The 2019 season of Concerts on the Quad – UNC Asheville’s free, outdoor Monday evening concert series – will feature concerts on June 24, July 8 and 15 beginning at 7 p.m. each night. Featuring music that spans many genres, Concerts on the Quad are family-friendly and informal, with lawn chairs, blankets and picnics welcome. Free parking is readily available on campus for these concerts; alcoholic beverages and pets are prohibited. For more information, call UNC Asheville’s Highsmith Student Union at 828.251.6990.
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June 24 – METAL! – The concert season kicks off with the adventurous sounds of METAL! Fronting the band is UNC Asheville music faculty member Steve Alford on electrified contra-alto clarinet, with faculty colleague Zach Page, and also Daniel Iannucci on electrified acoustic basses, and percussionists Matthew Richmond of UNC Asheville’s faculty, and Tyler Housholder both playing “drum kits” made of salvaged oil drums, saw blades and cut pipes. Bring your big ears and open mind – elevator music, this is not!
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July 8 – Brody Hunt & The Handfulls – An Asheville-area honky-tonk band, The Handfulls play a combination of classic tunes and originals by Brody Hunt styled in what Hunt calls country music’s “golden era.” A self-described retired freight-train hobo and collector of rare 78 rpm heritage music recordings, Hunt leads “shellac bashes” in Asheville. His prior appearance on campus with the Carolina Cud Chewers featured old-time string music, but with The Handfulls, Hunt, a guitarist, banjo player and vocalist, promises tunes in the style of country music legends George Jones and Merle Haggard.
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July 15 – Che Apalache – This four-man “Latingrass” band, with musicians from North Carolina, Argentina and Mexico, has an album produced by Béla Fleck slated for release in August. Che Apalache began as a bluegrass band, but also features Latin rhythms as well as a cappella mountain gospel harmonies. Fiddler and multi-instrumentalist Joe Troop is the band’s founder – an N.C. native, he met his bandmates while living in Argentina and making a living teaching bluegrass and old-time music. Paul Barjau (banjo), Franco Martino (guitar) and Martin Bobrik (mandolin) combine with Troop to create an unusual blend – one authentic enough to have been awarded first place in the neo-traditional category at the Appalachian String Band Music Festival in Clifftop, West Virginia.
