A&E

The art of sitting and listening

Historic Asheville building becomes musical beehive

BY GARRET K. WOODWARD S TAFF WRITER

In a seismic move that will further propel the Asheville and greater Western North Carolina music scene into the national spotlight, Citizen Vinyl will officially open its doors to the public on Oct. 8.

Situated in the historic Asheville CitizenTimes building on O. Henry Avenue in downtown, the property will become the new home for an extensive artistic collaboration. At the helm will be Citizen Vinyl, a record manufacturing facility (the first ever based in the state) at the heart of this musical project.

The collaboration will also include Session (Citizen Vinyl’s adjacent bar/cafe), Coda: Analog Art & Sound (an immersive art gallery and retail space) and Citizen Studios (WWNC’s former broadcast station, and now an in-house recording and mastering facility).

At the core of this melodic beehive is Gar Ragland of Citizen Studios. A longtime professional musician, record producer and label head, Ragland will bring WWNC’s legendary Studio A back to life — a piece of American musical history now entering its next bountiful phase.

Smoky Mountain News: With the opening of Citizen Vinyl next week, what’s the vibe going through the building right now?

Gar Ragland: We’re super excited. That’s where the real fun and magic is in this project, [which] is having the opportunity to build — and help build — a project where I find myself surrounded by people who really inspire me, who are so good at what they do.

And we all share this sort of youthful enthusiasm that what we’re doing as a team, as a sort of collective, is something far more special, impactful and enduring for Asheville than any of us would be able to do on our own sort of respective silos.

SMN: That also plays into one of the things I love not only about Asheville, but Western North Carolina, which is the idea of collaboration.

GR: Exactly. [And] I think that this project is a great case study for that. We feel like it’s a tremendous privilege and responsibility to be doing what we’re doing in that building. Our whole team has so much reverence for it and the architecture.

Our whole approach with this project has been to be as minimally invasive to the building, to our design and our concept, as we possibly can be. And frankly, it’s to our advantage because [the building] has so much to offer. Why would we mess this up and try to reconfigure it into something that it’s not? This [building] is beautiful art.

Obviously, our number one goal is to be a successful business. And we want to earn the reputation nationally for being the go-to for quality record manufacturing. But, as a collective under this building, we want to symbolize — and remind people of — the deep, historic and artistic history of Asheville.

SMN: Of course. I mean, two of the pillars of American music, Jimmie Rodgers and Bill Monroe, got their start in WWNC’s Studio A.

GR: Yeah, exactly. And so, we have recently done a beautiful restoration of the studio. As of about three months ago, I moved my studio equipment from Echo Mountain Recording, just a few blocks away, to Studio A. [Studio A] is where Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys played live on the “Mountain

Want to go?

The grand opening of Citizen Vinyl will be from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8, at the historic Asheville Citizen-Times Building. The business will hold those same hours Wednesday through Sunday.

Masks will be required inside when not seated. Social distancing guidelines will also be in place. For more information, click on www.citizenvinyl.com.

Music Hour.” So, that for me is a total added bonus. It was always my dream that, with a project like this, I would have an onsite room where I could continue to do the work that I love — as a producer, a mixer and a record label guy.

Also, we ended up with a building that had a history of manufacturing. The [Asheville Citizen-Times] printed the newspaper in the building. So, we’re honored to be able to bring modern-day manufacturing back to this amazing building.

And not only that, but we now have a firstclass state of the art analog recording studio upstairs where we’re celebrating the history of that radio station.

SMN: It’s been a very long road to this launch — a lot of logistics involved and probably a million obstacles. What’s going to be running through your head when the doors finally open?

GR: The first thought that’s going to come to my mind is — are they as inspired by this place as our team has been? Are they going to embrace the passion, the love we have for this concept? How effective is this going to be to draw and inspire people, in a way that they can come and feel like they’ve gained something from the experience of spending time in this beautiful building?

It’s a very intentional experience. We want people to come in and feel as included, invited, welcomed and inspired by good sound and food. It’s a multisensory celebration of life. We hope that we can be the community resource that we have built this to be.

SMN: In a very endearing way, it feels like a love letter to Asheville.

GR: Yeah. I mean, Asheville has been really good to all of us. This is a way of celebrating and honoring. I think all great art is created in part by a sense of gratitude and grace. And if this is it, this is the way that we are manifesting that, then that’s a wonderful thing.

If we can use this project as a way to really reaffirm our [artistic] identity [as creative forces in Asheville], and to help [those] new audiences that Asheville continues to attract [learn] about our rich cultural history and manufacturing — if we can serve that role as kind of an inspiration to the creative community, kind of a landmark in that way — then we would love that to happen to the benefit of Asheville.

BY GARRET K. WOODWARD

Ain’t it funny how the time just flies, don’t you think it’s time to get on board?

Nearing midnight here in Eastern Idaho. A landscape I used to call home some 12 years ago. The faces I chase down and interact with in these parts are familiar and beloved. The same faces I befriended when I first rolled through here to put down roots as a rookie reporter in January 2008 for the Teton Valley News.

Some twelve years later, I return from Western North Carolina. I return and think of what could have been and what came to pass. Wild, eh? Just one different shake of the dice and maybe I’d have never left Teton Valley.

One different shake and I found myself in Southern Appalachia. No regrets. Never, ever. But, the idea of time and place always blinks brightly in the dreams that I’ll never be able to shake until I’ve found what I’m looking for — whatever and whoever that may be.

Earlier this morning, I packed up my rusty, musty Toyota Tacoma in Bozeman, Montana, and said goodbye to my aunt and cousin (who live there) and my parents (who were visiting and flew home that afternoon back to Upstate New York).

In the back of my truck, I meticulously put away my clothes (street casual and running), sleeping bag, pillows, towels, toiletries, acoustic guitar, ukulele, two-thirds drank bottle of Kentucky bourbon, and Coleman cooler (my late grandfather’s) filled with domestic beers and two-day-old ice (proudly held cold for over 36 hours).

Exiting the Bozeman city limits, I pushed along U.S. 191 South towards Big Sky, Montana, at a steady 80 mph. Somewhere between Bozeman and Big Sky, I decided to pull off and go for a trail run/hike. I was in need of a good run, and a good sweat. So, why not dive deep into the surrounding mountains of high elevation, hot sun and dry air?

At the trailhead for Lava Lake (via Cascade Creek), I threw my bear spray canister into my running pack. With my whistle in my left hand and switchblade in my right, I tucked the pepper spray into the side pocket of my running shorts. Better safe than sorry in grizzly bear country.

About three miles up the steady incline of the trail, I found myself face to face with Lava Lake. Surrounded by the Spanish Peaks (hovering over 10,000 feet), I sat atop a boulder and gazed out over the water. A hot western sun burned above. I started to sweat, but it soon evaporated. Such is life, right?

But, no matter. My mind was racing in the presence of calm waters. Thinking and pondering. Nothing and everything. I wondered where those grizzly bears were right now. I wondered where that girl I once loved was, too. What ever happened to her, and to us? Bending down, I splashed some cold water onto my face. A spiritual baptism of sorts. For me, more so a moment to awaken myself into the immediate reality revealing itself before my eyes and ears. I thought of my late grandfather, wherever he was in the ether above the Spanish Peaks. I thought of my parents, wherever they were on their journey through the sky back to the North Country.

Back to U.S. 191, the nose of the Tacoma aimed for Eastern Idaho. Pass through Big Sky and towards West Yellowstone. Somewhere along U.S. 20, I found myself rocketing through Island, Park, Idaho.

Just below Island Park, a faint signal on my FM radio indicated the station being that of BYU-I (Brigham Young University-Idaho), as the tune “America” from the musical “West Side Story” blared oddly out of my truck speakers, the windows rolled down, echoing out into the vastness of nothing

(and everything), “Free to be anything you choose, free to wipe tables and shine shoes.”

By the time I crossed into the small prairie community of Tetonia, Idaho, my old buddy, Dave, got back to me (cell service finally resumed amid civilization). Entering downtown, I stopped at the Tetonia Club and met Dave for a couple cold Olympia beers (aka: “Olys”).

An hour later, I paid my bar tab at the Tetonia Club and headed for Dave’s farmhouse a few miles down the road. Creaking down the gravel road, I followed his taillights until they got bright red in front of the fence with the barking dogs and the barn floodlight in front of the house he calls home with his fiancé.

Within 12 minutes sitting in chairs in his living room, Dave and I erased 12 years of my absence from Teton Valley. Laughter. Agreement. Smiles. Beers held high and saluted to days and faces long gone, but never forgotten.

And here I sit at Dave’s kitchen table.

Eastern Idaho.

Right around 1 a.m. (mountain standard time). Somewhere in Western North Carolina, my friends and colleagues have been asleep for hours. It’s dark in here, except for the light of the MacBook Air and the sounds of whatever classic rock is on repeat within my headphones.

Side note: never forget that the Faces is one the greatest things that ever happened to rock-n-roll. So, play “Debris” every so often to remind yourself that life is good (even when it sucks, it still beats the alternative).

The domestic beer near my hand is still cold, even in the warmth of an Idaho farmhouse (some “120 years old,” Dave tells me). And yet, my fingers are warm and can’t keep from sliding across the keyboard, just like they did those many years ago, in 2008, in Teton Valley, Idaho, when I was 22 and thought I knew “what it all meant.” At 35, I still don’t know “what it all meant,” and I’m grateful for that realization.

Life is beautiful, grasp for it, y’all.

Summer Brooke & The Mountain Faith Band.

With Mountain Heritage Day canceled for 2020, Western Carolina University will still mark the date with a virtual concert by Summer Brooke & The Mountain Faith Band at 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26.

The special virtual performance can be viewed from the Mountain Heritage Day Facebook page and the university’s YouTube channel, with a recorded version available Monday, Sept. 28, at www.wcu.edu.

Summer Brooke & The Mountain Faith Band are perennial favorites at Mountain Heritage Day. They received the 2015 Mountain Heritage Award, given annually by WCU in honor of achievements in historic preservation and outstanding cultural contributions.

The award-winning ensemble began in 2001 from their home in Jackson County, playing bluegrass-gospel. In 2015, the band appeared on “America’s Got Talent,” reaching the semifinal round, which brought national exposure. The International Bluegrass Music Association named them

Drive-in concert series

The Maggie Valley Festival Grounds will host a drive-in concert series with beloved Americana/folk group Mandolin Orange Oct. 2 and legendary bluegrass act The Del McCoury Band Oct. 3.

All shows begin at 7:30 p.m. Gates open at 6 p.m. Social distancing and Covid19 protocol will be in place. Meals are available to pre-purchase. Beverages will be available for purchase onsite.

Hosted by The Grey Eagle and

as the “Emerging Artist of the Year” for 2016.

Also, throughout the day on Sept. 26, WCU social media platforms leading up to the concert will feature images of the 45 prior festivals, examples of local mountain residents at traditional work and play, and a sampling of vendors’ previous experiences.

The daylong free, family event began as Founders’ Day on Oct. 26, 1974, at the inauguration ceremony of Chancellor H.F. “Cotton” Robinson and became known as Mountain Heritage Day the following year. More recently, it was named as a “Top 20 Festival” by the Southeast Tourism Society.

Typically, around 15,000 visitors experience this one-of-a-kind event, with constant music and storytelling performances, living history demonstrations and Cherokee stickball games, with more than 140 vendors with arts and crafts and festival food for sale.

Mountain Heritage Day is planning for its return in 2021.

Mandolin Orange.

Worthwhile Sounds, tickets are available at www.thegreyeagle.com.

Waynesville art walk, live music

“Art After Dark” will continue from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2, in downtown Waynesville.

Each first Friday of the month (MayDecember), Main Street transforms into an evening of art, music, finger foods, beverages and shopping as artisan studios and galleries keep their doors open later for local residents and visitors.

Participants include Burr Studio, Cedar Hill Studios, Haywood County Arts Council’s Gallery & Gifts, The Jeweler’s Workbench, Moose Crossing Burl Wood Gallery, T. Pennington Art Gallery, Twigs and Leaves Gallery, The Village Framer, and more.

It is free to attend Art After Dark. For more information, visit www.waynesvillegalleryassociation.com.

• The Dillsboro Art & Craft Walk will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 3, in downtown. Find handmade treasures, with restaurants and a brewery open to the public. www.mountainlovers.com.

• The Blue Ridge Heritage Craft & Quilt

Exhibit will be held Oct. 2-31 at the

Haywood County Arts Council on Main

Street in Waynesville. www.haywoodarts.org.

• The “Haywood County Medical Exhibit: 1870-1950” will be held at The Shelton

House in Waynesville. The showcase will run through October. Admission is $7 adults, $5 students. Children ages 5 and under free. Admission includes Shelton

House. 828.452.1551 or www.sheltonhouse.org.

• Women of Waynesville will host a Wonder

Women Auction fundraising event at 6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 3, at Elevated

Mountain Distilling Co. in Maggie Valley.

Female entrepreneurs and business owners have donated a number of great auction items and proceeds will benefit Haywood

Habitat for Humanity. Music will be provided after the auction by Bohemian Jean.

• There will be a free wine tasting from 2 to 5 p.m every Saturday at The Wine Bar & Cellar in

Sylva. 828.631.3075.

• Elevated Mountain Distilling Company will host Arnold Hill (rock/jam) 8 p.m. Sept. 26.

Free and open to the public. www.elevatedmountain.com.

• Frog Level Brewing (Waynesville) will host semi-regular live music on the weekends,

Will King 6 p.m. Sept. 25 and Outlaw

Whiskey 6:30 p.m. Sept. 26. Free and open to the public. www.froglevelbrewing.com.

• The Ghost Town in the Sky parking lot (Maggie Valley) will host a drive-in concert series with St. Paul & The Broken Bones (soul/rock) on Oct. 29. All shows begin at 7:30 p.m. Gates open at 6 p.m. Hosted by

The Grey Eagle and Worthwhile Sounds, tickets are available at www.thegreyeagle.com. • The Maggie Valley Festival Grounds will host a drive-in concert series with Mandolin

Orange (Americana/folk) Oct. 2 and Del McCoury Band (blueALSO: grass) Oct. 3. All shows begin at 7:30 p.m. Gates open at 6 p.m.

Hosted by The Grey Eagle and Worthwhile

Sounds, tickets are available at www.thegreyeagle.com.

• Nantahala Brewing (Sylva) will host semiregular live music on the weekends. Free and open to the public. www.nantahalabrewing.com.

• The Smoky Mountain Event Center (Waynesville) will host a drive-in concert series with Mt. Joy (Americana/indie) Oct. 3,

Yonder Mountain String Band (bluegrass/jam) Oct. 7 and Whitey Morgan (outlaw country/rock) Oct. 10. All shows begin at 6:45 p.m. Gates open at 6 p.m. www.ashevillemusichall.com.

It has been said that the best place to start a story is at the beginning. With the first page of John Lane’s new novel Whose Woods These Are (Mercer University Press, 2020, 224 pg.) we literally begin at the beginning. “The first woods grew up far back in time, ancient as the last Ice Age, back beyond any notion we would call now.” After a brief description of how a woodlands came to be formed and how it looked through the ages up until the present day, we find Thomas Crowe Writer ourselves in the western-most uplands of South Carolina and in the woods with two families who own hundreds, if not thousands, of acres of undeveloped property and living side by side.

Lane takes us by the hand and into these woods, these properties, and with amazing detail of flora and fauna and lavish geographical description we find ourselves there, too, and participating in a storyline which begins as a love story between two young people from both of these families, but soon escalates into a feud based on property boundaries and an incident involving the shooting of a deer along said boundary lines.

With the Mitchells and the Paganos as the two conflicting families and their two young offspring as the main characters, Jae and Caddy, and the woods as a character in and of itself, our story unfolds. Old Doc Pagano, as he is known, goes missing down in the Mitchell Bottoms. A search ensues not only to find Old Doc but to find Jae Mitchell, who the Pagano family of fourwheeling, land-rich, dope-smoking militants decides has probably murdered the patriarch of the family and hence the conflict and the action is ignited.

Along with the major conflict there is also a conflict of interest, as Caddy has recently become a member of the local police force and as the officer in charge assigned to investigate Old Doc’s disappearance as well as Jae’s possible involvement as a suspect, has an ongoing romantic relationship with Jae that goes back many years.

And so in what reads like an intricate film script and a murder mystery plotline that is akin to Poirot meets Sherlock Holmes, our story unfolds. Most of the

scenes take place in the woods and in Mitchell Bottoms and plays out like a human pinball game with all the characters running into one another in potentially dangerous if not deadly circumstances, Lane’s individualized chapter presentations allow us to see things through the eyes of each of the major characters. While knowing from the outset what happened in the woods that day that Old Doc Pagano disappears and knowing of Jae’s innocence of any accusations of having killed Old Doc, we are led through the woods and through the minds of our characters in what becomes by the end of the book a hunting hound dog search of the hill country just north of Greenville, South Carolina. So, there’s lots of action, but even so it’s the quality of the writing by John Lane that carries the day and keeps our noses buried deep into the pages of this book. Much as in his previous novel, Fate Moreland’s Widow, which I wrote in these pages was, I thought, one of the very best Appalachian Noir novels to have come out of these hills, Whose Woods These Are, with its characterization of “the woods” that highlights what I’m going to call “the geneology of the land” loses no ground to his former masterpiece.

“The woods were known, and familiar. The trees all had names, scientific and common ones, and all autumn they shouted at the dawning days. There were fourteen different species of Quercus, oaks, with leaves like hands, stained copper, yellow, and bright red by November. There were other yellows, too — the high-ground hickories and the poplars. And there were streamers of tangerine sourwood branches bursting from the leaning trunks of the mature twisted trees, the forest’s contortion artists, anything to find the light. The scarlet of the dogwood understory sprinkled down the slopes speaking their language too. The maples had their dialect — red as flame. And then the closer you got to the river, the sweet gums and sycamores yelled burnt-orange verbs at the dawn.”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch and Jae’s more than humble house in the woods, he and officer Caddy are having a pointed conversation as to Jae’s innocence and what he is going to do to avoid the trigger-happy, gun-toting Paganos as well as the helicopters and the horde of local law enforcement. Jae has a Plan B in case his Plan A doesn’t pan out as the plot is ramped up with the escalation of the love story side of the storyline. No matter what the outcome of the manhunt is, in his epilogue at the end of the book, Lane sends us home with these words from a higher realm and as the naturalist that he is and has built his literary reputation around:

“Some call trees in a forest a form of community. Some say they send their roots deep into soil horizons, intertwine, and communicate in ways older than we can ever understand. Some say the big woods is only standing timber wasting away, sick for a sawmill. An oak can live four hundred years or more. A man or a woman, maybe a hundred. Does this sway the way we look at the woods? Are the woods more than a backdrop for our stories.?”

Thomas Crowe is a regular contributor to The Smoky Mountain News and author of the award-winning non-fiction memoir Zoro’s Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods. He lives in Tuckasegee in Jackson County and can be reached at newnativepress@hotmail.com

‘Banned Books Week’

Join the Marianna Black Library in Bryson City during the week of Sept. 27 as it recognizes “Banned Books Week.”

Each year, the American Library Association, Office for Intellectual Freedom records hundreds of attempts by individuals and groups to have books removed from libraries shelves and from classrooms. The OIF tracked 377 challenges to library, school and university materials and services. Overall, 607 books were challenged or banned in 2019.

A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials.

“Banned Books Week” (Sept. 27-Oct. 3) is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools.

It brings together the entire book community — librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.

This year, the library wants to encourage everyone to stop by the library to check out a challenged book. During “Banned Book Week,” the first 15 people that check out a banned or challenged book will receive their own personal “Banned Book Week” button.

For more information, the Marianna Black Library can be reached at 828.488.3030.

DURING ELECTIONS

we put out 3 jars to raise money to buy every child in Head Start a book.

MORE "VOTES"

MEAN MORE BOOKS FOR THE

LITTLE ONES!

This year the jars will be BIDEN, TRUMP, & SNOOPY Come in to "VOTE" with your money for a good cause.

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