Tag: Ashleigh Shanti

The Shift List – A Final Course

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

“Food, like a concert, is never the same experience twice,” Chef Edward Lee told me during our interview back in October 2018. “You can’t remove the human element from either.” 

Back at the end of March of this year, about two weeks into the nationwide shutdown, we re-released Chef Lee’s episode to highlight the work he has been doing through the Restaurant Workers Relief Program and the Lee Initiative to feed and raise funds for out-of-work restaurant workers all over the country. The human element was removed from both the restaurant and concert industry in a way that no one could have predicted just three weeks earlier. 

The Shift List was created to explore the creative relationship that chefs have with music, and to that end, the unique experience and vibe they provide to diners at their restaurants. Over two seasons as host and producer of the show, I’ve been fortunate to speak to thirty chefs in four countries and a dozen world-class cities, including London, Copenhagen, Montreal, and my hometown of Los Angeles. It was a privilege to eat their food in the restaurants that they built. 

There’s a lot of uncertainty around when we’ll all be able to eat out at restaurants freely, the way we used to, so for now, The Shift List will conclude its 30-episode run and serve as a time capsule for an experience that we never knew we were taking for granted. 

To commemorate this, I’ve selected five episodes to help inspire your own cooking playlists, and have included a few of my personal favorite discoveries from the show that always set a great tone when I want to focus on cooking at home. A special ‘Best of The Shift List’ playlist is up now over on our BGS Spotify page. — Chris Jacobs, host

Ashleigh Shanti (Benne On Eagle) – Asheville, NC 


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If Chef Ashleigh Shanti weren’t running the kitchen at Benne On Eagle, a restaurant that pays homage to the rich African American culinary traditions that once thrived in an Asheville neighborhood known as The Block, she’d like to try her hand at being a rapper. Her Shift List included A Tribe Called Quest, Kendrick Lamar, and plenty of Pharrell Williams.

Favorite tracks: 

  • A Tribe Called Quest – “Check The Rhime” 
  • Nina Simone – “My Baby Just Cares For Me” 
  • Kendrick Lamar – “DNA” 
  • The Neptunes – “Frontin’ (Feat. Jay Z)”

Tom Harris (The Marksman Pub, St John) – London 


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Chef Tom Harris explained what a proper English pub is, threw down some amazing jazz/funk/Afrobeat playlists (including Fela Kuti, Roy Ayers, and James Brown), and explained why recipes should be described in musical terms.

Favorite tracks:

  • Fela Kuti – “Mr. Follow Follow” 
  • Johnny “Hammond” Smith – “Shifting Gears” 
  • Moses Boyd – “Rye Lane Shuffle” 
  • The English Beat – “Mirror In The Bathroom” 

Jessica Largey (formerly Manresa, Providence, Simone) – Los Angeles 


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Chef Jessica Largey’s Shift List included The Clash, David Bowie, and Neko Case. In her episode she reveals why Nina Simone was the namesake of the DTLA restaurant she helmed for a year in 2018.

Favorite tracks:

  • Shakey Graves – “Dearly Departed” 
  • Ben Sollee – “Mechanical Advantage” 
  • David Bowie – “Golden Years” 
  • Gap Band – “Outstanding” 

Miles Thompson (formerly Michael’s Santa Monica) – Santa Monica 


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When Chef Miles Thompson describes food, it sounds like jazz – “salt, umami, acid, sugar, spice, crunch!” His Shift List included the trippy guitar stylings of Bill Frisell, the rootsy wanderings of Jason Isbell, and classical suites from the likes of Debussy and Isaac Albéniz.

Favorite tracks:

  • Bill Frisell – “Telstar” 
  • Bill Frisell – “Del Close” 
  • Agustiín Barrios Mangoré – “Julia Florida”
  • The Beatles – “Savoy Truffle” 

Matt Orlando (Amass, noma, Per Se) – Copenhagen 


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Chef Matt Orlando’s Amass restaurant in Copenhagen is a fine dining establishment located in a sprawling industrial warehouse that is covered in graffiti and proudly blasts obscure and “sometimes aggressive” hip hop. His Shift List included Bay Area legends Hieroglyphics, plenty of Wu Tang Clan, and some obscure Scottish reggae music to round it all out.

Favorite Tracks: 

  • Hieroglyphics – 3rd Eye Vision (Note: this is the entire album. Just let it run. There is no better music to cook to!)

 

Celebrate Black History Month with These 15 Artists

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

American roots music wouldn’t exist if not for the voices, stories, and musical traditions of Black Americans. Full stop. Celebrating the Black forebears of Americana, bluegrass, country, and string band music, pointing out their importance and their essential contributions to these genres we all know and love today needs to happen year-round, not just February. 

The BGS editorial team believes strongly in this idea, and though readers will be able to find several Black History Month features and articles in the coming weeks, we encourage you all to also take a dive back into our archives for stories that highlight Black creators and artists from all points across the last year. 

Mavis Staples on Live From Here

Ceaselessly relevant, Mavis Staples recently gave a keynote presentation at Folk Alliance International in New Orleans where she once again gleefully assured the audience she wouldn’t be done singing ‘til she didn’t have anything else to say. And she has plenty left to say! Watch Mavis Staples on Live From Here with Chris Thile. 

Yola’s Year of Debuts

Yola’s debut album, Walk Through Fire, landed on our BGS Class of 2019 lists for Top Albums and Top Songs — and nearly every other year-end list across the industry, too. Naturally she popped up a few times in our pages: In our in-depth interview, when she made her Opry debut, and when she dropped an blazing Elton John cover.

Liz Vice on The Show On The Road

Liz Vice is a Portland born, Brooklyn-based gospel/folk firebrand who is bringing her own vision of social justice and the powerful, playful bounce of soul back to modern religious music. She is following a rich tradition that goes back generations to powerful advocates like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sam Cooke, the Staples Singers, the Ward Sisters, Aretha Franklin, and especially Mahalia Jackson, who was the soundtrack to the civil rights movement. Listen to the Liz Vice episode of The Show On The Road.

Brittany Howard, Artist of the Month and More

Our November 2019 Artist of the Month stunned in a stripped down duet with Alicia Keys at the Grammy Awards last weekend, her well-earned musical stardom solidified by her debut solo album, Jaime. Our Artist of the Month interview anchored our coverage of Howard’s new music, but her Tiny Desk Concert really captured readers’ attention!

Steep Canyon Rangers with Boyz II Men

Yes, you read that correctly. A combination none of us knew we needed that now we can never go without. The Asheville Symphony backs up the two groups collaboration on “Be Still Moses,” a moment transcending different musical worlds and genre designations. You can watch that performance here.

Rhiannon Giddens: Booked, Busy, and Blessed

How much can an artist really accomplish in a year? A quick scroll through the BGS halls shows a Grammy-nominated album, being named Artist of the Month, scoring a ballet, playing the Tiny Desk, debuting a supergroup, and oh so much more. We are more than happy trying to keep up with Rhiannon Giddens’ prolificacy.

Ashleigh Shanti on The Shift List

The Shift List is a podcast about chefs, their kitchens, their food, and the music that powers all of it. On an episode from September we interviewed Chef Ashleigh Shanti of Benne on Eagle, an Appalachian soul food restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina. Her Shift List includes Kendrick Lamar, Nina Simone, and more.

Grammy Winners, Ranky Tanky! 

 

We spoke to Ranky Tanky about their album Good Time in August, less than six months before it would win the Grammy for Best Regional Roots Album. If you aren’t familiar with Gullah music, our interview will help you out.

Americana’s Sweethearts, The War and Treaty

Rapidly-rising folk/soul duo of  husband and wife Michael and Tanya Trotter, The War and Treaty have had a year chocked full of smashing successes. Of course the best way to catch up with them was on the road, so Z. Lupetin set up the mics for an episode of The Show On The Road.

Tui’s Old-time Tunes

Jake Blount, one half of old-time duo Tui with fiddler Libby Weitnauer, is a scholar of Black, Indigenous, and otherwise forgotten, erased, or marginalized American fiddlers in old-time and string band music. His work specifically spotlights the source musicians whenever possible, undoing generations of revisionist history in roots music. Tui’s recording of “Cookhouse Joe” was featured in Tunesday Tuesday.

A Sitch Session with Birds of Chicago

A song with a message well-timed for almost any era, “Try a Little Harder” seems especially perfect for this very moment. Birds of Chicago do an excellent job bringing that message to the world. A suitably stunning Sitch Session.

Dom Flemons Talks Black Cowboys

If you haven’t heard Dom Flemons talk about his album, Black Cowboys, and the narratives and traditions that inspired it, this episode of The Show On The Road is essential. The music is captivating on its own, a perfect demonstration of Flemons’ uncanny ability to capture timelessness and raw authenticity, but with his scholarly takes and his depth of knowledge the songs take on even more meaning and power. It’s worth a deep dive — check out our print interview, too.

Gangstagrass Set the Standard

When you read Gangstagrass’s Mixtape of standard setters the parallels that emerge between foundational bluegrass and hip-hop are certainly surprising, but they also make perfect sense. It speaks to the longevity of this boundary-pushing, genre-defying group — that has been setting their own standard as they go.

Jontavious Willis Goes Back to the Country

“Take Me to the Country” is Willis’ paean to his homeland: “No matter where I go in the world, I can’t wait to go back to the country,” He told BGS in April of last year. “For me, that special place is a rural southern town in Georgia where I grew up. It’s such a quiet and calm place, and somewhere I crave when I’m far from it.” You can hear that truth woven into the music.

Octogenarian Bluesman, Bobby Rush

At 85 years old, Bobby Rush has been playing his brand of lovably raunchy, acoustically crunchy, and soulfully rowdy blues for over six decades. After winning his first Grammy at the humble age of 83, he has no plans of slowing down. We caught up with Rush on The Show On The Road.

Photo of Yola: Daniel Jackson 

The Shift List – Ashleigh Shanti (Benne on Eagle) – Asheville, N.C.

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, our guest is Ashleigh Shanti, Chef de Cuisine of Benne on Eagle in Asheville, North Carolina.

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Benne on Eagle is located on Eagle Street in a historic Asheville neighborhood called The Block. Shanti describes Benne on Eagle’s fare as Appalachian soul food. She works closely with Chef John Fleer, who’s best known around Asheville for his acclaimed restaurant Rhubarb and its sister cafe/bakery, The Rhu. The menu at Benne on Eagle pays homage to the rich African American culinary traditions that once thrived in The Block, as well as honoring Shanti’s own history as a Southern, African American woman.

The restaurant opened in late 2018, and it’s captured the attention of numerous media outlets, landing an Shanti-centered feature in the New York Times as one of the 16 black chefs changing food in America. Benne on Eagle has also been listed on Bon Appetit’s the Hot 10: America’s Best New Restaurants 2019.

Now 29 years old, Shanti traveled across the US on a six-month sabbatical before landing in Asheville after being tapped by John Fleer, and as that story in the Times reported, she decided that her next step as a chef needed to fulfill a critical desire to “[cook] food that celebrated her heritage as a black woman from the South and rebuffed assumptions about what that food could be.”

And if she wasn’t running the kitchen at Benne On Eagle or didn’t have any culinary skills, Ashleigh professes that being a rapper would be her dream job. She even writes a bit here and there, like the time Chef Carla Hall stopped by the restaurant for a visit and Ashleigh presented an original rap in her honor.

Ashleigh Shanti’s Shift List
A Tribe Called Quest – “Check The Rhime”
Nina Simone – “My Baby Just Cares For Me”
Megan Thee Stalion – “Big Drank”
Wynton Marsalis – “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South”
ODESZA – “Late Night”
Kendrick Lamar – “DNA”
Lauren Hill – “Doo Wop (That Thing)”
The Neptunes – “Frontin’ (Feat. Jay Z)”

Heading to Asheville, NC? Reserve a Table at Benne On Eagle here.