Music Allies is an Asheville-based marketing and promotions company that works with major festivals and independent record labels. Creative Allies operates a social network that connects art students, freelance designers and music fans with paid design opportunities. 

Please see below for our available job openings. Salary is commensurate with experience. We are also looking for interns in a number of areas. Intern positions are unpaid, however we pay a daily travel/meal stipend, or a day rate, based on experience level. Minimum number of hours per week is 24, in blocks of at least 4 hours at a time.

Click here to read about the following jobs: Ruby programmer and system administrator; marketing and partnership director; social media marketing; internships.

Music Allies has been great at filling a niche by offering marketing and promotions services to music festivals and independent record labels.

The exciting new venture by the same folks is Creative Allies, which is a big social networking site designed to connect musicians with the creative producers of designs or other content. It sounds like a great idea. 

Home and Lawn Care Checklist 

The following checklist was developed by the University of Wisconsin-Extension & US Environmental Protection Agency and modified by RiverLink for local use in Western North Carolina. 

When rain falls or snow melts, the seemingly small amounts of chemicals and other pollutants in your driveway, on your lawn and on your street are washed into storm drains. In many older cities, the stormwater runoff is not treated and runoff flows directly into rivers, streams, bays and lakes. Pollutants in this runoff can poison fish and other aquatic animals and make water unsafe for drinking and swimming. 

What can you do to help protect surface and groundwaters from polluted runoff? Start at home. Take a close look at practices around your house that might contribute to polluted runoff. The following is a checklist to help you and your family become part of the solution, instead of part of the problem.

More here at Dreamspider. And more still at Pollinate Asheville. Excerpt:

If you are interested in music and film…and laughing, you should not miss MVA happening this Wednesday from 6 p.m. – 10 p.m. at the Cinebarre on 151/Brevard Road behind Biltmore Mall.

In it’s third year, MVA is an event developed by the Future of Asheville Music (FoAM, a networking group for musicians) to encourage creative collaborations between area film makers and musicians…and, the best part is: not all musicians and film makers are professionals.  Every year a number of new musicians and film makers are chosen for MVA.  So, videos are screened in advance folks.

A review of the Lexington Avenue Brewery's new performance space and last weekend's show there by Electric Owls and Cobra Horse. Review by Chall Gray:

Saturday night at the Lexington Avenue Brewery's performance space yielded several pleasant surprises, foremost of which was the stunning show by Electric Owls — who are, in this reviewers opinion, the best band in Asheville that you probably haven't seen play.

But this review is meant to address not just the show the evening's performances, but the new music venue in the LAB, so we'll get to the bands in a moment. The performance venue — which has a stated capacity of only 99 — is well appointed, with its own bar, and a long row of raised seating against one wall. One wall is stone, which is tastefully downlit, giving the room a bit of a dungeon feel that only dissipates after a decent size crowd has amassed. Until the music began I thought of the raised seating area, which offered a great view of the stage, as the venue's best feature, but the sound was better. 

Since the venue is owned by the proprietors of Echo Mountain Studios, I admit that my expectations were fairly high coming in. Were it not owned by such experienced audio experts, this reviewer might have felt more trepidation about a consideration of the space so soon. But they obviously but a great deal of thought and energy into the acoustics of the space. There is a considerable amount of sound damping material subtly placed throughout the room (chiefly on the ceiling), and the sound system is top notch. The space would seem given to echo, but that seemed to have been almost completely neutralized by these measures. 

Electric Owls took the stage somewhat later than the posted start time of the show, and immediately took charge of the evening. Despite being in existence for almost two years now, Electric Owls have kept a pretty low profile since being formed by lead singer Andy Herod. Their debut CD Ain't Too Bright was released in April of last year on Vagrant, and they have toured to promote it, but have played less than a half-dozen shows here in Asheville, according to Herod. The CD is definitely worth having (samples can be heard on their MySpace page), but their live show is even better. The arrangements are more intricate — almost every song on Saturday night featured a lap slide, which is absent from the the record — and have a very fun, expansive feel to them. Often starting slow, the songs would steadily, in a way reminiscent of The National's better songs (although Andy Herod and Matt Berninger's vocal stylings couldn't be more different). The vocal arrangements were also a pleasant surprise, often three part harmonies from Herod, the bassist, and the lead guitarist, whose falsetto was often the perfect compliment. Their set was thoroughly good — a fact that did not escape the crowd, whose spirited applause was a constant in between each song — and one of the strongest from a local band I can recall seeing in a long time. Next time you see Electric Owls listed for a gig, don't miss it! 

After a short break Cobra Horse began their set, a noticeable contrast in energy. Musically, Cobra Horse has obvious influences in The Ramones, The Stooges, and any number of other great punk bands, and singer/guitarist Josh Carpenter proved more than capable with his guitar solos on the first few songs. Instrumentally, their set was raucous, high-energy, and exciting--marked by propulsive drumming, snarling guitars and a solid bass line. The problem though, was that Carpenter's voice was higher than Iggy Pop or Joey Ramone, and it never seemed able to gain any purchase over their raucous instrumentation. Some of this could be due to the LAB's sound man not being used to the space, or to getting good levels with such a loud group in a small space (never an easy task), but, whatever the reasons, the quality of the set never quite made it to what it was so obvious these talented musicians were capable of. Even their final number, a spirited cover of Tom Petty's "Refugee," didn't quite get to where we knew the band could take it.

In sum, with the opening of the LAB's performance space the music scene is this town has gained a fantastic asset, and there is no doubt that it will yield many great shows in the years to come, and they could not have picked a more apposite band to open with than Electric Owls.

Chall Gray is a freelance writer and producer who lives in Asheville.   

What: Alice in Chains with Shooter Jennings

When: Tuesday, April 27, 8 p.m.

Where: Thomas Wolfe Auditorium

How: Tickets are $43.50, plus applicable service fees, available beginning

Friday, March 12, at 10 a.m. via all Ticketmaster outlets, Asheville Civic

Center box office, by phone at 800-745-3000, or online here.

Jerry Cantrell  guitars/vocals

Sean Kinney  drums

Mike Inez  bass 

William DuVall  guitars/vocals