holiday Archive
31 Oct 2021
Album Review: Andrew Gold’s Halloween Howls
Musician, singer and songwriter Andrew Gold combined a commercial (read: broadly accessible) sensibility with superb songwriting chops. With so many years having passed, many forget (if they knew at all) […]
11 Feb 2021
Album Review: Merry Christmas from Jackie Wilson
If you sent or received anything via the US Postal Service in the final months of 2020, you likely know that due to some serious shenanigans on the part of […]
10 Dec 2020
Album Review: Mrs. Miller – A Christmas Gift From Mrs. Miller & Other Stocking Stuffers
In the history of pop music, there are few tales stranger – and more inexplicable – than that of Elva Miller. In this postmodern era, the idea of so-bad-it’s-good has […]
05 Dec 2020
One from the Archives: Jamie Laval’s Celtic Christmas
2020 has been an unusual year .. to put it mildly. Pretty much nothing anywhere has gone as planned. Normally, by this time of year we’d all be gearing up […]
31 Oct 2020
It’s a Goolie Get-together!
A little over a year ago I was tapped to write liner notes for the first-ever reissue (on CD and vinyl) of The Munsters, a cash-in album that’s actually pretty […]
05 Jan 2020
Russ Wilson: It’s All About the Music
Russ Wilson is one of the busiest musicians in Western North Carolina. Leading or playing in no less than nine bands, the singer and multi-instrumentalist has still found time to […]
29 Dec 2019
Kat Williams: Season’s Gratitude
For nearly two decades, Katrina Way “Kat” Williams was a prominent fixture of Asheville’s live music scene. The vocalist’s multigenre repertoire earned her a place as one of the region’s […]
28 Dec 2019
Album Review: Amanda Anne Platt & the Honeycutters — Christmas on a Greyhound Bus
When an artist releases an album (or EP) of holiday music, it need not be designed to fulfill an obligation to a label. It also needn’t be a placeholder while […]
05 Dec 2019
Holiday Music for 2019
‘Tis the season for holiday music. It’s a genre that often gets a bad rap, for good reason: a lot of it is pretty dire. Though there are classics (like […]
01 Dec 2019
The Spirit of Christmas Lives in Hendersonville, N.C.
In between his jam-packed musical schedule, Hendersonville-born-and-raised Blake Ellege found the time to attend and graduate from the International University of Santa Claus. Fulfilling a lifelong ambition – a dream, […]