College Collection, which comprises over 1,000 artworks and ephemera. These objects create connections, each one a thread contributing to a nuanced tapestry of the people, materials, geographies, and ideas of Black Mountain College and its ongoing legacy.
“Connecting Legacies” highlights ephemeral materials that focus on underrepresented narratives and the women and people of color of Black Mountain College.
For instance, during the Summer Music Institute of 1944, almost 10 years to the day before the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court Ruling, Alma Stone Williams became the first African American student invited to BMC. The following summer, musicians Roland Hayes and Carol Brice were welcomed to the college as its first African American faculty. Programs from their performances are curated alongside student artworks made around the same period.
Black Mountain College was an experimental liberal arts community based in Black Mountain, from 1933-1957, founded by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and others who believed in an educational model that was distinctly different from the prevailing frameworks of the time.
Archival objects on view are part of the Theodore Dreier Sr. Document Collection and include mimeographs, letterpress, linoleum prints, offset prints, photographs, handwritten text, clippings, and correspondence. They contain internal records of the school and documentation from Dreier’s tenure at the school from 1933–1949, as well as correspondence, mailings, and publications through the mid-1950s.
Featured BMC faculty and student artists in this exhibition include Lorna Blaine Halper, Ruth Asawa, Hazel Larsen Archer, Elaine Schmitt Urbain, Warren “Pete” Jennerjahn, John Urbain, Joseph Fiore, Ray Johnson, Barbara Morgan, Anni Albers, and more.
The museum’s galleries, store and Perspective Café are open with limited capacity. Art PLAYce, our intergenerational makerspace, and the Frances Mulhall Achilles Art Research Library remain temporarily closed.
The museum welcomes visitors from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Monday, with late-night Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. The museum is closed on Tuesdays.
General admission is always free for Museum Members, UNC Asheville students, and children under 6; $15 per adult; $13 per senior (65+); and $10 per student (child 6–17 or degree-seeking college students with valid ID). Admission tickets are available at www.ashevilleart.org/visit.
• Balsam Falls Brewing (Sylva) will host an open mic from 8 to 10 p.m. every Thursday.
Free and open to the public. www.balsamfallsbrewing.com.
• Elevated Mountain Distilling Company will host semi-regular live music on the weekends. Free and open to the public. www.elevatedmountain.com.
• Frog Level Brewing (Waynesville) will host semi-regular live ALSO: music on the weekends. Free and open to the public. www.froglevelbrewing.com. • Lazy Hiker Brewing (Franklin) will host The
Waymores March 13. All shows begin at 7 p.m. unless otherwise noted. www.lazyhikerbrewing.com. • Lazy Hiker Brewing (Sylva) will host
Mountain Gypsy March 5 and The
Waymores March 12. All shows begin at 7 p.m. unless otherwise noted. www.lazyhikerbrewing.com. regular live music on the weekends. Free and open to the public. www.nantahalabrewing.com.
• Water’n Hole Bar & Grill (Waynesville) will host semi-regular live music on the weekends. 828.456.4750 or www.facebook.com/waternhole.bar.
• The Haywood County Arts Council’s
“Winter Member’s Show” will be held
March 5-27 in the Gallery & Gifts showroom at the HCAC in downtown
Waynesville. Original work for 24 local artisans. Free and open to the public. www.haywoodarts.org.
• The Bethel Christian Academy will be hosting the “Papertown Spring Market” fundraiser on March 13. There will be booths for local vendors to set up and sell their products: boutique clothing, home decor, handmade items, jewelry, and more. 828.734.9733.
The Waymores.
Atlanta-based duo The Waymores will hit the stage at 7 p.m. Friday, March 12, at Lazy Hiker Brewing in Sylva. The duo will also perform at 7 p.m. Saturday, March 13, at Lazy Hiker Brewing in Franklin.
Kira Annalise and Willie Heath Neal are The Waymores and they’re the epitome of acoustic country music. He was born in a cop car, lived in and out of foster care and served in the U.S. Navy. She used to get stage fright until she was swept up by his charm and grit, started writing country songs and never looked back.
Now, they travel the world together, writing songs from the road and bringing their intimate and fun stage presence to audiences around Southern Appalachia and beyond.
Both shows are free and open to the public. For more information, click on www.thewaymores.com.
Film explores emojis, societal inclusion
From March 14-17, Western Carolina University’s Bardo Arts Center will present, “Picture Character,” a documentary exploring the history and impact of the now-ubiquitous emojis.
Most people are familiar with the classic smiley face often used in texts and social media, but with the rise of mobile phones, the use of emojis (Japanese for “picture character”) have become a global popular culture phenomenon.
The popularity of the tiny icons raises new questions about identity, inclusion, and representation in technology and digital platforms. “Picture Character” explores the multifaceted, conflict-prone, and often hilarious world of the creators, lovers, and arbiters of emoji, our world’s newest pictorial language.
“When we embarked on directing this documentary about emoji, we anticipated creating a delightful, lighthearted romp through a strange and quirky set of digital symbols,” say Shane and Cheney in their filmmakers’ statement. “What we couldn’t predict at that time was how the creators of emoji — especially the creators of hijab emoji, maté emoji, and period emoji — would come to shape our story. As we witnessed these people from such diverse backgrounds fighting tirelessly for their emoji, we found ourselves asking deeper questions: Who should decide which emoji are added to the set? And can the full diversity of the world be represented in a limited set of digital symbols?”
Stream this documentary for free from March 14-17. Once you begin watching the documentary, you have 24 hours to finish. Watch on a browser or through the EventiveTV App. Learn more and pre-order your free ticket at arts.wcu.edu/picturecharacter.
Due to COVID-19, Bardo Arts Center is currently closed to the public. Find a selection of all virtual experiences upcoming and on-demand by visiting arts.wcu.edu/explore.
