Americana/bluegrass act Darren Nicholson will hit the stage for an intimate performance at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 18, at the Cataloochee Ranch in Maggie Valley.

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

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. 

Presented by Astro Record Store, the “Yonder Mountain Record Show” will be held from noon to 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 15, at Frog Level Brewing in Waynesville. 

In truth, there are two camps when it comes to Texas singer-songwriter Willis Alan Ramsey: you’re either completely obsessed with his music, with his tunes becoming a pillar of the soundtrack of your life, or you’ve never heard of him. 

I only met Bob Weir once. It was backstage at the long gone Gathering of the Vibes music festival located on the shoreline of the Long Island Sound in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It was the summer of 2009 and I was 24 years old, myself an aspiring journalist for a now-defunct music magazine. 

The Voices in the Laurel choirs have announced that spring registration is now open and the organization invites new/returning singers from Haywood, Buncombe, Jackson and Swain counties to be part of its 30th season. 

Ron Rash has never been to an opera. But later this month, he’ll sit down to enjoy an opus based on stories and poems he wrote about the Southern Appalachian mountains he calls home. 

“Shelton Laurel: An Appalachian Opera” takes place over a few years around the Civil War. The opera, which will see its world premiere later this month, tells the tale of farmers in Madison County’s Shelton Laurel, not far from Western Carolina University’s Bardo Arts Center in Cullowhee where the work will be performed. 

Editor’s Note: Since August 2012, Garret K. Woodward has held the position of arts and entertainment editor for The Smoky Mountain News. In December 2018, he also became a contributing writer for Rolling Stone.

Below are a handful of excerpts from my Rolling Stone travels this year covering some of the best albums of 2025, excursions that took me from Western North Carolina to Montana, Florida to Colorado, Tennessee to Utah and then some — always in search of all things beautiful and true, especially when it comes to the sacred, ancient act of live performance. 

A century ago, a record producer from New York City headed into Western North Carolina in search of the sound of Southern Appalachia. Landing in downtown Asheville, Ralph Peer set up a recording space in the former George Vanderbilt Hotel and began work on a series of field recordings that would forever change the course of American music. 

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.