Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Culture

The Manual may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site.

Top Music Venues Across the Country

Marla Milling
By

top music venues across the country orange peel
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Sometimes it’s the smallest places that offer up the best opportunities for catching a great band. We admit, it’s hard to choose just a few musical venues from across the country, but here are a few worthy of note.

Orange Peel, Asheville, North Carolina

Recommended Videos

Housed in a former skating rink, The Orange Peel Social Aid & Pleasure Club definitely keeps the music thumping. It may be a small venue at the corner of Biltmore and Hilliard Avenue in downtown Asheville, but it draws some big talent. The Smashing Pumpkins came to town in 2007 for a nine-show run and the venue has also hosted such talent as Imagine Dragons, Dawes, Sonic Youth, Blondie, Cyndi Lauper, My Morning Jacket, Sara Bareilles, the Beastie Boys and many more. The Orange Peel’s ability to draw major acts hasn’t gone unnoticed. Rolling Stone Magazine named it one of the top five rock clubs in the country in 2008. It’s also received accolades from a variety of other publications.

Tabernacle, Atlanta, Georgia

There’s a rich history surrounding the Tabernacle building in Atlanta. Started in 1910 as The Broughton Tabernacle it was run by Dr. Leonard Gaston Broughton who served as pastor and physician. It housed an infirmary as well as a Baptist Church. In the mid-80s the congregation found another place to worship and the building sat empty. It was turned into a House of Blues club by the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games. Different owners have operated it as a music venue throughout the years. Live Nation currently runs it as The Tabernacle featuring some of the biggest musical acts in the business.

Bluebird Café, Nashville, Tennessee

Its outer appearance really doesn’t reveal the secrets it contains, but The Bluebird Café in Nashville is one of the great places for musicians to be discovered. It’s located in a strip mall. With only 90 seats, it’s a small intimate setting. Up and coming musicians hope to play there and established singers and songwriters still enjoy an invitation. As far as being discovered—this is where Garth Brooks was first noticed.

House of Blues, Chicago, Illinois

They say when the house is packed at the House of Blues, you can feel the building swaying with the music. House of Blues Chicago first opened in 1996 and has hosted a who’s who list of musicians throughout the years—everyone from The Who and Al Green to Pearl Jam and Jurassic 5. Check the websites of all these venues for the most up-to-date calendars of upcoming shows.

Marla Milling
Marla Milling
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Marla Hardee Milling is a full-time freelance writer living in a place often called the Paris of the South, Sante Fe of the…
How long should you let new cigars rest in a humidor?
Cigar humidor

Looking at those beautiful, oily cigars you've just unboxed or unwrapped, the calling to light up is real. I get it. I always want to smoke my cigars right away, too. But you shouldn't. Mail day is always exciting after you've ordered a slew of new cigars. When they arrive, the real fun begins. You'll probably need to organize your humidor to make the new sticks fit or arrange them for optimal humidification. As you're handling them, it's difficult to resist the temptation to crack open the cellophane or boxes and smoke one right away. While you can do that in most cases, I would recommend against it. Depending on where those cigars came from, where you live, and how they traveled, they might need a little time to rest in a humidor. They'll need to replenish some humidity and moisture or dry out a little.
How long should you let your new cigars rest?

When you put cigars in a humidor, especially one that's filled, they'll soak up and release humidity over time until they reach the average RH (relative humidity) that you have set inside your humidor. If you have a device like a that does this automatically, it will produce moisture and humidity to keep the levels optimal. You can also achieve the same thing with in smaller humidors, which release and soak up the humidity to match the levels on the label. Boveda packs come in a range of RH levels, from the low to mid-60s to the mid-70s.

Read more
The 11 best Kevin Costner movies, ranked
He has a full resume of films, but if you're a Costner fan, then you must see these movies
Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves

An all-American, blue-collar working man turned Hollywood essential, Kevin Costner has lived a life full of experience and dreams that some can only imagine. Starting out as a small kid -- 5'2" at high school graduation -- who moved around a lot, Costner was fond of things like poetry, writing, and singing in his Baptist choir. Outside of the arts, he was also very interested in sports of all kinds, which is reflected in his film career to this day. Also a man of the outdoors, Costner built his own canoe at 18 and paddled it through sections where Lewis and Clark ventured. Fun facts aside, Costner had a full and interesting life before the world got to know him as the charming and eloquent movie man we know him to be today.
From his past life, accomplishments, and hobbies, Costner was fully prepared to write, direct, and act for the screen as he fulfilled yet another lifelong dream. A man who was once called "The King of the Sports Movie," Costner has been able to act in films of a subject matter near and dear to his heart that became the films he is best known for. And that doesn’t include his many other successful movies having to do with politics, crime, and romance that also make for some of his best roles. Luckily, we’re here to talk about all of those films at once as we celebrate the man who has accomplished more in one lifetime than some could in many. Here are the best Kevin Costner movies of all time.

11. Open Range (2003)

Read more
The best Quentin Tarantino movies, ranked – Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and more
If you haven't seen these films at least one time, you need to ... and then watch them again and again
Scene from Pulp Fiction, John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson

Of all the contemporary film auteurs, perhaps no one’s work has permeated pop culture as thoroughly as Quentin Tarantino's. This director’s hyper-stylized, retro fantasy worlds have come to define cinematic coolness. His clever mashups of genres, exquisite sense of aesthetics, impeccable editing, uproarious suspensefulness, and impossibly quippy dialogue have been endlessly imitated.
Given the current political landscape, Tarantino’s work has undergone a serious critical re-evaluation from Black and feminist critics and scholars who point toward both his allegedly abusive behaviors and the offensive politics and rhetoric of his films. It’s true that in this new light, for many, there may be nothing redeemable about his entire oeuvre. 
However, to discard all Quentin Tarantino movies would discount the impossible talent of his frequent collaborators and stars, such as Sally Menke (who edited all of Tarantino’s movies until her death in 2010), Uma Thurman (who not only played the protagonist of Tarantino’s most iconic movies but was also credited as a co-writer on Kill Bill), Samuel L. Jackson (a frequent Tarantino star), and many more.
With that in mind, here’s our (subjective!) ranking of the greatest directed Quentin Tarantino movies of all time.

9. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)

Read more