APLR Presents: **Garcia Peoples**

**with Country Westerns**

Wednesday, September 18th, 2024

AyurPrana Listening Room - 312 Haywood Rd, Asheville, NC 28806

Doors 7PM || Show 8PM

**Garcia Peoples**

Formed in New Jersey by guitarists Tom Malach and Danny Arakaki, the band took a few years to find their flying shape, solidifying into a lineup with Danny’s brother Cesar on drums and Derek Spaldo on bass by mid-2016. Ramping up their acceleration around the time of their 2018 Cosmic Cash debut on Beyond Beyond Is Beyond Records, they’ve blasted through residencies and new songs and sessions and collaborations, relocating to New York, picking up two new members in keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Pat Gubler and bassist Andy Cush, and leaving a trail of live tapes in their wake. This year, they’ve delivered not one but two new albums for BBiB: the sleek and song-oriented Natural Facts and the sprawling improvisatory opus of One Step Behind. 2019 also saw the first performances by the full Garcia Peoples lineup, a six-person behemoth with Spaldo on third guitar.

With a stash of live recordings accumulating at the Live Music Archive, Garcia Peoples’ music is very much a living entity. Since the release of their previous two albums, songs have started to expand, jam suites have grown, and experiments have been undertaken. The first part of 2019 has seen Garcia Peoples back Philadelphia guitarist Chris Forsyth (an expanded Solar Peoples Band has hit double-drummer overdrive several times now), and joined with guitarist Ryley Walker. They’ve improvised on WFMU, and jammed with the sounds of ocean waves and falling rain at strange late night happenings. Probably something else new and wonderful and weird has happened in the Garciaverse since I wrote this.

Whether or not you thought you knew Garcia Peoples’ music, One Step Behind is something new and beautiful, for new heads and old. No matter where you stand–behind, beyond, or another plane altogether–One Step Behind is ready. For those about to get on the Bus, we salute you.

**Country Westerns**

A Nashville institution in the making, Country Westerns infuse punk rock chutzpah with a classic rock sheen, yielding a sound that’s simultaneously fresh and reminiscent of all the LPs you used to “borrow” from your cool uncle. Their debut album came out in May 2020, beautifully coinciding with… a worldwide pandemic. Despite everything that cursed year threw at it, the self-titled LP survived and thrived on its many merits, rounding out the year on Pitchfork’s Top 35 Rock Albums of 2020. Tons of love also came in from Magnet, Brooklyn Vegan, Consequence, Paste, Glide, No Depression, Popmatters and more.

CW’s varied inspirations are evident on their self-produced “pandemic EP” that features covers by Richard Thompson, Jad Fair, and Dead Moon. Their pedigrees also belie their musical tastes and range.

Atlanta-native Plunket started as a hardcore-kid-turned-singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar; his first show was opening for Cat Power when he was nineteen. He traveled north and paid his dues in Brooklyn mainstays The Weight, and as a touring bassist with King Tuff and Gentleman Jesse. He eventually landed in Nashville where he befriended Brian Kotzur.

A Nashville underground legend, Brian Kotzur, prior to Country Westerns, drummed for indie rock luminaries Silver Jews and Crooked Fingers. His percussive talents also lead to him to play in bands with Duane Denison of The Jesus Lizard, and country legends Bobby Bare Jr. and Charlie Louvin. He also scored and performed in Harmony Korine films over the years. Korine says of his longtime colleague: “Kotzur is hilarious, one of a kind, great drummer, even better character, he cracks me up, we used to do push ups together.”

Polymath bassist Jordan Jones (formerly of LA glam rockers Easy), is the newest addition to the band, rounding out the rhythm section with the seasoned touch of a founding member.

This is an all ages event.

Garcia Peoples with Country Westerns 

Tough Freaks

Garcia Peoples

Country Westerns

Gigs

Asheville

AyurPrana Listening Room

APLR Presents: **Chris Rosser**

**ft River Guerguerian, Zack Page, Stephanie Winters, Jahidi, and more.**

**with special guest Shannon Hayden**

Saturday, October 12th, 2024

AyurPrana Listening Room - 312 Haywood Rd, Asheville, NC 28806

Doors 6:30 PM || Show 7:30 PM

***This event is GA Seated***

**Chris Rosser**

Album Release Concert w/ special guests River Guerguerian, Zack Page, Stephanie Winters, Jahidi, and more.

Asheville-based multi-instrumentalist, producer, and singer-songwriter Chris Rosser celebrates the release of his new album “Worrying Boy” with an all-star band. Chris has appeared many times at the AyurPrana Listening Room with his duo Free Planet Radio, Sean Johnson & the Wild Lotus Band, and many other Listening Room favorites.

For this concert to launch Chris’ new global-infused singer-songwriter album, he will be joined by master percussionist River Guerguerian (his Free Planet Radio cohort), bassist extraordinaire Zack Page, virtuoso cellist Stephanie Winters, master tabla player Jahidi and more!

**Shannon Hayden**

Renowned for her innovative prowess and emotive depth, cellist Shannon Hayden stands as a beacon of artistic exploration in the world of neo classical and contemporary music.

With a masterful command of the cello and a mesmerizing array of multi-instrumental talents, she orchestrates symphonic tales that transcend genres, inviting audiences into a realm where tradition and innovation harmoniously converge.

Her innate passion for music led her to blend classical virtuosity with a fusion of genres, effortlessly traversing boundaries between classical, pop, and avant-garde realms. Her performances evoke a whirlwind of emotions, captivating listeners with a spellbinding fusion of technical precision and soul-stirring artistry.

Chris Rosser - Album Release 

Chris Rosser

**A Community Gathering Celebrating the Life of David Newman**

AyurPrana Listening Room - 312 Haywood Rd, Asheville, NC 28806

Doors 1:00 PM || Event 1:30 PM

**We will gather on Saturday, October 26th at Ayurpana Listening Room to share song, video, stories & ritual in remembrance of David Newman. Open to all. 1:30-3:00**

All ages

A COMMUNITY GATHERING CELEBRATING THE LIFE OF DAVID NEWMAN

APLR Presents: Seán Johnson and The Wild Lotus Band

October, 26th, 2024

AyurPrana Listening Room - 312 Haywood Rd, Asheville, NC 28806

Doors 6PM || Show 7PM

**Seán Johnson and The Wild Lotus Band**

We warmly welcome you to a night of interactive, soul-stirring chant music with Seán Johnson & The Wild Lotus Band. Experience heart-expanding ancient mantras, given new voice through dynamic songs that merge conscious lyrics and New Orleans roots, rock, gospel, and world grooves.

The band includes Seán (vocals and harmonium); Alvin Young (6 string fretless bass & guitar); Gwendolyn Colman (percussion & vocals); Narada Wise (drums) and multi-instrumentalist Chris Rosser.

"A joy to listen to for anyone who appreciates wildly creative music." - Yoga Journal

"A hybrid of East and West that will bring joy to your heart and get your body boogieing." - Yoga Chicago

”The music of Seán Johnson & The Wild Lotus Band flows from the mystical confluence of the Ganges River and the Mississippi Delta—the deep bhakti tradition of Indian devotional chanting fused with the cultural cross-currents that so enrich the music of the group’s hometown of New Orleans, Louisiana. The result is music of majestic musical and emotional range—a heart journey from darkness to light, wrought from the homespun cloth of gospel, blues, soul, country, rock, Celtic folk, and other musical influences, all filtered through the magical Afro-Caribbean-inflected rhythmic flair of the Crescent City.

The much-beloved band evoke, conjure and celebrate that universally felt yet impossible-to-define essence that lies at the heart of all things, what Bob Marley once called “a natural mystic, flowing through the air.” – Alan di Perna (Rolling Stone Magazine, Creem, Billboard)

All Ages

An Evening of Mantra Music with Seán Johnson and The Wild Lotus Band

Sean Johnson & The Wild Lotus Band - Om Hari Om/Sharanam Ganesha (Refuge)

Sean Johnson & The Wild Lotus Band

APLR and Drop of Sun Present: **Setting**

**with Superflower**

***This event is GA Seated***

**Setting**

Setting is Nathan Bowles (solo/trio, Pelt, Black Twig Pickers) on strings, keys, tapes, and percussion; Jaime Fennelly (Mind Over Mirrors, Peeesseye) on harmoniums, synthesizers, and piano zither; and Joe Westerlund (solo, Califone, Sylvan Esso, Jake Xerxes Fussell) on drums, percussion, and metallophones. Setting established its own setting and found its footing in regularly scheduled improvisational sessions outside Westerlund’s home in Durham, North Carolina, beginning in 2021. The three players began as two, in the context of occasional Bowles and Westerlund percussion duo performances dating back to 2018. Fennelly provided the initial impetus to gather and play together with intentionality and discipline, as well as an harmonic adhesive and thickening agent in the grain and gravity of his harmonium and synthesizer. As always, Bowles’s background as a pianist and drummer informs his approach to banjo, imparting a woodiness, a piney verticality and resinous tang. Westerlund’s training with Milford Graves is apparent in his polyrhythmic flow and its correspondences to human circulatory and corporeal rhythms. They recorded their collective discoveries on their debut album “Shone a Rainbow Light On” (Paradise of Bachelors), which Uncut praised with a "9/10", while Mojo Magazine listed the album as #3 of Underground Records of 2023, calling it “a record that spectacularly reconciles micro-detailed improv with deep-listening ambience.” And in Aquarium Drunkard’s Year in Review, they penned, “Like Fripp and Eno holed up in a mountain cabin looking for UFOs, Setting’s debut is a luminous slice of kosmische Appalachia that’s like scanning the horizon until you lose all separation between earth and sky.”

**Superflower**

With her oblique pop compositions, Zoie Reamer's musical project Superflower finds beauty and meaning in everyday moments, transforming mundane rituals into contemporary hymns. Based in the reflective mountainscapes of Asheville, North Carolina, Superflower blooms at the intersection of folk and experimentation.⁠

Channeling Appalachian echoes, Reamer's repetitive guitar patterns and enveloping vocals create trance-like songs that feel both grounded and otherworldly. A rotating cast joins in on cello, clarinet, and more, adding undulating textures to the circular foundations.

This is an all ages event

Setting with Superflower

Superflower

Setting

APLR Presents: **Six Organs of Admittance**

**with Tashi Dorji**

November, 6th, 2024

AyurPrana Listening Room - 312 Haywood Rd, Asheville, NC 28806

Doors 7PM || Show 8PM

**Six Organs of Admittance**

With Time is Glass, Six Organs of Admittance is captured once again in the intricate tangle of the fretboards, soaring in open skies above. Like lens flare cutting through the speakers; spiderwebs cracking the windshield that holds back all the onrushing reality. Blowing the dust away, cutting a new path for cognition. As is always endeavored....

After 20 years of living on the road in different places, Six Organs of Admittance had returned home to Humboldt County—a far country, to some, but still part of the world through which creatures of all kinds are moving through and con- tributing to. And some of them are human. Alone together — forming connection and exchange out of thought and expression — no different from the people on the other side of the Redwood Curtain. It was there, where Six Organs had long ago emerged, in the name of everything cycling, of circles that spiral concentrically and remain unbroken, the new music was conceived.

In moments, it was as if the future had some- how wrapped around 360 degrees; elsewhere, the systems and patterns inside the writing and recording only became evident later — like a recognition that cumulus and nimbus clouds which passed through the sky the day before contained familiar shapes. Informing the songs accordingly as he went, Ben picked up on modes both musi- cal and lyrical, threading backward through the time of Six Organs of Admittance. Almost marinating in it as a way of life. Working on the music and the vocals, then spending some time with them while stepping away from them. Walking the dog and coming back to them. Time is Glass is made of that kind of time. Alone time.

Recorded in the visceral environs of home, Time is Glass is sharply focused, even as misty impressionist mountains float through the back- ground. Sweet and spiny, “The Mission” sings its purpose, before turning abruptly to the orches- tral rumble of “Hephaestus”: rural industrial psychedelia, ecosystem goth, synths arcing to lift a helplessly earthbound community into the firma- ment above. Winding almost imperceptibly back into song with “Slip Away”, the time of the record becomes clear, moves fluidly, relaxed but aware, from event to event. People and things coming around again. The intuit, passing through wormholes and time, sounding deep then dissolving into the universal. The acoustic sounds ringing, layered suddenly, then clear again. Explosions of a new kind of distortion. Ecstatic melodies. Communing. The space of a day. The space of a season. Time is Glass, and Six Organs of Admittance is here and will be here, again.

**Tashi Dorji**

Tashi Dorji is a Bhutanese guitarist and improviser based in Asheville NC. Tashi’s own skewering of guitar traditions has developed an idiosyncratic take on the instrument, one defined by movement and profound openness to technique. Tashi has released music both as a soloist and as a collaborator, notably with Mette Rasmussen, Aaron Turner (Sumac, Mamiffer), Che Chen (75 Dollar Bill), Aki Onda, Michael Zerang, John Deiterich (Deerhoof), C Spencer Yeh, Patrick Shiroishi, KUZU ( w/ Dave Rempis & Tyler Damon), MANAS (w/ Thom Nguyen), Patrick Shiroishi, Dylan Fujioka on labels like Moone Records, Gilgonko Records, Bathetic Records, Trost, Feeding Tubes, UNROCK, VDSQ, MIE, Aerophonic Records, Family Vineyard, Astral Spirits etc. Tashi is currently on Drag City records.

Six Organs of Admittance with Tashi Dorji 

Death Flowers

Six Organs of Admittance

Tashi Dorji

APLR Presents: **Natalie Jane Hill**

**with 7auPG (ft members of Animal Collective and Sham)**

Friday, November 22nd, 2024

AyurPrana Listening Room - 312 Haywood Rd, Asheville, NC 28806

Doors 7PM || Show 8PM

**Natalie Jane Hill**

Natalie Jane Hill is a Texas native guitarist and singer-songwriter currently based in the mountains of North Carolina. She writes songs that reach for the haunted and comforting corners of the natural world, dressed in a gently virtuosic and singular approach to finger-style guitar.

'Solely,' the sophomore effort by folk guitarist/singer-songwriter Natalie Jane Hill, is a record of transition. While the Central Texas native’s stunning debut “Azalea” grew from years spent developing a textural narrative voice and idiosyncratic guitar style in the vibrant Blue Ridge Mountains, “Solely” represents a period of inward growth, and an outward push into an expanded sonic palette.

Following a move back to the Austin area in the fall of 2019, just months ahead of the pandemic, Natalie began an intensive period of reflection, and expanded her song-craft’s foundations from the broader themes of nature into the vulnerable intricacies of self-discovery. Along with this process came an openness to external creative input.

Recorded between October 2020-March 2021 to Tascam 8 track in the Lockhart Texas home of producer Jason Chronis (Voxtrot, Tele Novella), these recordings represent Hill’s first incorporation of other musicians into her arrangements, featuring performances by Mat Davidson (Twain) among several other trusted friends. There is a liberating and careful grace in these collaborations, providing strength and color to the upper branches of each song while preserving space for the health of the roots.

'Solely' is a celebration of knowing ourselves well enough to be able to accept the darkest paths of introspection, which can allow us to combine our creative influence with others to construct the experiences we want to have. Like lived experience itself, this music breathes and inhabits the space you allow for it, constantly revealing new qualities and inviting repeated reflection.

**7auPG**

7auPG is a new band of 3 friends

Natalie Jane Hill with 7auPG

Orb Weaver

Natalie Jane Hill

APLR Presents: **Mary Lattimore**

**with Tashi Dorji + Min Xiao-Fen (duo set)**

Friday, December 27th, 2024

AyurPrana Listening Room - 312 Haywood Rd, Asheville, NC 28806

Doors 7PM || Show 8PM

**Mary Lattimore**

Through evocative, emotionally resonant music, Goodbye, Hotel Arkada, the new LP from American harpist and composer Mary Lattimore, speaks not just for its beloved namesake — a hotel in Croatia facing renovation — but for a universal loss that is shared. Six sprawling pieces shaped by change; nothing will ever be the same, and here, the artist, evolving in synthesis, celebrates and mourns the tragedy and beauty of the ephemeral, all that is lived and lost to time. Documented and edited in uncharacteristically measured sessions over the course of two years, the material remains rooted in improvisation while glistening as the most refined and robust in Lattimore’s decade-long catalog. It finds her communing with friends, contemporaries, and longtime influences, in full stride yet slowing down to nurture songs in new ways. The cast includes Lol Tolhurst (The Cure), Meg Baird, Rachel Goswell (Slowdive), Roy Montgomery, Samara Lubelski, and Walt McClements.

“When I think of these songs, I think about fading flowers in vases, melted candles, getting older, being on tour and having things change while you’re away, not realizing how ephemeral experiences are until they don’t happen anymore, fear for a planet we’re losing because of greed, an ode to art and music that’s really shaped your life that can transport you back in time, longing to maintain sensitivity and to not sink into hollow despondency.”

Memories, scenes, and split-second impressions have long filled Lattimore’s musical universe. As one of today’s preeminent instrumental storytellers, she has “the uncanny ability to pluck a string in a way that will instantly make someone remember the taste of their fifth birthday cake,” writes Pitchfork’s Jemima Skala. Lattimore’s impulse to record life as it happens matches her drive to travel and perform, as profiled by Grayson Haver Currin for The New York Times: “Lattimore recognized that being in motion shook loose strands of inspiration, moods she wanted to express with melody. She needed, then, to remain on the go.” That sense of fluidity has also made her a prolific collaborator outside of solo work. 2020’s Silver Ladders, recorded with Slowdive’s Neil Halstead, opened the door for Lattimore to widen the vision of her primary project as well, and its proper follow-up is the natural next scale. “All of these people I asked to contribute have deeply affected and inspired my life.”

For the title and inspiration, Lattimore’s mind returns to the island of Hvar in Croatia, where she first saw those silver ladders at the water’s edge. “There’s a big old hotel there called the Hotel Arkada, and you could tell it had been hosting holiday-goers for decades in a great way. I walked around the lobby and the empty ballrooms and it looked like a well-worn, well-loved place. My friend Stacey who lives there told me to ‘say goodbye to Hotel Arkada, it might not be here when you get back’ and I heard soon after that it was actually going to be renovated in a very crisp, modern way.” Lattimore became fixated on the ingredients that make a place special — for Hotel Arkada, the patinaed chandeliers, the patternedbedspreads, the echoes of its intangible charm — and how when those leave this world, as they inevitably always will, it feels important to memorialize them, “to bottle it for a brief second.”

**Tashi Dorji + Min Xiao-Fen (duo set)**

Tashi Dorji and Min Xiao-Fen, two Asheville-based artists who have come together in collaboration. Tashi Dorji is a Bhutanese guitarist who shatters traditional guitar conventions with his fiercely experimental style. His approach deconstructs classic forms into something entirely new and unrestrained, reminiscent of icons like Derek Bailey and John Fahey. NPR Weekend Edition lauded Min Xiao-Fen as “one of the world’s greatest virtuoso.” Ms. Min, a pipa player, composer, and vocalist from China, takes her traditional roots and cranks them up to a new level of intensity and experimentation, creating a sound that’s both rebellious and deeply engaging. Together, Dorji and Min promise an acoustic and electric performance of duets and solos that is both mesmerizing and boundary-defying—a standout event that could attract a diverse audience eager for something new and exciting.

AyurPrana Listening Room

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