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Asheville’s Ghost Mountain Rhythm and Blues band will bring a touch of New Orleans via Chicago to Townsend on Saturday night.

The band will headline the latest edition of the Sunset Music concert series, which takes place every weekend at the Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center.
According to founder J.P. Delanoye, the band has evolved from its straight-up Chicago-style of blues that the group brought to Brackins Blues Bar five years ago.

“We’ve still got the same focus, more or less, but we’re tilted more or less toward the New Orleans, Memphis side of things,” Delanoye told The Daily Times this week. “That’s what I love. In my opinion, Louisiana music is the best music being played. Maybe it’s the Latin influence that New Orleans has, with it being a big seaport, but there were a lot of Caribbean and African rhythms coming in there.

“I’m a guitar player, and New Orleans has never been that big of a guitar town. There are a lot of piano and horn players from there, but there have been a few big guitar players to come out of there over the years. With the rhumba and the mambo and things like that, it helps you learn a little different kind of syncopation.”

Delanoye, who plays guitar, harmonica and lap-steel in the band, wandered the country playing in various outfits until he settled in North Carolina in 1992. He played with his own band, J.P. and the Mojo Workers, before founding Ghost Mountain in 1998. The band took its name from “an imaginary musical center point in a triangle between the Mississippi Delta up through Memphis to Chicago and over to North Carolina’s Piedmont region, according to the band’s biography.

After touring the Southeast, playing covers from as diverse a repertoire as Muddy Waters, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Allen Toussaint, Buckwheat Zydeco and Ray Charles, the band released “Live from the Down Home” in 2002. It was followed by “Transmitter,” the group’s only studio album to date but one that garnered Ghost Mountain international airplay and critical acclaim. As the band has evolved, so has Delanoye’s love for the more exotic flair that the music of New Orleans brings to the group’s sound.

“With it being obliterated by Hurricane Katrina, it’s more important than ever to keep the music going,” he said. “It’s one of the most unique places on Planet Earth. I haven’t been since Katrina hit, but according to people I know that are from there and have been back to visit, some neighborhoods thriving but 70 percent of the places are uninhabitable. It’s sad, because the culture has changed a lot, and a lot of the musicians have moved on to greener pastures.”

Although Delanoye remains the only original member, he said the current lineup is the strongest to date.

“We’ve always had some great players, and to me, the most important thing is chemistry, both personal and musical,” he said. “Right now, I think we’re at our musical peak.”

Although the band is used to playing blues bars and roadhouses like Brackins, the key to a successful show — whether one played indoors or one such as Saturday’s outdoor gig at the Heritage Center’s amphitheater — is the energy level. Like a lot of bands, Ghost Mountain feeds off the energy of the crowd, and given the backdrop of the Smoky Mountains in the distance, Delanoye anticipates that Saturday’s show will be one to remember for both the band members and the audience.

“I guess while you’re playing, you’re always trying to soak up the atmosphere, and the people that you’re playing for become part of the totality of the performance,” he said. “What we do is largely improvisational, and we definitely try to incorporate the vibe that the crowd is feeling. I guess the key thing is a pretty consistent high energy level.

“We try to put our souls into it and communicate. You’ll see with a lot of jam bands that it’s all about the noodling, but to us, it’s all about the songs. We put our hearts into it and communicate. It seems like the band has really been able to gel as far as having a solid groove, and it’s just a whole lot of fun playing with these guys.

“We’re really looking forward to the weekend and being up there at such a beautiful venue,” he added.