Confession: I have never been to the South. For years, I have dreamed of roadtripping to Savannah, GA, or The Kentucky Derby, or this weird tourist attraction I read about as a kid called Fairyland Caverns at Tennessee’s Rock City Gardens. Alas: money, or a working vehicle, or friends who wanted to spend a week or two “enjoying” my deliriously tired conversation and disco-heavy roadtrip playlist always seemed to be lacking. And here I am now with another stop to add to my itinerary: Asheville, North Carolina’s Transfigurations festival. Sure, there might not be any eerily grinning gnomes hanging out in the silent depths of a sinisterly enchanted cave at this event, but I’ll tell you what there is: three solid days of solid tunes.
Transfigurations 2009 was put together to celebrate the five-year anniversary of Asheville’s Harvest Records record store. Putting on a festival in honor of your record store’s birthday is pretty boss in my book, and so is the planned entertainment. The lineup includes Mount Eerie, Kurt Vile, Circulatory System, The Books, Budos Band, Akron/Family, Jonathan Kane, Ice Cream, Espers, Villages, The War on Drugs, The Coathangers, Steve Gunn, Brightblack Morning Light, and the recently confirmed Bonnie "Prince" Billy. Plus there are discussions with Eric Isaacson from the Mississippi Records label, Lance Ledbetter of rare recording specialists Dust-to-Digital, and Nathan Salsburg, producer/archivist for the Alan Lomax Archive and curator of the Twos & Fews imprint on Drag City. The three-day event takes place across several Asheville venues.
08.13–15.09 – Asheville, NC – Transfigurations Festival
