Woodstock legend Melanie to perform Asheville house concerts

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Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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Singer-songwriter Melanie, whose appearance at Woodstock 50 years ago this past summer made her a voice of a generation, is set to perform a house concert in south Asheville.

Streamside Concerts will host Melanie at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 16 and 3 p.m. on Nov. 17. Tickets are $50. The setting is a beautiful listening room surrounded by the Pisgah National Forest. Get tickets here.

Melanie was a New York kid barely known outside of the coffeehouse circuit in Greenwich Village. But she sang her song “Beautiful People” at Woodstock and inspired one of the first panorama of candles and cigarette lighters ever raised at a concert event. (Event organizers had asked concert-goers to hold up candles to keep the rain away.)

That inspired Melanie to to write “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain”), which sold more than 1 million copies in 1970 and prompted Billboard, Cashbox, Melody Maker, Record World, and Bravo to anoint her the female vocalist of the year. Her single “Brand New Key,” an infectious romp about freedom and roller skates, topped the charts in 1971. (A documentary about Melanie recounts her story.)

Melanie was booked as the first solo pop/rock artist ever to appear from the Royal Albert Hall to Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera House, and later opened the New Metropolitan Opera House in New York, the Sydney Opera House, and in the General Assembly of the United Nations, where she was invited to perform on many occasions as delegates greeted her performances with standing ovations. The top television hosts of all time — Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson, and Dick Cavett — battled to book her. She’s continued her path guitar in hand and a talent that combined amazing vocal equipment, disarming humor, and a vibrant engagement with listeners.

Streamside Concerts is a house concert series held at the home of Lora Tannenholz and Sally Sparks in Arden. Nestled in the woods by a stream, the performance stage looks into the woods through an enormous window capped by a 28 foot cathedral ceiling. The two have been hosting concerts featuring world-class musicians representing all kinds of styles, from world music, classical, jazz and electronic music, as well as singer-songwriters, since 2011.

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Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

  • 1

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