Quick trip or long, Asheville's a solid 'A'

ASHEVILLE -- The travel guide folks at Frommer's have realized what savvy North Carolinians already know. They've included Asheville in their list of a dozen places not to be missed in 2007.

It's the gateway to the North Carolina mountains and many, many destinations beyond. But there's much more to this fabulous city.

Here are five quick stops for savoring Asheville in as little as an hour. (But don't be surprised if you find yourself taking more time.)

'Angel' with attitude

Some historic sites leave you cold, where something dusty on the fringe of your memory happened long ago; the narration droned by a grad student.

That's not the case at the Thomas Wolfe House in downtown Asheville. Wolfe was the author born and raised there, whose literary fame rests on four novels -- "Look Homeward, Angel," "Of Time and the River," "The Web and the Rock" and "You Can't Go Home Again" -- and an assortment of short stories. He died in 1938, just shy of his 37th birthday, and has been praised by peers and critics ever since.

Weekend guide Ted Mitchell is just the guy who could get you reading Wolfe's dense and personal prose. He's a Wolfe expert in his own right, an active researcher who knows people Wolfe knew well.

On a Mitchell-led tour, you get a riveting, real-life soap opera a la "Peyton Place."

First, walk through the visitor center for background: Wolfe's father was a womanizing carver of tombstones; his stern mother lived apart with some of the kids in her ramshackle Old Kentucky Home boarding house -- the place you visit next door. Tom grew up moving from one room to another, depending on vacancies; he hated his greedy and cold mom.

Mitchell dishes about the author's beloved brother who died young; the surviving bad-penny brother-from-hell; the locals who found themselves too thinly disguised in Wolfe's four novels. He even points out the window Tom crawled through to secretly visit the boarder he had a crush on.

Wolfe's tell-all prose antagonized his family and Asheville in general. Not that he cared: In his meteor-short rise to fame, he preferred drinking and womanizing in New York and Europe.

The house is done up circa 1915 and loaded with original family furniture, books and plates -- the works.

Acoustic pizazz

Asheville is Southern. It's mountains. It's artsy-funky. The musical aspects of all this collide delightfully in the Rib Tips (www.theribtips.com), a quartet whose only-in-Asheville sound might be described as Appalachian swing. Their sound (and one member) are currently featured in a 30-second TV ad for Asheville tourism.

You get a violinist who gravel-croons like Louis Armstrong; a fast but laid-back guitarist; a burly guy whose bass is actually a string stretched between an overturned washtub and a pump-handle apparatus; and -- remarkably -- a guy fitted with a washboard studded with stainless-steel cups.

"We've been playing about every weekend," says John Mulholland, the washboard guy (who daylights as a crafter of stringed instruments).

When not doing regional gigs (they opened for Willie Nelson recently at Harrah's Cherokee casino) or private parties, they may be at Jack of the Wood, Barley's brewpub or Across the Trax in Bryson City. Check Asheville's Mountain Express free weekly for updates.

In summer and leaf season, they also play out on the street regularly. Good weekend spots include Patton Avenue and at the Flat Iron sculpture at Battery Park Avenue and Wall Street.

Appetizing

This area has high-rolling diners down from their chalets, organic farmers and UNC- Asheville snack-seekers. Where to go?