East Flat Rock – The summer series is at 5-7 p.m. on summer Sundays for once or twice per month. Music on the Lake takes it name from the relaxing outdoor setting, with the stage and seating area by the main campus’ lake. Listeners bring lawn chairs. Some have picnics during these concerts.
Asheville Junction is a five-piece band. “Hot fiddlin’,” “toe tappin’” beats, and smooth vocal harmonies are among its trademarks.
Tierra Raiti is both the lead singer and fiddler. She was invited onto the “WoodSongs Old Time Radio Hour” last year. She is a featured singer and fiddler on the album “Galax to Toledo Tracks,” which made airwaves on Americana radio stations around the globe. She first learned classical violin, then bluegrass fiddle.
She won numerous fiddle contests, violin competitions, and singing competitions and scholarships by performing such styles as country, jazz, and classical.
Her mother Maria Raiti plays rhythm guitar, harmonizes vocals, and occasionally sings lead. She joined her daughter as a musical duo in jams, then in bluegrass bands.
Ken Sager plays dobro and guitar. He was the state’s flat pick guitar and mandolin champion in 2004. He first played publicly on violin when he was ten years young, and on electric guitar when he was 13. His solo album is “Here” in 2007. He has performed on more than 40 albums as a studio musician.
Asheville native Brad Pope is on upright bass, and sings. He is a 22-year veteran musician. He plays tenor guitar and mandolin with the locally-based Lazybirds.
Asheville Junction played in the Maggie Valley Arts Festival last Saturday, July 8, and on June 29 at the famed Cedar Point amusement park near Cleveland, Ohio.
Music on the Lake Finales
Music on the Lake concludes in 2023 with two Sunday concerts in August. Both have Asheville-based acts. Hearts Gone South plays on Aug. 6. The fiery band plays original, classic-styled country and honky tonk songs that its members says are “full of heart and soul, laced with wit and woe” with “age-old tales of love, loss, and victory for the underdog.” The band boasts of its “impassioned vocals, a tight rhythm section, and smoking leads.”
The long-popular pop-rock cover band Tuxedo Junction plays the series finale two weeks later, on Aug. 20. The Asheville-based act was formed in 1988 by drummer-singer Joey Moore, and plays music spanning several decades. Tuxedo Junction plays hits of the Beach Boys, Motown, and will get gritty performing Free’s “All Right Now.”