In the world of Celtic music, ’twas the Irish who discovered America. So pity the poor Scotsman, then, his pipes a-blazin’? “We’re kind of in the slipstream of the Irish in a way,” Jim Malcolm of celebrated Highland band the Old Blind Dogs noted by phone recently from a tour stop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. … Read more
Inside the cattle call What: WNC Theatre League Unified Auditions Where: Blue Ridge Motion Picture Studios When: Saturday, March 1 The main sound stage at Blue Ridge Motion Picture Studios is a giant cavern painted flat black. In the middle of the room sits a set for a TV pilot, a local cooking show called … Read more
On March 1, Asheville’s homesick New Orleans transplants, attempting to offer the uninitiated a taste of Big Easy bedlam, donned monkey suits and delivered our city’s inaugural Mardi Gras parade. Not to be outdone, a local Ireland native and a Celtic-centric bar owner have united to provide the area’s first annual St. Patrick’s Day Festival. … Read more
What does God look like? “A guitar,” asserts Leo Kottke. Such an answer, Kottke concedes by phone from his Minnesota home, might strike some as blasphemous. Yet if you’re a disciple of the acclaimed guitar innovator, a believer in his six- and 12-string channeling of the holy ghost of John Fahey, you accept his pronouncement … Read more
Considering the newly created U.S. Department of Homeland Security and our current climate of war hysteria, it seems appropriate that Blue Ridge Community College’s Belfry Players chose The Crucible as their latest production. Then again, if they’d done the play five years ago, when then-President Bill Clinton was impeached for sexual dalliances with a young … Read more
The Rev. James M. McKinley rose one recent winter morning to deliver his Sunday sermon not on the evils of drink, drugs or gambling, or even on the sins of the flesh. Instead, McKinley lifted his voice in praise — preaching the gospel of public art. The leader of Hendersonville’s Unitarian Universalist Fellowship talked to … Read more
By the time March rolls around, I am generally in the thick of getting the garden whipped into shape, with seedlings busting out on every windowsill. This spring, however, has been different. Fact is, I hesitate to call it spring at all. My kids have been reveling in the many snow days, and I’ve burned … Read more
Forum explores African-American contribution to the railroads The latest installment of the YMI Cultural Center’s ongoing educational-history project — “Ties That Bind: Local, Regional, and National Railroad History Told from an African American Perspective” — will focus on the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the nation’s first black labor union. The forum happens Saturday, March … Read more
To the average city resident, Council members might seem to hold a lot of power. Under state law, however, there are certain things municipalities can’t do without special permission from the state legislature. Before Council can levy a new 1 cent prepared-food-and-beverage tax to pay for upgrading the Civic Center, for example, city leaders must … Read more
photos by Heather Erson Where else in America could you have two rallies espousing fundamentally differing viewpoints while ostensibly promoting the same concept (support for U.S. soldiers), staged simultaneously within 100 yards of each other — a formula fraught with the potential for ugly confrontation — and have the whole day come off without a … Read more
