
This is the final stop on our five-part audio guide to Asheville, North Carolina, and we’re heading for the trees. In this episode of Unpacked by Afar, host Aislyn Greene laces up for Asheville hiking, and discovers why the oldest mountains on Earth are also some of the most beloved.
On a tour with Hike Bike Kayak Asheville that takes Aislyn and guide David into the Pisgah National Forest, Aislyn learns that Asheville hiking means far more than a simple walk in the woods. These are among the oldest mountains in the world, cloaked in one of the most biodiverse forests in North America, home to thousands of plant species and waterfalls around nearly every bend. David leads her to quiet swimming holes and points out plants that grow nowhere else on Earth.
She stands beneath Looking Glass Falls and hears how a single valley packs in world-class rock climbing, fly fishing on the Davidson River, and a 60-foot natural water slide called Sliding Rock.
Zoom out, and the scale is staggering. The Great Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge Parkway are among the most visited places in the entire national park system, and Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi, rises just up the road. It helps explain why so many people who come here for Asheville hiking end up never wanting to leave, and why the outdoors are one of America’s great travel destinations. It’s a landscape you can dip into for a single afternoon or disappear into for a week.
It all adds up to a rich piece of cultural travel and a fitting finale to our guide: a reminder that in Asheville, the wild is never far away. Whether you want a gentle waterfall stroll or a hard climb to a summit view, the trailheads are closer than you think, and the payoff is some of the most beautiful country in the eastern United States. Consider it your guide to where to go and what to know.
Unpacked by Afar is a travel podcast that unpacks one destination at a time. That’s the end of our Asheville audio guide, so catch up on the whole series in the feed.
CHAPTERS
00:00:00 Older Than the Atlantic
00:02:30 Meeting My Guide
00:06:30 The Blue Ridge Parkway
00:11:00 Looking Glass Falls
00:13:15 Wildflowers and Orchids
00:16:15 Behind Moore Cove
GUESTS | David Teafatiller of Hike Bike Kayak Asheville, our hiking guide
PLACES WE VISITED
Pisgah National Forest
Looking Glass Falls
Sliding Rock
Davidson River
Blue Ridge Parkway
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Mount Mitchell State Park
MORE FROM AFAR
Asheville Travel Guide
10 Travel Itineraries for Exploring Asheville Your Way (includes an outdoor itinerary)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 24
22 min

This is the fourth stop on our five-part audio guide to Asheville, North Carolina, and it may be the tastiest one yet. In this episode of Unpacked by Afar, host Aislyn Greene digs into Asheville food, and the surprising reason this mountain city punches so far above its weight at the table.
Aislyn joins a walking food tour with Sita of Eating Asheville, eating her way through a town where farm to table isn’t a slogan but a fact of geography. Along the way she:
Discovers that Asheville food can be a real relief for anyone with dietary restrictions at the celiac-run kitchen of Strada Italiano
Hears the moving, Helene-shaped story behind Mehfil from its owner, Raj
Tastes mountain-grown rice at the farm-to-table cornerstone Table with chef Catherine Smedley
Forages Appalachian flavors at Luminosa
And finishes with a former science teacher turned chocolatier, Melissa Quinn, at Asheville Chocolate.
It’s a scene built on tight relationships between kitchens and the farms a few ridges away, where the rice on your plate might have been grown just up the road, and where a devastating hurricane the year before only deepened the sense that these restaurants belong to their community.
But great Asheville food is also a question of who gets to make it, and whose history gets remembered. In a segment on the region’s Black foodways, Aislyn talks with two of the city’s most celebrated chefs, Ashleigh Shanti of Good Hot Fish and Rakim Gaines of Capella on 9, about Affrilachian cooking, representation behind the stove, and the stories layered into every plate. Their conversation is a reminder that a food town’s story has to include the people history has too often left off the menu.
It all adds up to a rich piece of cultural travel and a portrait of one of the best small food towns in the country. Whatever you come hungry for, consider this your guide to where to go and what to know.
Unpacked by Afar is a travel podcast that unpacks one destination at a time, with a real love of food and travel. This Asheville audio guide has one more episode to go, so look for it in the feed.
CHAPTERS
00:00 A Real Food Town
03:00 Strada's Gluten-Free Surprise
05:00 Mehfil and Raj's Story
09:45 Table's Mountain Rice
12:40 Foraging at Luminosa
18:15 Cooking on The Block
23:15 Dessert With Melissa Quinn
26:00 Come Hungry
GUESTS
Sita, operations manager and tour guide, Eating Asheville Walking Food Tours
Raj, owner, Mehfil Indian Restaurant
Catherine Smedley, chef de cuisine, Table
Chef Sean McMullen of Luminosa
Melissa Quinn, head chocolatier and owner, Asheville Chocolate
Ashleigh Shanti, chef and owner, Good Hot Fish
Rakim Gaines, executive chef, Capella on 9
PLACES WE VISITED
Strada Italiano
Mehfil Indian Restaurant
Table
Luminosa (in the Flatiron Building)
Asheville Chocolate
Good Hot Fish
Capella on 9
MORE FROM AFAR
Asheville Travel Guide
A Local Chef’s 2-Day Travel Guide to Asheville
Immerse Yourself in Asheville’s Culturally Diverse Experiences
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 24
31 min

This is the third stop on our five-part audio guide to Asheville, North Carolina, and it takes us just outside the city to the small mountain town of Black Mountain, North Carolina. In this episode of Unpacked by Afar, host Aislyn Greene goes looking for the creative soul of the region, and finds it everywhere: in the galleries, in the glass studios, and above all in the music scene.
Aislyn starts with breakfast at Cousins Cuban Cafe, then walks a town so small you can cross it in a few minutes, passing murals of Black Mountain’s famous daughter, the late Roberta Flack.
She also traces the ghost of Black Mountain College, the radical, short-lived arts school just outside town that helped shape modern American art before it closed and all but disappeared.
She plays with fire at the North Carolina Glass Center alongside executive director Candace Riley and glassblower Mark DeShields, learning how the quartz buried in these mountains helped turn the region into a glass capital.
Over dinner at Hell or High Water, chef Eric Morris explains how Appalachian food ways, and a hurricane, gave the restaurant its name.
But the heart of the episode is music. At a listening room called White Horse, Aislyn meets managing director Zach Hinkle, who traces the surprising, and nearly lost, blues and gospel roots of Asheville music, and explains why this corner of the Blue Ridge has always pulled creative people in. The episode ends inside a benefit concert, where the whole community turns out to keep a beloved venue alive.
It all adds up to a rich piece of cultural travel: the story of why a tiny mountain town became one of the most quietly influential creative places in America, one of the South’s most surprising travel destinations, and why the Asheville music scene still draws people to these hills. Consider it your guide to where to go and what to know.
Unpacked by Afar is a travel podcast that unpacks one destination at a time. This Asheville audio guide continues, so look for the rest of the series waiting in the feed.
CHAPTERS
(00:00) Welcome to Black Mountain
(01:30) Breakfast at Cousins Cuban and a walk through town
(04:00) Playing with fire at the North Carolina Glass Center
(06:30) The quartz that made a glass capital
(11:00) Dinner at Hell or High Water
(13:30) A restaurant named for the storm
(17:00) Inside the White Horse listening room
(19:00) The nearly lost blues of these mountains
(22:00) A benefit concert, and why the music survives
(27:00) The creative soul of Black Mountain
GUESTS
Candace Reilly, executive director, North Carolina Glass Center
Mark DeShields, glassblower, North Carolina Glass Center
Eric Morris, executive chef, Hell or High Water (Foothills Local Meats)
Zach Hinkle, managing director, White Horse Black Mountain
Featured musicians at the White Horse benefit: Robin Bullock, Bill Maddox, Dr. Bill Bares, Peggy Ratusz, and Chris Rosser
PLACES WE VISITED
Cousins Cuban Cafe
North Carolina Glass Center
Hell or High Water
Trillium Table
White Horse Black Mountain (performing at the Monte Vista Hotel during renovations)
Stay: Peri Social House
MORE FROM AFAR
Asheville Travel Guide
10 Travel Itineraries for Exploring Asheville Your Way (including a music itinerary led by Virtuous)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 24
26 min

This is the second stop on our five-part audio guide to Asheville, North Carolina, and it reaches back a lot further than you might expect. In this episode of Unpacked by Afar, host Aislyn Greene unpacks the long, strange story of Asheville wellness, and why doctors have been sending patients to these mountains for more than a century and a half.
To understand where Asheville wellness began, Aislyn talks with David Freedman, an infectious disease physician and travel medicine expert who retired to the city. He explains the era of climatotherapy, when clean mountain air and a just-right altitude were prescribed for the respiratory illnesses of the Industrial Revolution, and for the deadliest disease of the 19th century, tuberculosis. It’s a history written into the architecture itself, from buildings angled toward the prevailing wind to the once-ubiquitous sleeping porch, and even into the phrase “health resort,” which Asheville helped invent.
Then Aislyn brings the story to the present, where Asheville wellness has grown into one of the most diverse scenes in the country. She heads into the Asheville Salt Cave and Spa, surrounded by 30 tons of ancient Himalayan salt, and hears from owner Jodie Appel about the surprising family story that started it all. She also sits in on a sound bath with sound therapist Kristin Hillegas, and gathers the full, wonderfully weird range of what you can try here, from hydrotherapy and aura photography to a practitioner known as the Breath Nurse.
It all adds up to a rich piece of cultural travel and a portrait of a place locals call the Happy City. Whatever draws you to these mountains, it’s a reminder that the best travel experiences often start with simply feeling better, and that knowing where to go can be its own kind of medicine.
Unpacked by Afar is a travel podcast that unpacks one destination at a time. This Asheville audio guide continues across three more episodes, so look for the rest of the series waiting in the feed.
GUESTS
David O. Freedman, infectious disease physician and travel medicine expert, Asheville
Jodi Appel, owner, Asheville Salt Cave and Spa
Kristin Hillegas, sound therapist, who runs Serenity Sound Healing of Asheville and leads sound baths at the Center for Spiritual Living Asheville
Tebbé Davis, guide and storyteller, Asheville By Foot walking tours (returning from episode 1)
PLACES WE VISITED
Asheville Salt Cave and Spa
Center for Spiritual Living Asheville
Serenity Sound Healing of Asheville
The Spa at Omni Grove Park Inn
CHAPTERS
(00:00) A century-old prescription: go to the mountains
(01:40) A sound bath to begin
(02:10) Meet David Freedman and the science of climatotherapy
(03:40) Fresh air, altitude, and the architecture of breathing
(07:50) Tuberculosis and the “Robber of Youth”
(09:20) John Dickson’s “cure” and the birth of the “health resort”
(11:10) From sanitariums to a modern wellness scene
(11:20) Inside the Asheville Salt Cave
(13:00) Jodi Appell on salt, her father, and opening the spa
(17:00) A sound bath, up close
(19:00) Why Asheville calls itself the “Happy City”
(20:45) People still come here to feel better
MORE FROM AFAR
Asheville Travel Guide
10 Travel Itineraries for Exploring Asheville Your Way (includes a restorative, wellness-minded itinerary)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 24
21 min

Welcome to the first stop on our five-part audio guide to Asheville, North Carolina. And where better to start than at the beginning? In this episode of Unpacked by Afar, host Aislyn Greene sets out on foot to trace Asheville history from the ground up, and to answer a simple question: How did a remote, hard-to-reach valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains become one of the most creative small cities in America?
Aislyn’s first guide reveals the deep Asheville history hiding in plain sight downtown. There are the ancient mountains and rivers, the Cherokee crossroads that predated the city by thousands of years, the rowdy cattle-drive era that gave the town its early reputation, and the arrival of the railroad in 1880, which brought the Vanderbilts, the Groves, and the money that built landmarks like the Grove Arcade.
From there, Aislyn drives out to the Biltmore Estate, America’s largest privately owned home, to meet Chase Pickering, a fifth-generation member of the Vanderbilt family. He shares what it was like to grow up on the estate, and why stewardship and sustainability still shape the property today.
But no honest telling of Asheville history is complete without the Black community that helped build the city, including Biltmore itself. Aislyn rides through the historically Black neighborhoods of Eagle Street and Burton Street with DeWayne Barton of Hood Huggers, meets community elder Clifford Cotton, grandson of the pioneering entrepreneur E.W. Pearson, and hears a song from Asheville artist Virtuous.
It all adds up to a rich piece of cultural travel and the story of how Asheville became Asheville: a place ringed by mountains where people have both passed through and put down deep roots. Consider this your starting point for planning Asheville travel, and your first look at one of the South’s most distinctive travel destinations. It’s also your reminder that the best trips start with knowing where to go and why a place is the way it is.
Unpacked by Afar is a travel podcast that unpacks one destination at a time. This Asheville audio guide continues across four more episodes, so look for the rest of the series waiting in the feed.
GUESTS
Tebbé Davis, guide and storyteller, Asheville By Foot walking tours
Chase Pickering, Vice President of Guest Experience at the Biltmore Estate, and fifth-generation Vanderbilt family member
DeWayne Barton, founder, Hood Huggers
Clifford Cotton, community elder and grandson of E.W. Pearson, Burton Street Community Center
Virtuous, songwriter and performing artist
PLACES WE VISITED//WHERE WE STAYED
Grove Arcade
Biltmore Estate
Eagle Street
Basilica of Saint Lawrence
Burton Street Community Center
Peace Gardens & Market
Stay: AutoCamp Asheville, Airstream lodging on the river
Stay: The Windsor Boutique Hotel, apartment style lodging downtown
CHAPTERS
(00:00) Welcome to Asheville
(01:05) The oldest mountains in the world
(02:40) A Cherokee crossroads and the “Las Vegas” of the 1800s
(05:00) Inside the Grove Arcade
(10:40) The Vanderbilts and the Biltmore Estate
(12:10) Chase Pickering on five generations at Biltmore
(17:50) The Black community that built Asheville
(19:00) Riding with Hood Huggers through Burton Street
(21:40) E.W. Pearson’s legacy and the Royal Giants
(24:40) The Peace Gardens Sculpture Park
(27:15) How Asheville became Asheville
MORE FROM AFAR
Asheville Travel Guide
Immerse Yourself in Asheville’s Culturally Diverse Experiences
10 Travel Itineraries for Exploring Asheville Your Way (including a music itinerary led by Virtuous)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 24
31 min

Buffalo, New York has called itself the City of Good Neighbors since 1940, and in 2023 Reader's Digest even voted it the nicest city in America. But is it true? In this episode of Unpacked by Afar, host Aislyn Greene turns a Buffalo travel story into a bigger question: what does it actually take to turn a stranger into a neighbor?
We begin 150 years ago, on the East Side patch that grew into the second-largest Polish community in the world and the birthplace of Dyngus Day, one of the most joyful traditions in American travel culture. Then we follow that same ground to today, where newcomers from Burma, Congo, Iraq, and Afghanistan are remaking the city block by block. This is cultural travel at its richest: the refugee resettlement workers who set up a family's home before they arrive, the volunteers who knock on the door, and one man's first snow-covered year going from guest to Buffalonian.
If you love travel stories about the people who make a place, this Buffalo travel episode is a love letter to the city's neighborhoods and the neighbors rebuilding them. It's also a reminder that the most meaningful, responsible travel often means slowing down to notice who actually lives somewhere.
Where to go to explore Buffalo
Dyngus Day — The water-and-pussy-willow spring celebration through the Historic Polonia District, the largest Dyngus Day anywhere outside Poland.
Broadway Market — The 130-plus-year-old public market at the heart of the old Polish East Side, still going strong.
Buffalo Central Terminal — The grand, once-abandoned Art Deco railroad terminal now being restored, and where the Dyngus Day parade ends.
Journey's End Refugee Services — Learn about the Home Again program, volunteer, or donate to help welcome Buffalo's newest neighbors.
Buffalo & Erie County Botanical Gardens — Where Ko Ko finally found a mango tree, and a green escape from a long Buffalo winter.
Plan your own trip with our Buffalo travel guide.
Chapters
00:00 — Dyngus Day
02:00 — City of Good Neighbors
06:00 — Building Polonia
14:00 — A New Wave
22:00 — From Guest to Buffalonian
Follow Unpacked by Afar for more on where to go next, and let this be your guide to a side of Buffalo travel most visitors never see.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 21
23 min

Everybody knows Buffalo, New York, for the chicken wing. Fewer people know the real story behind the wing—or the full story of Buffalo's food scene, which is grounded in tradition and full of innovation.
In the first episode of our four-part Unpacked by Afar series on Buffalo, we start where you should always start: at the table. Host Aislyn Greene digs into a food scene that has quietly become one of the most surprising in America, shaped by waves of immigrants and refugees, a fiercely independent streak, and chefs who don't need anyone's permission to be great.
Meet this week's guests
Francesca Bond, food and drink reporter at the Buffalo News
Jessica Forster, partner, wine director, and sommelier at Waxlight Bar à Vin
Lina Brown-Young, founder of John Young's Original
Topics covered
The history of food in Buffalo
Why serious restaurants are betting on Buffalo's food scene
The real story of the Buffalo chicken wing
The best traditional foods to try, inclbeef on weck, the Tom and Jerry (a Christmastime drink), and the deep-fried pizza log.
Why Buffalo turned down a spot in the Michelin Guide (for now), and what that choice reveals about how the city sees itself.
Where to go to explore Buffalo's food scene
Southern Junction — Chef Ryan Fernandez's nationally acclaimed "Tex-ish" barbecue, blending Texas smoke with South Indian (Keralan) spice.
Waxlight Bar à Vin — Owner-operated wine bar in Black Rock with an ever-changing, French-ish menu, with a happy hour that lets you taste the ambition for around $12.
John Young's Original — Lina Brown-Young's bottled mumbo sauce (original and spicy), plus pop-up wings at the Broadway Market.
The Wing Ride (Buffalo Bike Tours) — A bike tour into the true, complicated history of the Buffalo wing, featuring a stop with Lina Brown-Young and her father's recipe.
West Side Bazaar — A small-business incubator and international food hall built by refugee and immigrant entrepreneurs
Duende at Silo City — A bar and gathering space set among Buffalo's historic grain silos on the river.
Anchor Bar — The wing's long-credited "official" birthplace, for the other side of the story.
Find more in this afar.com guide to Buffalo's food scene and be sure to explore our Buffalo travel guide
Chapters
00:00 — More Than Wings
04:00 — A Changing Food Scene
09:00 — Ambition and Affordability
15:00 — The True Inventor
21:00 — Michelin and Beyond
This is episode one of a four-part series that includes travel tips to help you explore Buffalo. Next week, we walk the neighborhoods of the self-described "City of Good Neighbors."
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 14
22 min

Welcome to Unpacked Five Questions, a podcast that takes you behind the scenes of one great travel story. In this episode, executive editor Katherine LaGrave sits down with writer Latria Graham, Afar's Unpacked columnist.
Latria spent seven weeks driving the nearly 5,000-mile Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail—alone—to report a story about the Corps of Discovery's most essential and least credited member: York, an enslaved man whose skills, knowledge, and presence helped make the entire expedition possible.
Latria traces the trail from Kentucky to the Pacific Northwest, stopping at massacre sites, Indigenous mounds, sunflower fields, and a 50-foot statue of an Indigenous woman with a star quilt—asking what it means to travel responsibly through landscapes layered with historical trauma, and the questions that still remain about York's life.
Meet this week's guest
Latria Graham is a writer and Afar's Unpacked columnist, whose work turns over some of travel's biggest and most difficult questions—from whether we should visit museums with complicated histories to how we can better support hospitality workers. Follow her on Instagram at @missgraham.
Episode highlights
Why York—the enslaved man who traveled the entire Corps of Discovery expedition—was essential to its survival, and how historical accounts minimized him for generations while Black historians have spent decades restoring his full dimensions
What Latria found at the statue of York in Louisville, the Dignity of Earth and Sky sculpture in Chamberlain, South Dakota, and Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park in North Dakota: three sites that grappled honestly with what the trail erased
How to travel responsibly through landscapes layered with trauma: spending money with local restaurants and farms, practicing leave no trace principles, sitting with hard history in small museums, and knowing when not to take the riskier hike
Why the rivers mattered most: every confluence, every overlook, every moment the water changed direction—the one thing on the trail that was there before the history and will be there after it
The questions the trail left open: what actually happened to York after the expedition ended, whether a GIS map or an app might tell these stories better than a book, and what it means to make sure history lives as fully realized human lives rather than names and dates
Links & resources
Follow Latria Graham on Instagram
Read her Lewis and Clark trail story for Afar
Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail
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Jul 9
40 min

LGBTQ+ Americans are more than twice as likely as the general population to hold a valid passport. That stat sits at the heart of (Out )on the Road: The Radical Joy of Queer Travel, a new book from writer Lindsey Danis that's part memoir, part guide.
Most conversations about queer travel start and end with safety. Lindsey wanted to write past that, toward joy, belonging, and power. In this episode, they and Aislyn talk about the honeymoon trip that reshaped Lindsey's whole life, the research that turns fear into freedom, and why traveling as exactly who you are is its own kind of homecoming.
Meet this week's guest
Lindsey Danis is a writer and the author of (Out )on the Road, a travel memoir and reported guide written by and for LGBTQ+ travelers. Their work explores queer travel, belonging, and the search for joy on the road. You can find their work at lindseydanis.com.
In this episode you'll learn
Why Lindsey scrapped an entire early draft that was a straightforward travel memoir, and what they wrote instead.
How research becomes the bridge from fear to joy, and the two tools Lindsey relies on before every trip.
Why a honeymoon in Vietnam and Thailand changed not just how Lindsey travels, but where and how they live.
What Lindsey hopes allies take away from the book, including readers who never expected to see themselves in it.
Episode chapters
00:00 A Surprising Stat
02:00 The Book They Needed
05:00 Scrapping The Memoir
09:00 Hiding And Choice
12:00 On Passing
16:00 Two Favorite Tools
18:00 A Toast In Vietnam
20:00 The Honeymoon Shift
25:00 The Galapagos
27:00 A Note For Allies
30:00 Next Stop, Sri Lanka
Resources
Movement Advancement Project — a color-coded database comparing US state laws on gender identity and sexual orientation: mapresearch.org
EqualDex — a country-by-country index of LGBTQ+ rights and attitudes worldwide: equaldex.com
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Jul 2
37 min

Welcome to Travel to Listen, a new Unpacked series hosted by veteran music journalist Tim Chester. Over four episodes, Tim took us into the cities where music is more than entertainment—it's the shortcut to a place's soul. In this season finale, he heads to Detroit to explore the legendary Motown sound—and to find out what's next for the little house on West Grand Boulevard that started it all.
Meet this week's guests
Adam White is the author of Motown: The Sound of Young America, co-written with former Motown president Barney Ales. A former editor-in-chief at Billboard, Adam has spent 40 years exploring the Motown story and writes a weekly blog about the label at adamwhite.com.
Robin Terry is the chairwoman and CEO of the Motown Museum—and Berry Gordy's great-niece. Raised by her grandmother Esther Gordy Edwards, who founded the museum, Robyn is currently leading the $75 million expansion.
Guest host Tim Chester is a freelance travel and culture writer who has spent the past 20 years exploring the world through the lens of music. His reporting has appeared in NME, Spin, and Afar, and his travels have taken him from Manhattan to Malawi and Beijing to Berlin in search of the festivals, scenes, and stories that reveal a city's soul.
Chapters
00:00:00 Welcome to Detroit
00:02:00 Why Motown Endures
00:04:00 The Detroit Advantage
00:07:00 The Motown Family
00:09:00 Inside Hitsville USA
00:12:00 Psychedelic Soul
00:16:00 Hitsville Next
A Music Fan's Travel Guide to Detroit
Detroit's Motown story is anchored to one street, but the city's music scene runs much deeper. Here's how to experience it.
Start here: the essential stops
Hitsville USA / The Motown Museum — Berry Gordy's original house at 2648 West Grand Boulevard, where Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, The Temptations, and Martha and the Vandellas all got their start. Note: the museum is closed during its $75 million expansion, but the plaza in front of Hitsville is open and activated with food trucks and live performances all summer.
Esther Gordy Edwards Center for Excellence — the nearby space hosting the museum's first major exhibition, Psychedelic Soul, running through September 2026. A deep dive into Motown's overlooked '70s era, Norman Whitfield, and the Temptations.
Michigan Central Station — the newly restored Beaux-Arts landmark that anchors Detroit's broader reinvention. A short drive from Hitsville and worth the detour.
Hear live music
Smokey's Soul Town on SiriusXM — not a venue, but essential listening before and during your trip. The show is recorded at the museum and hosted by Levi Stubbs III and John Mason.
The Current (Twin Cities) — if you're road-tripping from Minneapolis, keep this on. Their gig listings track what's happening across the Midwest music scene.
Go deeper
Standing in the Shadows of Motown — the book and documentary that finally gave names and faces to the Funk Brothers, the studio musicians behind the sound.
Hitsville Next — the Motown Museum's emerging artist community for singers, songwriters, musicians, and engineers. hitsvilleusa.com
The full Travel to Listen series
Episode 1: Macon, Georgia — Little Richard, Otis Redding, the Allman Brothers, and the small Southern city that punches far above its weight. Listen now.
Episode 2: Minneapolis — Prince, the Minneapolis sound, and a city still making music history a decade after his death. Listen now.
Episode 3: Southern California — the spacey, grungy desert rock scene beyond Coachella. Listen now.
Episode 4 (this one!): Detroit — Motown, Hitsville USA, and what comes next.
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Jul 1
23 min
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