Issue 24 - August 20, 2015 by Knoxville Mercury

TO P KN OX 2015 : Th e O f f i cial Ballot (page 27)

AUG. 13, 2015 KNOXMERCURY.COM

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1 / N. 23

THE CUMBERLAND AVENUE

WILL IT PAY OFF? CORRIDOR PROJECT IS A BIG

PAIN IN EVERYONE’S @%$. BY CLAY DUDA

NEWS

Activists Form Black Lives Matter Knoxville

JACK NEELY

WNOX’s Forgotten Auditorium Is Up for Sale

MUSIC

Ry Cooder Rediscovers His Roots and Goes Country

JOE SULLIVAN

Knoxville Makes Big Gains in Tourism

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

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Aug. 20, 2015 Volume 01 / Issue 24 knoxmercury.com

CONTENTS

“They say the universe is expanding. That should help with the traffic.” —Steven Wright

NEWS

16 Black Lives Matter in Knoxville The first official meeting of a local Black Lives Matter chapter drew a standing-room-only crowd to the My Place Performing Arts Center in East Knoxville last Wednesday night. More than 80 people turned out to learn more about the newly formed Knoxville branch, a local iteration of a national movement of activists that took root after the Trayvon Martin shooting in 2012. Clay Duda sits in.

18 Will It Pay Off?

COVER STORY

If you’ve driven, cycled, or walked anywhere near the Cumberland Avenue Strip lately, then you’re well aware of its current state: a mess. And this’ll continue for at least the next two years as crews upgrade utility lines, pour new sidewalks, put in landscaping, and ultimately cut the four-lane thoroughfare down to just two lanes of travel. It’s all part of the city’s ambitious attempt to add some more character to this chunk of asphalt many have long treated as a cut-through to somewhere else. Will all the misery finally lead to a picture-perfect college strip? Clay Duda looks for word on the street.

Top Knox 2015 Ballot! Turn to page 27 to see all the categories in our new readers’ survey. Then vote at knoxmercury.com.

DEPARTMENTS

OPINION

A&E

4 Letters 6 Howdy

10 The Scruffy Citizen

32 Program Notes: Knoxville’s busy

Start Here: Photo by Bart Ross, Believe It or Knox!, Public Affairs, Quote Factory. PLUS: Words With … Margo Miller

54 ’Bye

Finish There: Sacred & Profane by Donna Johnson, Crooked Street Crossword by Ian Blackburn and Jack Neely, Spirit of the Staircase by Matthew Foltz-Gray

Jack Neely looks for the remains of Knoxville’s most historic Holiday Inn.

12 Perspectives

CALENDAR fall film calendar.

33 Inside the Vault: Eric Dawson

spins a comedic record from Knox County’s dry years.

Joe Sullivan breaks the news on Knoxville’s big gains in tourism.

34 Music: Ry Cooder rediscovers his

Rick Held finds TVA’s Integrated Resource Plan lacking in a few important areas.

35 Movies: Nick Huinker previews

14 Guest Ed.

own roots with his new country music tour.

38 Spotlights: Native Construct, Robbie Fulks, Kristin Diable

FOOD & DRINK

50 Dirt to Fork

Rose Kennedy decides to put her culinary prowess to the test at the Tennessee Valley Fair.

Knoxville’s Public Cinema’s showing of Tu Dors Nicole.

36 Video: Lee Gardner heads over to The Dead Lands and Welcome to New York.

August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 3

LETTERS Delivering Fine Journalism Since 2015

THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES

Thanks for the article about the former parking lot by the student center at UT. [“Hating Modern Architecture, and Loving It (Part 2),” Architecture Matters by George Dodds, Aug. 13, 2015] I’m a Vandy grad (forgive me)—1971. I married and moved to Knoxville in ’75. As a stay-at-home mom in the ’80s, I got to go to UT to get my master’s in public health. I finished in 1986 and have had a great career and life here as a semi-UT-fan. Long story short, that parking lot in the mid-’80s was a haven for me and all my MPH friends. We met on various levels—planned lunch encounters, seriously, and had study sessions on random levels. It was neat to read your article about that parking lot—it was a true haven for lots of us in the mid-’80s. Thanks for the article and for all the memories it brought back to me. Susan Watson Knoxville

WE NEED MORE EARTHY MODERNISM

I have been reading, with interest, George Dodds’ series about modern and contemporary architecture. While it is true that most of the modernist architecture built in this country is of the type favored by the International School and is generally rather cold and crisp and often seems hard, uninviting, and unattractive to many or most of us, not all modern architecture is ugly; and not all of it is of this European type. Organic School, or Wrightian, modernism is characteristically warm, romantic, and intended to create an inviting and engaging environment. This is the American approach to modernism, founded by Frank Lloyd Wright and produced by him, his students, and, with varying degrees of success, by other architects who admire Wright’s work. He preferred earthy natural materials like wood and stone, and embraced the essential human desire for ornament and for spaces that emphasize the most important activities of 4

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

daily life, infusing them with a ceremonial character that—although not necessarily formal—invests those activities of family life with significance and meaning by making their architectural setting seem special. Wright was the acknowledged master of ornament created as part of the fabric of the structure of the building. Unfortunately, we have little in the way of examples of this type around Knoxville. A few do come close. I look forward to reading George’s last article in this series. Nick Wyman Knoxville

FACT CHECKER, CHECK THYSELF

I wouldn’t mention this at all if the story itself had not been about fact checking, but Brooks Clark himself needs to check his own facts in the article about Donald Trump and fact checking in the Aug. 13 edition of your fine publication. [“The Lies Donald Told Me,” Guest Ed., Aug. 13, 2015] Clark mentions a story about Conrad Dobler, once called the meanest man in the NFL. The article says he was a Broncos defensive tackle. However, I think a little fact checking will show you that he was an offense lineman and in fact never played for the Broncos, either. Most of his career was with the Cardinals, and then a few other teams, but no time with the Broncos. I still think it’s a great story, and I hope the national press picks it up (after further editing) just to give one more example of the lying that some national figures seem to think they can get away with. Kelly Franklin Maryville Ed. Note: In his defense, I must note that Brooks Clark did actually fact-check his guest editorial and found the errors—but he was too late for our press deadline.

STARK SPOILERS

My wife and I really enjoyed Stark Love at the Tennessee Theatre the other night. It was nice to see a film devoid of stars, products, ’splosions and CGI, but with… plenty of story! “They don’t make ’em like that anymore.” We wouldn’t have seen it but for the mention in Metr—I mean, the Mercury. But could you please ask the powers that be, whoever They are, not to show a “brief” documentary that’s nearly as long as the film itself and that details the plot in all its twists and turns, before the movie? Last night I was most frustrated, today I’m merely baffled. Who thought that was a good idea? Rare film. Hardly ever seen. Need we say it? SPOILER ALERT! Robert Quiggle III Knoxville

EDITORIAL EDITOR Coury Turczyn coury@knoxmercury.com SENIOR EDITOR Matthew Everett matthew@knoxmercury.com CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Jack Neely jack@knoxhistoryproject.org STAFF WRITERS S. Heather Duncan heather@knoxmercury.com Clay Duda clay@knoxmercury.com CONTRIBUTORS

Chris Barrett Ian Blackburn Bryan Charles Patrice Cole Eric Dawson George Dodds Lee Gardner Mike Gibson Carey Hodges Nick Huinker Donna Johnson

Rose Kennedy Dennis Perkins Stephanie Piper Ryan Reed Eleanor Scott Alan Sherrod April Snellings Joe Sullivan Kim Trevathan William Warren Chris Wohlwend

DESIGN ART DIRECTOR Tricia Bateman tricia@knoxmercury.com GRAPHIC DESIGNERS

Charlie Finch Corey McPherson CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

David Luttrell Shawn Poynter Justin Fee Tyler Oxendine CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS

Ben Adams Matthew Foltz-Gray

ADVERTISING

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR GUIDELINES

• Letter submissions should include a verifiable name, address, and phone number. We do not print anonymous letters. • We much prefer letters that address issues that pertain specifically to Knoxville or to stories we’ve published. • We don’t publish letters about personal disputes or how you didn’t like your waiter at that restaurant. • Letters are usually published in the order that we receive them. Send your letters to: Our Dear Editor Knoxville Mercury 706 Walnut St., Suite 404 Knoxville, TN 37920 editor@knoxmercury.com Or message us at: facebook.com/knoxmercury

PUBLISHER & DIRECTOR OF SALES Charlie Vogel charlie@knoxmercury.com SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Scott Hamstead scott@knoxmercury.com Stacey Pastor stacey@knoxmercury.com SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE–DIGITAL CONTENT David Smith david.smith@knoxmercury.com

BUSINESS BUSINESS MANAGER Scott Dickey scott.dickey@knoxmercury.com

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 706 Walnut St., Suite 404, Knoxville, Tenn. 37902 knoxmercury.com • 865-313-2059 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR & PRESS RELEASES editor@knoxmercury.com CALENDAR SUBMISSIONS calendar@knoxmercury.com SALES QUERIES sales@knoxmercury.com DISTRIBUTION distribution@knoxmercury.com

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Terry Hummel Joe Sullivan Jack Neely Coury Turczyn Charlie Vogel The Knoxville Mercury is an independent weekly news magazine devoted to informing and connecting Knoxville’s many different communities. It is a taxable, not-for-profit company governed by the Knoxville History Project, a non-profit organization devoted to exploring, disseminating, and celebrating Knoxville’s unique cultural heritage. It publishes 25,000 copies per week, available free of charge, limited to one copy per reader. © 2015 The Knoxville Mercury

Nature MEETS Nurture

WHERE

The Gentle Barn is a place of refuge for creatures of all kinds— humans as well as animals. Come out and visit the farm, meet our animals, and hear their stories. Rediscover kindness and compassion through them. We’re open to the public every Saturday and we look forward to meeting you soon!

MEET

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Register today at www.gentlebarn.org/tennessee OPEN SATURDAYS 11-1 / SCHOOL FIELD TRIPS / BIRTHDAY PARTIES / PRIVATE TOURS / SPECIAL NEEDS GROUPS August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 5

Illustration by Ben Adams

HOWDY

Believe It or Knox! BY Z. HERACLITUS KNOX Emory Place was originally intended to be Knoxville’s new Market Square! Established in the 1880s as the Central Market, it was believed to be much easier to get to than the older marketplace in the middle of an already congested downtown.

“Remember Or UT Conference Center Knoxville TN I” by Bart Ross (bartross.com)

QUOTE FACTORY “ I am the museum. Jesus!” —Lois Riggins-Ezzell, executive director of the Tennessee State Museum, responding to criticism by former Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe. In a story by News Sentinel contributor Tom Humphrey, Ashe called for Riggins-Ezzell’s replacement in part because of her alleged bias against East and West Tennessee artists.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS

8/20 MERCURY MEETUP #4 THURSDAY

5-8 p.m., Little River Trading Company (2408 E. Lamar Alexander Pkwy., Maryville). Free. The staff of the Knoxville Mercury is heading to Maryville to hang out with the locals. No speeches, we promise. So come by for a chat—you can tell us ANYTHING YOU WANT.

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

8/22 BLANKFEST

SATURDAY

5 p.m., Market Square. $10-$40. Local free paper BLANK is presenting its second annual festival with an all-star lineup of Knoxville bands, including Barstool Romeos, Black Cadillacs, J.C. and the Dirty Smokers, Johnny Astro and the Big Bang, LiL iFFy, Madre, Mic Harrison and the High Score, Tim Lee 3, and more. Plus, it’s a fundraiser for Positively Living, the local nonprofit support service for those living with HIV/AIDS.

8/23 SAFTA READING SERIES SUNDAY

3 p.m., The Birdhouse (800 N. 4th Ave.). Free. Knoxville’s one and only artists’ retreat, Sundress Academy for the Arts, is bringing poetry to the heart of Fourth and Gill. This month’s show includes poets Pauletta Hansel, managing editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, the literary publication of Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative; and Keith Norris, local author of “Knoxville Fried Inferno,” and “The Filthy F**king Family Fabliau,” which will premiere at this reading.

On one day in January 1986, KNOXVILLE WAS THE COLDEST SPOT IN THE UNITED STATES—INCLUDING ALASKA! During a polar vortex, Knoxville’s temperature plunged to 24 below—NOT COUNTING THE WIND CHILL! It earned Knoxville, which many Northerners assume to be part of the balmy South, a moment in the national news. The Tennessee Valley Authority was so unusual it was an international sensation. Between 1933 and 1950, Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier, legendary journalist Ernie Pyle, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, and FRENCH PHILOSOPHER JEAN-PAUL SARTRE all visited Knoxville just to find out more about TVA. Sartre stayed in the Andrew Johnson Hotel for several days in early 1945 and wrote an essay about American cities for Le Figaro!

8/25 MEETING: FOUNTAIN CITY LAKE FIXES TUESDAY

5:30 p.m., Lions Club Building, Fountain City Park (5345 N. Broadway). Free. Our favorite 125-year-old artificial lake has been suffering from excessive algae growth and poor water circulation—not a pretty situation. Repairs to its earthen berm started last fall, but what’s the city going to do next? Find out as Mayor Madeline Rogero, City Council members, and engineering staff discuss the next phase.

Join the race to save Tennessee water! Volunteer Landing Sat., Aug. 29, 2015 9 a.m. - 2 p.m. FREE ADMISSION Downtown Knoxvilleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s only dragon boat race raises money to support the Tennessee Clean Water Network, to keep our water swimmable, fishable, and drinkable.

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August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 7

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HOWDY WORDS WITH ...

Margo Miller BY ROSE KENNEDY The host of Mood Music with Margo Miller airs her show on the new community radio station WOZO LP, Tuesday nights from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on 103.9 FM. The show’s playlist depends on Miller’s mood.

How does the station work?

It is volunteer DJ-operated, with no advertisements. Some DJs are a lot more tech savvy than I am and record their shows and post them on online. I’m not there yet. I hope to get there soon. Each DJ pays dues or does work, and we run PSAs. We are currently raising money so we can stream, which will cost close to $1,000 and involve some paperwork. We are a low-power station, which means there are several areas in Knoxville unable to get our signal. Once we can stream, we will truly be Knoxville’s community radio station.

What’s most fun about the show?

Sharing music with the listeners and also listening to the music before putting the playlist together. I truly love all music. I get that from my dad. He introduced me to a variety of music. As a kid, I would sit on the floor, with oversized headphones listening to his album collection, which he has since passed on to me. I can hardly wait until we get the proper equipment to connect the turntables, ’cause I will be building playlists from my ’70s and ’80s LP collection.

What’s your favorite tune you’ve spun so far? “Mississippi Goddam” by Nina Simone. Most folks pulled that song when she first did it and some folks wouldn’t book her. I felt so rebellious!

Could you truly be in any kind of mood for the show?

I could. I like to go more with themes than types of music, so I can play a little bit of everything on the show—Latin music, bluegrass/folk, and spoken word have made it into just about each of my shows. I’m not too sure about heavy metal. I don’t own any so it would be hard to put that on a playlist.

Who’s the biggest influence over your musical taste?

Oh my! There really are too many to name. I’m an old 8

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

soul, though. My musical heart is in the late ’60s and ’70s. Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Eartha Kitt, Nina Simone, Motown, Paul Simon, Santana.

Were you ever a superfan in, say, middle school?

I remember singing to the top of my lungs, over and over again, annoying my cousins by singing “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” by Neil Sedaka. Also, the Monkees caught my attention because they had a television show. And I am sad to report in middle school I had a crush on Elvis Presley.

Did you help formulate the station?

I’m the executive director of the Appalachian Community Fund, which is one of three organizations whose names are on the license. United Mountain Defense Fund and the Neighborhood Center are the other two. Shortly after President Obama announced that he was going to have the FCC release the last of the low-power FM stations, we came together and organized an information meeting, encouraging folks to apply. A lot of our DJs come from those early meetings. We were officially granted our license May 21, 2015 and have been on the air since late June.

What’s your goal with the show?

I want to have guests who will come on and chat about some of the songs and how they feel about the mood. I’ve also got a few ideas for recurring 15-minute breaks to round out the show, like “Gardening with Gina,” or “Writing with Friends” readings, or “Hot Topics From the Region.” I would love to be able to promote some local musical talent and support the existing music scene. But mostly I see this as a perfect opportunity to have a wonderful time, maybe dance a little, sing a little—and I don’t have to worry about kicking people out or cleaning up after the party is over. Email the show at moodmusicwithmargomiller@ gmail.com

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August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 9

SCRUFFY CITIZEN

The TV Studio that Never Was The WNOX auditorium, which never reached its full potential, is up for auction BY JACK NEELY

his Friday, the 21st, will witness an event of interest to local music and architectural history. The old WNOX auditorium is going up for auction. It was designed in the early 1950s, when it looked like Knoxville’s most venerable radio station was soon to be East Tennessee’s first television station. Today it’s a relic of an era, and of a dream that never quite came true. But it has some interesting history anyway. It doesn’t jump out at you, just a big 16,000-square-foot brick building, set back from Whittle Springs Road at White Oak Lane. It could pass for a public school, but has just enough of a modernist flourish to suggest an architect was involved. We once expected it to be famous. How could it not be? It was the home of WNOX. By the late 1930s, with amiable Chicagoan Lowell Blanchard at the helm, WNOX became famous as a platform for live music, especially a form of it previously little respected in the industry: the one first known as “folk” or “hillbilly,” finally as country music. WNOX was especially known for its live 90-minute early-afternoon show of music and humor, the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round. Locals like Roy Acuff and Chet Atkins and Archie Campbell performed on the show. It caused such a regional stir that some musicians from other states, like Pee Wee King and the Carter Sisters, moved to Knoxville just to join the WNOX phenomenon. During its first 18 years, the show

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

broadcast from the WNOX auditorium on the 100 block of Gay Street. But in the early 1950s, everything was moving to the suburbs, and America was excited about television. WNOX made a bid to be Knoxville’s first television broadcaster. Figuring they were a shoo-in, the station hit the ground running by building a big, new state-of-the-art studio in the middle of the pleasant suburbs on the north side of town, beside the famous ca. 1918 Whittle Springs Hotel, which already had a bit of a show-biz reputation, having hosted some of the great jazz orchestras on its own. In their new, adjacent building, WNOX installed soundproof, fireproof TV studios, radio studios, recording studios, an auditorium with more than a thousand seats, and a sturdy stage built to hold new automobiles, for live advertising. The auditorium opened in May

1955 with much fanfare and a surprising lineup of entertainment, a dance orchestra, an Atlanta ventriloquist, and Jerry Colonna, the bugeyed, mustachioed singer/trombonist from a couple dozen Hollywood comedies. Lowell Blanchard announced. And giving the keynote was Gen. Leslie Groves, the boss of the Manhattan Project. If you’re Gen. Groves, you don’t have to say something appropriate to the occasion. Groves spoke about Oak Ridge and the future of atomic power. In 1955, atomic power and TV power went hand in hand, the elemental forces of the American future. By the time the grand new facility opened, there was already a cloud over it. WNOX didn’t get the first TV station. That honor went to more-modest WROL, downtown, operating out of the fifth floor of the old Mechanics Bank building (WROL-TV evolved into WATE). The Federal Communications Commission was concerned that Scripps-Howard, the national media corporation that then owned WNOX, also owned the bigger of the two daily newspapers. If granted the first TV station, Scripps would have a monopoly over media in the Knoxville market. Their shiny new TV studio was still under construction when WNOX suffered that shock. They angled to get the second local TV station, then, failing that, the third. A year after the grand opening, WNOX lost its bid for Channel 10 to WBIR. In the end, WNOX, which built the biggest, fanciest TV studio in Knoxville history, never got a TV station at all. They still had the radio station and boasted of the new facility as “the South’s Finest Radio Center.” Seasoned locals like Red Rector and Carl Story were at their height, and performed there. I’ve been told young

In the end, WNOX, which built the biggest, fanciest TV studio in Knoxville history, never got a TV station at all.

Dolly Parton performed on that stage, but have never proven it. With musicians and their audiences, it’s sometimes hard to nail down the whens and wheres. But WNOX’s radio business lost something with the move. Crowds were disappointing. Working people who’d jammed into the auditorium on Gay Street didn’t always drive all the way out to Whittle Springs to see the show anymore. That was just part of the problem. Their grand plan was also a victim of the times. Folks with TV had so much to watch at home, it no longer seemed such a special thing to come out and see local fellows broadcasting a musical show. And, to complete the perfect storm, radio was changing to national formats, while at the same time, rock ’n’ roll was ambushing a youth audience once tempted by country. Nobody saw that coming. Blanchard ended his live-music show in 1961. In ’63, WNOX dumped most of its local country programming, and went to Top 40—which doesn’t offer much call for auditorium-sized radio shows. The big facility that seemed so modern and ready for a high-tech future was, before it was a decade old, already something of a relic of the past. Except it was a past that never wholly happened. In 1964, the studio’s original anchor, the picturesque old Whittle Springs Hotel, was torn down, leaving the WNOX studio building standing by its lonesome self, with only the golf course for company. Still, the WNOX auditorium had some good days and nights. It served as a venue for the Tennessee Valley Barn Dance, and in 1985 it was rechristened the Lowell Blanchard Auditorium, with Archie Campbell and Chet Atkins on hand to authenticate it. It didn’t take, though, and the auditorium became home to an offbeat church. About 15 years ago, things were looking up for the place. I don’t remember the circumstances, but there was a well-attended live variety show in the old auditorium, featuring Robinella and the CC String Band, in their early days. I walked around it with some music people who were rapturous about the place, suggesting it could still be, with 21st-century wiring, an ideal recording studio. Today, there’s more entertainment-related industry in Knoxville than there was in 1955. Who knows. ◆

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August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 11

PERSPECTIVES

Gaining Travelocity Knoxville tourism grows with Visit Knoxville’s efforts BY JOE SULLIVAN

noxville has been experiencing marked growth in visitations, and much of the credit has to go to the marketing efforts of Visit Knoxville. According to a study just released by the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development, travel expenditures in Knox County rose by 6.2 percent in 2014 to just under a billion dollars ($988 million to be exact). With that growth, Knoxville regained a lead that it had lost in recent years to Chattanooga, which grew last year at close to the national average of 4.7 percent. It’s not possible to say exactly how much of the growth here is attributable to the emphasis that Visit Knoxville has started placing on attracting leisure travel since it was reconstituted two years ago as our convention and visitors bureau. But there’s little doubt that last year’s 6.4 percent increase in hotel room nights (to 1,906,944) and even more remarkable 15.2 percent growth in hotel/

motel tax collections are more than coincidental after having remained flat for the two preceding years. “People are starting to discover that Knoxville is a premier getaway destination, and they are coming here for a two- to four-night stay because Knoxville has so much to do right now,” says Visit Knoxville’s ebullient president, Kim Bumpas. And she’s clear that the organization’s marketing efforts have been a major factor in building awareness of what Knoxville has to offer. These multi-faceted efforts include a $700,000-a-year ad campaign, mainly TV spots, aimed at attracting visitors from cities within a 300-mile radius, with Chattanooga, Asheville, Lexington, and Louisville as prime targets. For the peak spring season, these ads feature Knoxville’s array of festivals and musicales—from jazz, Big Ears, and Rossini to Rhythm N’ Blooms, Dogwood Arts, and the

International Biscuit Festival. Throughout the year, they are calculated to draw viewers to Visit Knoxville’s ever more expansive website. “People don’t really buy based on commercials any more,” Bumpas explains. “They see the commercials and then they will Google the product on the Internet. So that’s how our reach expands.” In addition to heralding things to do and places to dine and stay, the website now has online hotel-room booking capabilities and many other fillips. Visit Knoxville’s newfound emphasis on promoting tourism hasn’t come at the expense of fulfilling its traditional mission of attracting conventions and other gatherings to the city. Groups booked in its fiscal year ended June 30 grew to 130 with 238,674 delegate days from 100 with 201,197 delegate days in the preceding year. Of these, 20 with 106,300 delegate days were at the Knoxville Convention Center. The balance were at hotels, Chilhowee Park, or classified as citywide. A majority of Visit Knoxville’s $4 million annual budget still goes toward these efforts. But it’s not solely dependent on the $2.5 million it receives from Knox County as a statutorily mandated share of hotel/ motel tax revenues and the little over $1 million from the city for convention center sales and services. In fact, VK turns a profit from ad sales and sponsorships of its signature Knoxville Visitor’s Guide, of which 225,000 copies were distributed this past year. All indications are that robust growth in visitations is continuing this year. According to Visit Knoxville data, hotel room nights rose by 5 percent during the first half of 2015 to a total of 983,703, coupled with a 3.3 percent rise in average rates that beget an 11.2 percent increase in

hotel/motel tax revenues (which may have been even higher except for payment delinquencies revealed by a recent audit). Another testament to Knoxville’s pulling power is the veritable boomlet in new hotels coming on the market after a four-year hiatus in the wake of the 2008 recession. At least five new hotels with a total of about 600 rooms have opened within the past two years and at least two more are in the works. The recent openings include the Hilton Garden Inn on Cumberland, a Courtyard by Marriott just off Northshore, a LaQuinta Inn on Papermill, an Embassy Suites on Parkside, and a Home2 Suites by Hilton on North Peters. The two now underway are the 73-room Tennessean in the former state office building adjoining the downtown Holiday Inn and a 120room Residence Inn on the State Street site that once quartered the News Sentinel. The upscale Tennessean is due to open in November 2016 and should be a boon to the nearby convention center. Beyond that, as first reported in this column, developer Rick Dover is seeking city support needed to proceed with his grand design for a 160-room restoration of the historic Farragut Hotel at the corner of Gay and Clinch. The just released report showing that Knoxville has regained the lead over Chattanooga in travel expenditures is part of annual study conducted for the state entitled The Economic Impact of Travel on Tennessee Counties. The study also states that Knox County benefited from $172,210,000 in payroll and 9,110 jobs, both up about 4 percent from 2013. So it’s easy to see that Visit Knoxville earns its keep as the community’s convention and visitors bureau. ◆

According to a study just released by the state, travel expenditures in Knox County rose by 6.2 percent in 2014 to just under a billion dollars.

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

The University of Tennessee: The Trip to the Hill After staying up all night to finish a sermon, Carrick died suddenly, at the age of 49. He was buried in the graveyard across the street from his college. Its trustees attempted to reopen ETC with a fundraising scheme based on a lottery, and appealed to former President Thomas Jefferson for help. Jefferson responded that he disapproved of lotteries. But he offered some free advice, that the struggling college in Tennessee spread out on a campus, an “academical village” composed of small buildings for each subject, arranged around a common square.

UT traces its beginnings to 1794, before Tennessee was even a state. But behind that founding date, which gives UT a claim to be one of the nation’s oldest public universities, is a story of stressful decades when the tiny college almost ceased to exist, changed its name and its campus, and only through the tenacity of a few determined scholars and supporters, held on by a thread. In its early years, Samuel Carrick (1760-1809) was the college’s president and only instructor. Originally from Pennsylvania, but educated at Virginia’s Liberty Hall Academy, Carrick came to Knoxville and started a local “seminary” in 1792. The young scholar’s brief experience was apparently impressive enough to convince the legislature of the federal Southwest Territory to establish a college.

Old College, the first building on campus, was built in 1828 and torn down in 1916, to be replaced with Ayres Hall.

East Tennessee College remained closed for more than a decade, during which Jefferson PHOTO CORTESY OF MCCLUNG HISTORICAL COLLECTION started his own college, the University of cmdc.knoxlib.org Virginia. After Knoxville lost its status as state capital, Carrick’s college might have seemed fated to be forgotten. It was named Blount College for William Blount, who was then the However, it reopened again, thanks to David Sherman, a Yale grad who had territorial governor of the Southwest Territory. Blount himself was come to Knoxville to be principal of Hampden-Sydney Academy, a local among the college’s original trustees, as were John Sevier, James White, private boys school named for the well-known Virginia college. Archibald Roane, William Cocke and several other pioneer leaders. When Sherman resigned in poor health, ETC hired Charles Coffin, Samuel Carrick is also credited with founding Knoxville’s first a Harvard alumnus who had been president of Greeneville College church, First Presbyterian. Back then, most colleges were affiliated (later Tusculum) to lead the struggling school. He began planning a with Christian denominations. Despite Carrick’s vocation as a move to a permanent campus. Presbyterian minister, Blount College has been claimed to be America’s first non-sectarian college. East Tennessee College settled on what was known as Barbara Hill, then just outside Knoxville’s city limits, citing the adjacency of Second In 1795, Blount College occupied a two-story frame house “designed Creek and “the main western road” as advantages. It was “near, and yet to accommodate 40 scholars” near the corner of Gay Street and secluded,” ideal for scholarly pursuits. Clinch, later the location of the Tennessee Theatre. Carrick wasn’t as handy at finding a building for his church. Hence, Knoxville had a When builders broke ground for the first building, men with college long before it had a single church building. shovels were surprised to find human bones. They had dug into a cemetery that was only 30 years old. A prominent early military The fact that five girls were once enrolled is the source of a thin claim commander was buried there, but Knoxville’s population was so transithat Blount College was America’s first “co-educational” college. tory at the time that few people remembered it. However, historians believe the girls were likely in a preparatory, not collegiate, program. There atop the Hill, they built the new campus’s first building, in 1828. Built of stone and brick, with an observatory and belfry, it would One alumnus of Blount College, Clement Clay (1789-1866), later became become known as Old College. an Alabama governor and a U.S. senator. He graduated in 1807, just as BC was being renamed East Tennessee College, reflecting the region it served.

The Knoxville History Project, a new nonprofit organization devoted to the promotion of and education about the history of Knoxville, presents this page each week to raise awareness of the themes, personalities, and stories of our unique city. Learn more on www.facebook.com/knoxvillehistoryproject • email jack@knoxhistoryproject.org August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 13

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TVA’s Integrated Resource Plan gives short shrift to renewables BY RICK HELD

et’s start by clearing the air. Yes, it is a good thing that, in pretty much every scenario in the Tennessee Valley Authority’s proposed Integrated Resource Plan, clearing the air is in fact what happens by producing more electricity in ways that don’t throw so much carbon into the air. But this does not mean, despite what is splashed across the tva.gov homepage, that the nation’s largest government-owned power producer is significantly increasing its clean-energy capacity. The only way TVA can back this up is by making the Orwellian claim that nuclear energy—which is poised to eclipse coal as TVA’s primary fuel source—is clean energy. Let’s clear the air: Nuclear energy is not clean energy. I realize I am about to be nuked by an army of Oak Ridgers for saying this, but there is a reason the X-ray tech steps behind a hefty concrete wall every time she takes that picture of your innards. Of course, whatever radiates from an X-ray session is presumably trivial compared to what emanates from a nuclear plant’s spent fuel rods. From a radiological standpoint there’s nothing clean about that energy. And with spent fuel rods “temporarily” stacking up at some plant sites for more than 50 years, there is still no clean solution for permanently disposing of this waste material that remains highly toxic for thousands of years.

But none of this is to say that nuclear energy doesn’t clear the air. Indeed, for all of its dirty ground baggage, nuclear energy releases zero carbon into the air when used to produce electricity. In this carbon-laden era, when temperature records seem to get broken every year, all global-warming mitigation options need to be on the IRP table. This is particularly true when considering a 20-year horizon for a major power producer’s mix of fuel sources and other strategies to serve the needs of its customers. As the most carbon-polluting of all fuel sources, coal is the only one facing an actual decrease in its contribution to TVA’s energy mix. With its use projected to be cut by half, it is clearly a big deal that after half a century as the king of TVA fuels, coal will abdicate the throne and hand the crown over to nuclear. But coal’s decline in no way means that clean, renewable energy sources such as solar and wind and energy efficiency programs will be major TVA portfolio players, although their use will get historic upward tweaks. Coal will no longer be Number 1, but the Big Three are still nuclear, natural gas (a hard fuel to resist at today’s bargain rates, which in no way reflect the cost of the permanently contaminated aquifers created to extract it through fracking), and coal. This leaves just about one-fourth of

TVA ENERGY PORTFOLIO — CURRENT OUTLOOK COAL NUCLEAR GAS HYDRO RENEWABLES ENERGY EFFICIENCY 2015 36% 35% 15% 10% 4% .6% 2033 18% 36% 20% 9% 8% 9% Source: TVA IRP Final Report; Southern Alliance for Clean Energy 14

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

the remaining portfolio to hydro (dams), renewables, and energy efficiency. The IRP Final Report states that the purpose of the IRP is to “meet future power demand by identifying the need for generating capacity and determining the best mix of resources to meet the need on a least-cost, system-wide basis.” In other words, an IRP makes the business case for how electricity is made and delivered. And yet, a couple of mandates unique to TVA’s founding mission must be factored into the business case. The IRP must somehow account for environmental stewardship and economic development. But looking at the relatively short shrift the IRP gives to renewables and energy efficiency— even though these true clean-energy sectors supported job growth in Tennessee at twice the state average— it would seem that not all environmental stewardship and economic development is created equal at TVA. Throughout the report, “least cost” power generation is equated with serving the needs of TVA’s customers. Technically, TVA’s customers are the local power companies in its service region, such as KUB. But, of course, at the end of the power lines, on the other side of the meters, are the real customers. Let’s be clear that a key need of TVA customers is survival as a species. With electricity generation being the single largest source of carbon emissions into an overheated atmosphere, of mounting radioactive waste with no long-term safe disposal solution, and the burning of natural gas extracted at the cost of permanently contaminated water supplies, it’s clear that TVA has a huge role to play in serving that need. Let’s also be clear that TVA’s progress on carbon emissions is laudable for the momentum it is creating going forward, at least for putting its dirtiest fuel source on track for deeper cuts. However, until renewables and energy efficiency are at least on track for parity with the Big Three, any IRP at TVA scale is making the business case for species extinction. ◆ Rick Held is the co-founder of the Knoxville Energy Alliance and Partnership for Green Jobs. If you have a burning opinion that must be shared (and if you generally know what you’re talking about), send it to: editor@knoxmercury.com

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY 15

Black Lives Matter in Knoxville A local chapter of the hashtag-inspired activist group holds its first meeting BY CLAY DUDA

rawing inspiration from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, a local group of activists is aiming to reignite dialogue in Knoxville’s black community over issues of race, economics, and other factors impacting African-Americans. “We want to take the reigns and carry on the work of our forefathers before us in the civil rights movement,” says Andre Canty, one of the more than half-dozen organizers behind Black Lives Matter Knoxville, a local rendition of the national Black Lives Matter movement. Canty and others are aiming to latch on to that national movement to

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

ferment change locally. Many involved have traveled to other cities to take part in demonstrations, workshops on social organizing, and to network with other activists following fatal police encounters that claimed the lives of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo. and Baltimore, among other cities. “These places are our Birmingham and our Selma (Ala.) of the ’60s and ’70s, so we like to go out to places and report back to people about what they’re experiencing (there),” Canty says. “It really gives a sense of how urgent things are and what we should do here, though it’s less about responding and more about being

proactive.” That goes beyond issues of police or state violence, he says, to include systemic problems such as the school-to-prison pipeline. The first official meeting of BLM Knoxville last week drew a standing-room only crowd of 80-plus people to My Place Performing Arts Center in East Knoxville. Most immediately, the group hopes to convene more black people to discuss black issues and plot a path forward. During the meeting they asked that only blacks sign up for a mailing list to receive future information about BLM Knoxville, but encouraged people of other races—which made up more than half the crowd—to get involved in the fight against racial injustice in other ways, such as joining the group Knoxvillians Against Injustice. Coy Kindred, one of the event’s organizers, said that tactic was an effort to establish a “black space” where folks could have frank conversation about serious issues, something currently lacking in Knoxville. One African American woman in attendance said she felt a blacks-only group to discuss issues of racism and other factors impacting her community was needed, noting: “I appreciate

having a lot of allies (of different races), but honestly I feel like I’m shut down a lot of times when I try to talk about race in Knoxville.” But some Knoxvillians with ties to the original civil rights movement lent words of caution after hearing the group was segregating along racial lines. Theotis Robinson Jr., a retired vice president of equity and diversity at the University of Tennessee who participated in marches and lunch counter sit-ins in Knoxville during the 1960s, says that movement for social change would have never proven successful were it not for blacks and whites working together. “Ultimately, I think people coming together is how you really bring about change,” Robinson says. “You need help from all quarters and not to do that is counter-productive to what you say your cause is. You have to get away from that kind of contradiction. It’s divisive.” Robinson was unaware of the fledgling Knoxville branch of BLM or its goals, but says that he sees the movement overall as a continuation of the civil rights struggle. Driven largely by grassroots organizing and social media, BLM was born from the

“Ultimately, I think people coming together is how you really bring about change.” —THEOTIS ROBINSON JR.

#BlackLivesMatter hashtag and IRL actions that took root following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in 2012. Over the past year, it has swelled into a national campaign with offshoots in dozens of cities and states around the country. It regularly makes headlines earning celebrity endorsements, crashing political rallies, and taking to the streets to demand accountability for police and others involved in deadly confrontations. “There are a lot of people mobilizing to say yes, black lives matter,” videographer Jasmine Newton told the Knoxville crowd last week. “You have a lot of allies. There are groups like this all over the place.” Former director of the Beck

Cultural Exchange Center and founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Avon Rollins says there’s still a need to push forward on issues of civil rights and racial justice, particularly around economic inequality. “I think a lot of things have changed in America, but one of the things that has not changed is the economic status of the African American family,” Rollins says. “That’s one of the things we really have to change—the economic structure between the haves and the have-nots—and that’s one of the issues that has been passed from my generation to the next generation. It’s one they’re going to have to deal with.”

While the recent gathering marked the first formal meeting for BLM Knoxville, there have been some past #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations in Knoxville. A protest was held at the intersection of Morrell Road and Kingston Pike on Dec. 14 last year, and on display during the meeting was a video shot during the Week of Righteous Resistance on July 23. Local organizer David Hayes recounted his recent experience attending a national Black Lives Matter conference in Cleveland where he and dozens of others had a run-in with police after officers arrested a 14-year-old boy off a bus nearby. Police have said the boy was under the influence of alcohol, but Hayes maintains the young man—who was not affiliated with the conference— was sober. That encounter made national headlines when a transit cop pepper-sprayed a crowd of people attempting to encircle a police cruiser to stop the boy’s arrest. A good portion of the group’s first meeting involved hearing ideas from people in the crowd about pressing issues facing the black community, what they envision for BLM Knoxville, and what sorts of action or changes

Co-organizers David Hayes (facing page), Andre Canty (top, right), and videographer Jasmine Newton (top, left) recount personal experiences and explain what keeps them engaged in the Black Lives Matter movement during the group’s first meeting last week in East Knoxville. they’d like to see locally. Ideas ranged from limiting the number of liquor stores allowed to operate along Magnolia Avenue to potentially putting forward a candidate for local political office, such as mayor or City Council. Other ideas included pushing for more black history to be taught in schools, finding ways to hold law enforcement and politicians accountable for their actions, spending one-on-one time with kids in the community, fundraising for school supplies or other needs, and making people in general more aware of black culture. Toward the end, organizers encouraged those who proposed ideas to step up and be a leader in that area, whether backing a new political candidate or just informing more people about the group and what it hopes to accomplish. Learn more about the group and future meetings at its Facebook page, Black Lives Matter Knoxville. ◆ August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 17

THE CUMBERLAND AVENUE

WILL IT PAY OFF? CORRIDOR PROJECT IS A BIG

PAIN IN EVERYONE’S @%$. BY CLAY DUDA

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

Renderings by Carol R. Johnson & Associates and Vaughn & Melton/City of Knoxville

t’s another sweltering August afternoon in Knoxville, and things are getting heated along Cumberland Avenue. Cars zip and zag through the gauntlet of plastic barrels and lane closures most of the morning without any real delays, but as lunch hour hits, throngs of hungry motorists pour out of nearby office buildings, hospitals, and off the University of Tennessee campus in search of a meal. Lines quickly grow long and tempers grow shorter. Brakes light up—again. Traffic stops—again. The culprit this time? Zaxby’s. The chicken emporium’s drive-thru queue has spilled onto the main drag, causing even those uninterested in fried poultry to wait in line. Just as soon as one car makes it through the food line another noses in, clogging the road—again. Some brave individuals on foot are just trying to get across Cumberland, wading through the rows of idling cars. A woman clad in red leggings, clutching an iPod, steps out into the crosswalk and immediately a car horn sounds. “Pedestrians have the right of way, asshole!” she screams. Yes, it’s just another day on Cumberland Avenue. As you may have noticed, most of the orange along the Strip isn’t in support of the Vols. Instead, it’s a smörgåsbord of bright-colored cones, barrels, and reflective signs marking off work zones and redirecting traffic around the Cumberland Avenue Corridor Project, a nearly $17 million streetscape and infrastructure renovation the city of Knoxville hopes will give the historic commercial district what some say is a much-needed makeover. The constant lane shifts and ever-evolving construction patterns are now part of daily life for the thousands of people that live, work, study, and play around Fort Sanders, and it’ll continue for at least the next two years as crews upgrade utility lines, pour new sidewalks, put in landscaping, and ultimately cut the four-lane thoroughfare down to just two lanes of travel. It’s all part of an ambitious attempt to add some more character to this chunk of asphalt many have long treated as a cut-through to somewhere else, and it’s a plan that has drawn more than a few complaints voiced in media coverage of the construction.

A rendering from the city of Knoxville paints an aerial picture of what life may look like along Cumberland Avenue once construction wraps in late 2017. The streetscape project, under development for nearly a decade now, is moving into the second and final stage of construction early next year.

Business owners hate the traffic snarls that may be costing them customers, nearby residents ache over the added struggle to get home, and commuters moan about anything that delays their forward progress. If you’ve been anywhere near this vehicular mess, you likely know the headaches. But the city administration has a dream, and that dream is to foster the sort of college strip other cities enjoy—a pedestrian-friendly boulevard that attracts quirky shops and unique restaurants, that serves as a lifeblood for students and families alike, and that draws out visitors to what could become a vibrant extension of Knoxville’s blossoming downtown. It’s a dream even those most affected by the construction say they believe in, too. The question is, can it become a reality?

BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME

Stanton Webster has lived in Fort Sanders for 20 years, and he’s happy to see the Strip finally get some attention.

“For a lot of people this is one of the fi rst places they see when they come to town, and it’s been in need of some upkeep for years now,” says Webster, president of the Historic Fort Sanders Neighborhood Association. “It’s going to be tough to get there, but man if we can pull together as a community and make an extra trip for lunch or dinner to some of these businesses—even go out of our way perhaps—it will be so worth it once the project gets completed.” In the works for nearly a decade now, the Cumberland Avenue Corridor Project has taken shape from a series of public meetings, studies, drafts, and revisions spearheaded under the administration of now former mayor and present Gov. Bill Haslam. Following the fi rst public brainstorming meetings in late 2006, an advisory panel of local stakeholders—mostly businesses owners—was appointed to oversee consultants’ work on the fi rst Cumberland Avenue Corridor study, which was penned in 2007. In the years that followed,

additional studies on traffic, parking, and other aspects were fleshed out, and innumerable public meetings were opened and closed. With all the continued input and research, the overall plan shifted some from its original form, but the goal has remained the same: to revitalize Cumberland into an enjoyable, urban destination. Gone will be the store-front parking lots and suburban-style strip malls. In will be spacious sidewalks lined with bushy trees, abutted by street-level storefronts with apartments stacked overhead. Bringing more foot traffic to the roughly six-block corridor—and to the neighborhood in general—will help attract and sustain more businesses, officials say, and hopefully ease what can be a brutal cycle of feast or famine that ebbs and flows with the school year. That’s the vision, at least. To get there, the city is shaving some lanes off Cumberland Avenue, completely revamping its feel, and changing standards for future

THERE MUST BE AN ANOTHER WAY! CLINCH IS JUST AS BAD! I SHOULD HAVE RIDDEN MY #%!@& BIKE! August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 19

Construction dust should give way to a revamped strip, complete with spacious pedestrian boulevards abutted by tree-lined streets and bustling storefronts. That’s the vision, at least.

development. But once the asphalt gets paved and the concrete cures, it will still be up to free market economics to make good on those ambitions and build up instead of out. New form-based building codes should help move the area toward more urban development, city officials say, allowing buildings on Cumberland to rise up to eight stories above this street currently fi lled with mostly one-level, free-standing shops and eateries. It’ll also require things like underground parking, short-term and long-term slots for bicycles, and signage geared toward pedestrians instead of towering billboards aimed at the interstate, among other things. Those all sound good to Debbie Billings, treasurer of the Cumberland Avenue Merchant Association, who remembers more vibrant days on the Strip as a young UT student. “The foot traffic we used to have in my college days is nonexistent,” says Billings, owner of Graphic Creations on Lake Avenue. “You just look at the Strip, the vacancies, and it just looks old and worn out. It’s been hard to draw some new life into it, and it’s time to revitalize it.” The recently opened Evolve building is a close example of the type of development the city hopes to attract—a mixed-use box with stores on the bottom and apartments up top—though if built under the new building standards, some features would have to be done differently. One example: Buildings reaching more than three stories will need stepbacks away from the sidewalk to let in more light. Evolve shoots straight up, permitted under the now-defunct C7 regulations that long governed construction in the area. The street itself is shaping up, too. Cumberland’s current four-lane configuration will be chopped into a “three-lane cross section,” engineer speak for a roadway with two lanes of travel, divided by a median, with turn lanes at intersections. It’s a narrowing technique known as a “road diet,” and it’s proven successful in other college towns looking to promote pedestrian traffic and slow the pace of commuters trying to blow through in a hurried rush. “Research has shown that when you reduce from two lanes in each direction to one lane, it has benefits

%*$#&! THIS IS THE ALTERNATE ROUTE?! NEYLAND IS SO #?%>&*#$ FAR OUT OF THE WAY! BLURGH! 20

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

for motorists and other modes (of transportation),” explains Libby Thomas, a researcher at the University of North Carolina’s Highway Safety Research Center, which has done extensive research analyzing road diets. “There are fewer opportunities for conflicts and it often reduces rear-end and side-swipe types of crashes from where motorists try to go around other vehicles attempting to make a turn.” It makes things safer for pedestrians, too, in part by slowing the flow of traffic and giving more of a buffer for those exploring on foot. Case studies have shown auto accidents on roads post-diet dropped an average of 29 percent, according to reports from UNC. Knoxville’s deputy director of development, Anne Wallace, who oversees the Cumberland project, says the Strip has long functioned as a two- or three-lane road as cars attempting left-turns clog up the roadway—so why not use that space for wider sidewalks and turn lanes? Those changes will make it harder for folks just trying to use Cumberland as a connector to downtown, but that’s also part of the plan. City officials expect Neyland Drive and Interstate 40 to pick up as much as 20 percent of the commuter traffic that once passed along the Strip, about 6,000 cars daily. “What we’re really trying to do is shift the perception of this being a college area or a cut-through street to it really being a destination like Market Square or Gay Street, where people really have a vested interest in the area,” Wallace says. “If we truly want this to be a destination street then we want to shift that behavior pattern. We want people cutting through Cumberland Avenue to choose a different route.” There’s still some outstanding issues, though. One is addressing the lack of public parking in the area, and some wonder how the already crowded neighborhood can handle even more motorists vying for a spot in its already packed surface lots. It’s a conundrum that has long led white-knuckled motorists to circle the block in frustration or dive-bomb a spot at a neighboring business. Nothing permanent has been pegged down yet, but the city says it’s still working on it. For now, there are a limited number of free nights and

“What we’re really trying to do is shift the perception of this being a college area or a cut-through street to it really being a destination like Market Square or Gay Street.” —ANNE WALLACE, Cumberland Avenue project manager weekend parking available in a surface lot at 19th Street and Cumberland Avenue. There are naysayers to all of this, of course. Many have wondered if creating a bottleneck on one of the main surface streets connecting downtown to the affluent western suburbs will benefit the city or its residents in the long run, or at all. And some local businesses are already feeling the pinch as construction work drives would-be customers to other parts of town. Those issues will likely persist as the bulk of the work moves slowly east along Cumberland, from Alcoa Highway to 16th Street, over the next two years.

GROWING PAINS

Sunspot manager Ben Breedlove noticed a drop in business almost

immediately after construction kicked off in April. “Pretty soon after the whole thing started the news had a big report about Cumberland Avenue, basically saying it should be avoided at all costs,” he recounts. “But I don’t want to be negative about it. It’s a goal that they (city officials) have, and we’re going to support it. There’s just no better way to go about it.” Like many other businesses nearby, Sunspot has trimmed some workers’ hours and ramped up marketing efforts in hopes of drawing more people in. It’s been forced to cut two or three server positions each shift and scale back kitchen schedules by three or four hours weekly, Breedlove says. Just across 22nd Street, Jason’s Deli killed four positions after walk-in

sales dropped by more than 25 percent, according to General Manager Scott Evatt. But it has also added a delivery driver. “Our walk-in has been impacted immensely, but luckily we do a lot of delivery catering, and we’ve really been focusing on that,” Evatt says. “Those catering orders are the only thing keeping us alive down here.” There’s also a hesitation even to talk about impacts from construction, and many owners and managers did not return our calls seeking comment for this story. That, at least in part, centers on concerns that more negative media coverage of traffic hassles and road diversions could persuade even fewer people to venture into the neighborhood. Yet many of the folks we talked with that have seen a loss in business are quick to put their support behind the project. In the long term, anything that makes the area more appealing and brings out more people should be good for the bottom line. It’s just a matter of surviving the messy interim. Mellow Mushroom is still half-baked and doing fine, manager Stephen Peake says, but he’s stoked for the start of UT’s fall semester and the influx of students it’ll bring. The pizza joint’s front doorstep gives way to a sidewalk lined with chain linked fencing and piles of gravel, but the current inconvenience should pay off down the line, he says. “Honestly, I think it’s going to be a really good thing because right now the Strip looks kind of industrial,” Peake says. “This is going to make it look good and bring more people out.” While none of the businesses we talked with said they were in immediate danger of closing, Wallace says it’s a sad fact that not every business operating on Cumberland Avenue today may be there when the final construction signs come down in 2017. “We’ve worked to minimize the impacts, but the reality is for some of our marginalized or underperforming businesses going into this season, we may see some businesses fail,” she says. “It’s the nature of the beast, unfortunately, but we worked diligently with our merchants to know what to expect and when.” Most business folks have said the city has done what it can to keep them

WHAT A *&$%@! NO LEFT TURN HERE, MORON! I’M GOING TO BE %!$@#& LATE! WILL THIS EVER END? August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 21

in the loop, from holding regular meetings to posting updates online about upcoming changes, but the city isn’t about to compensate businesses for revenue lost, Wallace says. That would set “a dangerous precedent” and could undermine its ability to keep up needed infrastructure fixes in the future. However, when the Henley Street Bridge was shuttered for several years, the city did chip in to a business marketing fund for South Knoxville, though there’s been no talk of such an arrangement for the shops near Fort Sanders. Businesses can advertise and offer coupons for free on the city’s Cumberland Connect website, cumberlandconnect.com, a dedicated URL set up to track the twists and turns of construction. There’s also a free cell phone app by the same name to help folks navigate on through, and free bus service connecting downtown. You can hop on bus routes 10, 11, or 17 between The Strip and Gay Street and ride for free. Just look for the “KAT Free Fare Zone” sticker pasted on a bus window. So far the hardest-hit parts have likely been on the west end of the Strip where the bulk of construction has ground down, but soon those jackhammers and backhoes will start a slow crawl east after the second phase of construction starts in early 2016.

WHAT TO EXPECT

The good news? The most disruptive work is already done and over with, construction overseers say. Wrapped up are two major installations that completely shuttered Cumberland Avenue twice last month and limited traffic flows to one westbound lane: the sinking of a 42-inch storm drain and polishing off of a street-level railroad crossing near University Commons Way. By year’s end, crews should have phase one work tagged and bagged, if all keeps on schedule. Still to come is pouring a new sidewalk on the north side of Cumberland between the entrance to Tyson Park and 22nd Street, resurfacing and restriping the road in the same area, and making improvements to access Metron Center Way and Tyson Park. Once the roadway is refinished it’ll feature a spiffy new westbound turn lane to

“For Cumberland, most of the pipes were approaching 100 years old. At some point those water mains would have to be replaced anyway.” —SHANE BRAGG, KUB project manager access northbound Alcoa Highway. Knoxville Utilities Board crews have already started their work further east along Cumberland ahead of phase two, which will involve extensive reshaping of the road and sidewalks. KUB is replacing a staggering amount of infrastructure— most of which needed to be dug up and replaced anyway—including 3,200 feet of sewer line, 7,300 feet of 8-inch water line, 14 fire hydrants, 17 manholes, and 150 domestic water connections, according to KUB project manager Shane Bragg. “We look at several variables when assessing our system, but mostly we look at the age of pipe,” Bragg says. “For Cumberland, most of the pipes were approaching 100 years old. At some point those water mains would have to be replaced

anyway, but with the streetscape project coming through it was advantageous for us to help push that along and get our infrastructure replaced at the same time.” That’s right, for all the headaches the Cumberland Avenue Corridor Project may be causing, some of that work was bound to happen eventually anyway. Replacing those pipes was already on KUB’s to-do list, though Bragg says it would have been at least another five years before it got there had it not been for the city’s revamp. You’ll see a big shift as phase two work moves along. Construction crews will be working their way east into the fall of 2017 as they widen sidewalks, plant trees and landscape, and rework the street into its new minimalist design, complete with a raised median and turn lanes. The

city doesn’t expect any more full lane closures, and much of the repaving and restriping work will be done one lane at a time so cars can keep edging along. If all goes as planned, work will be done in August 2017, but already the area is seeing an influx of investment dollars that city officials say are tied to the road improvements and the plan’s vision. Private investment in the area since 2011 totals $142.5 million—a figure the city provides as proof its vision is coming to life—ranging from new mixed-use build outs like Evolve to a new outside shell for McDonald’s. Yet many developers we spoke with say the streetscape revamp is all well and good, but didn’t play a definitive role in their independent decisions to build in the area. “I think it’s ultimately a pro, but I don’t believe it actually factored into our decision to develop this particular property,” says Tate Tatum, an associate with CHM Development, the Knoxville-based firm behind the $65 million University Commons retail shop with anchors Walmart and Publix that opened last year. “The main things (we look for) are the traffic counts, household incomes, and the amount of people living in the area—but upgrading the Strip is a huge pro for the students, the university, and the city, and I believe you’re going to see a lot more development along the Strip in the coming years.” A spokesperson for Evolve, the $20 million, 59-unit student housing new build, echoed those comments, noting Cumberland’s redesign will make the area “more unique and vibrant,” but other factors played a more pivotal role in development. “The first thing we looked at is the university itself: It’s a nationally-ranked school and there was a lot of desire to do something in that market,” says Michael Weiss, vice president of asset management for Chicago-based CA Student Living. “The location of our site was the next desirable factor. We think we’re pretty conveniently located between the university only a block away and an entertainment district. So there are a lot of reasons we wanted to do the project, but I think (the Cumberland Avenue Corridor Project) was a huge plus.”

C’MON! CAN’T YOU SEE ME WAITING FOR THAT SPOT?! %!$#&! I FORGOT I CAN’T GO THIS WAY TODAY! 22

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

Likewise, The Standard, a $39 million student-oriented apartment construct at White Avenue and 17th Street, would have likely happened with or without the streetscape project, though it certainly was a bonus, explains J. Wesley Rogers, president of the Athens, Ga.-based Landmark Properties. “We think the streetscape is a huge asset to the property and it certainly weighed into our decision making, but we would have probably done the project even without it.” The Strip redesign mattered more for Atlanta’s Paramount Hospitality Management when it was looking to convert the shell of a vacant six-story building to an updated Hilton Garden Inn on Cumberland, says company president Nikunj Lakha. “Anytime you’re able to take the environment and reshape it to be more upscale, it makes a big difference,” he says. “Just knowing it was going to be a more walkable area made it a little bit more desirable.” That $17 million project opened in 2013. McDonald’s completed its $1.5 million facelift in 2011. Then of course there are two other big players currently booming with construction that aren’t said to be tied to Cumberland’s new identity, but still add to the chaos of present-day Fort Sanders. East Tennessee Children’s Hospital has dropped $75 million on an expansion of its surgery center and neonatal intensive care unit, and UT is investing a staggering $1 billion in capital projects, including the construction of a science lab, residence hall, student union, and support services complex. Funding for those projects came from a variety of places, but the city got most of its money from the feds. Eighty percent of the Cumberland Avenue Corridor Project, or about $16 million (the actual budget for the project is $20 million, $3 million above projections, in case added costs surface), came from federal surface transportation funds divvied out by the Knoxville Regional Transportation Planning Organization. The city of Knoxville kicked in $4 million. Whatever the outcome, Cumberland’s reconstruction is well underway, if slow, and it’s the shaping of a dream we’re all going to live with. ◆

The plan’s idea is to attract more developments like Evolve, a mixed-use box with street-level retail space and apartments up top that opened in 2014. The current congestion of cars and lane closures should give way to a more walkable, pedestrian-friendly district.

YEAH, SURE, JUST WALK RIGHT OUT IN FRONT OF ME! @$*&#! WHERE THE HELL AM I GOING TO PARK?! August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 23

o G t e a v ' F e u l W l , Time Re por t er ! y e H

Thanks to our League of Supporters, our new staff writer Clay Duda is officially on the job. Clay joins us from The Record Searchlight in Redding, Calif.; before that, he was with Creative Loafing in Atlanta, as well as the Center for Sustainable Journalism. At the Knoxville Mercury, he will focus on hard news and social issues. Join us in welcoming him to Knoxville!

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

THE SUN

IS SETT I NG ON

SUM M E R !

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August 20, 2015

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

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TOP DANCE CLUB TOP MEXICAN/SOUTH AMERICAN TOP FITNESS CENTER TOP PARK FOR A PICNIC TOP TACO TOP PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER TOP MUSEUM P ATTRACTION TOP LGBT CLUB TOP JEWELRY STORE TOP GIFT SHOP TOP COSMETOLOGY SCHOOL TOP BBQ TOP WOMEN'S HEALTH CENTER TOP MARTIAL ARTS G TOP MOONSHINE TOP COCKTAILS TOP LANDSCAPING/TREE SERVICE TOP HIP-HOP/R&B GROUP TOP CATERING SERVICE TOP ELECTRICIAN TOP FREE STUFF TO DO P OUTDOOR DINING TOP DANCE SCHOOL TOP HAMBURGER TOP SALADS TOP SEAFOOD TOP EYEWEAR SHOP TOP PIZZA TOP AUTO SERVICE TOP HANDYMAN SERV MUSIC SCHOOL TOP REALTOR TOP THRIFT/CONSIGNMENT STORE TOP ROCK BAND TOP SECRET ABOUT KNOXVILLE TOP FLORIST TOP TECHNICAL/BUSINESS SCH TOP FURNITURE STORE TOP BREAKFAST TOP BOOKSTORE TOP WOMEN'S CLOTHING TOP ROCK CLUB TOP HAIR SALON TOP ASIAN TOP WINGS TOP KARAOKE OP TRADITIONAL BARBER SHOP TOP WATERWAY TO PADDLE TOP COFFEEHOUSE TOP RENOVATIONS/REMODELING COMPANY TOP NEW RETAIL BUSINESS TOP BAR TOP EYE CARE TOP ICE CREAM/FROZEN TREATS TOP DENTAL CARE TOP LOCAL-FOODS GROCERY TOP BIKE OR WALKING TRAIL TOP DELI/SANDWICH/SUB SHOP NPROFIT COMMUNITY GROUP TOP BANK/CREDIT UNION TOP BRUNCH TOP INSURANCE AGENT TOP INSTAGRAM FEED TOP SUSHI TOP SPORTS BAR TOP TV PERSO TTER FEED TOP DRY CLEANER TOP INDIAN TOP BAKERY TOP CLUB DJ TOP LIVE COMEDY VENUE TOP WALK-IN/URGENT CARE CLINIC TOP CHEF TOP PERFORMANC TOP MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS STORE TOP FRENCH TOP HOT DOG TOP JAZZ BAND TOP CHEAP MEAL TOP THEATER GROUP TOP LICENSED MASSAGE THERAPY TOP RESTORATION PROJECT TOP TV STATION TOP NEW RESTAURANT TOP LIQUOR STORE TOP DIVE BAR TOP BLUES BAND TOP VINE FEED TOP MEDI SPA TOP CRAFT BREWER TOP PLACE TO TAKE THE KIDS TOP STEAKS TOP WATERFRONT RESTAURANT TOP HOLISTIC HEALTH CENTER TOP MUSIC FESTIVAL TOP CLOTHING ALTERATIONS TOP PERSONAL TRAINER TOP MUSEUM TOP ARTISTS WORKSHOP/STUDIO TOP AUTO DEALER TOP FESTIVAL TOP RECORD STORE TOP FOREIGN FOODS GROCERY TOP TV PERSONALITY TOP GARDEN STORE/NURSERY TOP MIDDLE-EASTERN TOP WINE LIST (RESTAURANT) TOP COCKTAILS OP RADIO PERSONALITY TOP LAWYER TOP AMERICANA BANDTOP VEGETARIAN/VEGAN MENU TOP RIBS TOP ART GALLERY TOP ANTIQUES STORE TOP WINE STOR TOP UNDERRATED NEIGHBORHOOD TOP WINE BAR TOP DANCE COMPANY TOP BRIDAL SHOP TOP ITALIAN TOP SHOPPING DISTRICT TOP PET SUPPLY STORE P HOME IMPROVEMENT STORE TOP BLOG TOP BIKE SHOP TOP DOG PARK TOP COMEDIAN TOP NAIL SALON TOP PLUMBER TOP YOGA STUDIO TOP INTERIOR DESIG TOP SKIN CARE TOP OUTDOOR SPORTS STORE TOP SMALL COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY TOP FACEBOOK PAGE/GROUP TOP HAPPY HOUR TOP TATTOO STUDIO TOP APPETIZERS TOP FOOD TRUCK TOP FRAMERY TOP COVER BAND TOP BEER SELECTION (RESTAURANT) TOP HISTORIC LANDMARK TOP PRIVATE SCHOOL TOP DESSERTS TOP COMFORT FOOD TOP NEW THING IN KNOXVILLE TOP MEN'S CLOTHING TOP PODCAST TOP RADIO STATION TOP BEER MARKET/TAPROOM TOP DANCE CLUB TOP MEXICAN/SOUTH AMERICAN TOP FITNESS CENTER TOP PARK FOR A PICNIC TOP TACO TOP PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER TOP MUSEUM P ATTRACTION TOP LGBT CLUB TOP JEWELRY STORE TOP GIFT SHOP TOP COSMETOLOGY SCHOOL TOP BBQ TOP WOMEN'S HEALTH CENTER TOP MARTIAL ARTS G TOP MOONSHINE TOP COCKTAILS TOP LANDSCAPING/TREE SERVICE TOP HIP-HOP/R&B GROUP TOP CATERING SERVICE TOP ELECTRICIAN TOP FREE STUFF TO DO P OUTDOOR DINING TOP DANCE SCHOOL TOP HAMBURGER TOP SALADS TOP SEAFOOD TOP EYEWEAR SHOP TOP PIZZA TOP AUTO SERVICE TOP HANDYMAN SERV MUSIC SCHOOL TOP REALTOR TOP THRIFT/CONSIGNMENT STORE TOP ROCK BAND TOP SECRET ABOUT KNOXVILLE TOP FLORIST TOP TECHNICAL/BUSINESS SCH TOP FURNITURE STORE TOP BREAKFAST TOP BOOKSTORE TOP WOMEN'S CLOTHING TOP ROCK CLUB TOP HAIR SALON TOP ASIAN TOP WINGS TOP KARAOKE OP TRADITIONAL BARBER SHOP TOP WATERWAY TO PADDLE TOP COFFEEHOUSE TOP RENOVATIONS/REMODELING COMPANY TOP NEW RETAIL BUSINESS TOP BAR TOP EYE CARE TOP ICE CREAM/FROZEN TREATS TOP DENTAL CARE TOP LOCAL-FOODS GROCERY TOP BIKE OR WALKING TRAIL TOP DELI/SANDWICH/SUB SHOP NPROFIT COMMUNITY GROUP TOP BANK/CREDIT UNION TOP BRUNCH TOP INSURANCE AGENT TOP INSTAGRAM FEED TOP SUSHI TOP SPORTS BAR TOP TV PERSO TTER FEED TOP DRY CLEANER TOP INDIAN TOP BAKERY TOP CLUB DJ TOP LIVE COMEDY VENUE TOP WALK-IN/URGENT CARE CLINIC TOP CHEF TOP PERFORMANC TOP MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS STORE TOP FRENCH TOP HOT DOG TOP JAZZ BAND TOP CHEAP MEAL TOP THEATER GROUP TOP LICENSED MASSAGE THERAPY TOP RESTORATION PROJECT TOP TV STATION TOP NEW RESTAURANT TOP LIQUOR STORE TOP DIVE BAR TOP BLUES BAND TOP VINE FEED TOP MEDI SPA TOP CRAFT BREWER TOP PLACE TO TAKE THE KIDS TOP STEAKS TOP WATERFRONT RESTAURANT TOP HOLISTIC HEALTH CENTER TOP MUSIC FESTIVAL TOP CLOTHING ALTERATIONS TOP PERSONAL TRAINER TOP MUSEUM TOP ARTISTS WORKSHOP/STUDIO TOP AUTO DEALER TOP FESTIVAL TOP RECORD STORE TOP FOREIGN FOODS GROCERY TOP TV PERSONALITY TOP GARDEN STORE/NURSERY TOP MIDDLE-EASTERN TOP WINE LIST (RESTAURANT) TOP COCKTAILS OP RADIO PERSONALITY TOP LAWYER TOP AMERICANA BANDTOP VEGETARIAN/VEGAN MENU TOP RIBS TOP ART GALLERY TOP ANTIQUES STORE TOP WINE STOR TOP UNDERRATED NEIGHBORHOOD TOP WINE BAR TOP DANCE COMPANY TOP BRIDAL SHOP TOP ITALIAN TOP SHOPPING DISTRICT TOP PET SUPPLY STORE P HOME IMPROVEMENT STORE TOP BLOG TOP BIKE SHOP TOP DOG PARK TOP COMEDIAN TOP NAIL SALON TOP PLUMBER TOP YOGA STUDIO TOP INTERIOR DESIG TOP SKIN CARE TOP OUTDOOR SPORTS STORE TOP SMALL COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY TOP FACEBOOK PAGE/GROUP TOP HAPPY HOUR TOP TATTOO STUDIO TOP APPETIZERS TOP FOOD TRUCK TOPThe FRAMERY TOP COVER TOP BEER SELECTION (RESTAURANT) TOP HISTORIC LANDMARK TOP PRIVATE SCHOOL ultimate survey ofBAND everything Knoxvillians love most about Knoxville TOP DESSERTS TOP COMFORT FOOD TOP NEW THING IN KNOXVILLE TOP MEN'S CLOTHING TOP PODCAST TOP RADIO STATION TOP BEER MARKET/TAPROOM TOP DANCE CLUB TOP MEXICAN/SOUTH AMERICAN TOP FITNESS CENTER TOP PARK FOR A PICNIC TOP TACO TOP PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER TOP MUSEUM Prepare vote! We aim to makeTOP Top Knox indispensable user’s guide to the VOTING IS ONLINE ONLY P ATTRACTION TOP LGBT CLUB to TOP JEWELRY STORE GIFT an SHOP TOP COSMETOLOGY SCHOOL TOP BBQ TOP WOMEN'S HEALTH CENTER TOP MARTIAL ARTS G TOP MOONSHINE TOP COCKTAILS TOPand LANDSCAPING/TREE HIP-HOP/R&B GROUP SERVICE TOP ELECTRICIAN TOP FREE STUFF TO DO Knoxville area, we need your expert SERVICE help to doTOP it. You know this place insideTOP CATERING www.topknox.knoxmercury.com P OUTDOOR DINING TOP DANCE SCHOOL TOP HAMBURGER TOP SALADS TOP SEAFOOD TOP EYEWEAR SHOP TOP PIZZA TOP AUTO SERVICE TOP HANDYMAN SERV and out—and you’ve got great taste. So let’s make Top Knox the one “best of” list VOTING BEGINS: MUSIC SCHOOL TOP REALTOR TOP THRIFT/CONSIGNMENT STORE TOP ROCK BAND TOP SECRET ABOUT KNOXVILLE TOP FLORIST TOP TECHNICAL/BUSINESS SCH in town that truly matters. Here are this year’s categories—to vote, go to our website. TOP FURNITURE STORE TOP BREAKFAST TOP BOOKSTORE TOP WOMEN'S CLOTHING TOP ROCK CLUB TOP HAIR SALON Thursday, Aug.TOP 13 atASIAN 12:01TOP a.m.WINGS TOP KARAOKE OP TRADITIONAL BARBER SHOP TOP WATERWAY TO PADDLE TOP COFFEEHOUSE TOP RENOVATIONS/REMODELING COMPANY TOP NEW RETAIL BUSINESS TOP BAR And remember: no national chains allowed! VOTING ENDS:TRAIL TOP DELI/SANDWICH/SUB SHOP TOP EYE CARE TOP ICE CREAM/FROZEN TREATS TOP DENTAL CARE TOP LOCAL-FOODS GROCERY TOP BIKE OR WALKING NPROFIT COMMUNITY GROUP TOP BRUNCH TOP AGENT TOP INSTAGRAM FEED TOP 10 SUSHI TOP SPORTS BAR TOP TV PERSO ResultsTOP willBANK/CREDIT be published UNION in the Oct. 15 edition of INSURANCE the Knoxville Mercury. Thursday, Sept. at Midnight TTER FEED TOP DRY CLEANER TOP INDIAN TOP BAKERY TOP CLUB DJ TOP LIVE COMEDY VENUE TOP WALK-IN/URGENT CARE CLINIC TOP CHEF TOP PERFORMANC TOP MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS STORE TOP FRENCH TOP HOT DOG TOP JAZZ BAND TOP CHEAP MEAL TOP THEATER GROUP TOP LICENSED MASSAGE THERAPY TOP RESTORATION PROJECT TOP TV STATION TOP NEW RESTAURANT TOP LIQUOR STORE TOP DIVE BAR TOP BLUES BAND TOP VINE FEED TOP MEDI SPA TOP CRAFT BREWER TOP PLACE TO TAKE THE KIDS TOP STEAKS TOP WATERFRONT RESTAURANT TOP HOLISTIC HEALTH CENTER TOP MUSIC FESTIVAL TOP CLOTHING ALTERATIONS TOP PERSONAL TRAINER TOP MUSEUM TOP ARTISTS WORKSHOP/STUDIO TOP AUTO DEALER TOP FESTIVAL TOP RECORD STORE TOP FOREIGN FOODS GROCERY TOP TV PERSONALITY TOP GARDEN STORE/NURSERY TOP MIDDLE-EASTERN TOP WINE LIST (RESTAURANT) TOP COCKTAILS OP RADIO PERSONALITY TOP LAWYER TOP AMERICANA BANDTOP VEGETARIAN/VEGAN MENU TOP RIBS TOP ART GALLERY TOP ANTIQUES STORE TOP WINE STOR TOP UNDERRATED NEIGHBORHOOD TOP WINE BAR TOP DANCE COMPANY TOP BRIDAL SHOP TOP ITALIAN TOP SHOPPING DISTRICT TOP PET SUPPLY STORE P HOME IMPROVEMENT STORE TOP BLOG TOP BIKE SHOP TOP DOG PARK TOP COMEDIAN TOP NAIL SALON TOP PLUMBER TOP YOGA STUDIO TOP INTERIOR DESIG TOP SKIN CARE TOP OUTDOOR SPORTS STORE TOP SMALL COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY TOP FACEBOOK PAGE/GROUP TOP HAPPY HOUR TOP TATTOO STUDIO TOP APPETIZERS TOP FOOD TRUCK TOP FRAMERY TOP COVER BAND TOP BEER SELECTION (RESTAURANT) TOP HISTORIC LANDMARK TOP PRIVATE SCHOOL www.topknox.knoxmercury.com TOP DESSERTS TOP COMFORT FOOD TOP NEW THING IN KNOXVILLE TOP MEN'S CLOTHING TOP PODCAST TOP RADIO STATION TOP BEER MARKET/TAPROOM TOP DANCE CLUB TOP MEXICAN/SOUTH AMERICAN TOP FITNESS CENTER TOP PARK FOR A PICNIC TOP TACO TOP PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER TOP MUSEUM P ATTRACTION TOP LGBT CLUB TOP JEWELRY STORE TOP GIFT SHOP TOP COSMETOLOGY SCHOOL TOP BBQ TOP WOMEN'S HEALTH CENTER TOP MARTIAL ARTS G TOP MOONSHINE TOP COCKTAILS TOP LANDSCAPING/TREE SERVICE TOP HIP-HOP/R&B GROUP TOP CATERING SERVICE TOP ELECTRICIAN TOP FREE STUFF TO DO P OUTDOOR DINING TOP DANCE SCHOOL TOP HAMBURGER TOP SALADS TOP SEAFOOD TOP EYEWEAR SHOP TOP PIZZA TOP AUTO SERVICE TOP HANDYMAN SERV MUSIC SCHOOL TOP REALTOR TOP THRIFT/CONSIGNMENT STORE TOP ROCK BAND TOP SECRET ABOUT KNOXVILLE TOP FLORIST TOP TECHNICAL/BUSINESS SCH TOP FURNITURE STORE TOP BREAKFAST TOP BOOKSTORE TOP WOMEN'S CLOTHING TOP ROCK CLUB TOP HAIR SALON TOP ASIAN WINGS TOP KARAOKE AugustTOP 20, 2015 KNOXVILLE MERCURY 27 OP TRADITIONAL BARBER SHOP TOP WATERWAY TO PADDLE TOP COFFEEHOUSE TOP RENOVATIONS/REMODELING COMPANY TOP NEW RETAIL BUSINESS TOP BAR TOP EYE CARE TOP ICE CREAM/FROZEN TREATS TOP DENTAL CARE TOP LOCAL-FOODS GROCERY TOP BIKE OR WALKING TRAIL TOP DELI/SANDWICH/SUB SHOP NPROFIT COMMUNITY GROUP TOP BANK/CREDIT UNION TOP BRUNCH TOP INSURANCE AGENT TOP INSTAGRAM FEED TOP SUSHI TOP SPORTS BAR TOP TV PERSO

2015 BALLOT

WELCOME TO THE KNOXVILLE MERCURY’S READERS’ POLL!

shop local.

vote local.

top knox 2015 ballot

the rules

FOOD

DRINK

Top Appetizers

Top Bar

Top Asian

Top Beer Market/Taproom

Top Bakery

Top Beer Selection (Restaurant)

Top BBQ

Top Cocktails

Top Breakfast

Top Craft Brewer

Top Brunch

Top Dive Bar

Top Cheap Meal

Top Happy Hour

YOU MUST FILL OUT AT LEAST 20 OF THE CATEGORIES.

Top Chef

Top Liquor Store

Top Coffeehouse

Top Moonshine

You can manage that, right? Otherwise, your ballot won’t be counted. Show us you’re serious about this!

Top Comfort Food

Top Sports Bar

Top Deli/Sandwich/Sub Shop

Top Wine Bar

Top Desserts

Top Wine List (Restaurant)

Top Hamburger

Top Wine Store

YOU CAN’T VOTE FOR NATIONAL CHAINS. Sorry. Top Knox is all about the things that make our area unique—so vote for local and regionally owned businesses only.

YOU CAN ONLY FILL OUT ONE BALLOT. Voting is online only. (The print ballot is just for your information.) You will need to create a login for the ballot with your email address. You are only allowed to send in one electronic ballot for tabulation. Which brings us to…

Top Hot Dog Top Ice Cream/Frozen Treats Top Italian

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Top Food Truck

Top Americana Band

Top French

Top Art Gallery

Top Indian

Top Artists Workshop/Studio

Top Mexican/South American

Top Blues Band

Top Middle-Eastern

Top Club DJ

YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO STUFF THE BALLOT BOX.

Top New Restaurant

Top Comedian

Top Outdoor Dining

Top Cover Band

No! Don’t bother even trying to game the system—we’ll figure it out. We reserve the right to make final judgments in any categories where there appear to be voting irregularities. Any businesses involved in ballot stuffing risk being disqualified.

Top Pizza

Top Dance Club

Top Ribs

Top Dance Company

Top Salads

Top LGBT Club

Top Seafood

Top Hip-Hop/R&B Group

Top Steaks

Top Jazz Band

Top Sushi

Top Karaoke

Top Taco

Top Live Comedy Venue

ALSO: VOTE FOR BUSINESSES THAT ARE STILL IN BUSINESS.

Top Vegetarian/Vegan Menu

Top Music Festival

Top Waterfront Restaurant

Top Museum

Top Wings

Top Performance Venue

We may hold departed businesses dear in our hearts, but Top Knox is a celebration of the places we can enjoy now.

Top Rock Band Top Rock Club Top Theater Group

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

top knox 2015 ballot SHOPPING

HEALTH & BEAUTY

KNOX ONLINE

Top Antiques Store

Top Dental Care

Top Blog

Top Auto Dealer

Top Eye Care

Top Facebook Page/Group

Top Bike Shop

Top Hair Salon

Top Instagram Feed

Top Bookstore

Top Holistic Health Center

Top Podcast

Top Bridal Shop

Top Fitness Center

Top Twitter Feed

Top Dry Cleaner

Top Licensed Massage Therapy

Top Vine Feed

Top Eyewear Shop

Top Martial Arts Gym

Top Foreign Foods Grocery

Top Medi Spa

Top Furniture Store

Top Nail Salon

Top Gift Shop

Top Personal Trainer

Top Attraction

Top In-Store Pet

Top Skin Care

Top Bike or Walking Trail

Top Jewelry Store

Top Traditional Barber Shop

Top Dog Park

Top Local-Foods Grocery

Top Walk-In/Urgent Care Clinic

Top Festival

Top Men’s Clothing

Top Women’s Health Center

Top Free Stuff To Do

Top Musical Instruments Store

Top Yoga Studio

Top Historic Landmark Top New Thing In Knoxville

Top New Retail Business Top Outdoor Sports Store Top Pet Supply Store

KNOXVILLE LIFE

HOME & GARDEN

Top Nonprofit Community Group Top Park For a Picnic

Top Record Store

Top Electrician

Top Place To Take the Kids

Top Shopping District

Top Garden Store/Nursery

Top Restoration Project

Top Tattoo Studio

Top Handyman Service

Top Secret About Knoxville

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August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 29

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY 31

A&E

P rogram Notes

TURBO KID

TALES OF HALLOWEEN

Blockbuster Previews as Knoxville ever had a film season before? The Knoxville Film Festival, the Knoxville Horror Film Festival, and the Public Cinema series all return in the coming months, with more buzzedabout prestige movies, festival favorites, and local and regional premieres lined up than in any other year in recent memory. Public Cinema, which hosted a handful of art-house screenings at Knoxville Museum of Art in the first half of 2015, comes back with a bigger lineup and sponsorship from the streaming service Fandor, which specializes in independent films from around the world. Its second season kicked off earlier this month and continues this weekend with Tu Dors Nicole at KMA. (See Nick Huinker’s review on page 35.) That will be followed by the experimental film essay When It Was Blue (Sept. 1); Sean Baker’s acclaimed streets-of-L.A. drama Tangerine (Sept. 9); Clair Denis’ potent dissection of a

mixed-race relationship, Voilà l’enchaînement (Oct. 4); John Magary’s acidic comedy The Mend (Oct. 14); the Portuguese melodrama Horse Money (Oct. 25); Canadian underground legend Guy Maddin’s new film, The Forbidden Room (Nov. 3); Colin Healey’s indie coming-of-age tale Homemakers (Nov. 11); Peace Officer, a documentary about a controversial police killing (Nov. 17); a program of experimental short films and videos (Dec. 1); and the modest indie holiday drama Christmas, Again (Dec. 9). Screenings are free and are split among KMA, Scruffy City Hall on Market Square, and Pilot Light in the Old City. Visit publiccinema.org for more information. The third installment of the Knoxville Film Festival takes over Regal Downtown West Cinema 8 from Thursday, Sept. 17, through Sunday, Sept. 20, with more than three dozen movies, including Steve McKinney and Douglas McDaniel’s feature-length documentary Legends of Appalachia: The Ace Miller Story,

about the late local Golden Gloves legend; Rick Goldsmith’s Mind/Game: The Unquiet Journey of Chamique Holdsclaw, a portrait of the former Lady Vols basketball star; and Rev. Pappy, Dwight Swanson’s short doc about local religious and musical personality the Rev. Pappy “Gube” Beaver. The opening night headlining feature is Frank Hall Green’s Alaskan backpacking drama Wildlike, starring Ella Purnell and Bruce Greenwood. In addition to screenings and workshops, the festival will also feature the results of the recently completed 7-Day Shootout, in which local filmmakers shot four- to seven-minute films over the course of a single week. The best entries will be shown Sunday afternoon. Tickets for individual film blocks are $10 and festival passes are $50. Visit knoxvillefilmfestival.com. Organizers of the Knoxville Horror Film Festival have announced the feature lineup for their seventh and biggest fest, which will take place the weekend before Halloween—Friday, Oct. 23, through Sunday, Oct. 25. The first two nights will be held at Downtown West; Sunday night’s screenings will take place at Scruffy City Hall. The gruesome feature lineup includes the anthology Tales of Halloween; the ’80s post-apocalyptic pastiche Turbo

A look ahead to Knoxville’s fall film-fest season

Inside the Vault: The Liquor Raids of 1961

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

Music: Ry Cooder

Movies: Tu Dors Nicole

WILDLIKE

Kid; the psychological horror movie Sun Choke; the heavy-metal splatter film Deathgasm; the forgotten 1989 aerobics-themed slasher Death Spa; and Interior, the feature debut from Zachary Beckler, whose shorts “Seance” and “Where Is Alice?” won awards at previous editions of KHFF. KHFF starts the ramp-up to Halloween with Shark Exorcist on Wednesday, Sept. 2, and a night of feature previews on Wednesday, Oct. 7, both at Scruffy City Hall. The festival’s program of short films will be announced in October. Visit knoxvillehorrorfest.com. And while the Scruffy City Film & Music Festival is held in the spring, it’s programming year-round filmmaker events and screenings at Scruffy City Hall every Wednesday night starting at 8. This week’s edition features a showing of the first episode of State of Franklin and a Q&A with series creator Mitch Moore. There’s also a Seven Day Shootout roundup with Jamison Stalsworth, Elizabeth Gibson, and Mitch Moore. And Angry Dad Gamer (aka Victor Agreda Jr.) will demonstrate what it takes to get into live streaming via twitch.tv. More info at its Facebook page: ScruffyCityFilmandMusicFestival. —Matthew Everett

Video: The Dead Lands and Welcome to New York

Inside the Vault

The Great Raids of 1961 An old record mocks the hypocrisy of Knox County’s mid-century liquor laws BY ERIC DAWSON

ecently, TAMIS got a call from Joe Graziano, saying he had a record we might be interested in. Was he ever right. “The Great Raids During the Reign of Buford I,” a spoken-word record recalling Knox County liquor raids in 1961, is just the kind of obscure, Knox-centric relic we love. Graziano found the record while cleaning out his grandfather’s shed in White Pine. It probably hadn’t been listened to or even looked at in decades; despite numerous summers in the humid confines of a small building, it was in good shape. Graziano’s grandfather was Judge Max M. Moore of Jefferson County, known to some as “Maximum Moore,” thanks to the zeal with which he

assigned stiff penalties to offenders who entered his court. Graziano says his grandfather “kind of looked like Boss Hogg” and seemed to enjoy his local renown. He thinks his grandfather might have known some of the police officers involved in the 1961 raids, which came just months before Knox County voters finally approved liquor sales in the county. Buford I is Buford Ellington, who served as Tennessee governor from 1959 to 1963. The narration is read by Walt Martin, a reporter for WBIR. (That’s him ducking to his left in the famous 1956 photo in Life magazine of Cas Walker punching J.S. Cooper during a City Council meeting.) It was written by Don Whitehead, a widely

respected correspondent who covered World War II and the Korean War for the Associated Press and later became a regular columnist for the News Sentinel. Emblazoned on the front page of the News Sentinel from Feb. 15, 1961, was the headline: “Slot Machines Smashed, Liquor Seized in County-Wide Raid on Private Clubs.” Local law enforcement, assisted by the state alcohol-tax agents, raided eight clubs in a surprise sting that lasted all day and into the night, with several hundred gallons of liquor seized. It was described as a cloakand-dagger operation, months in the planning, kicked off by Sheriff Herman Wayland from a room in the Andrew Johnson Hotel with the words “Signal Four is now in effect.” Among the clubs raided were the Deane Hill and Cherokee country clubs, the American Legion, and the City Club. When the Elks Club at 532 State St. was entered, a bartender named Roy accepted the warrant with a grin. Slot machines were busted while 75-100 businessmen sat eating lunch, and a man operating a one-armed bandit thought the whole thing some sort of joke. Raids continued for weeks, as did the News Sentinel’s front-page coverage. Liquor was confiscated even in private residences, and citizens began to inform on one another. It grew as a scandal and embarrassment, but Ellington refused to consider any new liquor legislation. Whitehead was a columnist for the News Sentinel at the time, and though he stuck to his usual light-hearted fare in the weeks following the raids, in May he praised the “Noble 1,000 of Knoxville” who went to the polls and voted to make package liquor legal. The issue obviously struck a chord with Whitehead, as the tone of “The Great Raids” is rather incredulous in its mockery of a community that forbids drinking liquor even though many of its citizens do so openly. A dramatic church organ, possibly played by Lois Harris, the house organist for the S&W Cafeteria and a Valley Records recording artist,

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is the only musical accompaniment to Martin’s narration, delivered in the style of an evangelical preacher who can’t believe he has an opportunity to tell such a juicy story. “It was in the reign of Buford I that this thing came to pass,” he begins. This oratory style is maintained throughout, with side one devoted to describing the atmosphere that led up to the raids. “And it became the custom of the tribe that dwelled by the river to gather on Saturday nights and at diverse times to quaff strong wines and liquors … and the publicans waxed fat and prosperous from supplying the drink for these festivals.” Certain Knoxvillians, however, wished to know, “Why is it that certain members of our tribe vote dry and drink wet? Is there no virtue in consistency?” No one knows for sure, but, the preacher counters, “Verily, the ways of the Knoxvillians are strange.” Enter the high sheriff of Knoxville. He make a secret trip to Nashville, petitioning Buford I to help stop the flow of liquor in Knoxville. Busts occur at the Club of the Holston and the Club of the Elks Without Horns, where the patrons are indignant that their daily operations are upset by men who are so uncouth as to not remove their hats indoors. The protest, “We have voted dry and drank wet for lo these many years—is there no respect for ancient customs?” Not from Buford I or the high sheriff. Many Knoxvillians are gloomy, but Martin and Whitehead end by reminding everyone that “they knew full well that they themselves had written that no one could drink wet after voting dry, and verily they could find no one to blame but themselves.” The record was released on the mysterious Zoom label, with no date. It was probably recorded soon after the raids. It’s an interesting artifact of a series of events in Knoxville history that led up to a big change in the county’s liquor laws. ◆ Inside the Vault features discoveries from the Knox County Public Library’s Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound, a collection of film, video, music, and other media from around East Tennessee. August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 33

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Music

A Pretty Good Run Ry Cooder shares the lessons he’s learned from a lifetime in music BY CHRIS BARRETT

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

from patrons ranging from the Rolling Stones to filmmaker Wim Wenders. Cooder is distinctive among professional makers of music because he doesn’t sound like a market category, or any other player, for that matter. He’s doubly distinctive because he does not appear to wish to make music like anybody else. “It’s about the best fun I’ve ever had on stage,” Cooder says of his current fascination. “Things can happen. And the energy, the verve of it, is just great. Ricky said, ‘Bring your banjo next time,’ so now I’m playing that. That’s something I haven’t done since I was a teenager. I was a little shaky for a couple nights. I heard the ghost of Bill Monroe say, ‘Son, you

he says of a relevant example. “I thought maybe Obama would hear it.” The rumbly, grumbly rocker, from Cooder’s 2012 album, Election Special, is probably not on the president’s recently publicized Spotify deck. Asked if he believes that his championing of Cuban music affected the process of normalizing relations between Cuba and the U.S., Cooder responds with a qualified affirmative. “It was a contribution,” says Cooder. “It was very convenient to ignore Cuba, and have people ignore it. That was expeditious as far as corrupt politics is concerned. You want people to fear or disregard the things you’d rather they not know about. Then along comes Buena Vista. People said, ‘I thought we were supposed to hate and fear Cuba? It’s communist.’ And I’d say, ‘Who do you hate and fear? Compay Segundo? A 95-year-old man?’ “What they’ll do with Guantanamo, I don’t know. We’ve never given up a military base in our history, so it’s hard to say. This is a moral issue for the Cubans, but governments are all the goddamn same. There is no such thing as a moral government.” ◆

WHO

Ry Cooder, Sharon White, and Ricky Skaggs

WHERE

Tennessee Theatre (604 S. Gay St.)

WHEN

Saturday, Aug. 22, at 8 p.m.

HOW MUCH

$44.50-$84.50

INFO

Photo by Vincent Valdez

y Cooder, multi-instrumentalist and diviner of exotic musical traditions, has rediscovered one style of music that’s actually native to the United States and is the subject of his current touring project: country. He and his drummer/ percussionist son, Joachim, are accompanying and apparently inspiring an ensemble of classic country music royalty comprising Ricky Skaggs; Skaggs’ wife, Sharon White; and a rotating roster of Whites that includes sister Cheryl and patriarch-pianist Buck White. “It’s a chance for me to play this music with the best living people who are playing it,” Cooder says. “I know these songs, and I learned most of these songs when I was a teenager. I said I’m going to do this, so I learned the songs. You had to learn all the gospel songs and all the intros and outros and so forth, right? “I even played with Bill Monroe and Doc Watson on stage one night. Monroe’s band got stranded because the bus broke down, as they will do. I figured this was my ticket: It will get me out of high school and I’ll just tour with Bill Monroe. My future was clear at that moment. But Bill Monroe turned to me and he said, ‘Son, you just ain’t ready.’ Which was true. So that didn’t happen, and I went and did other things. I finished high school.” Among the many other things Cooder did instead of being a bluegrass boy was record an ongoing string of fantastic recordings—as band member, band leader, and as sideman—beginning in the mid-1960s. Cooder proved to have a gift for making the esoteric seem familiar (“Jesus on the Mainline,” from 1974’s Paradise and Lunch) and for making the familiar seem brand new (“Hey Porter,” from Into the Purple Valley, from 1972). Those gifts attracted work

still ain’t ready.’ But I’m doing it now.” Notable among Cooder’s many accomplishments is his involvement, during the mid-1990s, in the resurrection of a small Havana-based swing ensemble that had historic affiliations with the pre-Cuban revolution nightclub scene. The group took on the name of a defunct members-only joint—Buena Vista Social Club—which has since become the generic descriptor for modern Cuban music played in the style of the mid 20th century. Cooder recorded with the group, and toured with them, in a manner not unlike his process of the moment. “We had a pretty good run there,” he says of his Buena Vista days. “Played a lot of music. It sure sharpened up my chops.” On Cooder’s early recordings, he covered Woody Guthrie and sundry first-generation bluesmen. Since Buena Vista, his solo recordings have featured original compositions that address current issues in the musical vernacular of those trad forms. His recent songs are frank and critical without necessarily being cynical. “I wrote a song called ‘Guantanamo,’”

tennesseetheatre.com

Movies

Idyll Hands Tu Dors Nicole finds beauty in boredom without getting twee BY NICK HUINKER

ilms about bored, aimless youth aren’t particularly few or far between. Reluctant adults and their non-adventures have had a sub-genre to themselves since the independent film boom of the 1990s, and have become something of a default since digital video made filmmaking an outlet for actual bored, aimless youth. So why do so few of them have anything interesting to say about it? If the answers seem obvious— that boredom is boring, and lack of direction isn’t much of a narrative virtue—then Knoxville’s Public Cinema is happy to counter with Tu Dors Nicole, the Québécois wonder that kicks off their 2015 International Currents series at the Knoxville Museum of Art. A sleeper favorite on this year’s festival circuit, Stéphane Lafleur’s breezy slice of post-collegiate drift draws on the same tics and tactics as any given mumblecore joint

but adds them up into something rather different. It’s nothing too meaningful, really, but it’s beautiful and true. Recently released from university into the wilds of summer, 22-year-old Nicole ( Julianne Côté) doesn’t seem driven to do much beyond sorting thrift-store donations and wasting time with her best friend, Véronique (Catherine St-Laurent), at ice-cream stands and mini-golf courses. With her parents gone for the season (along with pretty much any other identifiably adult figure in their small town) Nicole settles into the peace of an empty house only to have it broken by her brother, Rémi (Marc-André Grondin), and the two other members of his post-punk band, who plan to spend the summer recording and bickering. With few exceptions, this basic setup stands in for any real plot. The film’s title translates to You’re Sleep-

ing, Nicole, but, despite the occasional harp music, it has much less to do with dream logic than it does with the comfort of safety and low stakes. (One fabulous exception: a thoughtfully surreal running gag involving a smitten preteen with the voice and relative wisdom of a grown man.) Other stories might hinge dramatically on Véronique’s lusty geriatric boss or the misunderstanding of an unsolicited credit card that spurs Nicole to book her and Véronique an international vacation. Here they’re softly comedic vignettes strung together in service of pillowy punchlines, and the effect is wryly pleasant. A lot of that is to do with Lafleur’s craft, and the performances he gets from his young cast. Tu Dors Nicole has drawn no shortage of comparisons to Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha, but Greta Gerwig’s abrasive, vivacious Frances is very little like Côté’s Nicole, whose sulks and smiles fade in and out of each other rather than snap. Nicole’s beautiful 35mm black-and-white photography, on the other hand, lives up to the comparisons, even as Lafleur pursues a more laconic tone. His witty, generally static visual composition and Organ Mood’s twinkly soundtrack synths are nothing too far out of the ordinary in twee independent cinema, but the lackadaisical mood diffuses their

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effect. This is a film that should play as pretentious to American eyes and never does. And that’s just the broadest of the expectations Tu Dors Nicole quietly undermines. (The narrowest: Rémy’s band is actually really good.) By the time an emotional momentum emerges in the final act, Laferve has trained the audience to ditch the guessing game. Nicole’s credit card doesn’t max out at a crucial moment. A mysterious emergency kit (“When does a situation become an emergency?” “Usually you know.”) plays the least consequential role in an otherwise offscreen emergency. There’s even a scene of implied danger that shifts abruptly from creepy to adorable. In the end, this narrative nonchalance is an asset, not just a charm, as various threads of Nicole’s sleepy summer finally culminate in actual drama. Plans are broken, assumptions are challenged, and flirtations go the wrong way; these things all play out as you may have suspected all along, but so loosed from structure that their effect can’t really be looked on as plot, but simply the jolt that awakens Nicole from the slumber of extended adolescence. It wouldn’t be uncharacteristic for her to lie in bed a while longer, but her eyes are open. ◆

WHAT

The Public Cinema: Tu Dors Nicole

WHERE

Knoxville Museum of Art (1050 World’s Fair Park Drive)

WHEN

Sunday, Aug. 23, at 2 p.m.

HOW MUCH Free

INFO

publiccinema.org

August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 35

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Video

Grindhouse Auteurs The Dead Lands and Welcome to New York elevate the exploitation film BY LEE GARDNER

ts setting among New Zealand’s Maori warriors aside, you’d be forgiven for dismissing The Dead Lands (Magnolia) at fi rst glance as one of those subcompetent C-movie action fl icks that populate the lower orders of the home-video ecosystem. But if you did opt for an evening of half-naked men subduing each other with Stone Age weapons instead of Gracie jiu-jitsu, you’d be in for a pleasant surprise. Director Toa Fraser’s fi lm is, in fact, a B-movie, a creditable action yarn reinforced with a core of integrity by its Maori roots. Effectively an Antipodean Apocalypto, The Dead Lands follows Hongi (James Rolleston) as he sets off to avenge his tribe’s slaughter at the hands of a strutting rival (Te Kohe Tuhaka). Since he’s all alone, Hongi turns to an unlikely ally: the unnamed warrior/boogeyman (Lawrence Makoare) who kills and eats any trespassers in the title no-go zone. The rest of the film follows a chase-fightchase rhythm while allowing Hongi to come of age and the guardian of the Dead Lands to flesh out his own backstory with a minimum of corn or simpiness. Many of the warriors look a bit too Crossfit-ted for pure realism, but the fights are handled with aplomb, the non-Hobbit-ish New Zealand scenery is amazing, and the story’s cultural roots give it bends and angles that make it feel fresh. At the climax, Hongi doesn’t do what the typical overmuscled, vengeful Western action hero would do, and that makes it all the more satisfying. Abel Ferrara’s latest fi lm, Welcome to New York (IFC), is another title that might get a hipshot pass when you’re scrolling through options. Ferrara’s fi lms haven’t gotten decent domestic distribution in decades, so most viewers have no idea

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

what he’s been up to, and his past mix of grindhouse sensibilities and auteur ambitions constitutes an acquired taste for most anyway. In addition, New York is Ferrara’s barely fictionalized take on the lurid Dominique Strauss-Khan sex scandal and stars Gerard Depardieu, who seemingly hasn’t been good in anything since well before the advent of the Euro. To be sure, Ferrara opens the fi lm by diving face-fi rst into the booze-andhookers netherworld of sexually compulsive French politician Devereaux (Depardieu’s Strauss-Khan stand-in), and the director takes a stab at a theory as to why such a man might sexually assault a random hotel maid (Pamela Afesi). But from there, Ferrara recedes into dispassion. He merely observes as Devereaux is arrested and processed. (If you’ve been aching to see the pendulous 66-year-old Depardieu strip-searched, ache no more.) And he watches coolly as Devereaux’s wife ( Jacqueline Bisset) begins her own processing regarding what her husband’s done and what it means for her. Welcome to New York neither dramatizes nor pathologizes the unrepentant Devereaux, and yet it doesn’t lose interest. Ferrara has disavowed the cut released in the United States, but it nonetheless stands as one of his best fi lms in years. ◆

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August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 37

CALENDAR MUSIC

Thursday, Aug. 20 BRAD BLACKWELL • Wild Wing Cafe • 8PM • • FREE EARTH QUAKER WITH TRACTORHEAD • Preservation Pub • 10PM HANDSOME AND THE HUMBLES • Historic Southern Railway Station • 8PM • Part of the Southern Station Live concert series. THE HENHOUSE PROWLERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM HOT SUMMER NIGHTS CONCERT SERIES • Blount County Public Library • 7PM • A weekly series of summer concerts, featuring gospel and popular songs by Ebony and Ivory (Aug. 13); high-energy Americana by Pistol Creek Catch of the Day (Aug. 20); a program of Native American music (Aug. 27); and a preview of Knoxville Opera’s 2015-16 season (Sept. 3). JANUARY MAY • Scruffy City Hall • 10PM • FRETZ LANE WITH CATHOUSE, SIENNA, AND COLT • Longbranch Saloon • 8PM JAMEL MITCHELL • Red Piano Lounge • 8PM NATIVE CONSTRUCT WITH WINGS DENIED, OUTRUN THE SUNLIGHT, AND WHITE STAG • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 7PM • All ages. • $7-$10 • See Spotlight on page 43. SCOTT SOUTHWORTH WITH JANUARY MAY • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. THE THIRST QUENCHERS • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine Lounge • 8PM • The Ps and Qs house band. Friday, Aug. 21 KEITH ANDERSON • The Bowery • 7PM • Every song Keith sings sounds like a hit, and that includes “Pickin’ Wildflowers,” his romping debut single for Arista Nashville. He’s already proven himself as an ace songwriter with the Grammy-nominated “Beer Run (B Double E Double Are You In?),” recorded as a duet by Garth Brooks and George Jones, and “The Bed,” recorded by the multi-Platinum Gretchen Wilson. • $10-$30 BASEBALL THE BAND WITH YARN AND BRAVE BABY • Scruffy City Hall • 8PM KEITH BROWN AND KB3 • Red Piano Lounge • 8PM CLOCKWORK • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up. THE DARNELL BOYS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM THE DEAD RINGERS • Preservation Pub • 10PM DREAMLIKE WITH SHALLOWPOINT • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • All ages. FREEQUENCY • Cru Bistro and Wine Bar • 8PM • Acoustic Americana trio. FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. THE JEFF JOPLIN BAND • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 10PM THE KINCAID BAND • Mulligan’s Restaurant • 7:30PM KITTY WAMPUS • Calhoun’s (Volunteer Landing) • 7:30PM • Classic rock and R&B. KUKULY AND THE GYPSY FUEGO • Casual Pint (Fountain City) • 7PM MAPS NEED READING WITH MESMER TEA AND FALLOIR • Pilot Light • 10PM • Maps Need Reading weaves psychedelic guitar harmonies over jazzy rhythm sections. 18 and up. • $5 NICK MOSS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM NORWEGIAN WOOD • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM PANDEMONIUM FEATURING LOUDPVCK, WICK-IT, AND MANIC FOCUS • The International • 9PM • Presented by 38

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

Thursday, Aug. 20 - Sunday, Aug. 30

Midnight Voyage and WUTK. 18 and up. • $15 ANNIE PIPER • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM DUSTIN SELLERS WITH THE AL HOLBROOK BAND • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-aweek lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. DAVE SLACK TRIO • Pero’s on the Hill • 7PM • Instrumental and vocal jazz standards. MIKE SNODGRASS • Bearden Field House • 9PM CHELSEA STEPP WITH THE BAND CONCORD • Longbranch Saloon • 9PM TRIAL BY FIRE • Wild Wing Cafe • 10PM • The ultimate Journey tribute band. 21 and up. • FREE CLAY WALKER • Cotton Eyed Joe • 10PM • Walker first topped the Billboard country singles chart in 1993 with “What’s It to You” and followed with his second consecutive No. 1 hit, “Live Until I Die.” Since then he’s placed 31 titles on Billboard’s singles chart. • $10-$15 Saturday, Aug. 22 JOSIAH ATCHLEY AND THE GREATER GOOD • Wild Wing Cafe • 10PM • Rock, blues, and pop. 21 and up. • FREE BETHANY AND THE SWING SERENADE • Red Piano Lounge • 8PM THE BLAIR XPERIENCE • Mulligan’s Restaurant • 7:30PM BLANKFEST • Market Square • 5PM • Presented by BLANK Newspaper and scruffycity.com, this year’s iteration will benefit Knoxville-based nonprofit agency Positively Living. In addition to the outdoor stage in the square, participating venues will include Scruffy City Hall, Preservation Pub and Cocoa Moon. Beginning at 5:00 P.M., a musical roster comprising nearly 20 acts will perform across three stages, with noted poet/emcee/Knoxville ambassador Zachary Fallon hosting a self-curated cavalcade of local comedians, improv artists and burlesque presenters at Cocoa Moon. The Black Cadillacs, David Mayfield Parade and Lilly Hiatt will serve as music headliners and will apply their craft to the outdoor main stage. A who’s who of local talent rounding out the bill will take to the stages at Scruffy City Hall and Preservation Pub: Barstool Romeos, Black Cadillacs, Brent Thompson & the Wandering, David Mayfield Parade, Gamenight, Guy Marshall, J.C. and the Dirty Smokers, Johnny Astro and the Big Bang, Justin Kaulk Orchestra, LiL iFFy, Lilly Hiatt, Madre, Mic Harrison and the High Score, Mr. ILL & the Medicine, Three Star Revival, Tim Lee 3, William Wild and the BLANKfest King Super Jam. MARK BOLING • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. CLYDE’S ON FIRE • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM COODER • WHITE • SKAGGS • Tennessee Theatre • 8PM • The legendary Grammy-winning trio made up of Ry Cooder, Sharon White and Ricky Skaggs will be hitting the second leg of their ‘Songs For The Good People’ tour. • $44.50-$84.50 • See story on page 34. FREEQUENCY • Willy’s Bar and Grill • 7PM • Acoustic Americana trio. LARRY GATLIN AND THE GATLIN BROTHERS • Niswonger Performing Arts Center (Greeneville) • 7:30PM • Over the course of a four-decade career that has taken the Gatlin Brothers from dusty Texas stages to White House performances, from Broadway to Grammy Awards, to the top of the country charts, there has been one unifying element ... music. THE HARIKIRIS WITH FINAL FIGHT, FIRE AT THE MARQUEE, AND BURNING TURLEYS • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Punk night at the Open Chord. HEARTSICK • Longbranch Saloon • 8PM J.B.’S BOOGIE ON BROADWAY • Two Doors Down • 4PM • Featuring Smooth Groove, the Dixie Highway Band, the

KRISTIN DIABLE Boyd’s Jig and Reel (101 S. Central St.) • Wednesday, Aug. 26 • 7 p.m. • $10 • jigandreel.com

Kristin Diable fled her hometown of Baton Rouge, La., to get her start in the music business. But coming home—or back to New Orleans, anyway—led her to a partnership with alt-country super-producer Dave Cobb and what’s shaping up as her breakthrough album, Create Your Own Mythology, released early this year. Trading the stark folk-country of 2012’s self-titled debut for more elaborate arrangements, Diable hits on something close to the classic Atlantic soul sound of the late ’60s and early ’70s on the new album—there’s straight-ahead Southern rock, but it’s embellished with organ, strings, and piano. Cobb, whose recent resume includes lauded albums by Sturgill Simpson, Lindi Ortega, Jason Isbell, and Chris Stapleton, deserves some of the credit, but the lush sound of Create Your Own Mythology wouldn’t matter much without Diable’s songs and her voice—heartfelt, groovy, and soulful. (Matthew Everett)

Spotlight: Native Construct

Spotlight: Robbie Fulks

CALENDAR Burnin’ Hermans, Jailhouse Review, the Fallbacks, and the Big Boogie, all in tribute to Jeff Breazeale. THE TOMMIE JOHN BAND • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM KISS ARMY WITH J.D. CABLE AND THE EMPTY BOTTLE BAND • The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson (Maryville) • 6PM • $15 NERVOUS TICKS WITH BIG BAD OVEN, THE SNIFF, AND BURNING ITCH • Pilot Light • 10PM • 18 and up. • $5 LUCY RAY AND RANDAL GARY WITH THREE STAR REVIVAL • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. THE REGISTRATION WITH DJ MIKE NASTY • The Concourse • 9:30PM • $10 THE RERUNS • Pero’s on the Hill • 7PM • Knoxville’s premier TV band plays your favorite television themes. BEN SHUSTER • Bearden Field House • 9PM STANLEY YATES • Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan • 7PM • British-born guitarist Stanley Yates enjoys an international career as concert performer and recording artist, teacher, arranger, and scholar. He has been described as “one of an elite breed of guitarists” (Classical Guitar Magazine), praised for the “transcendent quality of his interpretations”(Fort Worth Star Telegram), recognized for his “musical instinct and brilliant technique” (Suonare, Italy). Visit www.knoxvilleguitar.org. • $20 Sunday, Aug. 23 BLUES TRAVELER • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • After selling millions of records and logging thousands of miles on the road, Blues Traveler continue to chart new musical directions evident on their upcoming record Blow Up The Moon. A clever collaboration between various artists, Blow Up The Moon sees Blues Traveler keep an open-minded perspective on making music and enlists an eclectic mix of songwriters influenced by the bands remarkable 25+ year career. • $27 THE NICK MOSS BAND • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 6PM • $6-$20 THE RANSOM NOTES • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM JACK RENTFRO AND THE APOCALYPSO QUARTET • Pilot Light • 8PM • The Apocalypso Quartet is a rotating cast of some

of Knoxville’s best musicians. Each permutation of the band provides a strong foundation of rock, world music, gospel, and even hip-hop for Rentfro’s dense wordplay, a rambling and sometimes startling combination of biblical references and literary allusions, political rants, observational humor, puns, and philosophical rumination—like a letter to the editor co-written by Woody Allen, James Joyce, and Andy Kaufman. • $5 SHIFFLETT AND HANNAH • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. DAVE SLACK TRIO • Pero’s on the Hill • 1PM • Live jazz. Monday, Aug. 24 PETE KENNEDY • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Pete Kennedy is an award winning singer-songwriter from Ireland and now based in Nashville, Tennessee. From early idols like The Eagles, Kris Kristofferson and Emmylou Harris to contemporary artists such as Garth Brooks and Rascal Flatts, Pete’s influences are evident in his distinctive crossover style. OLIVIA NEUTRON JOHN WITH PSYCHIC BAOS, PALATHEDA, AND TATRAS • Pilot Light • 9PM • 18 and up. • $5 THE PS AND QS • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. Tuesday, Aug. 25 THE HOWLIN’ BROTHERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM JAZZ ON THE SQUARE • Market Square • 8PM • Featuring the Marble City 5. Every Tuesday from May 12-Aug. 25. MY FEVER • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. THE RANSOM NOTES • Wild Wing Cafe • 5:30PM • FREE REEL BIG FISH • The Concourse • 7PM • All ages. • $17-$20

AUGUST 28-29, 2015 BENNY GOLSON

MANUEL ROCHEMAN

KEITH L. BROWN with featured guests Terreon Gulley Russell Gunn Kenneth Whalum

Wednesday, Aug. 26 CARL ANDERSON • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. KRISTIN DIABLE • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7PM • Kristin Diable

plus:

JAZZ IN A HOT SCRUFFY CITY Jazz walking tour, local bands, vintage jazz films, and more!

For event schedule and locations

WWW.KNOXJAZZFEST.ORG BLUES TRAVELER

HAROLD & EVELYN R. DAVIS MEMORIAL FOUNDATION

August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 39

CALENDAR has been exploring freedom and choice in her music ever since she picked up an open mic at a lounge in Baton Rouge and stunned the audience into silence. And her newest album, Create Your Own Mythology, invokes her Louisiana and Americana roots, while firing a rock-and-roll shot across the bow of borrowed myths. • $10 • See Spotlight on page 38. FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 6:30PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. MATT NELSON SOUND • The Bistro at the Bijou • 7PM • Live jazz. MIKE SNODGRASS • Wild Wing Cafe • 8PM Thursday, Aug. 27 BRAD AUSTIN • Scruffy City Hall • 8PM KARINA BELFORD • Wild Wing Cafe • 8PM • FREE BIG SOMETHING WITH THE PAT BEASLEY BAND • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • BIG Something fuses elements of rock, pop, funk, hip hop and improv. All ages. • $10-$12 THE BOXMASTERS • Cotton Eyed Joe • 10PM • Teddy Andreadis, J.D. Andrew, Brad Davis and Billy Bob “Bud” Thornton make up “The Boxmasters”; an American roots-rock band of seasoned musicians whose sound is rich in rhythm and story. • $10 ROBBIE FULKS WITH ELLE CARPENTER • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. ROBBIE FULKS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM •

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

Thursday, Aug. 20 - Sunday, Aug. 30

See Spotlight on page 47. GUY MARSHALL WITH THE VILLAGE GREEN PEOPLE AND KENDALL CALKINS • Concord Park • 6PM • Part of the Lawn Chair Concert Series. • FREE HARD TARGET • The Bowery • 9PM • Hard Target is a southern hip hop based group that is more than unique and is quickly emerging onto the music scene. • $5 HOT SUMMER NIGHTS CONCERT SERIES • Blount County Public Library • 7PM • A weekly series of summer concerts, featuring gospel and popular songs by Ebony and Ivory (Aug. 13); high-energy Americana by Pistol Creek Catch of the Day (Aug. 20); a program of Native American music (Aug. 27); and a preview of Knoxville Opera’s 2015-16 season (Sept. 3). LAMONT 865 WITH YOUNG UKAMEA • Longbranch Saloon • 9PM THE CHUCK MULLICAN JAZZ BONANZA • Red Piano Lounge • 8PM REALM WITH SPLIT TUSK • Preservation Pub • 9PM THE THIRST QUENCHERS • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine Lounge • 8PM • The Ps and Qs house band. Friday, Aug. 28 THE ART OF WITH FALL OF THE ALBATROSS AND LINES TAKING SHAPE • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 7PM • A night of local prog and heavy rock to celebrate the Art Of’s new album. All ages. BADLANDS • Preservation Pub • 10PM BETHANY AND THE SWING SERENADE • Red Piano Lounge • 8PM THE BLAIR EXPERIENCE • Wild Wing Cafe • 10PM •

Old-school R&B, funk, and pop. 21 and up. • FREE MARK FARINA WITH KEVIN NOWELL AND J MO • The Concourse • 9PM • The legendary house and techno DJ, presented by Midnight Voyage and WUTK. 18 and up. • $10-$20 FREEQUENCY • The Rocks Tavern • 9PM • Acoustic Americana trio. FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. FUTUREBIRDS WITH NEW MADRID • Scruffy City Hall • 9:30PM GUY SMILEY • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 10PM MIC HARRISON AND THE HIGH SCORE WITH OLD SALT UNION AND BIG COUNTRY’S EMPTY BOTTLE • The Bowery • 8PM • The country influence he absorbed in the V-Roys made its way into Harrison’s songwriting and guitar playing after the band broke up in 1999, even during a brief stint in Knoxville indie/power-pop/punk outfit Superdrag. When he hooked up with local rockers the High Score (which currently consists of guitarists Robbie Trosper and Chad Pelton, bassist Vance Hillard, and drummer Brad Henderson) as his official backing band in 2004, he pushed the group in a direction that stretched the High Score’s punky pop-rock experience. The 2007 album Right Side of the Grass, in particular, was nearly a straight-up country album, from its Waylon Jennings-and-Willie Nelson-inspired cover art to its subject matter (drinking, in several cases).That’s changed on Harrison and the High Score’s new album, Still Wanna Fight, from 2012. Harrison and company’s rural roots

MARK FARINA show through, but the songwriting and production tilt toward classic power pop and old-fashioned ‘70s and ‘80s radio rock. • $12 HOOKA HEY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up. HUMMING HOUSE • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM HUNGRY OTTER FEST • Pilot Light • 7PM • Featuring No Air Radio, Temperance League, Kevin Abernathy, the Greg

CALENDAR AMERICAN AQUARIUM

SEPTEMBER 18–20 Photo by Alysse Gafkjen

Horne Band, White Gregg, and the Melungeons (Friday); Ancient Warfare, Heiskell, Bark, Scrawl, Big Bad Oven, and Hudson K (Saturday); and the Bearded, Black Atticus, Mike McGill and the Refills, and Spades Cooley (Sunday). • $5 KNOXVILLE JAZZ FESTIVAL: BENNY GOLSON AND MANUEL ROCHEMAN • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • To say that Benny Golson is among the greatest living jazz players in the world may sound like hyperbole. Yet few jazz musicians can claim to be true innovators and fewer yet can boast of a career that redefines the word “jazz”. Following Benny Golson is French pianist extraordinaire, Manuel Rocheman. • $25-$35 THE LAWLESS FEW • Longbranch Saloon • 9PM LEFT FOOT DAVE AND THE MAGIC HATS • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM NORMAN MANNELLA AND DAVID SLACK • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. MY SO-CALLED BAND • The International • 10PM • Hits from the ‘90s. • $1 SAME AS IT EVER WAS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • This 7-piece outfit of Knoxville musicians came together out of their mutual love and respect for the music of the Talking Heads in the summer of 2004 and have not looked back since. Over the years the band has performed extensively, and now nearly have the entire Talking Heads catalog at their fingertips. ALEXANDRA SCOTT • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. DAVE SLACK TRIO • Pero’s on the Hill • 7PM • Instrumental and vocal jazz standards. THE WHISKEY SESSIONS • Bearden Field House • 9PM Saturday, Aug. 29 2 CHAINZ WITH BABI MAC, DJ ERIC B, AND DJ SAGZ • Old City Courtyard • 7PM • The Hot 104.5 12th Year BDay Bash featuring 2 Chainz, Babi Mac, DJ Eric B and DJ Sagz. 18 and up. • $15-$50 AIR1 POSITIVE HITS TOUR • Knoxville Civic Coliseum • 7PM • Featuring Crowder, Lauren Daigle, NF, Finding Favour, and special guest 3for3. • $22 AMERICAN AQUARIUM WITH HANDSOME AND THE HUMBLES • The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson (Maryville) • 8PM • For nearly a decade, American

Aquarium have spent the majority of their days on the road, burning through a sprawl of highways during the day and playing hours of raw, rootsy rock & roll at night. • $20 BETTER DAZE • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 10PM THE CRY WITH LOST ELEMENT AND HELLAPHANT • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 7:30PM • Alt-rock and punk. • $8-$10 THE DEEP FRIED FIVE • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM FREEQUENCY • Hurricane Grill and Wings • 8PM • Acoustic Americana trio. BETHANY HANKINS • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. HUNGRY OTTER FEST • Pilot Light • 7PM • Featuring No Air Radio, Temperance League, Kevin Abernathy, the Greg Horne Band, White Gregg, and the Melungeons (Friday); Ancient Warfare, Heiskell, Bark, Scrawl, Big Bad Oven, and Hudson K (Saturday); and the Bearded, Black Atticus, Mike McGill and the Refills, and Spades Cooley (Sunday). • $5 JAZZSPIRATIONS • Red Piano Lounge • 8PM KNOXVILLE JAZZ FESTIVAL: KEITH BROWN • The Square Room • 8PM • Knoxville’s own, pianist Keith Brown celebrates the release of his new CD as part of the Knoxville Jazz Festival. LABRON LAZENBY • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM BRISTON MARONEY • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. THE POP ROX • Mulligan’s Restaurant • 8PM THE RERUNS • Pero’s on the Hill • 7PM • Knoxville’s premier TV band plays your favorite television themes. RYE BABY • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE BEN SHUSTER • Bearden Field House • 9PM THE MIKE SNODGRASS BAND • Wild Wing Cafe • 10PM • Feel-good pop covers and originals. 21 and up. • FREE SOUL MECHANIC WITH CALABASH • Preservation Pub • 10PM STRUNG LIKE A HORSE • The Concourse • 9PM • A high energy gypsy garage grass band based in Chattanooga. • $5 TOMATO HEAD SILVER ANNIVERSARY PARTY • Market Square • 4PM • You can’t shake Knoxville! We’d like to

Steve Earle & The Dukes Dr. Dog / Delbert McClinton

Hot Rize Ft. Red / Knuckles and the Trailblazers Rusted Root / Vintage Trouble / Moon Taxi Mike Farris & The Roseland Rhythm Revue John Anderson / The Districts / And Many More! ENTER BY EMAIL Enter by sending an email with “Bristol” in the subject line and your name and phone number to: contests@knoxmercury.com Enter any time between August 20-Sept. 6. Winners will be chosen on Sept. 7 and announced in the Mercury on Sept. 10.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 41

CALENDAR thank our customers for 25 wonderful years by throwing a birthday celebration on Market Square. Join us on Saturday, August 29 for a FREE concert featuring The Scott Miller (and the Commonwealth), Exit 65, Guy Marshall, and Jacqui and The Tumble Kings. This event will also serve as a #LovingSpoonful fundraiser for the Knoxville History Project, which is led by Knoxville’s favorite historian, Jack Neely. They’ll receive 100% of the proceeds from the sale of beer ID wristbands + any profits from the festival. And, an extra delicious reason to come out is to have a few pints of our silver anniversary ale, which is a special collaboration between Saw Works Brewing Company and Tomato Head. We’d like to thank our event partners Eagle Distributing Company, Visit Knoxville, WDVX, WBIR Channel 10, Knoxville History Project, WUTK The Rock, The Knoxville Mercury and Saw Works. • FREE Sunday, Aug. 30 THE BROCKEFELLERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM THE CARMONAS • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. HUNGRY OTTER FEST • Big Fatty’s Catering Kitchen • 3PM • Featuring No Air Radio, Temperance League, Kevin Abernathy, the Greg Horne Band, White Gregg, and the Melungeons (Friday); Ancient Warfare, Heiskell, Bark, Scrawl, Big Bad Oven, and Hudson K (Saturday); and the Bearded, Black Atticus, Mike McGill and the Refills, and Spades Cooley (Sunday). • $5 SHIFFLETT AND HANNAH • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. DAVE SLACK TRIO • Pero’s on the Hill • 1PM • Live jazz.

Thursday, Aug. 20 - Sunday, Aug. 30

TALL PAUL • Mulligan’s Restaurant • 4PM

BRING YOUR OWN VINYL NIGHT • Flow: A Brew Parlor • 6PM

OPEN MIC AND SONGWRITER NIGHTS

Sunday, Aug. 23 LAYOVER SUNDAY BRUNCH • The Concourse • 12PM • Brunch with a side of chill ambient music.

Thursday, Aug. 20 IRISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM

Tuesday, Aug. 25 PRESERVATION PUB SINGER/SONGWRITER NIGHT • Preservation Pub • 7PM OLD-TIME JAM SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM Wednesday, Aug. 26 TIME WARP TEA ROOM OLD-TIME JAM • Time Warp Tea Room • 7PM OPEN CHORD OPEN MIC • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM BRACKINS BLUES JAM • Brackins Blues Club • 9PM Thursday, Aug. 27 SCOTTISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM Friday, Aug. 28 TIME WARP TEA ROOM OPEN SONGWRITER NIGHT • Time Warp Tea Room • 7PM

DJ AND DANCE NIGHTS Thursday, Aug. 20

Thursday, Aug. 27 BRING YOUR OWN VINYL NIGHT • Flow: A Brew Parlor • 6PM Sunday, Aug. 30 LAYOVER SUNDAY BRUNCH • The Concourse • 12PM • Brunch with a side of chill ambient music.

COMEDY AND SPOKEN WORD

Thursday, Aug. 20 MOSTLY TRUE STORIES VOL. II • Pilot Light • 9PM • A storytelling show. 18 and up. • $5 Friday, Aug. 21 THE FIFTH WOMAN POETRY SLAM • The Birdhouse • 6:30PM • The 5th Woman Poetry slam is place where all poets can come and share their words of love, respect, passion, and expression. It is not dedicated solely women but is a place where women poets are celebrated and honored. Check out our facebook pages for the challenge of the month and focus for our poetry every month. Saturday, Aug. 22

IMPROV COMEDY CLASS • The Birdhouse • 10AM • A weekly improv comedy class. Sunday, Aug. 23 UPSTAIRS UNDERGROUND COMEDY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A weekly comedy open mic. Monday, Aug. 24 QED COMEDY LABORATORY • Pilot Light • 7:30PM • QED ComedyLaboratory is a weekly show with different theme every week that combines stand-up, improv, sketch, music and other types of performance and features some of the funniest people in Knoxville and parts unknown. Pay what you want. Cost: Free - But Donations Gladly Accepted. Tuesday, Aug. 25 COLIN JOST • University of Tennessee Alumni Memorial Building • 7:30PM • Colin Jost is a comedian from Staten Island, NY. He has been a writer for Saturday Night Live since 2005 and currently serves as the head writer for the show. Jost has received several awards for his work with SNL, like the Writer’s Guild Award and Peabody Award. EINSTEIN SIMPLIFIED • Scruffy City Hall • 8PM • Live comedy improv. OPEN MIC STAND-UP COMEDY • Longbranch Saloon • 8PM • Email us at longbranch.info@gmail.com to learn more, or simply come to the show a few minutes early. Wednesday, Aug. 26 SEAN SIMONEAU COMEDY SHOW • Longbranch Saloon •

Sweet P’s BBQ & Extrovert Media Present the Inaugural

Vol KicKoff Party 09.11.2015

at th n ess e e e st , ten e l anda l i rd • knoxv

a benefit for Green MaGnet acadeMy

GRAN TORINO W/ THE HERMIT KINGS free kickoff event 4-7pm • show starts at 8pm • tickets: $30 GeneraL aDmission PREORDER: www.tickettailor.com/checkout/view-event/id/32249/chk/f135

The Standard • 416 W Jackson Ave • Knoxville, TENNESSEE

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

Thursday, Aug. 20 - Sunday, Aug. 30

8PM Saturday, Aug. 29 IMPROV COMEDY CLASS • The Birdhouse • 10AM • A weekly improv comedy class. Sunday, Aug. 30 UPSTAIRS UNDERGROUND COMEDY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A weekly comedy open mic.

THEATER AND DANCE Thursday, Aug. 20 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 7PM • Aug. 14-30. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 Friday, Aug. 21 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 7PM • Aug. 14-30. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12

CALENDAR

KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 3PM • Aug. 14-30. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 OAK RIDGE PLAYHOUSE: ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS • Oak Ridge Playhouse • 2PM • Aug. 28-Sept. 6. Visit orplayhouse.com.

FESTIVALS

Saturday, Aug. 22 INDIA FEST 2015 • Hindu Community Center • 11AM • The ninth annual India Fest celebrates the food, music, history, and folklore of India. FOOTHILLS LAND CONSERVANCY SUMMER CELEBRATION • Penrose Farm • 5PM • During this year’s gathering, FLC will be ringing in the 30 years of service as a regional land trust. Celebration attendees will get to mingle in a beautiful, casual setting among Teenie’s gardens and pastures. There are no long speeches or auctions, just a good time filled with food, drinks and friends. Tickets can

be purchased at FLC’s website at www.foothillsland.org (select Celebration link) or by calling the FLC office at 865-681-8326. • $100 Thursday, Aug. 27 HISTORIC BIJOU THEATRE OPEN HOUSE AND TOURS • Bijou Theatre • 6PM • The Bijou Theatre will host our annual open house with tours of Knoxville’s most historic theatre available throughout the night. We’ll also kick off our fall membership campaign with refreshments and music on the U.S. Cellular Stage at the Bijou Theatre. Our Friends of the Bijou membership program supports the ongoing preservation of the Bijou Theatre as well as providing a unique venue for artists and musicians. • FREE Saturday, Aug. 29 KNOXVILLE JAZZ FESTIVAL: JAZZ IN A HOT SCRUFFY CITY • Scruffy City Hall • 11AM • The festival highlights Knoxville’s excellent jazz musicians and celebrates its vibrant jazz history with a jazz jaunt through downtown Knoxville led by Knoxville History Project Director, Jack

Saturday, Aug. 22 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 1PM and 5PM • Aug. 14-30. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 Sunday, Aug. 23 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 3PM • Aug. 14-30. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 Thursday, Aug. 27 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 7PM • Aug. 14-30. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 Friday, Aug. 28 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 7PM • Aug. 14-30. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 OAK RIDGE PLAYHOUSE: ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS • Oak Ridge Playhouse • 8PM • Change is in the air for Francis Henshall, who was recently fired and looking to make his mark. Circumstances find him suddenly working for not one, but two bosses. Faced with the distractions of a buxom bookkeeper, a self-important actor, and select members of the local criminal community, all the while fighting mounting mistaken identities and confusion, Francis goes out of his way to serve both his “guvnors” while keeping his moonlighting a secret. But how long can he keep them apart? Fast-paced and infectious, the hilarity is as boundless as Francis’ massive appetite. Aug. 28-Sept. 6. Visit orplayhouse.com. Saturday, Aug. 29 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 1PM and 5PM • Aug. 14-30. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 OAK RIDGE PLAYHOUSE: ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS • Oak Ridge Playhouse • 8PM • Aug. 28-Sept. 6. Visit orplayhouse.com. CATALINA MYSTIQUE ENTERPRISES: EROTICA • Kristtopher’s • 9PM • Hosted by international burlesque performer and producer Kisa Teasa, alongside an incredible cast of entertainers, we create a night of fun filled riveting entertainment. Tickets: http://erotica.bpt.me/ $10 Gen Adm $15 VIP Performances by: Egypt Blaque Knyle (Los Angeles) Deb Aunare (Asheville) Veronica DeLore LaShae The Katharine Slowburn Experience plus more. • $10-$15

NATIVE CONSTRUCT Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage (8502 Kingston Pike) • Thursday, Aug. 20 • 7 p.m. • $7/$10 at the door • facebook.com/openchordmusic • All ages

If the thought of a prog-rock concept album by a bunch of recent grads from the Berklee College of Music in Boston makes you cringe—or even worse, giggle—you’re probably not the target audience for Native Construct’s Quiet World, released on Metal Blade this spring. In fact, recent Berklee grads are probably the ideal audience for the album, which throws jazzy time signatures, shredding guitars, epic keyboards, pastoral interludes, and metal breakdowns together with less expected elements, like Queen-style sing-along choruses, saxophone, funky cabaret-rock digressions, and power-ballad crescendos. (And it almost goes without saying that the members of the New England trio have considerable chops.) For nerds and by nerds, for sure, but with enough twists and turns to keep anybody entertained. With Wings Denied, Outrun the Sunlight, and White Stag. (Matthew Everett)

Sunday, Aug. 30 August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 43

Now’s your chance to tell us what you really think–in person!

MEETUPS

Join us at our Monthly Mercury Meetup.

Thursday, August 20, 5 p.m. - 8 p.m. at

Little River Trading Company

2408 E. Lamar Alexander Pkwy Maryville, TN 37804 This is a great opportunity for the business owners and residents of Knoxville to stop by and tell us what’s on your mind! We hope to see you there.

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

CALENDAR Neely. Following the tour comes Jazz in a Hot Scruffy City, an afternoon of local jazz bands, an art exhibit, and vintage jazz films at Scruffy City Hall. EMORY PLACE BLOCK PARTY • Emory Place • 12PM • The first annual Emory Place Block Party has been organized to help bring attention to the historic Emory Place area. The goal of the block party is to create an opportunity for residents to get out and meet one another while experiencing what the area has to offer. Email emoryplaceblockparty@gmail.com or visit www. emoryplaceblockparty.com. CENTER FOR URBAN AGRICULTURE COMMUNITY GARDEN FESTIVAL • Knoxville Botanical Garden • 12PM • Join the Center for Urban Agriculture for the very first Community Garden Festival! This event offers FREE workshops presented by the Smoky Mountain Center of North Carolina. Enjoy food, music, kids crafts, take a tour of the beautiful gardens, and meet some of your local non-profits in the Knoxville area. • FREE TOMATO HEAD SILVER ANNIVERSARY PARTY • Market Square • 4PM • You can’t shake Knoxville! We’d like to thank our customers for 25 wonderful years by throwing a birthday celebration on Market Square. Join us for a FREE concert featuring The Scott Miller (and the Commonwealth), Exit 65, Guy Marshall, and Jacqui and The Tumble Kings. This event will also serve as a #LovingSpoonful fundraiser for the Knoxville History Project, which is led by Knoxville’s favorite historian, Jack Neely. They’ll receive 100% of the proceeds from the sale of beer ID wristbands + any profits from the festival.And, an extra delicious reason to come out is to have a few pints of our silver anniversary ale, which is a special collaboration between Saw Works Brewing Company and Tomato Head. • FREE

SPORTS AND RECREATION

Thursday, Aug. 20 WHOLE FOODS GAME NIGHT • Whole Foods • 6PM • Grab you peeps and join us for Game Night in The Rocky! We have everything from Candy Land to Chess! A pint, a pizza, and a board: who could ask for more? • Free Saturday, Aug. 22 THE MAN RUN 5K AND 10K • University of Tennessee Medical Center • 8AM • 100% of the proceeds will benefit prostate cancer research and outreach and educational programs in East Tennessee. The Man Run includes a 10K run, 5K run, and 1/2 mile fun run/walk at The University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville. Tuesday, Aug. 25 SMOKY MOUNTAIN HIKING CLUB: EMORY RIVER GORGE • 5:30PM • Hike 2.6-3.5 miles Meet at Oak Ridge Books-A-Million at 5:30 PM. Leader: Tim Bigelow, bigelowt2@mindspring.com. Saturday, Aug. 29 SMOKY MOUNTAIN HIKING CLUB: BALD RIVER FALLS AND WILDERNESS • 7AM • Hike 9.6 miles, rated moderate. Meet at Maryville Walmart at 7:00 AM or at Bald River Falls parking lot at 8:00 AM. Leader: Steven Miller, Samiller71@ rocketmail.com. FORGET ME NOT 5K FOR ALZHEIMER’S • University of Tennessee • 8AM • Show your Volunteer spirit and help Pat Summitt fight the fight against Alzheimer’s Disease. The Forget Me Not 5K benefiting The Pat Summitt

Foundation is a fun fast loop 5K in Knoxville Tennessee on University of Tennessee Campus. AUGUST 29 • Run for the Arts 5K • Carter High School • 8AM • The proceeds from the Run 4 the Arts 5K benefit the dynamic musical theatre and choral programs at Carter High School. DIRTY DASH AT WINDROCK PARK • Windrock Park • 9AM • The Dirty Dash is a mud run for everyone. Runners and non-runners can play dirty on this 5K run with obstacles and fun! Be ready to get mudddy.

FILM SCREENINGS

Friday, Aug. 21 SUMMER MOVIE MAGIC SERIES: ‘THE BIG LEBOWSKI’ • Tennessee Theatre • 8PM • This cult classic from 1998 stars Jeff Bridges as Jeff Lebowski, a burnout who insists on being called “the Dude.” As it happens Jeff has the same name as a millionaire whose wife owes a lot of money to dangerous people, resulting in “the Dude” having his rug soiled as he’s sent spiraling into the Los Angeles underworld. • $9 Sunday, Aug. 23 SUMMER MOVIE MAGIC SERIES: ‘THE BIG LEBOWSKI’ • Tennessee Theatre • 2PM • $9 THE PUBLIC CINEMA: TU DORS NICOLE • Knoxville Museum of Art • 2PM • FREE • See review on page 35. Monday, Aug. 24 THE BIRDHOUSE WALK-IN THEATER • The Birdhouse • 8PM • A weekly free movie screening. Wednesday, Aug. 26 SCRUFFY CITY CINE-PUB • Scruffy City Hall • 7PM • Free Wednesday movie screenings.

ART

American Museum of Science and Energy 300 S. Tulane Ave. (Oak Ridge) JUNE 12-SEPT. 13: Nikon Small World Photomicrography Exhibit. Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts 556 Parkway (Gatlinburg) MAY 18-AUG. 22 Arrowmont 2015 Instructor Exhibition Bliss Home 29 Market Square AUG. 7-31: The Lake House, paintings by Kate Moore. Downtown Gallery 106 S. Gay St. AUG. 21-29: First-Year MFA Student Exhibition. An opening reception will be held on Friday, Aug. 21. East Tennessee History Center 601 S. Gay St. APRIL 27-OCT. 18: Memories of the Blue and Gray: The Civil War in East Tennessee at 150 Emporium Center for Arts and Culture 100 S. Gay St. AUG. 7-28: ETSU Department of Art and Design: Further East; Melanie Fetterolf: Fire, Rain, and Nature Images; artwork by Sharon Gillenwater and Michael McKee; MAP!: Artwork by Jennifer brickey, Nick DeFord, Marcia

Thursday, Aug. 20 - Sunday, Aug. 30

Goldenstein, and Tony Sobota; Knox Heritage Art and Architecture Tour photographs; and artwork by Rosalina Tipton and Michael Giles.

CALENDAR

Sunday, August 23rd, 2015 at The Birdhouse, on the corner of Fourth and Gill. • FREE

Ewing Gallery 1715 Volunteer Blvd. AUG. 24-SEPT. 25: Selections from the Ewing Gallery Permanent Collection. An opening reception will be held on Monday, Aug. 24, from 4:30-7 p.m.

Wednesday, Aug. 26 JENA LEE NARDELLA: ONE THOUSAND WELLS • Union Ave Books • 6PM • Book signing with Jena Lee Nardella author of One Thousand Wells: How an Audacious Goal of Bringing water to Africa Taught Me to Love the World instead of Save It.

Knoxville Museum of Art 1050 World’s Fair Park Drive AUG. 21-NOV. 8: The Paternal Suit, paintings, prints, and objects by conceptual artist F. Scott Hess. ONGOING: Higher Ground: A Century of the Visual Arts in Tennessee; Currents: Recent Art From East Tennessee and Beyond; and Facets of Modern and Contemporary Glass.

Thursday, Aug. 27 GERRY MOLL: LABOR DAY SUNFLOWER PROJECT • McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture • 5:15PM • Join us in the museum auditorium for a lecture on public and community art with artist Gerry Moll, founder of the Labor Day Sunflower project. This lecture is free and open to the public. • FREE

Liz-Beth and Co. 7240 Kingston Pike AUG. 3-29: Contemporary Art on Canvas, featuring work by Ursula Brenner, Mike Ham, Mildred Jarrett, Nelle Farrara, and Bonita Goldberg.

FAMILY AND KIDS’ EVENTS

McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture 1327 Circle Park Drive JUNE 5-AUG. 30: Through the Lens: The Botanical Photography of Alan S. Heilman. Ongoing: The Flora and Fauna of Catesby, Mason, and Audubon and Life on the Roman Frontier. Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church 2931 Kingston Pike JULY 17-AUG. 30: Exhibits by Lisa Kurtz and Art Group 21. Westminster Presbyterian Church 6500 Northshore Drive JULY 5-AUG. 30: Work by the Tennessee Artists Association.

LECTURES, READINGS, AND BOOK SIGNINGS

Thursday, Aug. 20 AARON ASTOR: “THE CIVIL WAR ALONG TENNESSEE’S CUMBERLAND PLATEAU” • East Tennessee History Center • 12PM • Dr. Aaron Astor will discuss his new book, The Civil War Along Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau. For more information on the lecture, exhibitions, or museum hours, call 865-215-8824 or visit the website at www. EastTNHistory.org. • Free Saturday, Aug. 22 RON LEADBETTER: BIG ORANGE, BLACK STORM CLOUDS, AND MORE • Union Ave Books • 2PM • Book signing with Ron Leadbetter author of Big Orange, Black Storm Clouds, and More. HOLY TEMPLE OF KNOWLEDGE FINDING YOUR WAY BACK HOME LECTURE SERIES • Lawson McGee Public Library • 3PM • The Holy Temple of Knowledge of RA presents Finding your way back home lecture series at Lawson McGhee library in East Knoxville Tennessee. Sunday, Aug. 23 SAFTA READING SERIES: PAULETTA HANSEL AND KEITH NORRIS • The Birdhouse • 3PM • Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is pleased to announce the August SAFTA Reading Series event featuring poets Pauletta Hansel and Keith Norris. This month’s event will take place at 3PM on

Thursday, Aug. 20 BABY BOOKWORMS • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • For infants to age 2, must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. CHESS AT THE LIBRARY • Blount County Public Library • 1PM KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE SUMMER ACTING CLASSES • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 4:30PM • To reserve a seat in any class, or for more information: e-mail Academy Director Dennis Perkins at dennis@ childrenstheatreknoxville.com, or call (865) 208-3677. • $180 Friday, Aug. 21 SMART TOYS AND BOOKS ART CLASS • Smart Toys and Books • 10AM • Mommy, Daddy & Me Art Classes are every Friday at 10:00am & 11:00am. Reservations and payment are required in advance. Class fees are non-refundable. Ages 2+. • $10 Saturday, Aug. 22 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE SUMMER ACTING CLASSES • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 9:30AM • To reserve a seat in any class, or for more information: e-mail Academy Director Dennis Perkins at dennis@ childrenstheatreknoxville.com, or call (865) 208-3677. • $150 CHESS AT THE LIBRARY • Blount County Public Library • 10AM KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE SUMMER ACTING CLASSES • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 10AM • To reserve a seat in any class, or for more information: e-mail Academy Director Dennis Perkins at dennis@ childrenstheatreknoxville.com, or call (865) 208-3677. • $180 CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY FAMILY FUN AND DE-STRESSING ACTIVITIES • Cancer Support Community • 10:30AM • This program is for families with school-age children when a parent or loved one in the family has cancer. Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer. SATURDAY STORIES AND SONGS • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • A weekly music and storytelling session for kids. KMA FAMILY FUN DAY • Knoxville Museum of Art • 11AM • Celebrate “Back to School” with the Knoxville Museum of Art Family Fun Day. The day is packed with art-making

stations, artist demonstrations, face painting, continuous entertainment on stage, magic shows, gallery tours, and live music. Snacks will be available for purchase from Dave’s Dogs. “David and the Dinosaurs” will be performing family favorites throughout the day. This event is free and open to the public. • Free Monday, Aug. 24 MCCLUNG MUSEUM STROLLER TOUR • McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture • 10AM • Join us for a morning out as our museum educator leads engaging gallery tours for parents and caregivers and their young ones. Crying and wiggly babies welcome! This month we explore the special exhibit, Through the Lens: Botanical Photography of Alan S. Heilman. The event is free, but limited, and all attendees must register to attend online. Registration opens a month in advance and closes the day before the tour. SMART TOYS AND BOOKS STORYTIME • Smart Toys and Books • 11AM • Storytime with Miss Helen is every Monday at 11:00am. No charge. No reservations required. • FREE Tuesday, Aug. 25 PRE-K READ AND PLAY • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE SUMMER ACTING CLASSES • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 4:30PM • To reserve a seat in any class, or for more information: e-mail Academy Director Dennis Perkins at dennis@ childrenstheatreknoxville.com, or call (865) 208-3677. • $180 EVENING STORYTIME • Lawson McGee Public Library • 6:30PM • An evening storytime at Lawson McGhee Children’s Room to include stories, music, and crafts. For toddlers and up. Wednesday, Aug. 26 BABY BOOKWORMS • Lawson McGee Public Library • 10:20AM • For infants to age 2, must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. PRESCHOOL STORYTIME • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • For ages 3 to 5, must be accompanied by an adult. KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE SUMMER ACTING CLASSES • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 4:30PM • To reserve a seat in any class, or for more information: e-mail Academy Director Dennis Perkins at dennis@ childrenstheatreknoxville.com, or call (865) 208-3677. • $180 Thursday, Aug. 27 TODDLER’S YOGI YOGA • Shanti Yoga Haven • 9AM • Ages 2 to 5 yrs old. BABY BOOKWORMS • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • For infants to age 2, must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. CHESS AT THE LIBRARY • Blount County Public Library • 1PM KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE SUMMER ACTING CLASSES • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 4:30PM • To reserve a seat in any class, or for more information: e-mail Academy Director Dennis Perkins at dennis@ childrenstheatreknoxville.com, or call (865) 208-3677. • $180 Friday, Aug. 28 SMART TOYS AND BOOKS ART CLASS • Smart Toys and Books • 10AM • Mommy, Daddy & Me Art Classes are every Friday at 10:00am & 11:00am. Reservations and payment are required in advance. Class fees are non-refundable. Ages 2+. • $10

UP NEXT!

BLUES TRAVELER sunday, august 23 • 8pm 2015 KNOXVILLE JAZZ FESTIVAL PRESENTS

BENNY GOLSON & MANUEL ROCHEMAN friday, august 28 • 8pm

STEVE EARLE & THE DUKES

WITH SPECIAL GUEST THE MASTERSONS

thursday, september 10 • 8pm

THE MILK CARTON KIDS WITH THE CONTENDERS

tuesday, september 15 • 8pm ON SALE FRIDAY, 8/21 AT 10AM!

RALPHIE MAY

wednesday, october 21 • 8pm

DAVE BARNES

thursday, october 22 • 8pm

OLE SMOKY MOONSHINE PRESENTS

RYAN BINGHAM

saturday, december 5 • 8pm

KNOXBIJOU.COM TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE TENNESSEE

THEATRE BOX OFFICE, TICKETMASTER.COM, AND BY PHONE AT 800-745-3000

Saturday, Aug. 29 August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 45

CALENDAR KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE SUMMER ACTING CLASSES • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 9:30AM • To reserve a seat in any class, or for more information: e-mail Academy Director Dennis Perkins at dennis@ childrenstheatreknoxville.com, or call (865) 208-3677. • $150 CHESS AT THE LIBRARY • Blount County Public Library • 10AM KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE SUMMER ACTING CLASSES • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 10AM • To reserve a seat in any class, or for more information: e-mail Academy Director Dennis Perkins at dennis@ childrenstheatreknoxville.com, or call (865) 208-3677. • $180 SATURDAY STORIES AND SONGS • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • A weekly music and storytelling session for kids.

CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS

Thursday, Aug. 20 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY: KNIT YOUR WAY TO WELLNESS • Cancer Support Community • 1PM • Whether you are a novice knitter or an old pro, you are invited to bring your own project or join others in learning a new

Thursday, Aug. 20 - Sunday, Aug. 30

one. Supplies provided. 865-546-4661. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer. KNOX COUNTY MASTER GARDENERS: WATER! YOUR PLANTS ARE PROBABLY THIRSTY! • Concord United Methodist Church • 6PM • Extension Master Gardener Janice Gangwer will review just how much water plants need throughout the year, compared with actual rainfall. Various options for making up the difference will be presented, including: avoiding overhead sprinklers, proper hand-watering, using water spikes/cones, watering cans and drip irrigation. 865-966-6728. • FREE BELLY DANCE LEVELS 1 AND 2 • Knox Dance Worx • 8PM • Call (865) 898-2126 or email alexia@alexia-dance.com. • $12 Friday, Aug. 21 YOGA AND QI-GONG BASICS • Shanti Yoga Haven • 6PM Saturday, Aug. 22 YOGA AT NARROW RIDGE • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 9AM • For more information contact Mitzi Wood-Von Mizener at 865-497-3603 or community@ narrowridge.org. MINDFULNESS IN EVERYDAY LIFE • Cancer Support Community • 10AM • Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer. KNOX COUNTY MASTER GARDENERS: PERENNIAL GARDENS • Bearden Branch Public Library • 10:30AM • Fall is the perfect time of year to prepare your site for a new or renovated perennial garden. Extension Master Gardeners

Carolyn Kiser and Barbara Emery both have created many successful new gardens. You will learn how to identify and assess your space, prepare the soil, and select your new plants. The garden of your dreams will take shape before you know it. For more information phone 865-588-8813 or visit web knoxlib.org. • FREE JANE HICKS: “WORKING WITH SOUND AS A FACET OF REVISION” • Central United Methodist Church • 1PM • The workshop is sponsored by the Knoxville Writers’ Guild. Attendees can expect the workshop to focus on the use of sound as a revision tool and are encouraged to bring some of their own work. Participants should bring a poem or two that are not polished or in the early stages of revision. To register for the workshop, visit www. knoxvillewritersguild.org/events or send your check to KWG Workshops, P.O. Box 10326, Knoxville TN 37939-0326. • $35-$40 Monday, Aug. 24 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 5:30PM • Call 865-5772021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. Tuesday, Aug. 25 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. YOGA WITH SUBAGHJI • The Birdhouse • 5:15PM UT ARBORETUM SOCIETY URBAN FORESTRY PROGRAM • University of Tennessee Arboretum • 6:30PM • The University of Tennessee Arboretum Society is sponsoring a

lecture on the “Knoxville Urban Forestry Program” by Kasey Krouse, City of Knoxville Urban Forester who will discuss the City of Knoxville Urban Forestry program and its attempt to move from a reactive to a proactive urban forestry program. To learn more about this lecture or the UT Arboretum Society, go to www.utarboretumsociety.org. For more information on the program, call 483-3571. • FREE Wednesday, Aug. 26 KEEPING YOUR RELATIONSHIPS STRONG THROUGH CANCER • Cancer Support Community • 6PM • Join relationship expert Dr. Kristina Gordon as she provides an overview of good communication tools and mindsets that can support relationships during the challenges of a cancer diagnosis, treatment and beyond. RSVP. Call 865- 546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer. Thursday, Aug. 27 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. AARP DRIVER SAFETY CLASS • Halls Senior Center • 12PM • Call Carolyn Rambo at 382-5822. WRITING FOR THE HEALTH OF IT • Cancer Support Community • 12PM • Experience the therapeutic value of expressing yourself and your experiences through writing. No writing talent or experience necessary. A light lunch will be provided. RSVP. Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer.

ONE radio station has been turning YOU on to NEW music first for over 33 years! Throw in plenty of VARIETY, SPECIALTY shows nightly, and lots of LOCAL love, and you have Knoxville’s ONLY alternative! WUTK welcomes bac all UT studentsk to The Hill! Tune us in Voted Knoxville’s BEST Radio Station 10 years in a row.

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Streaming 24.7.365 at WUTKRADIO.COM or listen on your

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

smart phone and iPad app.

Thursday, Aug. 20 - Sunday, Aug. 30

CALENDAR

KNOX COUNTY MASTER GARDENERS: PERENNIAL GARDENS • Humana Guidance Center • 3:15PM • Fall is the perfect time of year to prepare your site for a new or renovated perennial garden. Extension Master Gardeners Carolyn Kiser and Barbara Emery both have created many successful new gardens. You will learn how to identify and assess your space, prepare the soil, and select your new plants. The garden of your dreams will take shape before you know it. 865-329-8892. • FREE BELLY DANCE LEVELS 1 AND 2 • Knox Dance Worx • 8PM • Call (865) 898-2126 or email alexia@alexia-dance.com. • $12 Friday, Aug. 28 AARP DRIVER SAFETY CLASS • Halls Senior Center • 12PM • Call Carolyn Rambo at 382-5822. YOGA AND QI-GONG BASICS • Shanti Yoga Haven • 6PM Saturday, Aug. 29 YOGA AT NARROW RIDGE • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 9AM • For more information contact Mitzi Wood-Von Mizener at 865-497-3603 or community@ narrowridge.org. NAMASTE BETTY YOGA AT WORLD’S FAIR PARK • World’s Fair Park • 9:30AM • A free yoga class on the lawn of the World’s Fair park to honor the memory of Betty Kalister and her contribution to the Knoxville yoga community. Bring a mat and your water bottle. • FREE

MEETINGS

Photo by Dino Stamatopoulos

ROBBIE FULKS Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (200 E. Jackson Ave.) • Thursday, Aug. 27 • 10 p.m. • barleysknoxville.com

Robbie Fulks has written a lot of songs, but he’ll probably always be best known for “Fuck This Town,” a bitter little novelty from his 1997 album, South Mouth, that became an anthem of the No Depression generation and made Fulks a martyr to the cause. In those days, Fulks specialized in smartass, subversive country, with songs like “She Took a Lot of Pills and Died,” “Every Kind of Music But Country,” and “Rock Bottom, Pop. 1,” all delivered with a wink in a hard-edged Bakersfield style. That strain of humor runs deep in Fulks’ catalog, but over the years he’s drier and craftier; even the clever wordplay of “Georgia Hard” and “I Never Did Like Planes” comes couched in more grown-up pathos than Fulks managed in the 1990s. He’s also become an interpreter, exploring classic Appalachian folk songs on his recent albums and recording a full album of Michael Jackson songs in 2010. (Matthew Everett)

Thursday, Aug. 20 CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY FAMILY BEREAVEMENT GROUP • Cancer Support Community • 4:30PM • CSC is committed to providing bereavement services to those who have lost a loved one to cancer. Please contact our clinical staff before attending. Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer. OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS • Recovery at Cokesbury • 5:30PM

Open Chord®

music store

Everything you need to play or perform.

Knoxville’s only Suhr & Alvarez Master Dealer

Saturday, Aug. 22 AL-ANON • Faith Lutheran Church • 11AM • Visit our local website at farragutalanon.org or email us at FindHope@ Farragutalanon.org. Sunday, Aug. 23 SILENT MEDITATION SUNDAYS • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 11AM • For more information contact Mitzi Wood-Von Mizener at 865-497-3603 or community@narrowridge.org. • FREE SUNDAY ASSEMBLY • Charles Towne Landing • 11AM • Sunday Assembly is a secular congregation without deity, dogma, or doctrine. Sunday Assembly Knoxville is part of the international movement of people who want to celebrate the one life we know we have. We meet the fourth Sunday of every month at the Charles Towne Landing clubhouse located at 8601 Old Carriage Ct. (off Westland Dr.). To find out more, like our public Facebook page or join our Meetup group. Monday, Aug. 24 GAY MEN’S DISCUSSION GROUP • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 7:30PM • We hold facilitated discussions on topics and issues relevant to local gay men in a safe and open environment. Visit gaygroupknoxville.org.

“These guitars have charisma!”

-Andy Wood

8502 KINGSTON PIKE (865) 281-5874 openchordmusic.com

Wednesday, Aug. 26 KNOXVILLE WRITERS’ GROUP • Naples Italian Restaurant • August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 47

CALENDAR 11AM • Several KWG members will read from their recent works.All-inclusive lunch, $12.00. RSVP by Monday, May 25, 865-983-3740. • $12 THE BOOKAHOLICS BOOK GROUP • Union Ave Books • 12PM • Union Ave Books’ monthly book discussion group. COMITE POPULAR DE KNOXVILLE • The Birdhouse • 7PM • A weekly meeting of the local immigrant advocacy organization. Thursday, Aug. 27 OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS • Recovery at Cokesbury • 5:30PM Saturday, Aug. 29 AL-ANON • Faith Lutheran Church • 11AM • Visit our local website at farragutalanon.org or email us at FindHope@ Farragutalanon.org. Sunday, Aug. 30 SILENT MEDITATION SUNDAYS • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 11AM • For more information contact Mitzi Wood-Von Mizener at 865-497-3603 or community@narrowridge.org.

ETC.

Thursday, Aug. 20 NEW HARVEST PARK FARMERS MARKET • New Harvest Park • 3PM • FREE MERCURY MEETUP #4: LITTLE RIVER TRADING CO. • Little River Trading Co. (Maryville) • 5PM • Yep, we’re heading

Thursday, Aug. 20 - Sunday, Aug. 30

out to Maryville! Each month, the Knoxville Mercury staff visits a different neighborhood to socialize with readers and to learn more about the issues facing each of our communities. There won’t be any speeches or roundtables. We’ll just be hanging out, ready to chat about darn near anything with whomever stops by. • FREE Friday, Aug. 21 UNION COUNTY FARMERS MARKET • Maynardville • 4PM • Fridays through October. More info call Union Co. Extension Office at 865-992-8038. • FREE LAKESHORE PARK FARMERS’ MARKET • Lakeshore Park • 3PM • FREE Saturday, Aug. 22 OAK RIDGE FARMERS’ MARKET • Historic Jackson Square • 8AM • FREE SEYMOUR FARMERS MARKET • Seymour First Baptist Church • 8AM • FREE MARKET SQUARE FARMERS’ MARKET • Market Square • 9AM • FREE GENTLE BARN TOUR • The Gentle Barn • 11AM • Come visit the second Gentle Barn, located in Knoxville, Tennessee, home to Dudley, Worthy, Indie and Chris. You will get to meet Dudley, saved from slaughter with a missing foot. He is now happy and healthy and has a brand new prosthetic foot. He loves treats and scratches on his back. You will get to meet Worthy, who was born with a deformed leg. After months in the hospital she is now happy and healthy with a straight leg. You will also get to meet Worthy’s mom, Indie and brother, Chris who will stay together at The Gentle Barn for the rest of their lives.

You will get to watch Gentle Barn rescue videos and shop at our gift store.The Gentle Barn will be rescuing more animals in Tennessee, so who knows who else you will get to meet? Tuesday, Aug. 25 EBENEZER ROAD FARMERS’ MARKET • Ebenezer United Methodist Church • 3PM • FREE Wednesday, Aug. 26 MARKET SQUARE FARMERS’ MARKET • Market Square • 11AM • FREE Thursday, Aug. 27 NEW HARVEST PARK FARMERS MARKET • New Harvest Park • 3PM • FREE Friday, Aug. 28 UNION COUNTY FARMERS MARKET • Maynardville • 4AM • FREE LAKESHORE PARK FARMERS’ MARKET • Lakeshore Park • 3PM 8 FREE Saturday, Aug. 29 OAK RIDGE FARMERS’ MARKET • Historic Jackson Square • 8AM • FREE SEYMOUR FARMERS MARKET • Seymour First Baptist Church • 8AM • FREE Market Square Farmers’ Market • Market Square • 9AM • FREE GENTLE BARN TOUR • The Gentle Barn • 11AM • Come visit the second Gentle Barn, located in Knoxville, Tennessee, home to Dudley, Worthy, Indie and Chris. You will get to meet Dudley, saved from slaughter with a missing foot.

He is now happy and healthy and has a brand new prosthetic foot. He loves treats and scratches on his back. You will get to meet Worthy, who was born with a deformed leg. After months in the hospital she is now happy and healthy with a straight leg. You will also get to meet Worthy’s mom, Indie and brother, Chris who will stay together at The Gentle Barn for the rest of their lives. You will get to watch Gentle Barn rescue videos and shop at our gift store.The Gentle Barn will be rescuing more animals in Tennessee, so who knows who else you will get to meet?Sunday, Aug. 30 THE TRAVELING BAZAAR • Bearden Banquet Hall • 10AM • Come out to The Traveling Bazaar and see over 30 fabulous hand picked vendors. Antiques & artisans only, all from within 3 hours of Knoxville, in Tennessee. Honeybee Coffee Company & Dale’s Fried Pies will be there. We will have a bin where you can donate to the Small Breed Rescue of East Tennessee. There will be door prizes from some of our vendors and a photo booth courtesy of our sponsor, Sweven Vintage and Rustic Rentals. Visit https://www.facebook.com/The.Traveling. Bazaar/events or https://thetravelingbazaar.wordpress. com/. • FREE MAGIC MEN LIVE! • The International • 8PM • The first live stage production to bring the phenomenon of Magic Mike, Fifty Shades of Grey and others to life with a high-energy and breathtaking experience unlike any other. • $20-$50

Send your events to calendar@knoxmercury.com

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

And tell them you saw their ad here in

CALENDAR THE LONG VIEW A guide to upcoming major concerts. THURSDAY, SEPT. 24 CHERUB • The International • 9 p.m. • $17-$35

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 28 BEN RECTOR • Tennessee Theatre • 8 p.m. • $22.50-$32.50

FRIDAY, SEPT. 25 THE DIRTY GUV’NAHS: THE FAREWELL TOUR • Tennessee Theatre • 8 p.m. • $27

SUNDAY, NOV. 1 YOUNG THE GIANT WITH WILDLING • Tennessee Theatre • 8 p.m. • $28

FRIDAY, OCT. 2 THE MOUNTAIN GOATS • Bijou Theatre • 8 p.m. • $20

FRIDAY, NOV. 6 JASON ISBELL • Tennessee Theatre • 8 p.m. • $35-$45

MONDAY, OCT. 5 BULLY • Pilot Light • 9 p.m. • $10 • 18 and up

TUESDAY, NOV. 10 STEVIE WONDER • Thompson-Boling Arena

FRIDAY, OCT. 9 GRIZ WITH BIG WILD AND LOUIE LASTIC • The International • 9 p.m. • $15-$40

FRIDAY, NOV. 13 STS9 • Tennessee Theatre • 7:30 p.m. • $30-$35

Thursday, Oct. 15 MADDIE AND TAE • Cotton Eyed Joe • 10 p.m. • $10 • All ages GRACE POTTER • Tennessee Theatre • 8 p.m. • $30-$49.50 SATURDAY, OCT. 17 MANDOLIN ORANGE • BIJOU THEATRE • 8 P.M. • $17

STURGILL SIMPSON

THURSDAY, OCT. 22 SOULFLY WITH SOILWORK, DECAPITATED, AND SHATTERED SUN • The International • 6:45 p.m. • $25-$28 • All ages

SATURDAY, SEPT. 5 THE KENTUCKY HEADHUNTERS • The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson (Maryville) • 8 p.m. • $15-$20

FRIDAY, OCT. 23 DIARRHEA PLANET • Bijou Theatre • 8 p.m. • $16.50

MONDAY, SEPT. 7 KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD • Pilot Light • 9 p.m. • $10-$12 • 18 and up

TUESDAY, OCT. 27 THE OH HELLOS • Bijou Theatre • 8 p.m. • $17.50-$19.50

THURSDAY, SEPT. 10 STEVE EARLE AND THE DUKES WITH THE MASTERSONS • Bijou Theatre • 8 p.m. • $30 SHOOTER JENNINGS AND THE WAYMORES • Cotton Eyed Joe • 10 p.m. • $10 • 18 and up

FRIDAY, NOV. 20 SHAKEY GRAVES WITH WILD CHILD • Bijou Theatre • 8 p.m. • $19.50 SUNDAY, NOV. 22 DONNA THE BUFFALO AND PETER ROWAN • Bijou Theatre • 8 p.m. • $25 SATURDAY, DEC. 5 RYAN BINGHAM WITH JAMESTOWN REVIVAL • Bijou Theatre • $27 FRIDAY, JAN. 15 STEEP CANYON RANGERS • Bijou Theatre • 8 p.m. • $20 WEDNESDAY, FEB. 17 R5 WITH RYLAND • Knoxville Civic Coliseum • 7 p.m. • $28.50-$99

FRIDAY, SEPT. 11 J.J. GREY AND MOFRO • The International • 8 p.m. • $23 SATURDAY, SEPT. 12 BUCKCHERRY • The International • $20-$25 • 18 and up STURGILL SIMPSON • The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson (Maryville) • 8 p.m. • $20-$25 MONDAY, SEPT. 14 THREE DAYS GRACE WITH POP EVIL • The International • 7 p.m. • $30.50-$60 • All ages TUESDAY, SEPT. 15 THE MILK CARTON KIDS WITH THE CONTENDERS • Bijou Theatre • 8 p.m. • $27-$37

SATURDAY, SEPT. 19 CODY CANADA AND THE DEPARTED • The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson (Maryville) • 8 p.m. • $15-$20 THE DIRTY GUV’NAHS: THE FAREWELL TOUR • Bijou Theatre • 8 p.m. • $27

Photo by Lauren Dukoff

FRIDAY, SEPT. 18 THE LONE BELLOW WITH JOE PUG • Bijou Theatre • 8 p.m. • $18-$20

YOUNG THE GIANT August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 49

FOOD

D ir t to Fork

long enough to decide on these events: • Beet pickles—I’m going to use those cool bullseye-interior beets and ginger, but don’t let that get around. • Any other pickle—I can only enter one, so this will be tough. Probably the pickled cherry tomatoes. • Class 6, perishable vegetables and fruits, three eggplants—they will be judged, on uniformity of size, shape and color; freedom from defects; trueness to type; and proper stage of maturity, and may I say, better them than me. • A display of five vegetables to be exhibited on a 9-inch plate—trying to work with Mother Nature at harvest time. • Corn muffi ns—on this one, my lips are sealed. I have a super recipe for these, one that I’ll happily convert to omit the cornbread mix (mixes are forbidden). It’s already won in 4-H these many moons ago, directly descended from a 1990s Tennessee Valley Authority friend’s wife’s recipe, obtained from her beauty parlor friend. I’m not telling what it’s called, even, but I did call Cakes, Breads, and

Fairly Competitive Putting your recipes on the line at the Tennessee Valley Fair BY ROSE KENNEDY

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

$50 in one of two categories, sweet or savory, and the contestant with the highest score gets free bacon for a year. But I have no recipe worthy of the contest; I don’t think “bake it in a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes” will do the trick. I also weed out some artistic flower-design contests, even though I can’t wait to see what someone else does with the Class 3-02 category, “Old Time Religion,” with their choice of plant materials; I’m a grower, not an arranger. I dally with the thought of exhibiting five hosta leaves, or coleus, before remembering how the garden here grows and realizing the utter unpredictability of there being five un-buggy leaves of any sort on design day. As I narrow, I notice I am growing increasingly competitive. What kind of “other pickle” the pre-registration form asks? Who wants to know? If I actually write down pickled carrots and mint, will there be imitators? But I manage to contain my ego

2015 Tennessee Valley Fair

GENERAL 9EXHIBITORS CATALOG0

www.tnvalleyfair.org 2015 TVF Covers.indd 2

5/27/15 11:03 AM

Photos courtesy of the Tennessee Valley Fair

teady now, pace yourself. Ten minutes into the 2015 Tennessee Valley Fair Exhibitors Catalog, conveniently displayed online, and I’m all over the place. I wanna do the pickled hot peppers, the largest sunflower (fi rst place $25!) and the pumpkin bread—even though I won’t have enough homegrown jalapeños for the fi rst, the birds have nibbled at the second, and I don’t make a particularly good version of the third. Focus, focus, I tell myself. The culinary arts and agriculture events don’t even happen until Sept. 11-20, but there is this highly recommended pre-registration you can complete online, by mail, or by email that’s due Aug. 28. I am trying to avoid the rookie mistake of committing to too many events, even though registration is free. This, I realize with a shock, is because I don’t just want to display and participate. I want to win. Me, the person who always claims to worry only about being allowed to participate in, say, Settlers of Catan games or which neighbor has the best lawn rivalries, would very much like a blue or purple ribbon for my efforts. And I want what these good folks call “premiums”—in most cases, $3, $4, or $5 for achieving fi rst, second, or third place in your “lot,” a bit more if you become one of the “best exhibitors,” even more for the big contests, like biggest watermelon, which pays $150. With enthusiasm only slightly dampened, I decide to approach it like college applications: a couple of safety events, a stretch, a dream. And I set my limit at five entries. A little wistfully, I drop the “Mmm… Bacon” contest on Sept. 12 from my list, even though fi rst prize is

Pies Department Head Vickie Stipes to make sure I was placing it in the right category. Indeed, she says, one can enter a “jazzed up” muffi n: “Just make sure you fi ll out the form with what it’s called and what it contains so the judges know it’s going to taste different, and that you’re trying something new.” Stipes makes me feel great about, at long last, joining the ranks of Tennessee Valley Fair exhibitors. For one thing, she answered the phone number listed right on the exhibition page on the third ring. “Enter with everything you can come up with,” she says. “Try it out, bring it in. You can only enter once in each category, but you can enter every category. One lady fi lls out almost the whole entry form; that’s what we like.” As for rookies such as myself, her best advice does not concern winning, but I aim to follow it. “Basically,” she says, “just try.” ◆ For an exhibitors catalog or to pre-register for events by Aug. 28: tnvalleyfair.org

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY 53

’BYE

Sacred & P rofane

Remember When A visit to Belew Drugs, last of the old-time pharmacies BY DONNA JOHNSON

here are certain places that take you back to a time when people knew who you were, remembered your name, where you came from, and where you were going. Belew Drugs, in the Broadway Shopping Center and now celebrating its 50th anniversary, is one of those places. Last summer, when I went in to pick up my meds, a young woman of about 23 waited on me. She was small, blonde, pretty, and efficient. “Your rings are beautiful,” I said, commenting on her very large engagement diamond and wedding band. “Thank you,” she said, without looking up. “How long have you been married?” I asked. “Two months,” she replied, now smiling with a purity and innocence that I envy. “I bet you were a beautiful bride,” I said, and she smiled even more radiantly. “Thank you,” she said, all the while filling my prescriptions with slender, deft fingers. “Did you have a large wedding?” I asked. “Oh, no,” she replied, now looking

up at me. “We decided to keep it simple and small. Just family and a few close friends.” “How many?” I asked. “About 200,” she answered pertly, and then it was my turn to smile. She looked at her ring fondly, then back at me. “We’re still in love,” she added, and for a second I wondered what it is like to be her—so young, so untainted, so sure of herself and her life ahead. I returned to myself as she rang up my meds and handed them to me with a smile and a professional, Southern farewell: “Come back and see us.” In the 10 years or so I have been going to Belew, I have never heard any of the employees say a harsh word or even give a stern look, either to each other or to their clients. Aside from their courtesy, Belew is cheaper than chain pharmacies such as Walgreens and CVS. Once, a few months ago, when I didn’t have the money to get my prescription, I asked the owner, David Belew, if he could front me two or three pills until my check came. “It would be a lot easier if I just fronted you the whole prescription,” and this he did on the spot, taking the money out of his own pocket and

BY MATTHEW FOLTZ-GRAY

KNOXVILLE MERCURY August 20, 2015

paying for my prescription until I could pay it myself. One of the few family-owned businesses of its kind in Knoxville, every person who works at Belew Drugs is treated as family. “Are you a member of the family?” I asked a woman who greets customers as they come in, and who must surely be at least 75. She glanced around the room with a warm smile and said, “One way or another, we are all family.” People just seem to come here to work and never leave. Grady, the store manager, has worked at Belew Drugs for over 35 years. On the walls are family pictures, large and small, black and white, and in color: a child just born; a toddler in a playsuit, romping in a front yard; kids graduating high school or college, accepting diplomas; a wedding, the couple looking raptly in one another’s eyes. Belew Drugs is more than a pharmacy. There is a mastectomy boutique, for women who have had one or both breasts removed, and natural-looking wigs for people who have had to undergo chemotherapy; it’s

managed by Melinda, a pretty, intelligent woman whose ease with herself promotes confidence in others. They also have a knapsack program that distributes school supplies for children whose parents might not be able to afford them. Last year they delivered these knapsacks to three different schools. And, of course, there are things to buy at Belew: greeting cards for 15 cents, diabetic shoes, old-fashioned canisters of candy, a variety of candles, a dollar rack with piggy banks. The most interesting discovery for me were long wax-paper tapers that, when you light them with a match, are guaranteed to clean out your ears. I decided to pass on that one. As I gathered my medicine and notebook together to leave the store, I heard a chorus behind me: “Goodbye, Donna. We’ll see you next time.” And for a few moments, I felt like a special person. When I looked back, I saw the young bride waving. “I hope you stay in love forever,” I called out to her. “That’s our plan,” she said, and I feel certain they will. ◆

In the 10 years or so I have been going to Belew, I have never heard any of the employees say a harsh word or even give a stern look.

’BYE

CLASSIFIEDS

MISCELLANEOUS

BY IAN BLACKBURN AND JACK NEELY

ATTORNEY

APPLIANCES

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PETS GREAT DANE Pups, 5 females, 8wks (German parents), 1 Mini Dachshund, 10 wks, long haired, wormed, 1st shots, $300, 931-526-1763, 931-261-3295 RARE AND Unique Curly SELKIRK REX, Grand champion sired kittens and some retired show adults, neutered/spayed. $200-$600, 865-556-2904 www.highlandkatz.biz EMAIL amclassifiedsknoxville@ yahoo.com to place a classified ad today! PUPPY NURSERY. Many different breeds. Maltese, Yorkies, Malti-Poos, Poodles, Yorki-Poos, Shih-Poos, Shih Tzu, $175/up. Shots & wormed. We do layaways. Health guaranteed. Division of Animal Welfare, State of TN Dept. of Health. 423-566-3647

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MOTORCADE BOATS 2002 LOWE Tahiti TH224SN, 22' Deck Boat, VERY lightly used, comes w/ trailer, Yamaha VMAX 150 recently serviced professionally & runs perfectly, $12,000, 865-310-5267 NEEDED BIG BOAT TRAILER for 30' 11,000 lb boat, 3 axles, 423-620-1850 2005 YAMAHA Waverunner Cruiser, 119 hours, 4 stroke, 3 seater, in great cond, very well taken care of, have had lots of fun with it, $4500, 865-335-2931 2000 TRITON, 21', fully equipped, depth-finder, fish-finder, GPS, tandem trailer, 225 Mercury, 1 owner, exc cond, garage kept, $16,575/obo, 865-966-2527 CARS 1968 FORD Mustang, PS, PB, AT, V8, $10,000. 1966 Corvair Convertible, AT, $14,000. Both are very nice, white w/black interior, 865-805-2454 1990 CORVETTE, Convertible, black on black, red interior, 74k miles, garage kept, $10,000 obo, 865-924-0484

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 19, 2015

August 20, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 55