The city of Asheville has been changed forever since rabid music enthusiasts Kevin and Kara Cassels moved there and opened Good Music and Other Stuff a year ago. In that time, they have hosted a slew of in-store performances with the hopes of turning on Asheville citizens to an eclectic array of artists. Gomez, Arrested Development, Steve Kimock, Xaviar Rudd, North Mississippi All-Stars, Fishbone, Lotus and Umphrey’s McGee are among the acts that have gone out of their way to perform in the cozy store located near the Mellow Mushroom on Asheville’s Broadway. So it is with good reason that Good Music will throw a week-long celebration starting March 26 with a 4pm Grateful Dead art show followed by a 5pm performance from one of Asheville’s most respected jazz acts, The Chronology Trio, and culminating with a 6pm set from Cadillac Jones. The following Tuesday (March 29), Sound Tribe Sector Nine will grace the Good Music ‘stage’ with a 2:30 performance that will serve as an appetizer for their Orange Peel performance that night. Fans of the wildly popular (in the nineties) Atlanta funk band Follow For Now should be alerted that their former frontman, David Ryan Harris will return to Asheville to perform an acoustic set at 6pm on Friday, April 1. As always, all performances are free of charge.

‘We’re very excited to have made it through our first year, which is always the toughest when starting a business,’ Cassels said, ‘The future looks bright thanks to the wonderful people of Asheville. In this age of disappearing independently-owned record stores, it is a breath of fresh air that one is excelling in Asheville, and in turn, fueling the Asheville music scene itself. Report by Rob Turner