Legendary Haywood County bluegrass act Balsam Range will hit the stage at 4 p.m. Sunday, May 17, at the Highlands Performing Arts Center in Highlands.

Since its inception in 2007, Balsam Range has become one of the most decorated and award-winning acts in the wide world of bluegrass music. 

The Mountain Roots Bluegrass Festival will take place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, May 23, at the Highlands Riverbend RV Resort & Cabins in Franklin.

Celebrating the musical, artistic and cultural heritage of Western North Carolina, the gathering will feature over 50 vendors, food trucks and bluegrass music onstage. 

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.

At age 66, legendary singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Darrell Scott is having a career rebirth of sorts. 

Though he’s always been known as a prolific and productive artist — whether in Nashville musical circles as a performer and producer or through endless touring from coast-to-coast and beyond — this current chapter of his storied life has evolved into a full-circle kind of thing, one where Scott is reevaluating just what it means to create and cultivate in your autumn years.