If you read this week’s story about chanteuse Madeleine Peyroux (in the print version of Xpress), then you know she’s a hard act to … contact. But your hard-working and dedicated reporter (moi) did manage to finagle this late-breaking e-mail interview with the touring blues singer.
Commissioners seek exemption from mental-health-board term limits In its latest effort to rein in development, the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners approved new rules strictly limiting the height and density of condominiums and apartments built at higher elevations. Got it? Good.: Mountain Voices Alliance member B.J. Snow protests outside the Buncombe County Planning Board’s Feb. … Read more
Two local environmental groups are considering legal action against the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners to overturn a cut-rate lease granted to Progress Energy to site a controversial new power plant. The Canary Coalition and the Mountain Voices Alliance say the commissioners’ action violated the state’s open-meetings law and ignored the potential impacts on county … Read more
Theremin 101: How to make it sing Good vibrations: Theremin master Pamelia Kurstin will lead Moog’s upcoming clinic, a rare chance to become familiar with the electronic instrument. courtesy MOOG Properly played, few instruments are as eerily haunting and ethereally beautiful as the theremin. Improperly played, few are as annoying. Of course, that’s part of … Read more
Merce Cunningham recreated dance, taking it from movement intended to relate a narrative to an organic outgrowth of a body’s natural flow. However, once the internationally famed choreographer developed his method and style—after he trained dancers to execute precise spinal arcs, steps, leaps and bends, he did the unthinkable: He flipped a coin. And the … Read more
In the beginning, Elvis hips and Jagger lips drove the kids wild. They drove preachers and PTAs even wilder, and they responded with vinyl-burning pogroms and fire-and-brimstone sermons about the decline of Western civilization. Ettes front woman Lindsay “Coco” Hames will do anything to please you. They feared what a Catholic cardinal at the time … Read more
I should be writing about Madeleine Peyroux, the singer with the affected Billie Holiday voice and stern, Emily Deschanel-à-la-TV’s-Bones face. But she’s late sending back the answers to the questions I e-mailed her last week, so instead I’m reading about another hard-to-peg vocalist: Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power). Crazy like a fox: Lots of artists … Read more
Haven Kimmel’s 2006 book She Got Up Off the Couch, and Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana is a literary retronym: It’s a nonfiction memoir. She not only gets up off the couch, she gets her Ph.D: Though her pic is still on the cover (for continuity’s sake … remember the beautifully homely baby gracing … Read more
“Black Sedan” Vies For CMT Prize Country Music Television recently accepted a video by local bluegrass band Buncombe Turnpike for its “Music City Madness” contest. Buncombe Turnpike’s video for their song “Black Sedan” was selected out of 600 entries and will compete with 64 finalists. Should they win the multi-round elimination contest, the band will … Read more
Give a little: The Mountain Sports Festival wants you to volunteer for the event, scheduled for May 4 to 6 at Carrier Park in Asheville. Help is needed throughout the weekend for tasks as varied as selling refreshments, working at the event headquarters, helping at race locations and setting up and tearing down. Volunteers who … Read more
