Bele Chere Entertainment

The Bele Chere Festival is an annual 3-day festival on the streets of Downtown Asheville featuring live, original music all day and night for 350,000 festival-goers.
The festival is committed to a diverse musical line up and features local, regional and national performers in all musical genres. Featured past performers include Travis Tritt, The Wailers, Original P Funk, Cowboy Mouth, Edwin McCain, Rusted Root, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Marty Stuart, Gin Blossoms, Gov't Mule, Train, Galactic, Shooter Jennings, Martin Sexton and many others. All scheduled performances for 2010 are FREE. Click here to view the grid for 2010 peformers.

Bele Chere Entertainment Selection Process:
Each year the festival receives more than 750 applications to perform at Bele Chere. The application process typically begins in December and remains open through mid-February. The application process consists of a band or agent submitting a completed application form, submission fee, publicity photo, stage plot and CD of the act's current lineup.  We also partner with www.sonicbids.com to offer an electronic application process.

The selection committee is made up of local community members involved in the Asheville music industry and scene. The music is divided by genres. The selection committee reviews each act's submitted materials, listens to a portion of 3 songs and scores each act on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the highest).  Each committee member is advised to keep the following criteria in mind: Overall quality of music, appropriate music for the Bele Chere Festival, and crowd appeal. The scores are tallied accordingly in their individual genres.

The highest scoring acts from each genre are contacted directly by the festival's production manager after consideration has been made about the act's requested performance fee, local vs. non-local acts and ensuring a variety of music genres are programmed.