An up-and-coming music mecca

When Rolling Stone magazine released its 2008 “Best of Rock” issue, Pat Whalen and his crew at the Orange Peel were in for a “very pleasant surprise.” The Peel was named by Rolling Stone as one of the five best rock clubs in the country. While club owner Whalen knew he had a good thing going at the Orange Peel, he didn’t expect the five-year-old venue to find itself in such rarefied company just yet. Noting Asheville’s “bohemian vibe and attentive crowds,” Rolling Stone placed the Peel in league with buzz-heavy clubs from places where the lights burned just a bit brighter: New York, Austin, Detroit, and Norfolk.

The national name-check might have stirred up a bit more fuss in this once-sleepy mountain burg if it had come out of nowhere. In fact, any local music fan with a passion for handstamps and rattling eardrums could have told you that the Asheville music scene had been gaining steam for years. In addition to a marked uptick in the number of national acts playing Asheville, the local scene is thriving, with a glorious mess of smaller bands playing smaller venues every night of the week, peddling everything from bluegrass to hardcore to post-punk-emo-ambo-fill-in-the-blanks improv. Lend a willing ear, and there’s someone here to fill it.

Consider at last count, there were 220 local bands listed with the newsweekly Mountain Xpress’ online musicians’ registry and more than 80 venues featuring live music. Granted, not every one of those bands is active, committed or (dare I say) talented, and not every club on the list is a live music mecca. Still, on an average Saturday night, a music-lover in Asheville has more than forty live acts to choose from, ranging from the marquee names at the Orange Peel to local heroes at Jack of the Wood to blues jams and cover bands at smaller watering holes all over town. Not too shabby for a city of 70,000.

The quality and quantity of touring bands has likewise improved. Old-timers —and around here lately that means anyone who has lived in Asheville more than five years — can easily recall a time, not so long ago, when big-name performers rarely came through town. That’s no longer the case. The Orange Peel has hosted the likes of Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Los Lobos, Ween, Wilco, and the Smashing Pumpkins — the last booked a nine-day residency at the club in 2007. National acts regularly grace the stage at the Grey Eagle, Stella Blue, and the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, as well as the many festivals that call Asheville home.

Why Asheville? 

How has this small Appalachian city, with its relative isolation and small student population, become home to such a vibrant music scene? Ask around town and you’ll get a lot of talk about chickens and eggs. If the egg in this equation is the burgeoning music scene, the chicken is Asheville’s larger downtown revitalization. That renaissance — which has seen bistros, bookstores, and boutiques replace block upon block of boarded-up windows — has dramatically increased the appeal of Asheville generally, not just to artists and musicians, but to monks, masseurs, librarians, developers, retirees, baristas, mountain bikers, life coaches, general contractors, and freelance writers pounding out copy for regional magazines.

Musicians like Asheville because everyone likes Asheville —  facile at best, shameless sloganeering at worst. And yet there is a lot of truth there, which is why the locals keep saying it. Sift their responses a little finer, though, and three key ingredients emerge in explaining why musicians are drawn to Asheville: natural beauty, urban feel, and a strong musical tradition.

“Asheville is a beautiful place,” says Whalen. “I think it resonates with a lot of people when they see Asheville for the first time. I think the mountains of Western North Carolina are particularly appealing. They’re kind of soft, you can deal with them, they’re green, they have enough irregularity to be interesting. [There are] not many cities where you can be in the downtown and enjoy an urban place that has a great local history and great creative energy and be surrounded by this amazing natural [beauty].”

It’s not just the green, says Whalen, but the grays, browns, and bronzes of stone, brick, and steel. Despite its modest size, Asheville has an urban feel, thanks to a compact downtown filled with classic architecture, much of it dating from Asheville’s last renaissance in the 1920s. “There’s a hunger nationally for authenticity and for getting away from the cookie-cutter nature of strip malls and gated subdivisions,” Whalen notes. “People really respond to the authenticity of downtowns because they see a lot of historic texture there.” Combine the natural and urban beauty, Whalen says, and you have a place that draws creative and independent people with a thirst for art of all stripes.

Deep roots

On top of all that enchantment lies a musical tradition with deep roots. When Bascom Lamar Lunsford organized the first Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in 1928—an event now considered the world’s first “folk festival.” He drew on a wealth of talent that had supplied the mountains with song for generations. Add some celebrated pickers, a few seminal recordings, and the weekly summer hoedown known as Shindig on the Green, and Asheville can lay claim to a mountain music tradition as strong as any in the country. And while old-time fiddle tunes may not have been what put Asheville on Rolling Stone’s radar, the locals take it for the treasure that it is.

“Music is respected here and passed down,” says Brian Sarzynski, a local writer who has been chronicling Asheville’s growth for 11 years. “Musicians recognize that. Even if they don’t play bluegrass or old-time music, there is an appreciation here of talent.”

Brian Landrum, drummer, singer, songwriter, producer, and since 2005, co-owner of the Grey Eagle Music Hall, echoes that sentiment. “People have always been drawn to the area, and I don’t think that’s anything new, necessarily. We’re more aware of it now, and it’s in a more commercial context, so maybe people are catching on to it more, but I think it’s always kind of been that way. From Bascom Lamar Lunsford to de Kooning [the abstract impressionist painter who taught at Black Mountain College in the 1940s], it’s just all over the map with the amazing artists and entertainers that have been drawn to this area.”

“This is a place where a lot of people were willing to take risks and explore art,” says Sarzynski, “and take a chance on their music. And [Asheville] was supportive of that.”

No overnight success

Despite an abundance of beauty and tradition, the rebirth of Asheville — both as a tourist destination and a music scene — was a long time coming. You know you’re a struggling city when your “dark period,” as defined by local histories, lasts more than 50 years. From the Great Depression —when Asheville became saddled with a crushing debt load, reportedly the highest per capita debt of any city in the nation — through the mid 1980s, the local economy was in the doldrums. While a 50-year recession is nobody’s idea of fun, Asheville wouldn’t be the same without it: for decades, nobody had any money to tear down Asheville’s old buildings, allowing the Arts & Craft and Art Deco wonders to survive until they were back in vogue.

As the city began to emerge from its debt in the 1980s, signs of life stirred in a previously dormant downtown. Local philanthropist Julian Price and his Public Interest Projects firm played a crucial role in filling empty buildings and promoting economic development in town. Musically, upstart rock clubs such as Be Here Now and Vincent’s Ear began to supplement the traditional music scene. As more businesses opened downtown, residential rates grew. As residential rates grew, businesses redoubled their efforts. Sidewalk traffic jumped, tourism grew, relocations increased, and before long Asheville was in the midst of the proverbial Snowball of Downtown Revitalization (surely you’ve heard of it). More people, more stores, more restaurants, more tourists, more condos, more money, more buzz.

And more music. Much more music. While Be Here Now, Vincent’s Ear, and some of their contemporaries have closed —victims of fickle fans, poor business acumen, and/or shady real estate shenanigans — dozens of new clubs have opened to take their place. Landrum calls the growth “exponential,” and Whalen agrees.

“Everything we’ve done [downtown] has succeeded more than I expected, the music scene in particular,” Whalen says. “It was a hope that we would draw national acts. There was a hope that a really vibrant music scene would develop around the local clubs — and all those things have happened beyond my expectations.”

“We were worried a little bit when we opened the Orange Peel that it would hurt some of the local clubs,” Whalen continues, “but I think the opposite has happened — it’s really helped the other clubs. We have a lot of strong clubs that are a little bit smaller than the Orange Peel but are also bringing in great acts from all over the country. The other thing that’s really flowered is just the local music scene in terms of bands and performers. We’re really starting to get a lot of people moving here who are musicians and want to be part of the Asheville music scene. The quality of our local bands and performers just keeps getting better and better.”

While it’s best not to go overboard  — Asheville is not Austin, Asheville is not Seattle, no matter what some of the starry-eyed boosters will tell you — there is a feeling that Asheville has something special going on, particularly for a town of its size. Outsiders have taken notice — not just the editors of Rolling Stone, but musicians, fans, and booking agents from across the country. When they draw up the next musical map, Asheville’s dot will be bigger than ever.

A long run?

To be sure, some wonder whether the buzz surrounding Asheville is sustainable, or even desirable. Some maintain that Asheville has reached a saturation point, with more music and artists than it can support. Others worry about gentrification, suggesting that Asheville is no longer affordable to the musicians and artists that made it such a vibrant place to begin with. As with all boom towns, there are plenty of recent arrivals who want to close the doors behind them. We got here, you didn’t, now please leave us alone.

Most Ashevillians, however, are content to share their city, and enjoy the ride while it lasts. It may last a while. Club owners and musicians alike see bright days ahead. They see continued growth for Asheville not just as a local scene or a national pit-stop, but as a regional draw for musicians and music-lovers alike. Club owners tell of fans coming from around the South to see shows in Asheville. Whalen sells plenty of tickets to folks from Knoxville, Charlotte, Raleigh and further afield.

“They’ll come up from Atlanta,” notes Sarzynski. “They’ll come down from Virginia to see a show, and spend a weekend, and spend some money here. And some of them end up living here.”

And why not? Everybody likes Asheville.

At least that’s what we tell ourselves.