Jason Carter brings his own band to 185 King Street

The fiddler's first area show since a January 2024 night at the Grey Eagle is a Saturday, Jan. 9, date in Brevard, and his first here since leaving the Del McCoury Band.

When Jason Carter played the Grey Eagle in January 2024, he was still the fiddler in the Del McCoury Band, a chair he had held for three decades. When he comes back to the mountains this January, it will be under his own name, at 185 King Street in Brevard, with a band built around him.

Jason Carter plays 185 King Street in Brevard on Saturday, Jan. 9, 2027. The show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are on eTix. The date was announced Oct. 23 and is his first show in the Asheville area since Jan. 12, 2024, at the Grey Eagle.

The headline since then is the move. In February 2025, Carter announced he was leaving the Del McCoury Band after 33 years to focus on a solo career, as Relix and Saving Country Music reported. Saving Country Music's headline put it plainly: "This Is Big." Thirty-three years is most of a career in one of bluegrass's best-known bands, and his departure also meant stepping away from the Travelin' McCourys.

He has been touring as the Jason Carter Band since, with dates this year at places like The Parkway Theater and an upcoming Nov. 25 show at the Blue Jay Listening Room in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, listed on OpenDate. His agency bio from the Kurland Agency frames this as the next chapter for a player best known for decades on the fiddle next to Del McCoury.

On record, Carter's solo catalog is short and spread out: On the Move in 1997 and Lowdown Hoedown in 2022. Grateful Web described the latter as arriving with a star-studded lineup of guests. There is no new album attached to this tour, so expect a night built on picking rather than promotion: fiddle tunes, songs and whatever the band feels like stretching out on.

185 King Street is a good room for that. It holds about 275, which is close enough to see the bowing hand and hear the fiddle without a wall of amplification between you and it. For anyone in Asheville, Brevard is a short drive down into Transylvania County on a Saturday night, and worth it for a player of this pedigree in a space this size.

When he comes back to the mountains this January, it will be under his own name.

Bluegrass in Western North Carolina has always had a long memory, and plenty of people in that room will have seen Carter play with Del at some point over the years. January is a chance to see what he sounds like when the band is his.

Sources: Relix: Jason Carter to Focus on Solo Career After 33-Year Tenure with The Del McCoury Band (relix.com); Saving Country Music: This Is Big: Jason Carter Leaves the Del McCoury Band (savingcountrymusic.com); OpenDate: Jason Carter, November 25, 2026 (app.opendate.io); The Parkway Theater: Jason Carter (theparkwaytheater.com); Kurland Agency: Jason Carter bio 2025 (thekurlandagency.com); Jason Carter (fiddler) - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Grateful Web: Star-studded lineup joins Jason Carter for Low Down Hoedown (gratefulweb.com); JamBase listing (jambase.com)