Issue 11 - May 21, 2015 by Knoxville Mercury

KNOXVILLE’S SWEATY GOALKEEPER

MAY 21, 2015 KNOXMERCURY.COM

1 / N.11

JAIRO DIAZ

ANGELO SIGNORACCI

VIGHTER IBERI

BROTHERHOOD OF THE TURF Both immigrants and newcomers find a second home on Knoxville’s indoor soccer fields BY BRIAN CANEVER

JACK NEELY

CLASSICAL

ELEANOR SCOTT

MUSIC

Anti-Preservationist’s Secret Heartbreak

KSO Director Lucas Richman’s Final Call

Tragedy at Fort Dickerson Quarry Lake

The Evil Genius of Zach and Kota’s Sweet Life

The Fragile 15 Every year, the 41-year-old preservationist nonprofit known as Knox Heritage--it has about 1,300 dues-paying members--announces its Fragile 15. It’s the list of the organization’s 15 most endangered historic properties in Knox County. They’re not just 15 buildings--some of them are clusters, or properties with something in common. They’re not all even buildings. In fact, this year the Fragile 15 lists 30 endangered buildings, plus a historic district with several old buildings, plus a river landscape in which buildings are not the main concern. This year, the list includes a 200-year-old log cabin and an innovative 1920s parking garage that may be one of the oldest in the nation. Several early buildings that were part of East Tennessee’s first college for black people, as well as the mansion of a reclusive heiress. An early 20th-century house--a winner of previous Knox Heritager preservation awards--which may be demolished for a new Walmart, and a graceful Victorian the childhood home of a Pulitzer Prizewinner.

2015 Fragile Fifteen 1. The Paul Howard House (1910) – 2921 N. Broadway

8. Magnolia Avenue Corridor Representative Properties: a. Burlington Commercial District (ca. 1910-1940) vicinity of Martin Luther King, Jr., Avenue and Fern Street b. Magnolia Avenue United Methodist Church (1927) – 2700 E. Magnolia Avenue c. Rabbit & Poultry Barn (ca. 1930s) – Chilhowee Park – 3301 E. Magnolia Avenue

The Paul Howard House - 2921 N. Broadway Courtesy of Knox Heritage.

10. French Broad River Corridor (ancient)

2. Historic Fort Sanders Neighborhood Representative Properties: a. Fort Sanders Houses & Grocery – 307 18th Street, 1802, 1804, & 1810 Highland Ave (1891-1923) b. White Avenue Houses – 1302, 1308, 1312 White Avenue (1894-1896) c. The Pickle Mansion – 1633 Clinch Avenue (1889)

11. University of Tennessee - Knoxville Campus Representative Properties: a. Melrose Hall (1946) – 1616 Melrose Avenue b. Estabrook Hall (1898) – 1012 Estabrook Road 12. Isaac Anderson Cabin (1802) - Creekrock Lane – Shannondale Valley Farms

3. The H.C. Christenberry House – 3222 Kingston Pike (1925) 4. Knoxville College Historic District – 901 Knoxville College Drive Representative Properties: a. McKee Hall (1876, 1895) b. Wallace Hall (1890) c. Elnathan Hall (1898) d. McMillan Chapel (1913) e. Giﬀen Memorial Gymnasium (1929) f. President’s House (ca. 1880s)

9. Historic School Buildings Representative Properties: a. South High School – (1936) – 801 Tipton Avenue b. Rule High School (1927) – 1901 Vermont Avenue c. Giﬃn School (1920-1940s) – 1834 Beech Street

13. Pryor Brown Garage (1925, 1929) 314 & 322 W. Church Avenue McKee Hall - 901 Knoxville College Drive Courtesy of Knox Heritage.

14. Tennessee Supreme Court Building (1954) – 617 Cumberland Avenue 15. Legg-England House (1846) – 8010 Rutledge Pike

For more, read the whole story at

5. Standard Knitting Mill (1945)1400 Washington Avenue

www.knoxheritage.org

6. The Eugenia Williams House (1940) – 4848 Lyons View Pike 7. Sanitary Laundry (1925) – 625 N. Broadway

Sanitary Laundry - 625 N. Broadway Courtesy of Knox Heritage.

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 2

KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 14, 21, 2015

May 21, 2015 Volume 01 / Issue 11 knoxmercury.com

CONTENTS

“Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way.” —Richard M. Nixon

10 Brotherhood of the Turf COVER STORY

On the surface, it makes little sense that the indoor version of the world’s most popular sport has found a home in Knoxville. From 1992 to 1996, the city had a semiprofessional indoor team, the Knoxville Impact. Since then, the city has not had a notable men’s or women’s soccer team to be credited with sparking the current surge in indoor soccer participation. But the growth in the city’s immigrant and overall population could partly explain it, as many newcomers here are finding a sense of community on Knoxville’s indoor soccer fields. Brian Canaver delves into the scene.

MUSIC

18 Zach and Kota’s Sweet Life

Survey of the Month!

It’s all about you, baby. We want to know more about our readers in our new monthly online survey. Go to: survature.com/s/knoxmercuryMay2015.

DEPARTMENTS

OPINION

A&E

4 5

Letters Howdy Start Here: Ghost Signs by Bud Ries, Believe It or Knox!, Public Affairs, Quote Factory. PLUS: Words With … Grace Gish ’Bye Finish There: Restless Native by Chris Wohlwend, Crooked Street Crossword by Ian Blackburn and Jack Neely, Spirit of the Staircase by Matthew Foltz-Gray

Drummer Zach Gilleran, guitarist Dakota Smith, and bassist Thomas Bigwood play a fluid, high-octane brand of rock that resembles the best parts of your favorite garage bands, one that can shift styles with ease and gets butts out of seats. It’s boisterous and exciting, making them one of the most recent additions to a list of must-see Knoxville acts, according to Will Warren.

8 9

The Scruffy Citizen Jack Neely expresses sympathy for our underachieving antipreservationists. Architecture Matters George Dodds believes there’s room for beauty amid our clean and well-lighted places to shop. Possum City Eleanor Scott examines the tragic miscalculations at Fort Dickerson Quarry Lake.

17 18 19 20 21

CALENDAR Program Notes: New releases by Kelsey’s Woods, John T. Baker, and Thelo-Que. Shelf Life: Chris Barrett surveys lively concert recordings at the public library’s AV collection. Music: Will Warren shares Zach and Kota’s Sweet Life.

Spotlights: Ralph Stanley, Steel Panther, *repeat repeat

FOOD & DRINK

Dirt to Fork Rose Kennedy ponders the mysteries of the funnel cake, and other addictive food items.

Classical: Alan Sherrod reflects on Lucas Richman’s final show with KSO. Movies: April Snellings wants to move into the wasteland of Mad Max: Fury Road. Video: Lee Gardner gets lost by Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut, Lost River. May 21, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 3

May 21, 2015 Volume 01 / Issue 11 knoxmercury.com

CONTENTS

“Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way.” —Richard M. Nixon

10 Brotherhood of the Turf COVER STORY

MUSIC

18 Zach and Kota’s Sweet Life

Survey of the Month!

It’s all about you, baby. We want to know more about our readers in our new monthly online survey. Go to: survature.com/s/knoxmercuryMay2015.

DEPARTMENTS

OPINION

A&E

4 5

8 9

17 18 19 20 21

Spotlights: Ralph Stanley, Steel Panther, *repeat repeat

FOOD & DRINK

Dirt to Fork Rose Kennedy ponders the mysteries of the funnel cake, and other addictive food items.

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 3

LETTERS Delivering Fine Journalism Since 2015

LEGENDARY PRAISE

Thank you so very much for the honor of including me in the beautifully written article concerning the Knoxville Opera. [“Knoxville Opera’s Overture,” Knoxville History Project page, April 23, 2015] I have received so many wonderful comments, and everyone has remarked about how much they enjoy reading your new publication. Every good wish for continued success in the future. Again, my deepest gratitude, Mary Costa Knoxville

TOO MANY BUMPS IN THE ROAD

The city is ready to spend $250,000 on bicycle infrastructure [“Bikeopolis,” news feature by Eleanor Scott, April 23, 2015], but can’t or won’t fix the ridiculous artistic speed bumps at the intersections of Church and Clinch as they pass through Gay Street. Brick and stone slabs are not conducive to any type of traffic,

especially vehicular. As a motorist I abhor the unnecessary humpty dumps that I must endure every day! The city roads seem to be in a constant state of repair—fix these intersections too! My tax dollars are not at work! William Hall Knoxville

SAVE THE HOWARD HOUSE!

We need to totally fill the City Council room with voters who object to this. [“Awash in Walmarts,” news feature by S. Heather Duncan, April 30, 2015] Everyone needs to contact their commissioner directly too. The minute we hear a zoning change is being put on the agenda, we need to be very clear about the fact that we elect those people to act on our behalf. As a member of the Edgewood Park Neighborhood Association, an organization currently trying to “brand” our neighborhood as eco-friendly, this feels like a kick in

We’ve been extra busy recently putting together our rewards for Kickstarter donors. Below are the plates of the first cover ready for limited edition letterpress prints made at Striped Light last Thursday. We’ve also got stickers, totes, hoodies and more scheduled for delivery next week. So, if you were a donor, keep an eye on your inbox for an email from us. If you missed the Kickstarter, you just might have a second chance to purchase extras on our website soon.

the gut. More traffic, more concrete, more parking problems, and less habitat for our pollinators—this is not the highest and best use of that property. Only Walmart would be willing to pay such a ridiculous price for a property valued at so much less. Shame on them for deciding to invade our neighborhood. Carole Ann Borges via Facebook Knoxville

BACK IN TOWN

I just returned from a two-and-a half year stay in Houston (family medical reasons) and almost passed up your publication when I saw it in a grocery store rack. But upon picking it up and seeing familiar names, I was surprised and pleased. And sorry to hear of the demise of the much-beloved Metro Pulse. Congratulations on creating a publication dedicated to true independent journalism in a free publication. I see I have returned to K-town just in time! Elisanne MacHardy Mead via Facebook Knoxville

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

KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 21, 2015

EDITORIAL EDITOR

Coury Turczyn coury@knoxmercury.com SENIOR EDITOR

Matthew Everett matthew@knoxmercury.com CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Jack Neely jack@knoxhistoryproject.org STAFF WRITER

S. Heather Duncan heather@knoxmercury.com CONTRIBUTORS

Chris Barrett Ian Blackburn 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 Joe Tarr 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 PUBLISHER & DIRECTOR OF SALES

Charlie Vogel charlie@knoxmercury.com SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES

Scott Hamstead scott@knoxmercury.com Stacey Pastor stacey@knoxmercury.com

BUSINESS DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS

Jerry Collins jerry@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 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

HOWDY Illustration by Ben Adams

Believe It or Knox!

GHOST SIGNS BY BUD RIES

BY Z. HERACLITUS KNOX

Pizza and dancing sounds like a winning combination whatever way you slice it. Scotty’s kept it simple and straightforward with its sign in downtown Maryville.

The National Cemetery on Tyson Street near downtown is ONE OF THE OLDEST NATIONAL CEMETERIES IN AMERICA! Congress passed the National Cemetery Act, which provided for the orderly burial of Union dead, in 1862. The East Tennessee campaign, including Longstreet’s invasion of East Tennessee and siege of Knoxville, came in 1863. Therefore, Knoxville got a National Cemetery before most cities did. It’s even older than Arlington!

QUOTE FACTORY “ I won’t teach the same way as every other teacher in the building because some businessman at the Milken Family Foundation or Gates Foundation thinks it is a good idea. I won’t be a score on your 1-5 scale, and I won’t be your ‘human capital.’”

The marble Union solder on the top of the memorial monument at the National Cemetery was erected in 1904 TO REPLACE AN EARLIER ONE THAT HAD BEEN DESTROYED BY LIGHTNING! During a spring storm in 1900, lightning hit the Union monument, which was built of cast iron and marble, splitting the structure AND HURLING HUGE CHUNKS OF MARBLE INTO THE NEIGHBORHOOD!

—Gloria Johnson, Knox County Schools special ed teacher, from her May 19 resignation letter to Superintendent Jim McIntyre and head of human resources Dr. Kathy Sims. Johnson, a former state representative, led teacher protests of administrative policies, particularly its numerous testing and assessment programs. In her letter, which she posted on Facebook, she says she couldn’t “stomach this last battery of tests” and decided to leave “so that I can continue to fight for our kids, teachers, and public education.”

For the city’s first 80 years, the river that flows through Knoxville WAS NOT KNOWN AS THE TENNESSEE! Through the Civil War era, the river in Knoxville and a few miles to the west was known as the Holston, and took the name Tennessee near Loudon, where it joined what’s now known as the Little Tennessee. The name was officially changed in 1876.

5/21 SOUTHERN STATION LIVE THURSDAY

6-10 p.m., Historic Southern Railway Station (300 West Depot Ave.). Free. They’re circling the wagons at the Historic Southern Railway Station for an attack of hungry foodies—every third Thursday of the month. This month’s edition includes live music from Mike Snodgrass, vinyl treasures from Raven Records & Rarities, the Vagabond fashion truck, and WUTK.

5/22 IJAMS CRAG RIBBON-CUTTING FRIDAY

4:30 p.m., Ijams Nature Center (meet at the entrance on Aberdeen Lane). Free. South Knoxville’s venerable nature center is unveiling a new attraction—Ijams Crag, an outdoor climbing center that will be the first locally to provide beginner-friendly routes (as well as more difficult ones for advanced climbers). Parking is limited, and there’s a half-mile hike to the site.

5/25 KNOXVILLE OPEN SCREEN MONDAY

9 p.m., Birdhouse (800 N. 4th Ave.). Free. If comedians, poets, and musicians can have open-mic nights, why not filmmakers? That’s the premise behind Knoxville Open Screen, which accepts submissions for videos anywhere from one minute to one hour long at birdhousewalkin@gmail.com. Bonus: free popcorn.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS

5/26 CITY COUNCIL MEETING TUESDAY

7 p.m., City County Building, Main Assembly Room. That ordinance to require a 60-day delay on demolitions of historic buildings got unanimously approved on first reading. Let’s go two for two!

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Grace Gish BY ROSE KENNEDY Grace Gish, 16 (on right), works with potter Peter Rose as part of the Community School of the Arts’ Side-by-Side Visual Arts Apprentice Program. The program, with executive director Jennifer Willard, was chosen as one of 50 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Finalists by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities and its partner agencies. Awards will be announced in June, and Gish’s work and that of other students and adult artist-instructors will be on exhibit at Bennett Galleries (5308 Kingston Pike) June 1-5, with a silent auction June 5 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

When did you first start thinking of yourself as an artist?

I have been creative for as long as I can remember—always thinking outside the box. My mom always said I wasn’t aware there was a box.

Are there other artists in your family?

No. My mom had worked with pottery before but she never expressed that to me until I started the apprenticeship. She does a lot of music but I wasn’t gifted with that—I was gifted with guitar, but it’s not my favorite thing.

When you were younger, were you good at realistic drawing?

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 21, 2015

I’ve tried but it’s definitely not my strong suit. When I was younger I just drew dogs and got better from doing that. That was the one thing I always did and I never branched out until I started with Community School of the Arts when I was 12.

What were some of your early experiences with CSA?

I worked with a different artist there my first two years, just basic learning—how to draw shapes and stuff. Then I worked with Ms. Jennifer on mixed media. We started with canvas and then we got maps and laid them on the back, put paint on top of that and kind of layered with paint and gel and more pieces of paper.

Is it awkward at first, working directly with an artist?

No, Peter brings a lot of knowledge and life experience to the table that I would not otherwise be exposed too. And he has a good sense of humor

and makes learning easy.

What are your further education plans?

I am probably going to do the Tennessee Promise and go to Roane State or Pellissippi for my first two years. I’ll probably study marketing and I’m also considering truck driving.

Are you getting exposed to the business side of pottery?

I’m just there when he is working with clay. We set up a three-hour session and he gives me instructions and then does his own thing at the same time he’s watching me and giving me pointers. He really wants me to be independent and learn it for myself.

How far could you take pottery? As far as the Lord allows.

Does the pottery experience interact with your faith at all? Definitely. In Sunday school, we were talking about the verse from the Bible, Isaiah, 64:8—”But now, O Lord, You are our Father. We are the clay, and You our potter. And all of us are the work of Your hand.” You just want God to mold your life. There will be rough trials, almost like pottery being put into the fire. But you will come out stronger like the pottery comes out harder and doesn’t break. That was an instant fit for me. The nonprofit Community School of the Arts provides free instruction in all the arts to children who would otherwise not be able to afford it. For more information: csaknox.org

SCRUFFY CITIZEN

The Anti-Preservationist’s Secret Heartbreak The unimpressive results of a challenge BY JACK NEELY

month ago I proffered a challenge: to name one instance in which tearing down a building 75 years old or more resulted in something better than the building that was demolished for it. Since it’s Preservation Month, as celebrated by the National Register of Historic Places, I thought it worth revisiting that question, and possible answers to it. I got quite a lot of responses to that article in general, so I know people heard the question. I got a few tenuous responses, none resounding. One recalls some small historic buildings were torn down in 1988 for the Whittle Communications Headquarters project, the building that’s now the federal courthouse. The only building of historic interest, as identified in newspaper reports at the time, was the 1920s Baumann and Baumann office building, on the now-nonexistent 800 block of Market Street. It sounds as if its interest was more for its association with those locally significant architects than for its own architecture. I don’t remember it, and haven’t found a photo of it. In any case, it was only about 60 years old when demolished. It caused only a little bit of a stir. A couple of readers, including former Metro Pulse contributor Matt Edens, who now lives in Maryland but reads the Mercury online, brought up the ca. 1910 Townsend house at 1515

Cumberland Avenue. Originally owned by a lumber executive, a member of the family for whom Townsend, Tenn., was named, it was a pretty cream-colored brick house with a big staircase and oak paneling inside. In its later years it served as UT’s International House. It was torn down 20 years ago and replaced with a probably necessary addition to the UT Law School, an addition to the front that redefined that building’s presence on the street. It’s generally agreed to be an aesthetically and functionally successful building. Is it a better building than the house was? Neither of the readers who nominated it was very certain about whether to call it the elusive exception. “I’d say it was, at best, an even trade for the International House,” Edens says. He also mentioned that he’d heard praise for the Tennessee Valley Unitarian-Universalist Church, on Kingston Pike, which was built after the controversial removal, almost 20 years ago, of the 1916 Bonnyman house, a two-story Charles Barber landmark, along with the hill it sat on. Fans of innovative modernism like that church, while admitting you have to get off the road and see it from the west side—or, of course, go inside—to get the effect of it. Again, Edens was just offering a speculative for-instance of a building with value removed to be replaced by another building with value. To date, no one has even claimed any new

building in their personal memory was categorically better than the historic one it replaced. And so far, not even any nominations for replacements to buildings demolished in our own century. Does that say something? The word “progress” was once a handy euphemism treasured by lazy headline writers to describe the motive to tear down old buildings. Local newspapers of the 20th century are full of headlines like “Old Tavern Makes Way for Progress.” I’m not sure reporters ever followed up, to measure that progress they once heralded, and whether the city ever saw a real gain from the removal of another irreplaceable bit of history. You don’t see that word used so casually anymore. The heartbreak of the non-preservationist faction is their unimpressive resume. Regardless of what developers announce to be built in place of a demolished building in the near future, the fruits of demolition have a very strong tendency to be, even 10 years later, nothing but parking lots. Anti-preservationists are people, too. If you know one, he may need a pep talk. The things they promise will happen just don’t ever seem to happen. And they have to sit there and listen while everybody talks about all the new things going into preserved old buildings. That can’t be easy. All the exciting new development in Knoxville, downtown especially but all over town, has been happening in preserved old buildings. Well over 90 percent of the current new businesses and residences downtown are in pre-1940 buildings. If you don’t like old buildings, if you’re annoyed by preservationist do-gooders getting in your way, stand up for yourself. Have some pride, man. If you tear down a house or building that many people in the community wish you wouldn’t, prove them wrong! Build something good! Don’t put in a parking lot and

then cash out and move to Florida. You’re not serving the anti-preservationist cause that way. Maybe you’ve succeeded in knocking down a building. But in your heart you know you’re letting the preservationists win the moral argument, again.

or Memorial Day, I looked into something I’ve wondered about for years. Sutherland Avenue, which may be getting more of a workout lately as an alternative to construction-constricted Cumberland Avenue, has cross streets with colorful names of less-than-obvious origin. Streets named Liberty, Victory, Division, Seaman, Concord. They’re all words that were big in the headlines during the world wars. Another, Portland, might be puzzling, considering its distance from any port or any place of that name—but, speaking of seamen, the U.S.S. Portland played a major role in the Pacific during World War II. Could nearby Seaman Street be a reference to a sailor on the Portland? Well, no, as I learned at McClung over the weekend. Seaman Street was named around 1920 for J.W. Seaman, a marble worker who lived there. Portland Street’s origin is a bit of a mystery, but it had that name seven years before the famous battleship did. For all I know, considering its stone-working community, it may be named for Portland stone and cement. Then there’s another cross street, Cary Street. Frank Street and Harry Street might be hard to guess, but the most famous Cary in Knoxville history, by far, is Cary Spence (1869-1943), a veteran of two wars, a colonel who saw combat in World War I and later became a brigadier general. It was named in the 1920s, at the height of his fame. All these names first appear in the 1920s, within a decade or so after World War I. It was during that short period when some people really did believe it was the war that ended all wars. ◆

Anti-preservationists are people, too. If you know one, he may need a pep talk. The things they promise will happen just don’t ever seem to happen. May 21, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 7

ARCHITECTURE MATTERS

On the Necessity of Beauty We’ve got enough clean and well-lighted places to shop BY GEORGE DODDS

n one of his finest short stories, Earnest Hemingway wrote of a man who, having given up on such ineffables as beauty, desired of life only “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” (1933). For most Americans this seems the most we can expect of our cities. Conversely, a few years earlier, Sigmund Freud explained in Civilization and Its Discontents (1929) that while our enjoyment of beauty can be “mildly intoxicating,” it offers no cultural utility: “[Y]et, civilization could not do without it.” Why then have we seemingly ceded the right to expect that our cities not simply be clean and well lighted, but also beautiful? Even New York’s Central Park was realized largely on the argument of cleanliness, not godliness, and certainly not beauty. Curiously, never has a society been so protected from infection and yet so fearful of it. Hence, we insulate ourselves from the strange and unknown, and worst of all, from each other. We use various prophylactics as we Purell® our way through life: suburban enclaves, rural retreats, private schools, country clubs, cable TV, Internet shopping, virtual chat rooms. So being out in public can seem particularly risky. It’s not unusual, for example, for an American’s second question about a potential restaurant to be about the bathrooms, something that would simply never occur in most other cultures. Yet, a nice cake of soap in the urinal and plenty of paper towels beats overcooked pasta or under-rip-

KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 21, 2015

ened melon every time. It’s the same for our cities; as long as parking is free and easy, streets are absent unpleasant odors, and there aren’t too many people that don’t look like us, then all is well. By these standards, of course, Venice, Italy would have gone out of business long before the Black Death. Indeed, cities of quality succeed and persist, admired over time, despite their many utilitarian faults, largely because they function as inchoate “melding pots,” and because they delight. Two years ago on a business trip to Madrid, I arrived, mid-morning, to a surreal scene. A city I had known only through film, books, and the stories of friends, looked more Walking Dead than Death in the Afternoon. Streets deserted, newspapers and odd bits of garbage blowing across vacant squares, major intersections piled high with debris. As it turned out, the streets were not just deserted; the police had closed them owing to organized protests. A garbage collectors’ strike had begun the day I arrived and ended the day I left. Timing is everything. Yet, Madrid is such a muscular city, filled with remarkable monuments—parks and gardens, museums and galleries, palaces and stately homes, great crowded avenues and quiet charming streets—that its urban qualities simply overpowered the towering mounds of waste. But how does a city build such sinew? Where does it come from and how long does it take? Madrid is, of course, Spain’s capital, with over 3

million inhabitants. Founded in the 9th century, during its path to modernity it has melded many cultures. Here in Knoxville, we begin where we are, building upon what we have, and on what we desire to have. At times, these two can be in conflict, evinced in the recent controversy regarding a developer’s desire to build a store on top of one of Knoxville’s stately homes, The Howard House at 2921 North Broadway, which may have more than a little to do with the city’s right to beauty. There has been much discussion of late in social media and in print regarding plans to develop a Walmart on a large tract of property in North Knoxville, part of which is occupied by this lovely “craftsman’s cottage.” Others have made the necessary arguments regarding why the building ought to be saved and that process seems well underway with the help of Knox Heritage, which recently listed it first amongst its 2015 Fragile Fifteen. North Knoxville’s need for such retail notwithstanding, it is difficult to believe that big-box stores are still in the business of tearing down perfectly fine buildings on the periphery of downtowns to further relocate business from center to edge. As retail continues to morph from an analog to a digital platform, all over the country, and here in Knoxville, there are many big- and medium-sized boxes that have long been vacant. Large “brick and mortar” stores are coming to terms with the reality that they must provide far more than a clean and well-lighted place for their customers; even local shopping malls struggle to maintain something approaching full occupancy. The huge retail venues Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s have long been leading the way of “destination retail.” This concept is even seeping into healthcare as the Mayo Clinic is now a destination medical center. Which leads to the question: If Walmart, or something of Walmartian scale, is interested in attracting yet another core Knoxville demographic with easy access to I-40, could not a more central location work just as well, particularly for something akin to destination retail, and help the downtown transform into “destination urbanism”? More than a decade after the re-urbanization of Knoxville began in earnest, the urban core remains absent a single major retailer or

grocery store. With a modified vision of its retail model, and a more modest footprint, there ought to be plenty of potential space within or very near the city center for something akin to a big-box program. If this sort of thing can be accomplished in Manhattan, where the world is far more dense, it ought to be possible here, whether the program is reconfigured within the entrails of the moribund and homely TVA “tower,” as part of a reprogramed and underused convention center, or beneath I-40 or James White Parkway on the edge of the Old City. Not that Walmart is the sort of retail around which one would desire to anchor a city’s retail. Nor, I suspect, would anyone like to see the company’s insipid signage with its yellow sphincter facing Market Square for the next generation or two. Yet, a downtown location, one that reinhabits a long-vacant and high-profile building, or activates the dross space beneath an interloping Interstate, would be an opportunity for the world’s largest retailer to establish a new and healthy relationship with the physical environment upon which it depends—one that achieves something far higher than the least common denominator they delivered at the University Commons. Freud went on to say: “Happiness in life is sought first and foremost in the enjoyment of beauty … this aesthetic attitude offers little protection against the menace of suffering, but it is able to compensate for a great deal.” It certainly helped me during the menace of the garbage collectors’ strike in Madrid; it also helps explain why, for example, we find cave paintings as old as the earliest human-made tools. If we as humans have been trying to make our settlements more attractive and commodious since we began dwelling together in primitive huts, is it such a stretch to imagine that when a developer requests approval for a large project, that the city ask how, for example, yet another big box surrounded by asphalt parking, contributes to making Knoxville a better place in which to live? In short, how does the proposal help the city build sinew and make it more beautiful? Beauty is useless, yet it’s necessary for a happy and fulfilling life, and for the life of any clean and well-lighted city. ◆

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his Memorial Day marks the two-year anniversary of the legalization of swimming in the Fort Dickerson Quarry Lake in South Knoxville’s urban forest. Hopefully, it will not be the last. The policy change, enacted by Mayor Madeline Rogero’s administration in spring of 2013, followed a citizen-led push to decriminalize swimming that included a petition and letter-writing campaign. As early as 1994, Mayor Victor Ashe envisioned the lake as “Knoxville’s largest public swimming pool” in a speech presenting the newly-named Harold Lambert Overlook on the quarry’s northern tip. This overlook is in Fort Dickerson Park where the cliff drops sharply and the water lies 100 feet below. To enter the water in a sane way, you must approach the quarry from the south side, where an old mining road enters the water at a gentle slope. Until recently, those who did so were trespassers on private land. Around 2007, non-profit Legacy Parks, aided by the charitable Aslan Foundation, began buying up tracts of land in South Knoxville, including the greenspace along the south edge of the quarry. Their intention was to preserve these forests, meadows, and rocky crags from development by donating them to the city as public wilderness areas. With growing momentum behind South Knoxville’s emerging identity as an outdoor recreational destination, the profoundly beautiful quarry lake was too precious to hide away. Even cops writing tickets to swimmers in the summer of 2012, when temperatures reached a record high of 105 degrees, expressed sympathy for the rule-breakers. On that first holiday of legal swimming, the 2013 Memorial Day weekend, the quarry was packed with boisterous swimmers toting floats

and coolers. This spring, the mood at the quarry is somber. Within the span of four weeks, rescue teams have pulled the bodies of three men from the water. All deaths resulted from jumps from heights of 80 feet or more, at least one involved alcohol. As in all city parks, alcohol is banned at Fort Dickerson Quarry and cliff diving is forbidden. A May 12 News Sentinel story had this striking comment from Knoxville Fire Department spokesman D.J. Corcoran: “Some of the heights they’re jumping from are the equivalent to people committing suicide off the Gay Street Bridge.” We can assume the three men who died this spring did not intend their lives to end on the day it did. Each made a tragic miscalculation. On April 12, a homeless man named Robert Cosson, 50, was drinking with a few buddies when he jumped from the 80-foot cliff on the western edge. On April 24, the day Joshua King, 36, died, he was enjoying a warm day at the quarry with family. And on May 9, a 20-year-old Belgian exchange student at Maryville

College, Tijl Werbrouck, jumped from the same cliffs and never resurfaced. One week after the death of Werbrouck, a patrol car sat at the head of the trail, and officers warned visitors against cliff diving. KPD has erected a fence around the most dangerous jumping site. In the nearly deserted quarry, only a few swimmers stuck close to the shallowest areas. Swimming is still legal, although people are expressing apprehension in message boards and conversation. At the 30-foot overlook, a homemade sign begs people to use caution and behave themselves, lest we lose the right to submerge ourselves in the most beautiful body of water in Knoxville. Being in the quarry has contributed greatly to my happiness and well-being over the years. Floating alone in the center, supported by the green void, fi xes something vital. A relic of Knoxville’s industrial age, the 350-foot-deep quarry is a vast man-made scar in the Earth. There must have been a time when it seemed like an irreparable open wound. Now, migrating birds rest on the water, snakes make their homes under the slabs of limestone. Deer come down to drink, and a transient misfit makes his home beside the water, carving a shelter out of the rock. There is no clearer example of humans’ compulsion to consume and destroy and Mother Nature’s persistent creeping power to heal. John Nolt, philosophy professor at the University of Tennessee, writes that three ingredients are needed to manifest the sublime: solitude, immensity, and silence. The danger of the quarry is as real as its healing power, and this sublime piece of ravaged Earth deserves our respect. ◆

May 21, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 9

BROTHERHOOD

KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 21, 2015

of the turf Both immigrants and newcomers find a second home on Knoxvilleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s indoor soccer fields

BY BRIAN CANEVER

PHOTOS BY TYLER OXENDINE

May 21, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 11

airo Diaz is still wearing his sweat-soaked goalkeeper’s jersey as he enters Double Dogs, a short drive down Hardin Valley Road from D1 Knoxville, where his team has just won a third consecutive Friday night co-ed indoor-soccer league championship. Many of the players on the Berzerkers team have already changed into their prizes for the night—orange T-shirts proclaiming their championship. The group is ordering 22-ounce mugs of beer, hot wings, and burgers to celebrate. During the night out, the eclectic mix of thirtysomethings, who have been playing together for the last year, take turns saying those things people always do after winning championships: “What a hard-fought match,” and “I’m so proud of this team.” Although it’s only a recreational league, the Berzerkers are visibly happy with their achievement, and Diaz feels no different. “It’s funny, because when I was moving to Knoxville, I didn’t think I’d be able to fi nd any soccer here,” says Diaz, annunciating sharply, yet leaving the hint of a Honduran accent. “Now I play four nights a week and got some free shirts out of it.” Diaz is a lot like the hundreds of players who exit Knoxville’s indoor soccer facilities nightly, paying $50 for an eight-game session and a chance at a champion’s T-shirt. Like his teammates, who are nuclear physicists, real-estate agents, and construction workers by day, Diaz rushes home from work on Friday nights to grab his cleats and shin guards and then drives out west for a night of soccer. On the surface, it makes little sense that the indoor version of the world’s most popular sport has found a home in Knoxville. From 1992 to 1996, the city had a semiprofessional indoor team, the Knoxville Impact.

Aside from the semipro Knoxville Force, which plays traditional outdoor soccer in the fourth-tier National Premier Soccer League, and the team’s amateur equivalent, the Knoxville Lady Force, the city has not had a notable men’s or women’s soccer team to be credited with sparking the current surge in indoor soccer participation. Compared to the Knoxville Metro Soccer League, which organizes seven outdoor leagues from Campbell Station Road in Farragut to Holston Hills, and independently organized Mexican and Guatemalan leagues that play on Sundays in warmer weather, Knoxville’s five active indoor soccer complexes—D1, Fuse Sportsplex, Cool Sports, Johnny Long’s, and the Zone—collectively organize up to 15 leagues with hundreds of players like Diaz hitting the turf year-round. The growth in the city’s immigrant and overall population could partly explain the gravitation toward indoor soccer. According to the last U.S. census, Knoxville experienced a Tennessee state record 33 percent increase in its urban population from 2000-2010. During the same 10-year period, Tennessee saw a 134 percent growth in Hispanic residents like Diaz—the third-highest rate among all U.S. states. Diaz and other international players more accustomed to the outdoor game have made a smooth transition into indoor soccer in Knoxville. Their presence is felt almost every night. While teams with mostly American players choose names like Get Off My Lawn and the Unknowns, there are those with names like Real Internationals, Gallos Blancos (“white roosters” in Spanish), Special Olympiakos, Pathetico Madrid, the Foreign Stars, Los Chicos, and Mexico, many of which are puns based on established

international club and national teams from Latin America and Europe. On the Berzerkers, Diaz plays with teammates from France, Nigeria, and El Salvador. On his Tuesday night team at Cool Sports, he plays with a Greek, German, and South Korean in addition to domestic transplants from Arizona and Ohio. “It’s funny to have all these accents when you’re playing, and hearing everybody speaking their native language when things get heated,” he says. When he fi rst arrived in Knoxville three years ago, Diaz says he felt like an outsider. “But once you get on the field, it doesn’t matter where you come from, it just matters whether you have skill or not,” he says. “That’s the great thing about indoor soccer, especially here in Knoxville. No one looks at your origin or what language you speak, they just look at what you bring to the team.”

KNOXVILLE’S INDOOR HISTORY

Diaz was born in the Altos de San Isidro neighborhood of Tegucigalpa and was kicking a soccer ball as soon as he could walk. During World Cup qualifying cycles, he fl ies back home to watch matches between his beloved Los Catrachos and Mexico. “If we beat El Tri, the celebration doesn’t end for days,” he says. “How can I miss it?” Every three months, he tells his wife and teammates that he’s going to quit one of his four indoor leagues to spend more time at home. He never keeps his promise. Diaz is only one of millions of soccer fans around the world. More than a billion people watched the World Cup fi nal in 2014. But the sport’s popularity in the United States has waxed and waned over the last few decades, only recently establishing itself as a mainstream spectator

“That’s the great thing about indoor soccer, especially here in Knoxville. No one looks at your origin or what language you speak, they just look at what you bring to the team.” —JAIRO DIAZ

KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 21, 2015

JAIRO DIAZ sport. A particular American invention of the mid 20th century was indoor soccer, replacing grass with artificial turf, reducing the size of the pitch, and cutting the number of players. In 1978, the fi rst professional indoor soccer league in the U.S., the Major Indoor Soccer League, debuted. Professional indoor soccer, however, never really caught on. The MISL folded in 1992, and two other reincarnations have met the same fate. The most notable league currently is the Major Arena Soccer League, founded in 2008. More like arena football than the NFL, the sport has found popularity regionally and on semipro and amateur circuits. Relatively cheap to produce, indoor soccer requires only six players and can be played yearround. It is fast-paced, with an emphasis on quick movements, ball skill, and a smart use of the walls that encircle fields, similar to hockey rinks. Indoor soccer arrived in Knoxville in the early 1990s, housed inside what is now the parts department of a Honda dealership on Kingston Pike. Known as the Soccer House, the complex served as home to the semipro Knoxville Impact and recreational leagues. A few years later, Filip Leander and Preston Dixon opened a larger, multipurpose facility to host indoor soccer, dodgeball, inline hockey, flag football, and lacrosse leagues. “We opened Thunderplex in November and booked out the youth league within 72 hours,” Leander says. “We didn’t know how to even

FROM LEFT: AMANDA STEFFEN, ANGELO SIGNORACCI, ANTON DINERSTEIN (BLOCKING OFF AN UNIDENTIFIED PLAYER), AND VIGHTER IBERI. handle that influx of money. In the fi rst year, during the cold season, we’d have to start on weekends at 7:30 a.m. and play through midnight to accommodate everybody.” Those early efforts laid the foundation for the current indoor boom in Knoxville. But just as indoor soccer has exploded in popularity here, it’s also being played more in countries with stronger outdoor traditions. The World Minifootball Federation, formed in 2013, is the international governing body for the sport, and counts 23 countries among its members. MASL, the world’s foremost professional indoor league, has two teams based in Mexico and another in Canada. “When this indoor soccer craze started in Knoxville it was a lot of American guys, but now look,” says Marco Browning, a 37-year-old former semipro player who coordinates the leagues at Fuse Sportsplex off Papermill Road. “We’ve got all-Mexican teams, Israeli teams, Greek teams. Now you see these guys you would have never met before in Market Square and you’re all friends, even if you try to knock each others’ heads off the night before.” On Wednesday nights at Fuse, the players from Mexico, dressed in their national team’s jersey, bring their wives, who cheer on their husbands from the sidelines and lay into opposing teams with shouts of “No tienen nada” (“Your team is weak”) and other expletive-fi lled rants. The husbands swing elbows on the field and celebrate goals like the professionals on TV, holding imagi-

nary matador curtains for imaginary bulls to run through.

INTERNATIONAL CROSSROADS

Before arriving in Knoxville in 2012, Diaz had only left Honduras once, on the study-abroad exchange to France where he met his wife, Jean, an American who grew up in Kingston. Diaz arrived in East Tennessee without a single local contact and one month later took a job at a regional bank— with no soccer fields in sight. “Fortunately, I just started meeting people and asking around everywhere,” Diaz says. “Every new league that I played in I made a new connection, and I’m never lacking for soccer now.” On most weeks, Diaz’s soccer calendar looks like a part-time work schedule: Monday, Fairmont FC (Fuse); Tuesday, Green Dinosaurs (Cool Sports); Friday, Berzerkers (D1); Sunday, Rosario Central (Fuse). On Tuesdays, Diaz might fi nish a game at 11 p.m. at Cool Sports, drive 30 minutes home, fall asleep, and get up by 6 a.m. to help his wife with their daughter. But it’s a passion that makes him feel at home in a foreign city. Diaz’s friend and occasional teammate Vighter Iberi understands that feeling. “If it wasn’t for soccer, I wouldn’t even be in the U.S.,” he says. A postdoctoral research associate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Iberi moved from Ibadan, Nigeria, in 2005 after securing a soccer scholarship at Campbellsville University in Kentucky. “In Nigeria, our fields were made

“Coming here, you don’t know anybody and you expect at work you’ll make the same kind of friendships as at home, but you don’t always have that, So when I started to play on Fridays and Mondays, it was like, ‘I’m finally starting to make real friends in Knoxville,’ because it was not happening before.” —SOPHIE BLONDEL

May 21, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 13

VIGHTER IBERI AND AMANDA STEFFEN

“With a sport like soccer, you need to make it accessible to people, The club system in the U.S. often makes it difficult because it prices out kids of a lower socioeconomic status, so you have to find other ways.” —HEMANT SHARMA

KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 21, 2015

JAIRO DIAZ up of sand, concrete, and grass, and we’d play barefoot,” Iberi says. “But as long as it was bright enough, people were playing outside. Someone would come out at 8 a.m., especially during summer holidays, and wait for people to join, and we’d play five-a-side all day.” Iberi experienced indoor soccer for the fi rst time in Kentucky, playing at Campbellsville’s facility with teammates from as close as Louisville and Elizabethtown and as far away as England, Argentina, and Costa Rica. He loved how the ball slid perfectly across the turf, unperturbed by the bumps he’d fi nd on grass fields. After moving to Knoxville in 2009 to start work on his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Tennessee, Iberi played occasionally at the campus intramural fields and picked up at the Zone. One evening, he phoned Mark Ponce, league coordinator for D1, and asked if there were any free-agent spots open for teams in one of his leagues. “Mark was like, ‘Yeah, you can play on my team,’ and, of course, the fi rst day I was terrible,” Iberi says. “I spent most of the game trying to catch my breath.” Iberi played on Ponce’s team for four seasons. After winning three championships, he now has a colorful collection of wrinkled T-shirts in his closet. Angelo Signoracci, another postdoctoral researcher at ORNL, plays on three teams with Diaz and Iberi. Signoracci is from Columbus, Ohio, but worked for two years in Paris after earning his Ph.D. in nuclear physics from Michigan State.

He and his French girlfriend, Sophie Blondel, met abroad and moved to Knoxville at different points in 2013. Blondel also plays on the Green Dinosaurs, Berzerkers, and Fairmont FC, although for different reasons. She played pick-up occasionally in France. But, unlike Diaz, Iberi, and Signoracci, who love the competition and the sense of home that soccer brings, Blondel most appreciates the social element of being part of a community—post-game meals at Double Dogs, end-of-season celebrations at players’ houses or Central Flats and Taps, and regular Tuesday night trivia games at Suttree’s High Gravity Tavern. “Coming here, you don’t know anybody and you expect at work you’ll make the same kind of friendships as at home, but you don’t always have that,” Blondel says. “So when I started to play on Fridays and Mondays, it was like, ‘I’m fi nally starting to make real friends in Knoxville,’ because it was not happening before.”

A DIVERSE COMMUNITY

Soccer is now the second-most popular televised sport in the U.S. for 12- to 24-year-olds. And more Americans bought tickets to the 2014 World Cup than fans from anywhere else in the world, except host Brazil. What is beautiful about Knoxville’s indoor soccer scene, if it is to be an indication of soccer’s increasing spread throughout the U.S., is the diversity. Players wear Seattle Sounders and Manchester United jerseys, come in all shapes, colors, and sizes, and shout commands in a

wide range of accents, from East Tennessean to Honduran. Often the statistics about soccer’s growth in the U.S. are contested, or misunderstood, based on stereotypes of what it means to be American. In the 21st century, being American is increasingly less about skin color, ethnicity, or even language. Diaz’s 2-year-old daughter, Ana Carolina, will almost certainly speak English with the same East Tennessee accent as neighbors who can trace their ancestry to before the Civil War. She may not look “American,” or even support the U.S. national soccer team as an adult, but when she straps on her cleats she’ll be contributing to the sport’s growth as much as anyone else born in the U.S. Hemant Sharma, a political science lecturer at the University of Tennessee, goalkeeping director for the youth club FC Alliance, and a former pro indoor soccer player, is one of only a few former top-level Indian-American goalkeepers. “I took a lot of crap from people being the Indian guy,” he says. Born and raised in Short Hills, N.J., Sharma sounds like he could’ve been a character in Goodfellas and believes soccer can be a powerful tool for blending and creating community. Sharma doesn’t come directly from a soccer culture like Diaz’s, but his parents took him to local pro games as a kid. In college, Sharma was a starter for the nationally ranked Cornell men’s soccer team; in 1996, his senior year, Cornell lost to Rutgers in double overtime in the fi rst round of the NCAA tournament.

“In Nigeria, our fields were made up of sand, concrete, and grass, and we’d play barefoot, But as long as it was bright enough, people were playing outside. Someone would come out at 8 a.m., especially during summer holidays, and wait for people to join, and we’d play five-a-side all day.” —VIGHTER IBERI

“With a sport like soccer, you need to make it accessible to people,” Sharma says. “The club system in the U.S. often makes it difficult because it prices out kids of a lower socioeconomic status, so you have to fi nd other ways.” Most of the adult players in Knoxville’s indoor-soccer leagues pay $40-$60 for an eight-game season. The price averages to less than $10 a week—the same amount it costs per person to rent a turf field to play pick-up with friends. The problem, as Sharma notes, is the expense for children and teenagers to play soccer in the city. Most kids have two options: recreational AYSO leagues or competitive clubs like FC Alliance, Knoxville Crush, and Blount United. AYSO, which prioritizes participation above competition, costs $95 a season, while fees for competitive clubs can be as high as $1,500 a year. Derrick Long, the new general manager of the Knoxville Force, sees how these fees can intimidate parents—especially those recently arrived to the U.S. Emerald Youth Foundation, a local faith-based nonprofit that provides after-school programs for kids in the inner city, bought the Force last year and created Emerald Force Soccer Club. The club has organized recreational and travel leagues that serve up to 500 kids in Knoxville. Many of the kids involved in these leagues come from overseas backgrounds, with the larger concentrations of Mexican or Burundian origin. “For me, the cultures are a little new,” Long says. “I was a director of a club in Missouri and it was mostly white and black Americans—I don’t think I even had one Hispanic kid. So

right now I’m learning to communicate with the parents because most of them don’t speak great English. With the kids, it doesn’t matter where they come from—they just want to get the ball in the net.” In 2014, Emerald held organized futsal—a sport similar to indoor soccer that is often played on turf, minus the walls and with one less field player—on the basketball courts inside its North Central Street headquarters. With construction on EFSC’s 14-acre Sansom Sports Complex outside of the Fort Sanders neighborhood now complete, a combination of futsal and traditional outdoor leagues will be played through the summer. The price for summer futsal, starting in June, is $40 for 10 games and two jerseys. These leagues will help include players with backgrounds similar to Hussan al-Wadei, a Yemeni immigrant who grew up in an apartment complex three miles west of EFSC’s facility. Al-Wadei, a recent administrator for a UT pickup soccer Facebook group, spends three or four nights a week playing on the turf at the Tennessee Recreation Center for Students, better known as TRECS, and is a regular indoor player at D1. Al-Wadei never participated in club soccer in Knoxville because it was too expensive. “Soccer has been a really great thing for me,” al-Wadei says. “Over here, I’ll play with South Koreans, Chinese, Europeans, Africans, South Americans—and now, after the World Cup, there’s a lot more Americans, too. When I started here, I didn’t know how to speak English, but the language is soccer and that’s how I made friends.”

he Berzerkers players are at Double Dogs again in late February, after the conclusion of another league session. In the night’s fi rst playoff game, the team lost 2-1 to eventual champions the Unknowns. The Berzerkers’ reign was over just as it started, a normal occurrence in a soccer scene where teams regularly change players, names, and facilities. The night of their last celebration isn’t too different from the one of their dethroning; there are still beers, burgers, and hot wings. Diaz isn’t too upset. His wife is pregnant with their second child, and he wants to take a step back from Friday soccer, as well as some of his other leagues, to spend more time at home before the baby comes. “Anyway, it was best the Berzerkers didn’t win a fourth session,” he jokes, “or someone might accuse us of taking performance-enhancing drugs.” Signoracci offers Diaz a departing handshake. Blondel kisses Diaz once on each cheek, a traditional French farewell, and says she’ll see him on Monday night for Fairmont FC’s game against Real Internationals. It’s almost midnight and the hundred or so players that flooded D1 have trickled down to a dozen who are all, too, heading for their cars. The balls have long been put away and the sweat-soaked pinnies are in someone’s trunk ready to be washed for Monday night. In one week, the process starts again. Friends, former college players, co-workers, and family members rejoin each other on Knoxville’s turf fields, fighting for bragging rights, and a wrinkled T-shirt. ◆ May 21, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 15

A&E

P rogram Notes

Listening Party A trio of local music reviews

THELO-QUE

JOHN T. BAKER

Catman, the new seven-song EP of bedroom hip-hop from Knoxville rapper/producer Thelo-Que, was inspired by a dream: “Wandering aimlessly through the streets of downtown Knoxville I came to the conclusion that even though I’m in the form of a cat, I’m also a man … a CATMAN,” Thelo writes on his Bandcamp page. That fits the general atmosphere of the new collection— hazy, disconnected, and, well, a little dreamy. Catman was written and recorded in a week, which gives the EP a loose-limbed groove and stream-of-consciousness vibe. The songs float by on a suite of luxe synth arrangements and lush beats, with flourishes of funk guitar and spacey keyboards. Amid the laid-back production and floating instrumental passages, Thelo manages a subtly impressive performance—his rhymes on “Til I’m Holy” and “Come Back” show his facility without showing off or interrupting the gauzy mood.

John T. Baker has been both a mastermind and a utility player on the local music scene for years—as leader of the power-pop bands the French Broads and Econopop, guitarist and electronics manipulator for the experimental rock outfit Stolen Sheep, and regular contributor to the Westside Daredevils and the Ampient collective, in addition to guest appearances on stage and record with a handful of other notable local acts. He’s also composed and recorded, in his first-class home studio, a dozen or so solo albums of ambient music, chamber pop, and assorted stuff that doesn’t fit with his other groups. Flirting With Azrael is, by all appearances, a pet personal project that took several years to finish. Even for someone with a background as varied as Baker’s, it’s an odd little record—a dark pop-rock opera with horns, sax, and sci-fi keyboard sounds alongside the expected guitar, bass, and drums provided by Baker’s frequent partners Gray Comer, Doug

Catman

17 16

Shelf Life: Live Albums

KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 21, 2015

Flirting With Azrael

Classical Music: Lucas Richman

Campbell, Tim Lee, and George Middlebrooks. Some of the curveballs pay off better than others—Jason Thompson’s brief sax lines on “The Plan” and Emily Parker’s bassoon on “Time Is of the Essence” and “Hand” add texture and mood, but the spoken-word half-rap over glitchy electronic beats on “Put the Body on Ice” is a less welcome divergence. Likewise, some of the genre exercises on the disc—bossa nova guitar on “I Need Controlling” and a funky wah-pedal workout on “Black Magic”—are a little jarring. Flirting With Azrael is at its best when Baker sticks to melancholy guitar pop; there’s plenty of dark material here that’s well-served by understated songwriting and the clear chops of Baker’s supporting cast.

decorated with fiddle and steel guitar. The band’s new disc showcases the group’s other side, with a bunch of plugged-in Lucero-style anthems about bad women, long road trips, and drinking binges. The new songs are strengthened by a new lineup—the former trio has expanded to a quintet, led by lead singer Dave Kennedy and fortified by Stevie Jones’ piano and organ—and better production, which gives even the relatively strippeddown tracks like “Bottle to Forget” and “Whiskey and Cocaine” cinematic scope. Kennedy is also a much more confident writer and singer than he was on One More Heart to Break, matching the band’s instrumental upgrades. Kelsey’s Woods hasn’t exactly turned into a party band—When the Morning Comes Around is more like the soundtrack to the squinty-eyed hours after the bars have closed but before the whiskey has run out than a screaming good-time record. But the band’s newly revealed polish and confidence puts them near the top of a crowded local roots-rock field. —Matthew Everett

KELSEY’S WOODS

When the Morning Comes Around

The debut album from Kelsey’s Woods, One More Heart to Break, was a lovely little country-rock downer, full of moody ballads of broken hearts and romantic laments

Music: Zach and Kota’s Sweet Life

Movie: Mad Max: Fury Road

Video: Lost River

Shelf Life

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It’s Alive! Dusting off some in-concert classics from the Knox County Public Library music collection BY CHRIS BARRETT SON HOUSE

Son House in Seattle 1968 (Arcola Records, 2007)

Representative of Son House’s second musical career—he gave up music during the 1940s and had to reteach himself guitar when the 1960s folk revival found him in New York state— this too-short, small-venue recording is terrific. House attacks his resonating guitar as a percussion instrument, generating competing rhythms and coincidental melodies with both hands. His dexterity would be impressive even if he wasn’t making music. But the music that he pounds out is the perfect accompaniment to his Baptist preacher-style delivery of the Delta blues, a form that he helped invent and popularize during the Great Depression.

THE BEACH BOYS

The Beach Boys in Concert (Capitol/Brother Records, 2000)

This 1973 gem is the perfect tonic with which to rinse if you have the current working-too-far-into-retirement rendition of the Beach Boys stuck in your noggin. Pre-Auto-Tune, these guys just nail their harmonies on track after track. Brian Wilson is absent, and Carl Wilson has recruited singer and guitarist Blondie Chaplin to help prove that the franchise can survive without him, and to transition the band away from its bubblegum origins. They may have never sounded better.

CHARLES MINGUS SEXTET WITH ERIC DOLPHY Cornell 1964 (Blue Note Records, 2007)

Discovered nearly 30 years after the death of bassist Charles Mingus, this two-disc live set is a must for any jazz fan. Mingus assembled and led some of the fi nest jazz ensembles on record, but his latent anger and intimidating air often diminished the results. Here,

Mingus appears to be actually happy with himself and his bandmates, who take full advantage of a rare mood. Particularly illuminating are flattering covers of Strayhorn’s “Take the ‘A’ Train” and Waller’s “Jitterbug Waltz.”

RAVI SHANKAR

A Night at St. John the Divine (East Meets West Records, 2014)

This 1976 dusk-to-dawn concert commemorated Ravi Shankar’s 20th year of playing to American audiences. Featured on this package, only recently released, are the ragas Shankar performed as a sunrise finale for the event. The momentum is slow to build, but is fairly rapturous as it does. This music won’t disappoint anyone looking for new sitar sounds. And it’s doubly fascinating as a demonstration of how an instrumental soloist is capable of manipulating an audience.

NATALIE MERCHANT

PRESENTED BY

Live in Concert (Elektra Records, 1999)

Natalie Merchant is well known for withholding onstage. With 10,000 Maniacs, it was not uncommon for her to sing backstage, from the wings, and let the rest of the band fuss over putting on a show. So while this record probably does not document much in the way of spectacle, it documents a way above-average songwriting talent and superlative voice in a demanding, nonstudio situation. Considering the fact that she had so little solo material in 1999 from which to build a set list, it’s surprising that she didn’t include “Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key” or some of her other contributions to the Mermaid Avenue sessions. In lieu of Woody Guthrie, we have a quite nice interpretation of Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush.” ◆

COMPLETE SUMMER MOVIE MAGIC LINEUP AT TENNESSEETHEATRE.COM

www.TennesseeTheatre.com Tickets available at the Tennessee Theatre box office, Ticketmaster.com and by phone at 800-745-3000. May 21, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 17

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Classical Music

Photo courtesy of Moxley Carmichael

Final Call Lucas Richman closes his final season as KSO director with a pair of eclectic performances BY ALAN SHERROD

“W

here words fail, music speaks” was Maestro Lucas Richman’s simple introduction to the encore selection—the poignant and wistful Variation IX (“Nimrod”) from Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations—on his final concert as music director of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra last weekend. While that quote from Hans Christian Andersen is often used a bit too generically, its tearfully succinct use on this occasion was befitting the moment. It followed round after round of tumultuous applause and ovation for Richman and the orchestra—a demonstration of appreciation for his 12 seasons of accomplishments that rendered any more words quite meaningless, and probably, impossible. However, with symbolic tears dried and composure regained, words inevitably must be used to describe

KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 21, 2015

this KSO season-finale concert of four works by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, and Ravel. “Eclectic” is an apt description, a word Richman himself used in his introduction to the evening, perhaps fearful that the audience might find the program too unconnected. He shouldn’t have worried. In fact, “refreshingly eclectic” is even more to the point in describing the stylistic leap from Beethoven’s Egmont Overture to Ravel’s La Valse, not to mention the vivid contrast of the familiar Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the Adagio movement from Gustav Mahler’s uncompleted 10th Symphony. Inevitably, a music director’s final concert cannot escape the responsibility of being a summation of sorts, although in this case it was an entirely positive one. One highlight of Richman’s time with KSO has been the selection and arrival of Gabriel

Lefkowitz, who is now completing his fourth season as KSO concertmaster. In addition to the leadership and the youthful and charismatic face that Lefkowitz has brought to the orchestra, the violinist possesses a depth of virtuosic ability that far exceeds what one expects in a concertmaster, a fact made perfectly clear with a stunning performance as soloist in the Tchaikovsky concerto. The concerto’s opening Allegro moderato movement is one of ebb and flow, contrasts of motion, in which Lefkowitz articulated both the broad lyrical statements and the rapid-fire details with intricate clarity—bright and bold one moment, warm and complex the next. Lefkowitz’s take on the movement’s gorgeous cadenza was both intelligent and passionate, so much so that when the orchestra overlaps the violin’s closing note with a statement of delicate gentleness, the resolution was nothing short of exhilarating. After the movement’s dramatic conclusion, Friday night’s audience would not be denied their say despite the work being only half over, with many leaping to their feet for an extended ovation for Lefkowitz’s sensational performance. While Richman gave the violin all the space it needed, he also made sure that Tchaikovsky’s entertaining orchestral moments got their due, from the bold theme pronouncement of brass and strings in the opening to the intriguing questions and answers from the woodwinds. The Mahler Adagio, the only movement from his 10th Symphony that was completed at the composer’s death, took the orchestra in an entirely different direction. On Friday

evening’s concert, the viola section opening was solid yet mysterious and rich, opening the way for the movement’s textural clashes between brass and strings. Moments of 20th-century melodic and harmonic complexity are burnished by luscious stretches of 19th-century lyricism—contrasts and combinations that dive in and out of focus, almost cinematically. The evening concluded with Maurice Ravel’s 1920 La Valse, a work that richly evokes images of waltzes, ballrooms, and swirling dancers. However, this is not a neatly focused theatrical or cinematic view of dance, but one as spied surreptitiously through a hazy, distorted window— sometimes clear, but more often beautifully twisted or misshapen. The work was a feast for the KSO percussionists, from triangle and orchestral bells to castanets and tambourines, with cymbals, bass, and snare drum in between. In fact, the expanded instrumentation also included two harps, bass clarinet, tuba, and extra woodwinds, which allowed the rhythmic complexity and the textural depth of La Valse to be the perfect instrumental showcase for the orchestra to end a season. While Richman’s KSO legacy has been the topic of late, we need not have waited until now to show thanks. Each of the last several seasons have witnessed some hard decisions and aesthetic choices on his part that have allowed KSO to advance rapidly through impressive performance milestones and achieve its current notable reputation among American orchestras. For that, Knoxville music audiences should be eternally grateful. ◆

A music director’s final concert cannot escape the responsibility of being a summation of sorts, although in this case it was an entirely positive one.

Music

Photo by Drew Cox

Life Is Sweet Guitar and drums, but no blues—the evil genius of Zach and Kota’s Sweet Life BY WILL WARREN

xplosive guitars ring while a hyperactive drummer bangs away, threatening to go off the rails at any moment. Earplugs aren’t required, but maybe you should consider them; it’s loud, and the mood is getting rather sinister. But feel free to dance—it’s just another rollicking episode of Zach and Kota’s Sweet Life, and there are many more to come. The name, a pun on the mid-’00s Disney Channel sitcom The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, is eye-catching, eye-rolling, and evil genius, all at once. Drummer Zach Gilleran, guitarist Dakota Smith, and recently added bassist Thomas Bigwood play a fluid, high-octane brand of rock that resembles the best parts of your favorite garage bands, one that can shift styles with ease and gets butts out of seats. It’s boisterous and exciting, making them one of the most recent additions to a list of must-see Knoxville acts. Smith and Gilleran started playing together in college. “We would just find each of us playing late at night, doing

jangly, loud guitar rock stuff,” Smith says. In 2012, they decided they wanted to play in front of audiences, and the Sweet Life has been rolling ever since, with frequent gigs at Pilot Light and Preservation Pub. Gilleran brings an intense, frenetic style of drumming to the forefront, while Smith’s guitar chugs and twists rapidly to keep pace. It’s all very thrilling, even when they drop the pace and breathe for a minute. With new member Bigwood, the band wants a fuller sound—Smith says the trio is working on a full-length album in the near future. Sweet Life currently has two tracks available online, but the band is releasing a six-song self-titled EP this weekend at Pilot Light. The EP contains remastered versions of the two Bandcamp tracks and four other songs, staples of their live set. All six songs were recorded before Bigwood joined the band, with just Gilleran on drums and Smith on guitar—an unusual setup for a guitar-rock band. “We were fascinated with the idea of a two-piece, but I didn’t want to do

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anything super riff-based, like blues,” Smith says. “We wanted it to be more free-form.” The music reflects that, changing directions and moving at high speeds. While the band’s reference points are scattered about, their taste for hooky melodies recalls garage contemporaries the Soft Pack. They aren’t afraid to let the waves of guitar and drum noise crash loudly, either, like Chapel Hill bands from the ’90s like Superchunk and Archers of Loaf. Sweet Life keeps their songs interesting and concise, with few of them longer than three minutes—a welcome change in an increasingly verbose world. Smith, Gilleran, and Bigwood know their boundaries and seem to be comfortable with them. “Our songs are very earnest, almost to the point where you’ll cringe—and then we try to change directions,” Smith says. “I think that we’re like a profile of a dead Facebook friend, where there’s this smiling face and a collection of images and recollections on top of a morbid reality.” Smith says that the band’s Disney-inspired name has gotten them attention, but it’s also had some unintended consequences. “I get a lot of people that call me ‘Kota,’ which I had never been called before,” he says. “I also have people ask me about the show—I don’t think we’ve seen an episode, to be honest.” ◆

WHO

Zach and Kota’s Sweet Life with Ex-Gold and Joseph Allred

WHERE

Pilot Light (106 E. Jackson Ave.)

WHEN

Saturday, May 23, at 10 p.m.

HOW MUCH

MERCURY

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TESTIMONIAL “The ad in the Knoxville Mercury made the difference for us. It was a great thing for us to do. It definitely had an impact, and it definitely paid off for us.” —CARRIE TYLER, Gourmet’s Market

Gourmet’s Market advertised its entry in the International Biscuit Festival 2015, the Big Nasty, with a back-page ad. At 9 a.m. on Saturday, 150 people were already in line. By 2 p.m., after tickets stopped being sold, they were still dishing out biscuits— 2,300 were served in all. The Big Nasty won the Last Biscuit Standing Award and was a runner-up for the People’s Choice Award.

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May 21, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 19

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Movies

To the Max Mad Max: Fury Road shows the way to the future of action cinema BY APRIL SNELLINGS

often find myself watching summer blockbusters and wondering if we’re approaching some sort of event horizon, at least where cinematic spectacle is concerned. Now that budgets routinely soar past the $200 million mark and visual-effects technology has caught up to the ambitions of our most wildly inventive filmmakers, where can we go next? The new Mad Max film, appropriately subtitled Fury Road, has the answer: We go back the way we came, and we do it with imagination, conviction, a few hundred tons of grinding metal, and a flamethrower guitar. There’s spectacle to spare in the fourth installment of George Miller’s post-apocalyptic fever dream—the entire movie is essentially a two-hour climax—but it doesn’t traffic in the kind of amped-up global peril and intergalactic kerfuffles that keep

KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 21, 2015

superheroes in business. Fury Road is a lean, stripped-down chase movie that, in spite of its bloated budget, argues for a back-to-basics approach to action: likable characters running for their lives while loathsome villains pursue them. The road is the world, and it’s dangerous enough. Those themes of regression and return are keen stylistic choices, but they’re also integral to the plot. It helps if you’ve seen the previous films, but no worries if you haven’t. Fury Road begins with an amusingly terse introduction to Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy instead of Mel Gibson this time) and his grim world, a literal wasteland where gasoline is more valuable than human life and women are imprisoned as breeding stock. A devastating energy crisis and the ensuing “oil wars” have reduced the world to a primitive patriarchy, and

Max quickly runs afoul of a masked warlord called Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played Toecutter in the first Mad Max film). Don’t sweat Max’s backstory if you don’t already know it; once you’ve seen a guy stomp and then eat a two-headed mutant gecko, you pretty much know all you need to know about him. Besides, Max isn’t even the main character of Fury Road. That honor, to the glorious chagrin of sexist idiots everywhere, goes to Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a no-nonsense road warrior with a dark history and a rococo mechanical arm. She goes from being Joe’s most trusted general to his most hated enemy when she orchestrates the escape of the Wives, five women who have been kidnapped, imprisoned, and forced to bear Joe’s children. As soon as Joe realizes what Furiosa has done, he dispatches a fleet

of his War Boys—feral young men who think their highest purpose is to die in battle—to kill her and bring back the Wives. For much of the film, Max is literally just along for the ride, strapped to a car and serving as a mobile “blood bag” for Nux (Nicholas Hoult), a War Boy whose story is one for the movie’s greatest pleasures. Max eventually recovers some agency, of course, and casts in his lot with Furiosa and her charges. To say that Furiosa’s betrayal kicks the film into high gear is misleading, because it implies that Fury Road has any gears that aren’t high. The film barrels forward so relentlessly that motion almost becomes a new stasis. It’s not enough that 90 percent of the movie sees its characters hurtling through the desert at top speed, gnashing at each other’s bumpers; they also have to be crawling along the underbellies of their rigs, or clinging to the hoods of souped-up muscle cars while spitting gasoline into their engines, or flinging themselves at neighboring vehicles while lashed to giant, swinging poles. What really makes the movie such a success, though, is that it takes as many chances with its story and characters as with its stunt performers. There are moments that almost feel as if I imagined them. Did I really just see Max wash blood off his face with breast milk? Did an action-movie icon just volunteer to become a human tripod for a woman who’s much better with a rifle than he is? Am I really watching a movie that pits biker grannies against paint-huffing albinos while a guy called the Doof Warrior bangs out heavy-metal riffs on a flamethrower guitar? Yes, yes, and yes. The beauty of it is that, in spite of its baroque imagination and wildly kinetic imperative, Fury Road achieves a clarity that eludes most action movies these days. The entire thing is a redline spectacle of flight, pursuit, and collision that feels at once manic and carefully measured. What’s happening onscreen is almost always ludicrously over the top, but it’s so impeccably staged, shot, and edited that you can almost feel the grit without getting lost in the chaos. ◆

Video

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Downstream Ryan Gosling loses the course in his silly writing/directing debut BY LEE GARDNER

ost River (Warner Home Video streaming, Blu-ray, and DVD ) is the kind of movie where a flaming bicycle rolls through a scene for no reason. It’s the kind of movie that features a girl named Rat who has a rat named Nick. It’s the kind of movie where a bank manager casually quotes Ol’ Dirty Bastard when discussing foreclosure. It is the kind of movie where the TV only shows kooky old TV shows. It is the kind of movie that never saw a lens fi lter or color process it didn’t like. It is, in short, go-for-broke ridiculous, and not in an entertaining way. It is also the writing and directing debut of one Ryan Thomas Gosling, and more likely to kill lady boners for the heartthrob actor than 30 pounds of cookie dough around his middle. In a magical-realist ruin-porn wilderness that resembles the worst of Detroit (where the movie was shot), Billy (Christina Hendricks) lives in her tumble-down wooden-frame castle with her two sons, the oldest of whom, played by Iain de Caestecker, rips copper pipe out of old buildings for a meager living. But the bank—in the person of Ben Mendelsohn’s sinister

loan officer—wants their hovel. And a neighborhood baddie, played by a nearly unrecognizable Matt “Doctor Who” Smith, wants all the copper for himself. Complications ensue, including a hoarder-style Miss Havisham-alike, a nightclub devoted to gory Grand Guignol skits, and a sunken city at the end of a lost highway. Lost River isn’t without its diverting or effective bits. The increasingly indispensable Mendelsohn, for one, wrests something like a cohesive performance from all the folderol, and the gruesome nightclub acts surprise anew every time. But Gosling’s cliché-ridden fable isn’t as clever as he clearly it thinks it is, and his directing style, such as it is, brings to mind an undigested stew of Terrence Malick aspiration and David Lynch lite, with perhaps a touch of recent Gosling collaborator Nicolas Winding Refn. It’s not a total artistic disaster, just irredeemably silly and juvenile. Making fun of it seems no more sporting than making fun of some middle-schooler’s creative-writing manuscript. Except this is a grown man who’s worked in Hollywood since he was barely pubescent. Just baffling. ◆ May 21, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 21

CALENDAR MUSIC

Thursday, May 21 JONATHAN BYRD AND THE PICKUP COWBOYS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM JASON MICHAEL CARROLL • The Concourse • 7PM • Country music hit-maker Jason Michael Carroll from Youngsville, North Carolina, is gearing up to release his first new album since 2011, featuring the single “Close Enough.” All ages. • $15-$18 FOURKAST • Market Square • 7PM • Part of the city of Knoxville’s spring series of free concerts on Market Square. • FREE THE GRAHAMS • Disc Exchange • 7PM • Alyssa and Doug Graham have spent nearly their entire lives exploring music together. Friends since she was 7 and he was 9, they became a couple in their teens, then husband and wife. Somewhere along the way, they also became The Grahams, a dynamic Americana duo who’ve married their love of adventure with a desire to build on foundations laid by their musical predecessors. Their new long-player, the explosive and aptly named Glory Bound, was helmed by Grammy nominated producer Wes Sharon (John Fullbright, Parker Millsap) at his 115 Recording studio in Norman, Okla., and will be released on May 19. • FREE HARPETH RISING • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Named for the small but powerful river in Tennessee, Harpeth Rising creates original songs that layer lush instrumental arrangements with rich harmonies and powerful lyrics. Their songs depict wanderlust, eternal curiosity, class struggle and extraordinary love. The result is a sound that is both rooted in the folk tradition and simultaneously pushing the envelope. INVISIBLE THINGS WITH NAAN VIOLENCE • Pilot Light • 10PM • $6 DAVE KENNEDY • Clancy’s Tavern and Whiskey House • 6PM OPPOSITE BOX • Preservation Pub • 9PM MIKE SNODGRASS • Historic Southern Railway Station • 8PM • Part of the Southern Station Live concert series. LAURA THURSTON WITH THE GRAHAMS • WDVX • Noon • 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. • FREE Friday, May 22 BEGGING VICTORIA • Longbranch Saloon • 7PM DEAD HORSES WITH DAVE EGGAR • WDVX • Noon • 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. • FREE DIALECTS WITH AMOUR, BAPHOMET, INSIGHTS, GYNOBLENDER, THE GOOD OLE BOYS, FULLSWING, AND RAT PUNCH • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 4PM • $7 EMISUNSHINE AND THE RAIN • The Square Room • 8PM • Emi Sunshine, a 10-year-old Madisonville, Tenn prodigy who has captured the nation’s attention as a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, has been described by The Tennesseans as “an old soul,” noting, “Onstage, this soul’s presence is commanding and her singing voice authentic and folksy.” Similar to artists like Dolly Parton, Alison Krauss or members of the Carter Family, and steeped in Appalachian music, she is a true vocal stylist, one who instinctively knows how to interpret the nuances of a song with her impressive range. • $10-$12 FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE 22

KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 21, 2015

Thursday, May 21 - Sunday, May 31

GASLIGHT STREET • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM LARRY GOODWIN • Jimmy’s Place • 6PM • Buffett covers, beach tunes, and more. All ages. • FREE TOM JOHNSON • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE KELSEY’S WOODS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM • Local country band Kelsey’s Woods released its most recent album, When the Morning Comes Around, in May. • See review on page 16. MARBLE CITY SHOOTERS • Casual Pint (Fountain City) • 7PM • • FREE MIPSO • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • • FREE SUSAN PRINCE • Susan’s Happy Hour • 8PM • • FREE *REPEAT REPEAT WITH CHIEF SCOUT AND NOT IN THE FACE • Preservation Pub • 10PM • See Spotlight on page 25. RENE RUSSELL • Kristtopher’s • 9PM • • $5 VASKI WITH MARLEY CARROLL • The Concourse • 9PM • American sensation Vaski has spent the better part of two years touring, shaking the globe with his electro-derived dubstep. With releases from the prestigious Rottun Recordings and Play Me Records, Vaski is no stranger to the top of the dubstep kingdom. Starting with his first release, Resonate EP, each of Vaski’s successive releases have enjoyed top-ten status. Presented by Midnight Voyage Productions. 18 and up. • $7-$10 THE WHISKEY SESSIONS • Bearden Field House • 9PM • FREE Saturday, May 23 3 MILE SMILE • Jimmy’s Place • 6PM • All ages. • FREE MARK BOLING • Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE SHERYL CROW WITH SAM OUTLAW • Tennessee Theatre • 8PM • Sheryl Crow’s most recent album, FEELS LIKE HOME, captures the sound of a great and established artist enjoying a kind of fresh start. It features songs on which Crow collaborated with her longtime guitar player and frequent co-writer Jeff Trott (with whom she co-wrote such past Crow classics as “If It Makes You Happy,” “My Favorite Mistake” and “Every Day Is A Winding Road”), as well as such Nashville songwriters as Chris DuBois, Luke Laird, Natalie Hamby and Chris Stapleton, among others. • $70.50-$90.50 THE DELTA SAINTS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM FORLORN STRANGERS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • • FREE FREEQUENCY • Willy’s Bar and Grill • 7PM MARBLE CITY SHOOTERS • Doc’s All American Grille • 9PM MOUNTAIN SPIRIT AND THE GYPSY • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM MUSTANG SALLY WITH HARDWIRED • The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson (Maryville) • 6PM • What happens when you throw Alabama and Lynyrd Skynyrd in a blender, add a dash of Comedy Central, and a hint of Lady Gaga?When you attend a Mustang Sally show, you are transported away from everyday life and into the world that Mustang Sally inhabits: a world where dancing on the bar is encouraged, and spontaneity is king. • $20 OLD CITY BUSKERS • Clancy’s Tavern and Whiskey House • 9PM SCENT OF REMAINS WITH KINGSLAYER, WEARTH, AND AMONG THE BEASTS • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 7PM • An all-ages local metal showcase. • $8 BEN SHUSTER • Bearden Field House • 9PM • • FREE SOCIALITES WITH TIM AND JODI HARBIN • WDVX • Noon • 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. • FREE ZACH AND KOTA’S SWEET LIFE WITH EX-GOLD • Pilot Light • 10PM • Local garage rock/guitar pop band Zach and Kota’s Sweet Life celebrates the release of its new EP. • $5 • See Music story on page 19.

Sunday, May 24 CAPTAIN GREEN • Preservation Pub • 10PM KIRK FLETA • Jimmy’s Place • 6PM • Blues, rock, and soul. All ages. • FREE LANEY JONES AND THE LIVELY SPIRITS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM • Raised on an exotic animal farm in rural Mount Dora, FL, Laney Jones sings tales of love and adventure with a voice that has been described as “a mix

of lemon, molasses, gin and gunpowder” (WPRK), mellifluous and smooth but brimming with passion. Her live performance highlights her multi-instrumental prowess on banjo, ukulele, tenor guitar and harmonica backed by her band the Spirits. MEGAWAVE • Pilot Light • 10PM • $5 SHIFFLETT AND HANNAH • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. • FREE

RALPH STANLEY The International (940 Blackstock Drive) • Thursday, May 28 • 6 p.m. • $31-$65 • All ages • internationalknox.com

Bluegrass occasionally gets brief moments of cultural visibility—in the 1970s, when the newgrass revivalists brought counterculture attitude and plugged-in instruments to the music, or the mid-1990s, when Alison Krauss introduced the Dobro and fiddle to the adult-contemporary charts. The spotlight briefly landed on Ralph Stanley in 2000, when his version of the morbid old Appalachian ballad “Oh Death” appeared on the soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou? Stanley has remained popular ever since, but his late-life pop-culture icon status still doesn’t do justice to his achievements—as half of the Stanley Bothers and the long-time leader of the Clinch Mountain Boys, he helped establish bluegrass in the 1940s, produced some of its finest recordings in the ’50s, and cultivated dozens of the world’s best players, including Ricky Skaggs and Larry Sparks, through the 1960s and ’70s. The Stanley Brothers’ greatest hits— “Angel Band,” “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow,” “Rank Stranger,” “Little Maggie”—are among the most powerful pieces of American music ever made, right alongside the best work of Howlin’ Wolf, Frank Sinatra, and Billie Holiday for influence, accomplishment, and emotional resonance. Of the great original bluegrass acts, the Stanleys were the ones with the deepest ties to old-timey mountain music and the most gothic strains of Southern gospel. Ralph’s high, keening tenor, his rolling, almost percussive banjo-playing, and the preternatural harmonies he shared with his brother, Carter, made their music at once smoother and darker than that of contemporaries like Bill Monroe and Flatt and Scruggs. Stanley announced his retirement in 2013 and then almost immediately took it back. He’s still out on the road, performing more than 100 dates a year at the age of 88. He’s not quite the force of nature he once was—he no longer plays the banjo live—and most of his concert sets now are led by his son, Ralph II, and his grandson Nathan Stanley. But during the moments when he takes center stage, he’s still a commanding presence, and you know why he’s a legend. See him while you can. With Nathan Stanley and the current incarnation of the Clinch Mountain Boys. (Matthew Everett)

CALENDAR STEEL PANTHER • The International • 7PM • $24-$150 Monday, May 25 THE BLUEPRINT • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM KIRK FLETA WITH MARBIN • WDVX • Noon • 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. • FREE MARBIN • Preservation Pub • 10PM Tuesday, May 26 THE BRUMMY BROTHERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM THE FEVER • Preservation Pub • 10PM • Berlin-based synth rock. 21 and up. JAZZ ON THE SQUARE • Market Square • 8PM • Featuring the Marble City 5. Every Tuesday from May 12-Aug. 25. • FREE SARAH MORGAN WITH LOOK HOMEWARD • WDVX • Noon • 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. • FREE AUSTIN STEPPE • Clancy’s Tavern and Whiskey House • 6PM Wednesday, May 27 FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 6:30PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE SAM QUINN AND FRIENDS WITH JACK RENTFRO • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7PM • Tennessee Shines will celebrate the legacy of Levon Helm (b. May 26, 1940) & The Band with songs performed by Sam Quinn & Friends. Poet Jack Rentfro joins us to read some East Tennessee poetry and prose. • $10 BARRY ROSEMAN • Bistro at the Bijou • 7PM • Live jazz. • FREE KELLEY SWINDALL WITH GOLD HEART • WDVX • Noon • 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. • FREE Thursday, May 28 THE BAD DUDES WITH YUNG LIFE, BIG BAD OVEN, NEW ROMANTICS, GUY MARSHALL, AND ERIC GRIFFIN • Pilot Light • 8PM • $5 BONE JUGS N HARMONY • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Frank Zappa meets Spike Jones, Looney Tunes meets Nintendo. A ragtime-jugband-calypso-shake-up from Urbana, IL. GARTH BROOKS AND TRISHA YEARWOOD • Thompson-Boling Arena • 7:30PM • The country superstar kicks off his 2015 tour with a four-night stand at Thompson-Boling Arena, his first official Knoxville appearances in 18 years. • $69.23 CBDB • Preservation Pub • 10PM THE JAZZ TIME SWING ENSEMBLE • Market Square • 7PM • Part of the city of Knoxville’s spring series of free concerts on Market Square. • FREE THE LEADBETTERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM THE MICHAEL MARTIN BAND WITH SWEET G.A. BROWN • WDVX • Noon • 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. • FREE DR. RALPH STANLEY WITH NATHAN STANLEY AND THE CLINCH MOUNTAIN BOYS • The International • 6PM • Three-time Grammy Award winner and International Bluegrass Hall of Honor inductee Dr. Ralph Stanley is a true American musical icon who, at 87 years old, continues to be embraced by fans of all generations. •

$31-$65 • See Spotlight on page 22. ADAM WHIPPLE, ETHAN NORMAN, AND KYLE ADEM • Clancy’s Tavern and Whiskey House • 8PM Friday, May 29 KYLE ADEM • Union Jack’s • 7PM THE T. MICHAEL BRANNER CONCEPTET • Bijou at the Bistro • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE GARTH BROOKS AND TRISHA YEARWOOD • Thompson-Boling Arena • 7:30PM • The country superstar kicks off his 2015 tour with a four-night stand at Thompson-Boling Arena, his first official Knoxville appearances in 18 years. • $69.23 FOUR LEAF PEAT • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE FREEQUENCY • Hurricane Grill and Wings • 8PM FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE THE GRAND SHELL GAME • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM MR. BILL WITH PSYMBIONIC, COSMOORE, AND PSYCHONAUT • The Concourse • 9PM • Presented by Midnight Voyage Productions. 18 and up. • $8-$12 MASS DRIVER WITH O’POSSUM, REALM, AND SPLIT TUSK • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 7PM • Fuzz pedals, clangin’ cowbell, and rock n roll. That’s all Mass Driver is concerned with. All ages. • $8 R.B. MORRIS WITH THE TIM LEE 3 • Pilot Light • 9PM • $5 MY SO-CALLED BAND • The International • 7:30PM • Relive the ‘90s! All Ages • $5 PALE ROOT • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM • Knoxville Americana. THE POP ROX • Bearden Field House • 9PM • FREE SUSAN PRINCE • Susan’s Happy Hour • 8PM • FREE NATALIE YORK WITH GALLOWS BOUND • WDVX • Noon • 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. • FREE Saturday, May 30 BAMM • Kristtopher’s • 9PM • $5 CORY BRANAN WITH SAMANTHA CRAIN • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM GARTH BROOKS AND TRISHA YEARWOOD • Thompson-Boling Arena • 7:30PM • The country superstar kicks off his 2015 tour with a four-night stand at Thompson-Boling Arena, his first official Knoxville appearances in 18 years. • $69.23 THE DEAD RINGERS WITH KROOKED KREEK • The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson (Maryville) • 6PM • FREE SAMANTHA GRAY AND THE SOUL PROVIDERS • Jimmy’s Place • 6PM • R&B. All ages. • FREE THE LOST DOG STREET BAND • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE MARLOW DRIVE • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Chattanooga-based blues rock. All ages. THE MENACE FROM EARTH WITH FRETZ LANE, THE BILLY WIDGETS, AND VICTIMS OF EUPHORIA • Longbranch Saloon • 5:30PM THE WILL OVERMAN BAND WITH ERIN MCLENDON • WDVX • Noon • 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. • FREE SHRIEK OPERATOR WITH SMOKER AND SHILPA RAY • Pilot Light • 10PM • $5 BEN SHUSTER • Bearden Field House • 9PM • FREE WRENN • Preservation Pub • 8PM THE WILL YAGER TRIO • Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE Sunday, May 31

JOCELYN ARNDT • Preservation Pub • 10PM GARTH BROOKS AND TRISHA YEARWOOD • Thompson-Boling Arena • 7:30PM • The country superstar kicks off his 2015 tour with a four-night stand at Thompson-Boling Arena, his first official Knoxville appearances in 18 years. • $69.23 HAOCHI WITH BLEETH • Pilot Light • 10PM • Haochi and Bleeth, are both three-piece Miami based bands, whose members have been an active part of the Miami music scene for years. A scene that’s bred bands the likes of Torche, Jacuzzi Boys, Load, Floor and countless others.Most recently Haochi’s grungy dark rrriot girl laced sound brought them to be one of the headliners for Sweatstock 2015, a Record Store Day event where over 4,000 people attended. ST. VINCENT WITH SARAH NEUFELD • Tennessee Theatre • 8PM • In 2011 St. Vincent released her third album, ‘Strange Mercy,’ called “one of the year’s best” by the New York Times and “something to behold” by Pitchfork. The record cemented her status as one of her generation’s most fearsome and inventive guitarists, earned her the covers of SPIN, Paper, and Under the Radar, performances everywhere from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Fallon to Letterman and Conan, and a year-long sold-out tour of her biggest venues to date around the world. • $34.50 SHIFFLETT AND HANNAH • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. • FREE STARSHIP WITH COLUMBIA BLUE • Knoxville Civic Coliseum • 6:30PM • The Knoxville Fire Fighters Association would like to invite you out for a night of family fun. Join us Sunday May 31st at 6:30 pm as we host one of the biggest bands of the 80’s STARSHIP featuring Mickey Thomas with songs like “We Built This City” “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us” and “Sara”. Special guest Cumberland Blue. • $28 THE STELLA VEES • Star of Knoxville Riverboat • 3PM • Kentucky blues band the Stella Vees kicks off the Smoky Mountain Blues Society’s season of summer blues cruises. • $16-$19

OPEN MIC AND SONGWRITER NIGHTS

Thursday, May 21 IRISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Held on the first and third Thursdays of each month. • FREE BREWHOUSE BLUES JAM • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM Friday, May 22 TIME WARP TEA ROOM OPEN SONGWRITER NIGHT • Time Warp Tea Room • 7PM • Songwriter Night at Time Warp Tea Room runs on the second and fourth Friday of every month. Show up around 7 p.m. with your instrument in tow and sign up to share a couple of original songs with a community of friends down in Happy Holler. • FREE Saturday, May 23 NARROW RIDGE MUSIC JAM • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 7PM • Narrow Ridge invites our friends and neighbors to join us for our open music jam on Saturday, May 23 at our outdoor stage just up the road from our Mac Smith Resource Center at 1936 Liberty Hill Rd, Washburn. This is a non-alcoholic event that is free and open to all ages. Bring your friends, family, blanket or lawn chair, and good cheer. Contributions to the snack table are appreciated but not required (finger foods only, please). For more information contact Mitzi Wood-Von Mizener at 865-497-3603 or community@narrowridge.org. • FREE May 21, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 23

CALENDAR Tuesday, May 26 PRESERVATION PUB SINGER/SONGWRITER NIGHT • Preservation Pub • 7PM • A weekly open mic. OLD-TIME JAM SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Hosted by Sarah Pickle. • FREE Wednesday, May 27 OPEN BLUES JAM • Susan’s Happy Hour • 8PM • FREE Thursday, May 28 SCOTTISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Held on the second and fourth Thursdays of each month. • FREE BREWHOUSE BLUES JAM • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM

DJ AND DANCE NIGHTS

Friday, May 22 THE ART OF HOUSE WEEKENDER DANCE PARTY • Southbound Bar and Grill • 11 p.m. • Featuring resident DJs Rick Styles, Mark B, and Kevin Nowell. 21 and up. Saturday, May 23 THE ART OF HOUSE WEEKENDER DANCE PARTY • Southbound Bar and Grill • 11 p.m. • Featuring resident DJs Rick Styles, Mark B, and Kevin Nowell. 21 and up. Sunday, May 24

Thursday, May 21 - Sunday, May 31

S.I.N. • The Concourse • 9 p.m. • A weekly dance night for service-industry workers—get in free with your ABC license or other proof of employment. ($5 for everybody else.) • 18 and up. Friday, May 29 THE ART OF HOUSE WEEKENDER DANCE PARTY • Southbound Bar and Grill • 11 p.m. • Featuring resident DJs Rick Styles, Mark B, and Kevin Nowell. 21 and up. Saturday, May 30 THE ART OF HOUSE WEEKENDER DANCE PARTY • Southbound Bar and Grill • 11 p.m. • Featuring resident DJs Rick Styles, Mark B, and Kevin Nowell. 21 and up. Sunday, May 31 S.I.N. • The Concourse • 9 p.m. • A weekly dance night for service-industry workers—get in free with your ABC license or other proof of employment. ($5 for everybody else.) • 18 and up. LAYOVER BRUNCH • The Concourse • 12PM • Featuring music by Slow Nasty, Psychonaut, and Saint Thomas Ledoux. Presented by Midnight Voyage Productions on the last Sunday of each month through October. • FREE

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Thursday, May 21 KSO PICNIC IN THE PARK • Greenbelt Park (Maryville) • 7:30PM • Join the Knoxville Symphony Chamber Orchestra in a concert of light pops music at Theater in the Park located on

the Greenway in Maryville, TN. In the case of rain, the concert will be rescheduled for May 22.This concert is free and open to the public; lawn chairs are encouraged. Join James Fellenbaum and the KSO for Picnic in the Park on Tuesday, May 21 at 7:30 pm, sponsored by Clayton Homes, Aubrey’s Restaurants, and Hickory Construction. • FREE

COMEDY AND SPOKEN WORD

Monday, May 25 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. It’s weird and experimental. There is no comedy experience in town that is anything like this and it’s also a ton of fun. Pay what you want. Cost: Free - But Donations Gladly Accepted • FREE Tuesday, May 26 OPEN MIC STANDUP COMEDY • Longbranch Saloon • 8PM • Come laugh until you cry at the Longbranch every Tuesday night. Doors open at 8, first comic at 8:30. No cover charge, all are welcome. Aspiring or experienced comics interested in joining in the fun email us at longbranch.info@gmail.com to learn more, or simply come to the show a few minutes early. • FREE

Spike Collar Comedy Night • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8:30PM • Featuring Trae Crowder, Matt Chadourne, Waylon Whiskey, Shane Rhyne, and Jay Kendrick. 18 and up. • FREE Thursday, May 28 BUDDY VALASTRO: THE CAKE BOSS • Tennessee Theatre • 8PM • For Buddy Valastro, 36, mixing eggs, sugar, butter and flour means a lot more than “making a cake.” As a fourth generation baker, it’s a constant source of pleasure, pride and creativity. Creating amazing cakes connects Buddy with the memory of his father Buddy Sr. and his extended Italian family history. His talent and passion for the family business, Carlo’s Bakery, has earned the straight-talking cake expert the moniker, and TLC TV show, Cake Boss. • $37.50-$74.50 Saturday, May 30 IRA GLASS • Tennessee Theatre • 8PM • Ira Glass is the host and creator of the public radio program This American Life. The show is heard each week by over 2.2 million listeners on more than 500 public radio stations, with another 1.5 million downloading the podcast. • $29.50-$57.50

THEATER AND DANCE

Thursday, May 21 CAGES: FOUR SHORT PLAYS FROM THE SAFTA STAGE • Emporium Center • 7PM • Sundress Academy for the Arts presents four short plays discussing themes of race,

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 21, 2015

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CALENDAR sexuality, and gender. Directed by Erik Schiller. May 21-24. • $5

purposefulness which underlies the antic banter of its characters. May 29-June 14. • $15

Friday, May 22 CAGES: FOUR SHORT PLAYS FROM THE SAFTA STAGE • Emporium Center • 7PM • Sundress Academy for the Arts presents four short plays discussing themes of race, sexuality, and gender. Directed by Erik Schiller. May 21-24. • $12-$15

Saturday, May 30 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: STEEL MAGNOLIAS • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • May 29-June 14. • $15

Saturday, May 23 ANGELA FLOYD SCHOOL FOR THE DANCER SPRING DANCE CONCERT • Knoxville Civic Coliseum • 5PM • $21 Sunday, May 24 CAGES: FOUR SHORT PLAYS FROM THE SAFTA STAGE • Emporium Center • 3PM • Sundress Academy for the Arts presents four short plays discussing themes of race, sexuality, and gender. Directed by Erik Schiller. May 21-24. • $12-$15 Friday, May 29 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: STEEL MAGNOLIAS • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • Concerned with a group of gossipy southern ladies in a small-town beauty parlor, the play is alternately hilarious and touching—and, in the end, deeply revealing of the strength and

Sunday, May 31 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: STEEL MAGNOLIAS • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 3PM • May 29-June 14. • $13

FESTIVALS

Saturday, May 23 BCPL MINI-CON • Blount County Public Library • 10:30AM • Join us at the Blount County Public Library for the kickoff to our Summer Reading Program, MINI-CON, a locally organized comic convention for people of all ages. • FREE Friday, May 29 ROCKY TOP BBQ FEST • World’s Fair Park • 5PM • The Rotary Club of West Knoxville presents The 3rd Annual Rocky Top BBQ Fest. This is a Tennessee State Barbeque cookoff sanctioned by the KCBS. Bring your whole family and enjoy a fun-filled weekend and observe some of the best barbeque chefs in the country and a smorgasbord of

other festivities.Rocky Top BBQ Fest will happen on May 29 -30, 2015 at the World’s Fair Park, and all proceeds will go to support Mobile Meals, Flu Shot Saturday, Pond Gap Elementary, Knox County Schools, 3rd Grade Dictionary Project (all Knox County Schools, West Hills Park, Interfaith Clinic, Friends of the Smokies and many others through the Rotary Club of Bearden. 50 teams will compete for Knoxville’s own sanctioned Tennessee State Barbeque Championship.Hours are Friday, May 29, from 5-10 p.m. and Saturday, May 30, from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. • $15 Saturday, May 30 ROCKY TOP BBQ FEST • World’s Fair Park • 10AM • The Rotary Club of West Knoxville presents The 3rd Annual Rocky Top BBQ Fest. This is a Tennessee State Barbeque cookoff sanctioned by the KCBS. Bring your whole family and enjoy a fun-filled weekend and observe some of the best barbeque chefs in the country and a smorgasbord of other festivities.Rocky Top BBQ Fest will happen on May 29 -30, 2015 at the World’s Fair Park, and all proceeds will go to support Mobile Meals, Flu Shot Saturday, Pond Gap Elementary, Knox County Schools, 3rd Grade Dictionary Project (all Knox County Schools, West Hills Park, Interfaith Clinic, Friends of the Smokies and many others through the Rotary Club of Bearden. 50 teams will compete for Knoxville’s own sanctioned Tennessee State Barbeque Championship.Hours are Friday, May 29, from 5-10 p.m. and Saturday, May 30, from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. • $15 DRAGON BOAT FESTIVAL • Melton Lake Park (Oak Ridge) • The second annual Oak Ridge Dragon Boat Festival will be held Saturday, May 30, at the Oak Ridge Marina and Pavilion in Melton Lake Park. Registration is now open! This year the festival will be preceded by an evening social event and beer garden on Friday, May 29, at the park. For more information, visit http://oakridge. racedragonboats.com/.

SPORTS AND RECREATION

Saturday, May 23 KTC EXPO 10K AND 5K • West Jackson Avenue • 8 AM • KTC’s signature 10K starts near the 100 block of Gay Street and runs through downtown Knoxville in its 38th year. • $40-$50

*REPEAT REPEAT Preservation Pub (28 Market Square) • Friday, May 22 • 10 p.m. • $3 • 21 and up • preservationpub.com

Nashville up-and-comers *repeat repeat get garage-rock revivalism just right on their debut album, Bad Latitude, released in 2014. Borrowing from surf rock, ’60s girl groups, ’90s indie pop, and the Nuggets compilation, the band nails a balance of sweet hooks, dreamy harmonies, and bracing guitar riffs on Bad Latitude, and they do it with impressive pop economy—of the album’s 10 songs, only three last for more than three minutes. It’s a pleasant, unassuming sugar rush that leaves you wanting more. Credit the band’s chemistry to the playful interaction between guitarist/singer Jared Corder and his wife, Kristyn, who joined the band during its first recording session—the winning results are apparent on the band’s very first single, “12345678,” a minor hit on Nashville indie radio that anchors the full-length debut. With Chief Scout and Not in the Face. (Matthew Everett)

Saturday, May 30 SWEETWATER CLEAN SWEEP • Volunteer Landing • 10AM • Full day of water activities at Volunteer Landing with Legacy Parks, Billy Lush Board Shop, and SweetWater Brewing Company. SUP Yoga, Paddleboard Demos, then at 2 p.m. help clean up the water along Volunteer Landing in the SweetWater Clean Sweep River Clean Up. An after party at the Outdoor Adventure Center featuring SweetWater products will see someone win a SweetWater Paddleboard. HARD KNOX ROLLER GIRLS • Knoxville Civic Coliseum • 5PM • Knoxville’s rollicking roller-derby team takes on the Richland County Regulators, from Columbia, S.C. • $10-$12

FILM SCREENINGS

Monday, May 25 BIRDHOUSE OPEN SCREEN • The Birdhouse • 9PM • Birdhouse Walk-In Theater and SAFTA films are proud to present Birdhouse Open Screen. Open Screen is an May 21, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 25

CALENDAR open-mic night for local filmmakers and film lovers happening the last Monday of every month at the Birdhouse located in the Fourth and Gill neighborhood. Videos can be of any length, from 1 minute to 1 hour, and anyone can submit. The screenings are free and open to the public. If you are interested in screening any of your work or have questions contact Blake Wahlert at: birdhousewalkin@gmail.com. • FREE Tuesday, May 26 TWIN PEAKS VIEWING PARTY • The Birdhouse • 7PM • Bi-weekly viewing parties for every single episode of the cult TV series. Attendees encouraged to dress as their favorite characters. Trivia, Twin Peaks-themed giveaways, donuts and coffee, plus some surprises. Trivia begins at 7:00pm with viewing to follow at 8:00pm. • FREE

ART

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts 556 Parkway (Gatlinburg) MAY 18-AUG. 22 Arrowmont 2015 Instructor Exhibition Art Market Gallery 422 S. Gay St. MAY 1-30: Artwork by Inna Nasonova Knox and Mary Saylor Bliss Home 29 Market Square

Thursday, May 21 - Sunday, May 31

MAY 1-31: Artwork by Sarah McFalls, part of the International Biscuit Festival The District Gallery 5113 Kingston Pike APRIL 24-MAY 30: Automata: Art Cars by Clark Stewart Downtown Gallery 106 S. Gay St. MAY 1-31 Richard J. LeFevre’s Civil War series of mixed-media works 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. MAY 1-31: Artwork by the Artist Association of Monroe County and the Community Artist League of Athens; Clarence Brown Theatre Costume ad Prop Art; International Biscuit Festival Art Exhibition; Thoughts and Things by Marty Elmer; and artwork by Graceila Barlesi Snyder. Ewing Gallery 1715 Volunteer Blvd. MAY 1-JUNE 12: UT BFA Honors Exhibition Ijams Nature Center 2915 Island Home Ave. WEDNESDAY, MAY 27: Michael Hardin demonstrates

YOUR WORLD. YOUR WORDS. Learn more at WUOT.org Visit the booth at Suttree’s High Gravity Tavern May 28 • 6PM

matchstick art as part of Ijams Brown Bag Series. • 12PM Knoxville Museum of Art 1050 World’s Fair Park Drive MAY 8-AUG. 2: Intellectual Property Donor, an exhibit of work by Evan Roth. See Spotlight on page 26. 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. Liz-Beth and Co. 7240 Kingston Pike MAY 8-23: Birds in Art, featuring artwork by Jim Gray, Theresa Shelton, Daniel Miller, Steven McGovney, and Hill Dee Fisher. McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture 1327 Circle Park Drive JAN. 22-MAY 24: Drawn From the McClung Museum, an exhibition of work by 27 artists inspired by the McClung Museum collection. Ongoing: The Flora and Fauna of Catesby, Mason, and Audubon and Life on the Roman Frontier. Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church 2931 Kingston Pike MAY 8-JUNE 30: Knoxville Watercolor Society Exhibit. An opening reception will be held on Friday, May 8, from 6-7:30 p.m. Urban Bar

109 N. Central St. APRIL 3-MAY 30: Paintings and drawings by Charlie Pogue.

LECTURES, READINGS, AND BOOK SIGNINGS

Sunday, May 31 CINDY MCMAHON: ‘FRESH WATER FROM OLD WELLS’ • Union Ave Books • 2PM • McMahon will read from her memoir, set in Georgia during the Civil Rights Movement. • FREE

FAMILY AND KIDS’ EVENTS

Friday, May 22 S.T.E.A.M. KIDS • Blount County Public Library • 4PM • Every week will be a different adventure, from science experiments to art projects and everything in between. Materials will be limited and available on a first come, first served basis. For grades K-5. • FREE Tuesday, May 26 LEGO CLUB • Blount County Public Library • 4PM • Kids will complete different themed and timed Lego Challenges, as well as have some time for free building. • FREE

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 21, 2015

CALENDAR Friday, May 29 S.T.E.A.M. KIDS • Blount County Public Library • 4PM • For grades K-5. • FREE Saturday, May 30 FAMILY FUN DAY • McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture • 1PM • Join us for a free Family Fun Day featuring activities, crafts, tours, and more. We’ll be exploring Ancient Egypt, and making our own artistic creations. All materials will be provided. The program is free and open to the public. Reservations are not necessary. • FREE

CLASSES

Thursday, May 21 AARP DRIVER SAFETY CLASS • John T. O’Conner Senior Center • 12PM • Call Carolyn Rambo at 382-5822. GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. KNOX COUNTY MASTER GARDENERS: KILLER TOMATOES • Humana Guidance Center • 3:15PM • Join Extension Master Gardeners Joe Pardue and Marcia Griswold for a class on growing killer tomatoes. Whether the newest garden center hybrid or Grandma’s ancient heirlooms, everybody’s favorite garden vegetable is the tomato. Learn how to select varieties, start seeds, plant seedlings, fertilize, water, prune, sucker and harvest a bountiful crop. For more information call 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 Saturday, May 23 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. Monday, May 25 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 5:30PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. Tuesday, May 26 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. Thursday, May 28 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. BELLY DANCE LEVELS 1 AND 2 • Knox Dance Worx • 8PM • Call (865) 898-2126 or email alexia@alexia-dance.com. • $12 Friday, May 29 AARP DRIVER SAFETY CLASS • Halls Senior Center • 12PM • Call Carolyn Rambo at 382-5822. Saturday, May 30 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.

MEETINGS Sunday, May 24

SILENT MEDITATION SUNDAYS • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 11AM • Narrow Ridge invites you to join us for our Silent Meditation Gathering on Sundays from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm at Narrow Ridge’s Mac Smith Resource Center (1936 Liberty Hill Rd., Washburn). The gatherings are intended to be inclusive of people of all faiths as well as those who do not align themselves with a particular religious denomination. For more information contact Mitzi Wood-Von Mizener at 865-497-3603 or community@narrowridge.org. • FREE Monday, May 25 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. Wednesday, May 27 THE BOOKAHOLICS BOOK GROUP • Union Ave Books • 12PM • Union Ave Books’ monthly book discussion group. • FREE Sunday, May 31 SILENT MEDITATION SUNDAYS • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 11AM • FREE

ETC.

Thursday, May 21 NEW HARVEST PARK FARMERS MARKET • New Harvest Park • 3PM • FREE FOOD TRUCK PARK • Historic Southern Railway Station • 6PM • Knoxville’s food trucks land at the Southern Railway Station in downtown on the third Thursday of each month. Featuring The Breezy Weenie Food Trailer, Gonzo Gourmet, Forks on the Road, HOLY SMOKIN BBQ, Poutine Mobile, Savory and Sweet Truck, Tootsie Truck, The Lunch Box, Hawg Dawg’s, and Retro Taco. Friday, May 22 LAKESHORE PARK FARMERS’ MARKET • Lakeshore Park • 3PM • FREE HARVEY MILK DAY 2015 • Communications Workers of America Local 3805 • 6PM • Knox County Young Democrats, Knox County Democratic Party and Tennessee Equality Project invite you to Knoxville’s first ever Harvey Milk Day 2015. We will be screening the film “Milk” starring Academy Award winner Sean Penn. After the film, we will have a discussion on Harvey’s life and message and how it applies to us in East Tennessee. Saturday, May 23 OAK RIDGE FARMERS’ MARKET • Historic Jackson Square • 8AM MARKET SQUARE FARMERS’ MARKET • Market Square • 9AM • FREE NARROW RIDGE MEMORIAL WILDFLOWER SEED SOWING CEREMONY • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 6PM • Narrow Ridge invites friends and neighbors to join us as we remember loved ones who have died in a wildflower seed sowing ceremony in our Wildflower Memorial Garden. For more information contact Mitzi Wood-Von Mizener at 865-497-3603 or community@narrowridge. org. • FREE Tuesday, May 26 EBENEZER ROAD FARMERS’ MARKET • Ebenezer United Methodist Church • 3PM • FREE Wednesday, May 27 MARKET SQUARE FARMERS’ MARKET • MARKET SQUARE • 11AM • FREE

Thursday, May 28 NEW HARVEST PARK FARMERS MARKET • New Harvest Park • 3PM • FREE Friday, May 29 FRIENDS OF THE KNOX COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY BOOK SALE • Bearden High School • 2PM • This year’s annual used book sale May 29-June 1 has families in mind: books for students to help them maintain their reading skills over the summer, activities for children while Mom and Dad shop, and bargains to keep peoples’ wallets in good shape. The sale will kick off with a Members Preview Day on Friday, May 29, 2–8 p.m. and will be open to the public Saturday, May 30–Monday, June 1. The purpose of the sale remains the same—to raise funds for the Knox County Public Library (KCPL) and to offer affordable books to everyone in the community. The last day of the sale, Monday, June 1, is the popular $5 Bag Sale. Area teachers and librarians are invited to shop $5 per bag before everyone else, on Sunday, from 4-6 p.m. School purchase orders will be accepted. • FREE LAKESHORE PARK FARMERS’ MARKET • Lakeshore Park • 3PM • FREE Saturday, May 30 OAK RIDGE FARMERS’ MARKET • Historic Jackson Square • 8AM MARKET SQUARE FARMERS’ MARKET • Market Square • 9AM • FREE THE RETROPOLITAN CRAFT FAIR • Historic Southern Railway Station • 11AM • The Retropolitan Craft Fair is a hand selected indie-craft marketplace featuring the South East’s finest talents in contemporary craft and design while also incorporating upcycled goods with a funky, vintage inspired, and fabulously quirky vibe. Our fair brings makers out of their studios to celebrate all things artsy, crafted, and most importantly retropolitan. Each vendor is chosen exclusively after a juried event. They are then curated based on one-of-a-kind products, creativity, and retropolitan swagger.With food trucks, wine, and shopping - The Retropolitan Craft Fair is a great way to spend a lovely May Saturday!Free admission for all ages. • FREE FRIENDS OF THE KNOX COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY BOOK SALE • Bearden High School • 11AM • FREE Sunday, May 31 FRIENDS OF THE KNOX COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY BOOK SALE • Bearden High School • 1PM • FREE

Send your events to calendar@knoxmercury.com

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY 27

FOOD

D ir t to Fork

grease, and flour! I know because I read the schmantzy recipe being peddled by miller-to-the-hipsters, King Arthur Flour. I am pretty glum about this because while their online recipe requires 2 1/2 pounds of oil for frying, and a deep fryer, it declines to tell me exactly what it is that makes people like these things. No cultural references, and no ingredient that couldn’t be just as easily employed to make, say, perfectly respectable blintzes with 2 1/4 pounds of oil left over. I say, until we learn the details—and we will never learn the details—leave the funnel cakes to the 4-Hers.

DEVILED EGGS

Mystery Ingredient Why are certain foods so suspiciously addictive? BY ROSE KENNEDY

ort of amusing, isn’t it, when people get all worried about yeast in the Taco Bell beef filling.* I mean, when you only have $1.79 in change at the end of the night, no one is saying Taco Bell beef is something to look forward to. There’s little danger someone is going to get addicted to it when there are better things out there. So why aren’t people worrying about other foods instead? I keep a list of suspect items served by popular restaurants and even at our own homes and potlucks. They make my list by being mysteriously addictive, lusted after, something a person would race granny to the end of the buffet for the last one. I’d say, “You know the ones I mean,” but I think I’m the only one who’s detected them. These are foods

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 21, 2015

that just don’t add up. I spend a lot of time pondering this; not worrying about it, exactly, since nothing on my list is going to kill anyone except as part of the Carnival Food Cleanse diet. I just feel like I’ve missed something. I could list dozens, maybe more, but with spring easing into summer, I’ll stick with three currently being waved in my face:

FUNNEL CAKE

Okay, it smells good, even in air tainted with carnival sweat. It’s a rite of passage to eat one at a fair, if you are lucky enough to go to a fair this summer. But baseball boosters and regular home cooks are starting to make them, too. They are 100 percent powdered sugar (which might have GMO cornstarch in it, don’cha know),

These are made of boiled eggs and ingredients you would never be seen with in public. I’m pretty sure the only reason Food City even sells dry mustard anymore is because cooks hustle out under cover of early morning carpool-driver duties to purchase it to make deviled eggs. White vinegar, paprika, sometimes mayo, sometimes sweet pickle juice—I am not making this up, that’s what goes in the classic version of these much ballyhooed “treats.” And the recipes are everywhere these days. Rachael Ray, in the “we give you a year of recipes we prepared at home” cookbook she co-authored with her husband, cooked three kinds of deviled eggs for one meal. None of them listed crack, or even MSG, so I remain baffled. People have special plates for deviled eggs. Food safety experts constantly warn us to protect them from going bad at picnics. I am wondering if there is a finish on those vintage plates that transmogrifies them into something palatable. Because they taste like, you know, mushed up egg yolks inside the whites of boiled eggs. I don’t think even the current trend of replacing the obligatory green olive slice on top with a square of caramelized bacon—like they do on Chop House’s $7 (for four halves!) Deviled Eggs with Brown Sugar Bacon appetizer—explains the allure. Maybe people flock to the deviled-egg cult because they are so hard to make,

bearing the boiled-egg smell and all. Or maybe, well … that’s all I got.

PISTACHIOS

They are okay-tasting and are healthy like most tree nuts. But they are what I can only call costly—on sale at EarthFare for $8.98 per pound in the shells, saving $2.51. But I constantly see pistachios being called for among the spring recipe hawkers. My venerable buddy, Eating Well, wants you to use them to make Orange-&-Pistachio Crusted Pork Tenderloin in the January/February issue (as if you didn’t have Shake and Bake for Pork sitting right on the counter), or Lamb with Mint, Orange, and Pistachio in March/April. The aforementioned Ray puts them in pesto—half pine nuts (possibly the only edible tree-related substance aside from truffles that are more expensive than pistachios) and half pistachios. So now you get to keep them both around the kitchen awaiting your next batch of impress-the-neighbors pasta, instead of putting those nut funds toward a down payment on a metal funnel-cake form. And those shells. The first few are fun. The next two batter your cuticles. Then you are in oyster-digging and shucking-caliber exercise mode for the next 20 to 30. And then there are the hermetically sealed ones left at the bottom of the bag that yield to no man or power drill. They eventually make everyone miserable— so what secret hold do these shell-on pistachios have on us? I’ll leave you to think about it there, since it’s time to go get some Red Burrito hard-shell beef tacos. They are just pretty good, and I know why they’re addictive—they taste just like the Old El Paso/iceberg lettuce ones we ate in the ’70s. But fear not, I’ll pick this back up in a few months with three more candidates for autumn. Until then, just go on and drink your Pumpkin Coffee. ◆ * It is far more amusing when I go to the Taco Bell website and find that the ingredients also include potato, tapioca, cocoa powder, potassium chloride, and oats that—parentheses credit Taco Bell, sic—“(contains wheat).”

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY 29

’BYE

Spir it of the Staircase

BY MATTHEW FOLTZ-GRAY

Thank You! 30

KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 21, 2015

We’d like to thank the following readers who recently made contributions to the paper through PayPal on our site.

MARY ENGLISH • ROBERT FREELAND • MATTHEW RANGE • THOMAS VON CLEF If you like what you read in the Knoxville Mercury, please consider supporting us with a donation. More information is available at knoxmercury.com/donate.

Restless Native

Escape from Rose Hill Knoxville as a way out from hard-scrabble Appalachia BY CHRIS WOHLWEND

orma showed up at my grandparents’ house sometime in the late 1940s. In her teens, she had left her home in rural southwestern Virginia the day before, catching the bus to Knoxville in hopes of finding a job. The trip was Norma’s first to Knoxville, and she had exited the bus when it reached Burlington, mistakenly believing the business bustle she was seeing meant that she had reached the city. The highway, U.S. 11, became Magnolia Avenue at Burlington, morphing into a prosperous-looking four-lane. She was unaware that she was still several miles from downtown. Noticing a help-wanted sign in the window of Kay’s ice-cream parlor at Magnolia and Crawford Avenue, she walked in and applied. She was immediately hired as counter help. Next, she needed a place to live, and my grandparents’ house was only a block from her new place of employment. My grandmother let Norma stay in her spare bedroom, and she helped around the house for her board. Soon, she was helping my mother, who was trying to manage me, a handful like most toddlers, and my new baby sister. Norma began spending a lot of time at our place, within walking distance of

my grandparents’ house. And she soon added another job, working the night shift at Standard Knitting Mills—she could get there on the city bus that stopped in front of Kay’s, exiting at Winona Street and walking a few blocks north to the Standard plant. I was too young to understand all this, and my memories of Norma from that time aren’t clear. But I knew that she was important to our household, and to my grandmother’s as well. But Norma’s ambition went beyond the mill and the ice-cream counter. She saved her money until she had enough to enroll in beauty school. By the time I was a student at Park Junior High School in Park City, she had married and was the proprietor of her own beauty salon in Burlington. Soon, she was rearing her own family. Years later, my mother and dad provided details about Norma, whose tale was typical of the time and place. It was a hard-scrabble story of want, ambition, and determination. Norma Jean Lee had grown up in Rose Hill, Va, and did not see a future in what was around her. Belying its name, Rose Hill is a mean stop in coal-mining country, another ridge-side Appalachian hamlet where residents

eke out a living as best they can. There were several brothers and sisters. And, according to my mother, the family did not want Norma Jean heading south to the metropolis of Knoxville. A couple of months after her arrival in Burlington, my dad said, Norma was confronted by her mother, who had ridden the bus to Knoxville to take her daughter back home. Norma refused and there were shouts and then tears. When her mother left, my dad remembered, Norma looked at him and said, “I don’t care if they do come after me, I’m never going back to Rose Hill.” Next, a younger sister came down to see if she could persuade Norma to return. She succumbed to Knoxville’s city charms. “Norma took her on the bus downtown to the movie at the Tennessee Theater,” my mother said. “They got caught in the rain, and got soaked.

’BYE

Norma’s sister only had the dress she was wearing, so she had to stay another day until her dress dried out.” She caught the Trailways back to Rose Hill the next day, returning without her sister. Appalachia’s isolated hills and valleys are dotted with Rose Hills, places where the rock-encrusted land surrendered a limited living to its occupiers, grudgingly providing just enough for a family to survive. The jobs that were available—involving coal primarily—were backbreaking and dangerous. Post-World War II, many of the natives had witnessed the larger world and wanted a piece of it. Many, like Norma, were successful in escaping, even if was only a hundred miles away to Knoxville, the unofficial capital of Appalachia. True to her vow, Norma only returned when she died in 1991, aged 62, to be buried in Rose Hill’s Daniels Cemetery.

BY IAN BLACKBURN AND JACK NEELY

Appalachia’s isolated hills and valleys are dotted with Rose Hills, places where the rock-encrusted land surrendered a limited living to its occupiers.

May 21, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 31