Of note She sings Sidhe songs The all-female vocal-and-percussion group Sidhe has announced plans to release their first full-length CD this spring. The album is currently untitled. For more information, e-mail the group at bluvida@msn.com. Front-row reviews Who: Rudy Roberson Where: Soco Moon Tea House When: Saturday, Nov. 9 “Why on earth is someone like … Read more
As a boy, WNCW Program Director Mark Keefe recalls hearing Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” on the car radio on a Thanksgiving trip to his grandmother’s house. Through the years, he discovered that many stations across the country made a habit of spinning the rambling comic epic on Turkey Day. “It’s one of those things … Read more
In 1967, the year between my birth and my father’s being shipped off to Vietnam, folk singer Arlo Guthrie released his comic spoken-sung epic about a young man convicted of littering on Thanksgiving Day. The song, “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” tells how later, when the young man’s draft board learns of his former crime, he is … Read more
A game, I say. I toss out a word; you respond any way you like. “OK, sure,” Billy Jonas agrees via cell phone as he navigates Philadelphia-area traffic, bound for another show. Rhythm “Rhythm is what I live by,” Jonas notes. “It’s how I organize my creative life, as well as my more mundane life. … Read more
Readers make selfish friends. We demand that the writers we like keep to their keyboards and produce new novels for us on schedule, and we pooh-pooh any impediment that might keep them from their allotted task. Writer’s block, car accident, snow, sleet, dark of night — all are dismissed by the loyal reader with a … Read more
Hearing that North Carolina Stage Company’s late-summer run of the rock opera Hedwig and The Angry Inch was very impressive, I anticipated memorable things from the company’s current production, A Wrinkle in Time. But I emerged from a second-weekend performance of Wrinkle largely unmoved. The play, based on Madeleine L’Engle’s children’s novel of the same … Read more
On June 13, 2001, bluegrass heavyweights Ralph Stanley, Ricky Skaggs, Alison Krauss and Jerry Douglas could be found on stage at New York City’s Carnegie Hall, feeding the new mainstream bluegrass and acoustic-music frenzy that sprung, almost unaccountably, from the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? Alongside this group, playing to the capacity crowd, … Read more
The Buncombe County Board of Commissioners voted 3-2 on Nov. 19 to restore partial funding to the Asheville-Buncombe Community Relations Council. The CRC is one of many nonprofits whose county funding was cut from the commissioners’ 2002-03 budget last June. Director Bob Smith made his plea before the board for funds to continue long-running programs. … Read more
A pair of perennially touchy subjects — crafting regulations to govern development on steep slopes and letting county residents create their own zoning districts — dominated the Buncombe County Planning Board’s Nov. 18 meeting. The idea of regulating hillside development has been kicked around for at least a year, with the previous Planning Board considering … Read more
Preserving the past It began with simple curiosity. Ten years ago, John Morris was at a family Thanksgiving gathering, looking at some old photographs his grandmother had. He’d seen them before, but this time they really caught his interest — particularly one time-worn postcard. “It was obviously very old, [and] it was a panorama of … Read more
