The Nude Party returns to Asheville for Grey Eagle homecoming show

The Nude Party brought its Appalachian roots back to Asheville on Saturday night, turning a Grey Eagle show into more than a stop on a Southern tour. The band came through behind Look Who’s Back, with the Asheville date landing alongside nearby shows in Charlotte, Richmond, Louisville and Nashville, and carrying a sense of return for a group that still traces its story back to western North Carolina.

That return matters in Asheville because the band’s connection to the city is not symbolic. The Nude Party formed in 2012 at Appalachian State University in Boone, then built its early identity around house concerts, including nude performances that gave the group its name. The band later recorded its Hot Tub EP in Asheville in 2016, a local thread that still runs through its history even after the musicians moved on to New York and a broader touring life.

The band’s current album cycle reflects how much that life has changed. New West Records says Look Who’s Back is an independent 2026 release, marking a return to independent status after the group’s earlier label run. That follows a stretch that included Midnight Manor, released on Oct. 2, 2020, after two years of nonstop touring while the band lived together under one roof in the Catskills. The self-titled 2018 album was produced by Oakley Munson and recorded at Dreamland Recording Studios in Woodstock, New York.

Patton Magee has described the early years as a period when nearly everyone in the band was still learning how to play, with the group developing by repetition on the road and by leaning into a simple push and pull between loud passages and quiet ones. That sound, shaped by 1960s garage rock, 1970s glam and a country edge, helped the band move from Boone house parties to a national stage without losing the grit of its beginnings.

Asheville has seen the band before. The Nude Party played The Mothlight on Dec. 30, 2016, and its return to The Grey Eagle brought that early local footprint into the present. In a city where venues, rent and the cost of staying in music keep changing, the show underscored a larger point: Asheville is still part of the band’s identity, and the city’s music scene still has the power to shape artists long after they leave.