Lake Eden Arts Festival
Friday-Sunday, May 9-11, Camp Rockmont, Black Mountain

Spring is in the air, and with it comes the sweet siren song of music alfresco — for a few glorious months musicians get the chance to crawl out of their dark little bars and play in the open air. This week’s offering is the 16th edition of the Lake Eden Arts Fest, a three-day exercise in getting the collective groove on. Chief among its charms is an eclection of fine feel-good music, played out in the tents and halls that dot the hills of Camp Rockmont in Black Mountain. Over 30 bands are slated to perform: highlights include rural roadhouse vets the Red Clay Ramblers; renowned folk-rocker Linda Thompson; the Afro-Cuban crazy machine of Richard Lemvo and Makina Loca; banjo innovator Alison Brown; bayou squeezebox rockers Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys; Ghanaian multi-instrumentalist Aaron Bebe Sukura; the joyful noise of gospel’s Golden Trumpets; the syncopated whimsy of the Mad Tea Party; and of course the mountain luau lilt of Asheville’s own Hula Cats.

Along with the plentiful song, you’ll find dancing, poetry, handcrafts, jam sessions, kids’ stuff, open space, funnel cakes, crystals, Carrhartts, crepes, hippies, lumberjacks, welders, Frenchmen, lawyers, yogis, claims adjusters, firemen, firesticks, patchouli, no dogs, beer in plastic cups, and several tentsful of the “Healing Arts” — Flexmobility, Baby Wisdom, Flower Essence and Birdwalk Tarot are among this spring’s offerings. Sunday is Mother’s Day, with a Mother’s Day brunch, some family-centered activities, free ibuprofen, and some “extra mom-special vendors.” (I’m joking about the ibuprofen.)

Sales of advance tickets close May 7 at noon, but the LEAF folks say they will have day tickets available at the gates: the truly wise among you will check before making the trip. Day tickets run from $25-$35 ($20-$30 for youth). Call 828.68.MUSIC or visit www.theleaf.com for more info.

The Larry Keel Experience
Saturday, May 10, Soul Infusion

Hats Off, WCU grads. Four (or more) years of chemistry, Cliff’s Notes, keg-floating, and strenuous dorm-room debate (Betty or Veronica?), and it’s come to this: a fling of the cap, a kiss of the mom, and one sweet piece of paper in your hands.

What’s next? Hell, I don’t know, but for starters you can head down to the Soul Infusion for the WCU Graduation Night shindig with the Larry Keel Experience. The LKE is fronted by — you guessed it — Larry Keel, the flatpickin’ fool and “master of his own music” who has been twisting bluegrass into strange and lovely shapes since he was but a pup. (This week’s fun fact: at age 18, Keel held a job at the Tokyo Disneyland, playing bluegrass music six shows a day, six days a week. No word on whether Goofy ever sat in on mandolin.) Keel is aided (and abetted) by wife Jenny Keel, who plucks a mean bass and sings real purty; omnipresent instrumentalist and vocalist Jason Krekel (Snake Oil Medicine Show, Mad Tea Party, Hula Cats) completes the Experience. It’ll be a growlin’, howlin’, pickin’, singin’, footshufflin’ wing-dang-do and you’re invited. (Non-grads and been-grads can come too.) After that, go your own way: pack your bags, fuel up the jalopy and live it like you mean it. The Great Gordo wishes you the best.

$10 advance tickets are available at In Your Ear Music. Call 586.1717 for more info.

Soundcheck
Lucinda Williams, World Without Tears (Lost Highway)

Critics are foaming at the mouth — in a good way — over Lucinda Williams’ World Without Tears. They have good reason: it’s a powerful record, sultry, slow, sexual, aching, vulnerable, tired, and wise, all in the finest Williams tradition. Recorded in a couple of takes, with few overdubs, it is a little bit grungier than previous releases, with fewer studio flourishes and a bit of a rough-cut feel. It is also slightly more urban — there are a couple of spoken-word sorta-raps on the record — although it’s still heavily steeped in a swampy Southern sensibility, earthy and sensual and profane.

There is much that is new in World Without Tears, but even a casual listener can connect the musical dots clear back to her 1980 breakthrough, Happy Woman Blues. The best tracks follow Williams’ established pattern of combining her raw, wondrous voice with some serious heartache: World Without Tears is a catalog of the many colors of melancholy. There is languid, reflective melancholy (“Fruits of My Labor”); lonely, oceanic melancholy (“Ventura”); even a little spiteful Minnesota melancholy (“Minneapolis”). The sheer volume of grief on the album reminded me of why Lucinda’s music has been called “white blues”: it is not that there are a lot of blues progressions or Robert Johnson licks involved — there aren’t — but that it is a music of genuine ache and despair, more intense and immediate than even the sorriest tear-in-my-beer country ballad. There are some weak moments, of course: the rock doesn’t always rock, and the latest in her tent-revival sub-set of songs, “Atonement,” is grating at best. The casual, come-what-may poetics of the lyrics might lead some to think she’s coasting, pushing the weary swamp chanteuse thing a little too far, adding a stray hip-hop beat in a lazy effort to sound fresh. But I think that’s a mistake: the music remains potent and real, and Lucinda has never shied from the simple, arresting image to make a lyrical point. Contrary to some critics, I won’t proclaim World Without Tears her best yet: I’ll take Car Wheels, Essence, and Sweet Old World over this. Heck, throw in 1988’s Lucinda Williams too. It is a testament to her greatness, then, that even her fifth-best effort is worth owning. There are certain talents, and they number very few, that demand you buy every album they release, and learn to love it for itself. Lucinda Williams is such a talent, and World Without Tears does not disappoint.

4 stars out of 5.

Three Good Lucinda Williams Songs

1. “King of Hearts,” from Happy Woman Blues (1980)
2. “2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten” from Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (1998)
3. “Bus to Baton Rouge,” from Essence (2001)

They Said It

“We are all of us lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

— Oscar Wilde