Magnetic Attraction
Nine local bands perform 69 love songs.
by Cassady Sharp
February is the month for love, but according to Magnetic Fields front man Stephin Merritt, love is not always roses and conversation hearts. It can better be explained in 69 Love Songs, the three-disc concept album the band released on Merge Records in 1999. The songs are quirky, and occasionally dark. Take #9, for example, “Let’s Pretend We’re Bunny Rabbits,” or #13, “Fido, Your Leash Is Too Long.” The Magnetic Fields have performed all 69 songs consecutively in concert before. But since Merritt schedules his live performances few and far between (in part due to a hearing condition), nine local bands will bring his music to Asheville, performing each of the 69 love songs on the album at the Grey Eagle on Valentine’s Day weekend.
Asheville arts producer and Magnetic Fields fan Chall Gray came up with the idea last fall, but a multi-band blowout at the Grey Eagle wasn’t exactly what he had in mind. “At first I was going to do a small show in someone’s living room,” says Gray, who’s also the marketing and development manager at Asheville Bravo Concerts. “The idea just started to mutate.”
He partnered with musician James Richards, and Matt Schnable and Mark Capon at West Asheville’s Harvest Records, and then sent word to fellow musician pals through (what else?) Facebook. After a set of auditions, the living room gig had turned into a nine-band extravaganza.
Verve-acious
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A Step in the Right Direction
For years, Susan Stader helped men with alcohol addiction. Now, she's opened two new facilities for women.
by John Clausen . photo by Brent Fleury
Susan Stader runs what you might call a tragically successful operation. Since 2006, she’s been operating Next Step Recovery, a Montford recovery house for men suffering from alcohol and drug addiction. (Of the 14 million alcoholics in the U.S., roughly ten million are men). The program has been so successful that she’s developed a waiting list. “That’s a positive and a negative,” she says. “It’s positive because people are staying longer and getting better. It’s negative because there are people out there who want our services and I don’t have room for them.”
And, of course, she could only help men. But that changed last July when Stader and her staff opened a six-bed facility on Main Street in Weaverville to help women with addiction recovery. In January she opened an even larger Weaverville facility across the street, a 17-bed building that was once the Secret Garden Spa. The historic main house has a Zen-like atmosphere (and was once the home of the city’s first mayor). Residents, who currently range in age from their late teens to mid-40s, have access to nearly an acre of Japanese gardens, a waterfall and a teahouse. A three-person staff helps them through an addiction recovery plan that’s similar to other 12-step programs, along with life-skills training and relapse-prevention classes. “There was definitely a need in the community for men and women to have continued support after treatment,” says Stader, who struggled with drug addiction as a teenager and entered a drug rehab center at 16. “A lot of folks find it very difficult to go back to the same old people, places and things…and find themselves not being successful because of that same environment.”
Pulling Strings
A puppereer travels far and wide with her ancient craft.
by Joanne O'Sullivan . photo by Anthony Bellemare
Many of Susan VandeWeghe’s best friends are puppets. More precisely, they’re “trick marionettes,” jointed puppets with body parts that are moved by strings. Because each part can move independently, the puppeteer can imitate life-like motions. So much of the puppet’s character is revealed through movement that VandeWeghe, a full-time puppeteer for the past 18 years, didn’t even add scripts to her performances until recently. All her shows were based on puppets moving to music.
Her marionettes are circus performers—trapeze artists, tightrope walkers and jugglers—who imitate the choreographed motions of their human counterparts. “Dancers try to hit the ‘grace point’ in the music, and with marionettes you try to do the same,” she says.
Growing up the oldest of eight kids, VandeWeghe spent a lot of time entertaining her younger siblings. Sewing doll clothes and making up stories—VandeWeghe never considered these talents useful in her adult life until leaving her 20-year career in the hotel industry. While contemplating her next job move, she started helping out a friend, Chicago puppeteer David Herzog. Sculpting marionettes by hand and creating stories for them, it didn’t take long for her to realize: “This is what I was born to do,” says the puppeteer, who moved to Cedar Mountain, North Carolina, in 1999 and set up her own performance company, Mountain Marionettes.
Remember the Reapers?
by Janet Hurley . photo by Naomi Johnson
When we wrote about Carol Motley, Kim Zorn and Caroline Yongue in our September/October issue last year, the three Ashevilleans, who call themselves the “Green Reapers,” were just getting their eco-friendly businesses off the ground. (Or in some cases, in the ground.) Now, they’re really on a roll. Carol Motley and Lauri Newman opened a joint storefront—essentially a hip, friendly, plant-filled funeral parlor—on Haywood Road in West Asheville last November. Motley, of Bury Me Naturally, and Newman, of the landscaping company Farm Girl, sell local native plants and natural burial products, including eco-friendly pine caskets made by Kim Zorn of the Green Casket company and an organic burial shroud designed by Brooke Priddy of Asheville’s Ship to Shore.
Editor's Note
Hooray for power suits. Even pink ones.
Not everyone on our 10 Women to Watch list wears a power suit. But some do. And suits or no, all of these women are powerful in their own ways. Barbara Volk, the first female mayor of Hendersonville (see page 49), has a sort of quiet power. When we talked to her about shaking things up in 2010, the longtime Hendersonville City Councilwoman says she’ll be doing some “gentle shaking.”
Then there’s Asheville City Councilwoman Esther Manheimer, who also seems poised to shake things up (see page 42). Don’t look for her to be so gentle. A land-use attorney at a high-profile downtown firm, she admits some people find her intimidating. Though she has never held political office before, she appears self-assured about tackling tough city issues. So far, she’s hit the ground running—literally. For the VERVE cover shoot in January, Manheimer sprinted up the steps of the federal courthouse several times, wearing high heels and cracking jokes all the way. “For a land-use attorney, I’m about as zesty as they come,” she says. (No wonder she got more votes than anyone else last fall.)
We hope the rest of the issue helps you start the year off right. To help you get organized, Robin Edgar interviewed local “declutterers,” the British term for professional organizers. Asheville’s very own “Intrepid Declutterer,” Adriel McIntyre, gives excellent tips on page 28. On page 34, Maggie Cramer writes about five clever, playful ways to get in shape without setting foot in a gym. Personally, the mere suggestion of going to the gym makes me want to reach for a Twinkie. Which means I’ll eventually have to take Maggie up on her recommendations.
Happy reading,
Jess