WNC Songwriter Sessions at The Brandy Bar Wednesday – September 16 – 7- 9 pm – Hey Neighbors! WNC Songwriter Sessions return with songwriters Mare Carmody, Charlie Wilkinson & John Longbottom for an evening of original songs in the natural acoustics and listening room atmosphere of the beautiful and historic Brandy Bar. Our September session will be Founders’ Night and that means Mare Carmody and Charlie Wilkinson and also John Longbottom will be in house and on mic sharing their handcrafted songs exploring the human experience and all the ups, downs, and wrong turns it can/does entail. It’s gonna’ be a mighty good night, y’all. Come join us!
Mare Carmody is a voice of Southern storytelling, in both songs and prose. She believes life indeed is a song. Or a series of songs. Mare and her husband currently reside in the NC Piedmont, in case you wondered why you don’t bump into her at the farmer’s market.
Charlie Wilkinson has been writing and performing since a time before junior high schools, from the Washington, D. C., area to Florida and other foreign lands, and has always seemed to get dropped into the middle of special places and special folks.
John Longbottom is an elder folkie which means he sings folk songs he wrote for other folks to enjoy. John was indoctrinated by the BBC when he was 8 years old, and 71 years later, John is still folking about. He’s looking forward to playing with Mare and Charlie again!
Thurs 9/17/26 – 4-9 PM – Graveyard cocktail specials – Prior to 1913 Henderson County did not maintain a public record of marriages, births, or deaths, leaving people still very much alive who did not have these documents. Without written evidence, they often had to rely on the family Bible for proof of their births or marriages for Social Security, health insurance and other purposes. As the Bibles were safe havens for family records, burial plots in the churchyard became sources of knowledge to be honored as well. Maintenance free perpetual care cemeteries, with their cookie-cutter flat bronze plaques and pull-out vases are today’s preferred method of burial. Those “cemetery days” formerly set aside for the families to gather for cleaning and clearing the grounds around the graves of their departed loved ones are dying like their patrons. When removing debris on those occasions, family members would touch a headstone and read the name aloud, and other members hearing it would share some small tale or secret about the deceased’s life, and it would be logged into memory to be passed on by those present. It was a critical part of a family’s obligation to record the notable events in the life of its members by logging them in the safe recesses of this sacred file. The Bible would also safeguard lockets of baby’s hair, grants, deeds, maps, claims or other important documents, and when death became reality, its entries referenced grave sites in cemeteries where loved ones were buried. It became the vessel of things past – things that needed memory – for without it these things would fade and be lost. The old headstones, carved of whatever stone was available, showed love and individual creativity. They were often of odd sizes and less uniform shapes, and their details were personal designs based on remembrance and tradition. Some were only inscribed with the essentials of birth, death, and maybe marriage, but others offered personal comments that gave their witnesses a hint of the deceased’s life sparkle while here. Such we found in the Old Salem Cemetery in Fletcher: Died in a RR Accident October 26, 1906, at 3:40 pm Engine No 622 with coal car. While firing this engine he was killed instantly at Hickory, NC Denominational cocktails – Presbyterian – Brandy, ginger ale and club soda; Catholic – Brandy, rum, orange & lime & lemon juice, grenadine; Episcopal – Douglas Fir, CB Frost, Cointreau, lemon juice, sour mix, lemon bitters; Quaker – Cognac, Cointreau, Chartreuse, lemon juice, bitters; Unitarian Universalist – CB Frost, curacao, lime & orange juice, lemonade topper; 1/2 price fruit/infused flight