An award-winning bluegrass band with gospel, folk and country music influences, Dailey & Vincent will hit the stage at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 4, at the Smoky Mountain Center for the Performing Arts in Franklin. 

Hailing from Asheville, Bryan Sutton is one of the most intricately talented acoustic guitar players of the modern era. He’s also an A-list, in-demand session musician and collaborator in Nashville, Tennessee. 

Sutton first appeared on the national bluegrass scene when, in 1995, he was named lead guitarist for Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, a position he held for three years.

An acclaimed Americana/bluegrass act, the Darren Nicholson Band will hit the stage for an intimate performance at 5 p.m. Wednesday, June 3, at the Cataloochee Ranch in Maggie Valley.

A Grammy-nominee and winner of 13 International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) awards, Nicholson has taken his own brand of mountain music around the world. 

When she was just in elementary school, fiddler/vocalist Lake Carver graced the cover of the Down the Road magazine, an annual publication put together through a partnership between The Smoky Mountain News and the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area based in Asheville. 

And much like her current life, Carver was heavily invested in the music scene in her native Wilkes County, finding herself headlong in local jams, all while soaking in as much knowledge and technical ability as possible. 

Jon Stickley is a pillar of the Asheville and greater Western North Carolina music scenes. He’s also a nationally-renowned guitarist, one whose skillset and scope goes far beyond the ancient mountains of Southern Appalachia. 

I first laid eyes and ears on Americana/roots act Old Crow Medicine Show at the 2005 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. At the time, I was a 20-year-old college student on my first solo road trip from my native North Country of Upstate New York — in search of the sound, the way. 

Approaching the Harrah’s Cherokee Center in downtown Asheville last Wednesday evening, a mob scene had overtaken the sidewalks surrounding the venue. 

The entry line stretched down the hill on Flint Street, across the Interstate 240 overpass and around the Asheville Skatepark on Cherry Street. Thousands of joyous faces aiming to witness one of the “must-see” live acts of the modern era — Billy Strings.

The Asheville Mountain Boys’ self-titled debut album drops on Feb. 12, heralding the arrival of a new era of old-school bluegrass from the Buncombe County quartet. 

Recorded at The Shop Studio with master bluegrass engineer Van Atkins (Doyle Lawson, Balsam Range, Town Mountain), the record blends heartfelt originals about love and loss with a hand-picked selection of bluegrass standards and deep cuts from the catalogs of the band’s musical heroes. 

Whirlwind. Virtuoso. Rollicking. Heartfelt.

Those were some of the sentiments I had ricocheting around my mind watching Bronwyn Keith-Hynes perform earlier this winter at The Orange Peel in Asheville. A renowned fiddler/singer, Keith-Hynes is headlong into a solo career with the recent disbanding of her former band, the Grammy-winning Americana/bluegrass act Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway. 

It’s been 20 years since the inception of The Infamous Stringdusters, the Grammy-winning string act whose tone and swagger encompasses an acoustic majesty coupled with a full-blown rock show attitude. 

“When you’ve been a band for 20 years, a lot of things change, including your perspective on how to create music and art,” said dobroist Andy Hall.