S5, E40: Black Mountain and the Region’s Creative Soul | The Travel Guide

This is the third stop on our five-part audio guide to Asheville, North Carolina, and it takes us just outside the city to the small mountain town of Black Mountain, North Carolina. In this episode of Unpacked by Afar, host Aislyn Greene goes looking for the creative soul of the region, and finds it everywhere: in the galleries, in the glass studios, and above all in the music scene.

Transcript

Aislyn: For about two decades. There was a college in the mountains outside Asheville, near a small town called Black Mountain. It had no grades, no required classes, and no promise it would still exist the next semester. It also helped invent modern American art. Then it closed and it mostly vanished. But you can still feel it all over this town. That’s after the break.

When the tears of all run dry. And the hopeful words have all been said. I go down to the river side. Close my eyes bow my head. Bow my head.

Aislyn: I’m Aislyn Greene and this is Unpacked by Afar. Most weeks we roam two different topics. This week we’re staying in one place. And in fact, we made you a guide. Five episodes, one city, all of it reported on the ground in Asheville, North Carolina earlier this year. So think of this as your audio guide to Asheville, where to go, what to know, and everything worth unpacking in between.

Today, we head out of Asheville, about 15 miles to the small community of Black Mountain. Less than 7 square miles, the town sits at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains and is surrounded by the 7 Sisters mountain ranges, but its cultural weight is far larger than its size would suggest. As we covered last episode, the Asheville region has long been a health and retreat destination in Black Mountain that comes paired with an arts culture that reaches back to the 1930s, when an experimental school called Black Mountain College started drawing artists and thinkers who would go on to shape the entire country. That legacy still lives here, in art, in music, and first on my list today in food.

I’m eating a bowl with black beans, rice, plantains. It’s phenomenal and it’s fantastic. Kind of acidic hot sauce. Cousins Cuban is a must.

Aislyn: Okay, so maybe you can’t exactly connect the dots between a liberal arts college and Cousins Cuban Cafe. But I think when the black beans and rice are done this well, you can read it as a sign that everything else is going to be good too. And in Black Mountain, that turns out to be true.

And I’m walking down Broadway because there’s a Broadway, even in a tiny little town like this that takes maybe 3 to 4 minutes to walk through. And I’m not exaggerating. And now I’m looking at this mural of Roberta Flack. Oh, I love Roberta Flack. Um, it says Black Mountain. It’s this gorgeous, gorgeous black and white mural of her outside of Black Mountain Brewing.

Roberta Flack was born right here in Black Mountain, which surprises and delights me and offers a hint at the musical legacy we’re going to explore later in the episode. For now, let’s keep walking.

Now we’re arriving at the North Carolina Glass Center, and today I’ve got to play with fire.

My second stop of the day is a nonprofit glass studio and gallery, and with any luck, I’ll walk out with a piece of glass. I blew myself sort of.

Candace: My name is Candace Riley, and I’m the executive director at the North Carolina Glass Center. We rent out studio space to glass artists. We teach classes. We have a gallery showing the work of over 80 regional glass artists. I think this whole area of western North Carolina is a creative hotbed. Folks moved to this area, you know, decades ago because it was inexpensive at the time. And it’s such a beautiful place. So there are inspirational views all around you. It was easy to create a studio space here and settle. It’s always been an artists hotbed. There are craft schools, there are craft communities, there are artists there, painters that you see sitting by the side of the road.

Aislyn: When I asked Candace why she circles back to that college I mentioned at the top of the episode.

Candace: So it’s always been an artists hotbed, Black Mountain in particular, though about I guess it’s been almost 100 years, was the home of Black Mountain College, which was a liberal arts college that really focused on integrating the arts into all education. And it was only around for a couple of decades. And lots of notable artists like Robert Rauschenberg and the famous Buckminster Fuller were taught or were students at the school. And so Black Mountain is really well known for that history of bringing all of these artists from major cities back in the 1930s and 40s and into the 50s.

Aislyn: The college drew people to these mountains, who changed the culture, and then it closed in the 1950s, but its pull never really ended. Candace says artists keep arriving, especially after the pandemic. And then she tells me that the glass itself comes from these mountains, at least in its most raw form.

Candace: Glass art didn’t happen outside of industrial settings until the 1960s and 70s. Because glass equipment is incredibly expensive, it’s high maintenance to use. And then in the 1960s, a gentleman named Harvey Littleton did some experiments trying to create smaller glass furnaces that could go into independent individual studios. And they were successful. And then Harvey moved here, and he settled up in Spruce Pine near Penland School of Craft. And in that area there are quartz rich mountains. And so they were able to start mining this quartz and turning it into a glass batch, and it’s called spruce pine batch. That’s where we get our glass batch that we melt down. And so yeah, there’s a huge history of glass in this area. And then artists started coming to work with Harvey and learn at the Penland School of Craft, where they were building glass facilities. It was like somebody lit a match and, and that gradually just grew into this huge glass community. There are hundreds of glass artists here.

Aislyn: So the mountains that made this a hard place to reach are also the reason it became a glass capital. And now it’s my turn to try to make some. Candace hands me off for one of their 30 minute classes and I get to choose what to attempt. A pint glass, a paperweight, a pumpkin, an ornament, or a stemless wine glass. I choose the wine glass and enter the studio to find my teacher, a glass blower named Mark DeShields.

Mark: Obviously, we have several very hot things in here. That’s called our reheating chamber. Inside of that, it’s about 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit. Uh, so don’t put anything in there besides glass.

Aislyn: The first thing I notice is the heat. It reaches me before I’ve even touched anything. This dry pressing wall coming off the furnaces, and it does not let up the entire time. I’m peeling off layers left and right. The next thing I notice is the light. As the class unfolds, I find myself holding a pipe, and at the end of my pipe is a glowing knot of molten glass, the color of a small orange sun. It’s so bright it’s hard to look straight at, and it moves like honey, slow and heavy and almost alive. And it is very, very, very, very hot.

Mark: There will be moments where you feel like reaching for it with your right hand. Just be holding one of those to keep yourself from having any errors. Okay?

Aislyn: That warning helps because my body keeps wanting to reach for the wrong spot, and the pipe is heavier than it looks. And the whole time my main job is to roll. I roll the pipe back and forth, back and forth without pausing. Because the instant you stop, gravity starts pulling the glass into a droop. So I sit there, rolling this glowing weight, sweating and watching the color. I picked a transparent green shot through with light blue bloom, brighter as it heats. When it’s finally time to blow, we actually use a little tool, almost like a blood pressure cuff, to breathe into the tube and watch a bubble open up inside the glass.

This is making me more appreciate every single wine glass I’ve ever held.

When I’m finally done, Mark sets my glass into a 900 degree oven where it will cool slowly overnight so it doesn’t shatter. And I have to admit, I am more than ready for the cool air outside.

It’s not sleepiness because there’s a lot happening here, but it is certainly a small town pace of life. You do not need a car. I mean, you need a car to get here, but then you can just park it and kind of ignore it for the next couple of days.

2 nights in Black Mountain is plenty of time. You can enjoy some live music, a couple of great restaurants, a drink, meet some artists. And speaking of the restaurants, mine for the night has a name with a real story. Hell or High Water is in a beautiful old brick building that was once an ice house. It’s the most photographed building in town, and it has one very good reason for that.

Speaker: The gentleman who owned it, Jay Cooke, he had lost his hands in a rail car accident. And he has hooks for hands. So we really like emphasizing on that part, I think. Yeah, you can see it right here.

Aislyn: Oh my gosh.

Speaker: Hooks for hands. So we pick up ice blocks pre-refrigeration days and put them in your truck.

Aislyn: I mean that’s pretty handy honestly.

Aislyn: Yeah. But the name of the restaurant comes from something much more recent. I sit down with chef Eric Morris, who cooks the way this entire region has always eaten.

Eric: We do whole animal butchery and use every part of that animal in our multiple locations. You could work at any restaurant. If you take a dive back into the history of Appalachian foodways. Preservation has always been a big part of the Appalachian history curing country ham, canning pickles and saving the best from the summer and the fall. So you have it through the winter, um, and not wasting anything.

Aislyn: And then Eric explains the name. He signed on to open this restaurant just before the fall of 2024. And in September of 2024, Hurricane Helene hit these mountains. The storm dropped as much as 30 inches of rain in places. It set off catastrophic flooding and landslides. It killed more than 100 people, and it briefly cut off some communities from the world entirely. Eric started this job right in the middle of that. So the restaurant is named for the worst season this town has ever had. And for the decision to open anyway.

Eric: I started with the company, um, not knowing that there was a devastating hurricane on the way. And it was amazing to see Casey and his family, his kids, um, there in the aftermath of the storm, just going around and digging people out of their own homes. Um, we fed people. And what was even more incredible was the speed and the determination to get the Grange back open and get people back to work. I remember shortly after we opened the Grange, I think we’re sitting downstairs in November looking at each other, sitting in the space, and we asked the question, do we want to do this? Are we going to do this? Are we capable of doing this? We’ve all been through a lot and we all looked at each other and said, yeah, I mean, let’s make it happen no matter what. And Amanda McKissick, Casey’s wife, says, we’re going to do this come hell or high water. And that was it. Uh, and the name was just, you know, gifted to us at that moment. Um, and we just, we stuck to it and we still stick to it to this day.

Aislyn: And when I ask Eric for a dish that captures what they believe in, he points me to the top of the menu.

Eric: Something simple on our menu that’s been on there from day one, it’s a trout dip. Um, you know, trout dip can be ubiquitous, but I’ve been working with the, the Easons who own sunburst trout farms for about 11 years. They do a really cool aquaponics program where they have hydroponic plants in with the trout. The trout produce waste that help feed the plants and filter the water. It’s a really cool what they’ve done.

Aislyn: I eat that trout dip with a spoon and zero regrets. And I gotta say, it’s just one more reason I would drive back to these mountains. There’s one part of Black Mountain we haven’t met yet, and it’s the part everyone told me not to miss: the music. We’ll listen in after the break.

Belly full ahead to an event called White Horse. On this night, it’s not in its usual home. It’s at the Monte Vista Hotel, which isn’t even a hotel anymore. And before the music starts, I sit down with a man who runs it.

Zach: My name is Zach Hinkle. I’m the managing director of White Horse, Black Mountain, and when I speak from the stage, I joke, although it’s only partially a joke, that really that just means I was lucky enough to be born. The son of Bob Hinkle, who’s the founder of Whitehorse almost 18 years ago now.

Aislyn: And what is White Horse for people who are not familiar?

Zach: Was founded by my dad as a listening room. He grew up around here and it is argued that he founded the first integrated band in North Carolina when he was 15 years old. He just had a couple black friends who were amazing musicians, and there were there were club owners on the white side of town, and there were club owners on the black side of town who embraced this young, integrated band. Like when you think about the South in the 60s, like, that’s a shocking thought that that would even have been possible. And I think it strangely speaks to this place in general.

Aislyn: Zach says it’s kind of the seed of everything that White Horse became. Zach’s father, Bob, built a space where the music and the musicians come first.

Zach: When you’re at White Horse, the energy of the music that’s being created on stage is the link between the humans and the audience. And we honor that link by being quiet. The music is really the thing. The bar is the afterthought. Whereas in most places the bar is the focus. The socialization is the focus, and the music is the afterthought. A true listening room is a rarity in America these days.

Aislyn: And then Zach tells me about who used to live in these mountains and what they played.

Zach: You’ve got your mountain music, your ballads, you’ve got your bluegrass. Interestingly, though, a lot of the music that’s here, you can find the foundation, the blues. But when you look at Buncombe County in particular, there was a period from a historical record not so long ago where the population of this area was upwards of 30 percent black. A huge piece of that foundational block of music was blues, blues and gospel. If you were a black person in these mountains, that’s what you were playing. But nowadays, the local population is 3 percent black. So the interesting thing is, is that over a period of about 30, 40, 50 years, the Blues Foundation’s kind of went away because the people that were carrying the flame of the blues went away.

Aislyn: So White Horse started a sister organization, the Black Mountain Blues Society, as well as a yearly festival to bring the blues back. And when I ask Zach why this specific place produces so much creative energy, he reaches for a word I heard all over Asheville. Vortex.

Zach: This place, the energy of this place is so profoundly creative. Even I who am, do not embrace, perhaps the lens of the crystal in the pocket. Know full well that there is a vortex of energy in this location. Maybe it’s the remnants of the Black Mountain College and all of the amazing creative work and kind of original integration of racial relations work that they did there. Maybe it’s the remnants of the Cherokee in the hills. I don’t know, man. There’s something about this place that is a vortex of energy for creativity, and people who are creatives feel it here. They really, really do. And so from that sense, it’s a wonderful place to be a musician.

Aislyn: The school is gone, but Zach thinks you can still feel it in the air of the place. And something, whether it’s the vortex, whether it’s just the legacy of creativity, keeps drawing people here to make things. Which brings us to tonight and why the show isn’t in the usual room.

Zach: Since Hurricane Helene, we’ve raised over 300,000 dollars for other local non-profits that are doing like the life giving work, like feeding people, housing people. And so when we had some building damage recently and we were relocated to the Monte Vista Hotel. These musicians tonight offered to donate their time so that we could do a benefit. And this is indicative of the foundation that my dad set with musicians, which is to really take care of them. That’s not common in the industry these days. So when we have needs like this, they tend to come out of the woodwork pretty fast and ask how they can be supportive of us, which is an amazing thing.

Aislyn: 8 musicians, each donating 3 or 4 songs so a listening room can rebuild its room. I find a seat, and the thing that Zach promised turns out to be true. When the music starts, the room goes, pin drop. Quiet. We’re all ready to listen.

Bob: I’m just continue to be astonished of how all this happened since we started doing this, and we could have had a good idea and sat in a room and talk to each other and played cards and ping pong, and none of this would have happened. It happened because of you. I mean, we had to be dumb enough to do it, but you guys had to supply the wherewithal. And I don’t just mean the money. I mean the support and good cheer and the beer, all that stuff. We’re beyond grateful.

Aislyn: That’s Bob Hinkle, the man who started it all, now more than 80 years old. And then the music begins. First, a guitar player named Robin Bullock, who has lived here for 12 years. A little later, the Blues enters the stage, sung by a woman referred to as the godmother of the Blues. Around here.

Here she comes. The Belle of the blues with her feather chapel. She dips down low and sums up the blues. She captivates and beguiles. She leaves him crying in the aisles. She’s the people’s shanta’s. The belle of the blue.

Aislyn: And then, near the end of the night, a jazz pianist named Bill Bures sits down and tells us a story.

Bill: The first one is a song called The Miracles of Saint Helene, which is actually a party that was started in my neighborhood by a very enterprising person who wanted to have a party at the 1-year anniversary of Helene to celebrate, like the the community that we all found in our neighborhood. I had already kind of sketched the melody by candlelight when the power went out a year earlier. And it starts kind of, uh, we’ll say dark and stormy. Um, and then it, it sort of ends on a really positive, optimistic note. Triumphant note. So.

Aislyn: Let’s let our MC for the night, Chris, wrap the show.

Chris: What a great night of music, right? Thank you guys for being here. We’re all here because we love the White Horse. We love music. That’s maybe not, not going to be in stadiums. Not yet. Working on it.

Aislyn: Well, the school might be gone, but the instinct it ran on to make art for art’s sake is still alive here. This is part 3 of 5, so the other Asheville episodes are in the feed. And next time we eat. Because Asheville was farm to table before, it was a slogan. I’m Aislyn Greene and this is Unpacked by Afar. We’ll see you in the mountains.

Oh, the wind stole my song from me. Blew it to my neighbor’s house.

Aislyn: Unpacked is a production of Afar. This episode was hosted by Aislyn Greene and produced by Nikki Galteland and Kendal Perkinson. Music from Chris Collin and Epidemic Sound. This podcast is part of the Airwave Podcast Network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to their other fine shows like Culture Kids and The Explorers podcast.