Issue 5 - April 9, 2015 by Knoxville Mercury

APRIL 9, 2015 KNOXMERCURY.COM

IS IT SPRING YET?

1 / N.5

Chyna Brackeen has cultivated the Rhythm N’ Blooms Music Festival into Knoxville’s most popular musical event

NEWS

SCRUFFY CITIZEN

MUSIC

INSIDE THE VAULT

This Year’s Sex Week is Outrage-Free

UT’s Amazing, Unloved University Center

Dweezil Zappa on Frank Zappa

Guy Carawan’s Journey Across the South

April 9, 2015 Volume 01 / Issue 05 knoxmercury.com “Spring is nature’s way of saying ‘Let’s party!’” —Robin Williams

14 Sonic Blooms COVER STORY

The history of the Rhythm N’ Blooms Music Festival—Knoxville’s biggest music fest, and now an unofficial civic marker of the arrival of spring—is dotted with happenstance and luck, both good and bad. In fact, its evolution over the course of six years, from a well-intended roots-music complement to the Dogwood Arts Festival to a stand-alone event expected this year to draw 20,000 people from around the country, parallels pretty closely the career of its creator, Chyna Brackeen. Matthew Everett profiles the festival and its creator.

NEWS

12 Sex Week’s New Generation

If you like what you’ve seen so far in our weekly paper, be sure to tell our advertisers as you patronize their businesses!

DEPARTMENTS

OPINION

A&E

4 5

Howdy Start Here: Ghost Signs, Believe It or Knox!, Public Affairs, Quote Factory ’Bye Finish There: At This Point by Stephanie Piper, Crooked Street Crossword by Ian Blackburn and Jack Neely, Spirit of the Staircase by Matthew Foltz-Gray

8 10

The Scruffy Citizen Jack Neely recalls some historic moments that occurred at UT’s soon-to-be-demolished University Center. Architecture Matters George Dodds considers why the UT UC is being torn down, and why there’s a lack of outcry. Small Planet Patrice Cole hopes local builders comply with our toothless Ridge and Hilltop Protection Plan.

One of North Broadway’s last remaining historic houses, the Craftsman-style Howard House, may be demolished to make way for a large retail food center.

The University of Tennessee’s infamous Sex Week is going on right now—and you probably haven’t heard much about it. Why not? Rose Kennedy finds out.

Tell ’em You Saw Their Ad in the Mercury!

Letters

13 Homewrecker?

21 22 23 24 25

CALENDAR Program Notes A Black Lillies update, and Nick Huinker revisits the sole release by the Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight. Inside the Vault Eric Dawson shares the letters of folk legend Guy Carawan. Music Interview Dweezil Zappa Classical Music Alan Sherrod previews UT Opera Theatre’s The Magic Flute

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Spotlights: Sir Richard Bishop and the Hot Club of San Francisco Talk Show: Jay Nations reflects on the 30-year legacy of Raven Records.

FOOD & DRINK

Home Palate Dennis Perkins gets some breakfast at OliBea. Also: Other notable breakfast noshes.

Books Kim Gordon’s Girl in a Band Movie Review Furious 7 April 9, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 3

LETTERS SO MANY MORE QUESTIONS

Wrestling with the decision to vaccinate or not remains one of my hardest choices of parenting. Once you decide to research and consider the options, you stop automatically accepting a doctor’s (stranger’s) recommendations. This article [“Big Shots” by S. Heather Duncan, March 26, 2015] misinformed by implying there is only one “right” choice—vaccinate! I hope by offering these questions to reopen the conversation, to acknowledge the gray areas, and to get a sense of the depth of this topic. To parents who are considering not vaccinating or following an alternate schedule: • How much do you trust the medical community? What are some areas of trust? Mistrust? • Am I committed and intellectually able to do the research surrounding vaccines? Examples include recognizing signs of illness, comprehending a scientific study, and understanding potential side effects. • How comfortable am I with my decision in the face of disapproval from authority, family members, friends, community, and media? • Where will my support come from? Do I have support from my partner, religious community, friends, or community groups? • If you do not vaccinate and your child contracts an illness that has a vaccine, are you prepared for that? Would it change your decision? To parents who vaccinate on schedule: • What are the potential side effects of vaccines? How long should I watch for these? Where do I report side effects? • How much protection does each vaccine provide against the illness? Is it life-long? Is there a way to test to see if my child already has immunity before getting a vaccine? How likely is my child to contract the illness without the vaccine? How long has this version of the vaccine been available? • Should I allow my child to receive a vaccine if s/he is sick? • How can I contribute to my 4

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

child’s medical care? What do I need to learn about before my doctor’s visit? • Is there ever a time when you would choose not to follow a pediatrician’s recommendation?

T-shirts and offering them to your readers. I think they would be popular.

To doctors: • How can I build trust with parents? • What steps am I taking to ensure that parents understand the potential side effects of vaccines? • Are you able to be non-confrontational when parents disagree with your vaccine recommendations? • Should children be limited in their choices of physicians because they are unvaccinated? What are the insurance financial ramifications of accepting unvaccinated children? Where should these children receive care?

ED. NOTE: We’re working on it! First up, we will be producing Knoxville Mercury hoodies for some of our Kickstarter supporters. Then we will start looking at creating other branded items to sell or offer as prizes/bonuses. We’ve got so many plans, yet so few staffers…

To non-parents: • Have you seen the myriad changes that come along with becoming a parent? Is your opinion on this issue influenced by the absence of the parenting experience, which includes responsibility and care for another person 24/7 for 18+ years?

• 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.

I sincerely hope the Mercury will print a follow-up article that broadens the conversation and adds depth. That would much better represent the Mercury in its stated mission of being “devoted to educating and connecting Knoxville’s many different communities.” Rebekka Jackson Knoxville

WHERE IS THE LICENSED APPAREL?

I’ve been enjoying the Knoxville Mercury and hope it is very successful. In the March 19 edition, I was looking at the “Mercury Selfies.” When I saw the picture of the couple each holding the inaugural copy, at first glance, I thought the man had on a shirt with the logo. I realized that I was mistaken, but thought, “What a great shirt it would make!” Perhaps, you might want to consider putting that front cover on

Judy Rizzo Knoxville

CORRECTION

In last week’s cover story profiling Randy Boyd, we misidentified the CEO of Radio Systems Corporation; his correct name is Willie Wallace, not “Watson.”

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR GUIDELINES

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

Delivering Fine Journalism Since 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

Victor Agreda Jr. Chris Barrett Ian Blackburn Patrice Cole Eric Dawson George Dodds Matthew Foltz-Gray 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 ILLUSTRATOR

Ben Adams

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

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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! BY Z. HERACLITUS KNOX

GHOST SIGNS BY BUD RIES

Peter Staub (1827-1904) was one of Knoxville’s most influential Knoxvillians, built Knoxville’s famous opera house, and served two nonsequential terms as mayor. He was also a U.S. consul to Switzerland, the country where he was born. Staub lived a long life, dying at age 77, but old age was not the cause. HE WAS KILLED BY A RUNAWAY HORSE!

In the heyday of painted signs, Coca Cola was prolific in its advertising. There are at least four signs still in downtown Knoxville; this extra large one in is nearby Clinton.

QUOTE FACTORY

Walnut Street, the address of the Knoxville Mercury, was for decades known as CROOKED STREET! It got that name because of the jag it was obliged to take around the James Park house, which still exists as the headquarters of the Gulf & Ohio Railroad.

“ There’s accidents with bicycles in parks, should we outlaw bicycles? —House Republican Caucus Chairman Glen Casada, R-Franklin, responding to a reporter asking about the “guns-in-parks” bill and whether it might increase the chance of shooting accidents involving children at parks.

Thanks to its proliferation of textile mills, like Standard Knitting Mill, which specialized in T-shirts and hosiery, in the early 20th century Knoxville sometimes marketed itself as THE UNDERWEAR CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!

PUBLIC AFFAIRS

4/9 CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL CALL MEETING 4/11 26TH ANNUAL RIVER RESCUE THURSDAY

5:30 p.m., Small Assembly Room, City County Building. It’s been three long years in the making, but now City Council at last has a new 38-page sign ordinance to review. Will interstate signs get limited to 40 feet in height? Stay tuned!

SATURDAY

10 a.m.-2 p.m., clean-up sites along the Tennessee River. Ijams Nature Center, the City of Knoxville, and Living Lands & Water are organizing this Tennessee River clean-up effort taking place at over 50 sites along more than 50 miles. To volunteer, contact Sarah Brobst at 865-577-4717 ex 124 or email her at sbrobst@ijams.org.

4/13 HOME ENERGY SAVINGS FAIR MONDAY

10 a.m.-2 p.m., Community Action Committee building (2247 Western Ave.). Free. Knoxville Scores, a public-awareness group tasked with promoting local energy efficiency (and who could really use a new website), is presenting this fair devoted to saving energy at home. Exhibitors include local organizations such as SEEED and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, government offices, and local energy companies. Info: knoxvillescores.org.

4/15 BOOKS SANDWICHED IN WEDNESDAY

Noon, East Tennessee History Center (601 S. Gay St.) Knox County Public Library’s monthly book program features Knoxville attorney Wanda Sobieski discussing A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power by Jimmy Carter.

April 9, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 5

SCRUFFY CITIZEN

So Long, UC The university’s student center was amazing without ever being beloved BY JACK NEELY

o drop in on the University Center. It hasn’t been much heralded, but this month is your last chance to visit a local institution. It’ll be demolished in a few weeks. That’s not news; its demolition was first publicly announced eight years ago. It had been on the drawing board for some years before that. They’ll build a much-bigger student center, even though the University of Tennessee is hardly bigger. In fact, in total students, UT’s a little smaller than it was when I was in school, 35 years ago. But folks in the university business agree, if you talk to them privately, that it’s about attracting teenagers, and today’s teenagers demand luxury. They demand extraordinary luxury, even beyond what they have any reason to expect when they’re grownup professionals. La Bohème is so 19th century. College is posh now. Maybe the new building will do the trick. But some personal appreciation for the old one seems called for. Everybody’s would be different, but here’s mine. First envisioned in 1950 as a “Student-Faculty Center,” this building has been UT’s student union ever since 1954, the early days of television and rock ’n’ roll. Its origin involves a very strange story often simplified. I’ll tell it in this space later this month. For 61 years, it has served as an

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

intellectual forum, bringing some of the great thinkers and performers and creators of the era to one place. It’s also been a great place to get an extraordinarily cheap bag of chips and Coke. Also to go bowling. The first time I ever bowled—I was about 9, I think—was there, in the basement. Three decades later, I took my kids there to go bowling. They were better at it. One of my life’s regrets was that I considered, and chose to skip, the Tom Waits show in the UC auditorium, in

The first time I ever dared to taste yogurt was there, at a restaurant then called the Rafters, an odd name for a basement cafeteria. It was the ’70s, and I became an addict. You may consider this cheating the harsh reality of life, but for three years after I graduated I found myself in the UC almost daily. The cafeteria was still a handy resource for a good cheap meal, and after supper I often went upstairs to hear a lecture or see another interesting old movie in the auditorium. I was a better student after graduation than I was when I was enrolled. Sometimes the UC was a lightning rod. Remember the controversy about Philip Pearlstein’s unsettling nudes, on display in the corridors, in the ’80s? I didn’t get it. I didn’t like them or hate them. I saw bluesman Albert Collins play guitar there, in the same room where I later heard legendary ghostbusters Ed and Lorraine Warren. And then Norman Mailer. One column can’t contain its history. A list of other literary figures who have lectured there includes playwright Tennessee Williams, poet Allen Tate, novelists Saul Bellow, James Dickey, Joseph Heller, and Kurt Vonnegut. Pearl S. Buck, who in 1938 became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, spoke there in 1967. Historian Bernadotte Schmitt, UT’s first alumnus Pulitzer Prize-winner, spoke there in 1957.

Humorists from Art Buchwald to Margaret Cho have spoken there. And Bill Nye the Science Guy. Frank Zappa gave a very frank talk there in April 1969, an audio recording of which has gotten around on the Internet.

1978. He did two shows in a row there, in the days when he was using gas pumps for props and singing sad, beautiful songs. I remember seeing the little posters for it outside the cafeteria. It was five bucks. I wasn’t sure I could justify it. He didn’t return to Knoxville for 30 years.

Robert Lowell, one of the best-known American poets of the 20th century, gave the final reading of his entire career in the Shiloh Room, in May 1977. An alcoholic with a serious heart problem, he died a few weeks later. I always thought there should be a plaque.

Regional figures like Bobbie Ann Mason, John Egerton, Lee Smith, Alex Haley, John Siegenthaler, and Andrew Young all spoke there. President Lyndon Johnson stopped his motorcade in front of the UC in May 1964, to get out and shake a few dozen strangers’ hands. That was gutsy, considering what had happened to his boss not six months earlier. Yippie Jerry Rubin spoke there about 15 years later. President Ronald Reagan was there for a few hours in 1985 when he presided over a technology symposium in the ballroom. With him was the whole White House press corps, including Helen Thomas and Sam Donaldson, who reported on the occasion. Humorists from Art Buchwald to Margaret Cho have spoken there. And Bill Nye the Science Guy. Frank Zappa gave a very frank talk there in April 1969, an audio recording of which has gotten around on the Internet. Tragic, short-lived folksinger Phil Ochs performed in front of the building, in 1970. You’d think some awareness of that heritage, of all the major world thinkers and artists who have convened at the University Center, would be a selling point for a college. I don’t know that it ever was. I had to do a few hours of digging to research this column. The UC was central to the whole antiwar Student Strike of May 1970. And of course there was the Marion Greenwood legend. The muralist— she’s soon to be the subject of a biography—painted her “Singing Mural” for the ballroom in 1955. After it was damaged during the most chaotic weekend of the Strike, and some called the painting controversial, it was fastidiously concealed with paneling, hidden there for decades. Saved, it will soon be on display at the Knoxville Museum of Art. The UC has some history. But is there something about modernist architecture that tends to shed affection? The UC should be a famous and beloved building. I can’t tell that it is. If it were a nominee for the National Register of Historic Places, it would be a slam-dunk. But it’s being torn down, and there’s not a whole lot of demonstrating about that fact. For the last few years it’s been on Knox Heritage’s Fragile Fifteen list, but I’ve met only a few—and there are a few— who regret its loss.

Cripple Creek For the second time, a low-lying area just west of the Old City serves as a main venue for the Dogwood Arts Festival’s annual live-music party known as Rhythm N Blooms. The East Jackson Avenue may look like it was never anything but parking lots and warehouses and the underside of a highway. However, it was once a high-density residential district known as “Cripple Creek.” It got its name around 1880 because it’s the area defined by where First Creek (now partly underground) bows sharply to the east, as if crooked, or crippled. It was a thicket of shacks, saloons, pool halls, brothels, and “herb men,” but music was always part of the scene. In a July, 1900, account, a newspaperman remarked that in the Cripple Creek area “crowds can be seen in all the bars, drinking beer and laughing or dancing” and that the most popular attractions were notable for the fact that many patrons hung around outside the doors “singing or dancing to the music which comes out from the saloon doors.” One creekside bar composed of rough boards nonetheless hosted a “string orchestra.” Jackson Avenue

First Creek

By the 1920s, the area was associated with a few musical groups, including the obscure early blues duo the Two Poor Boys, whose 1931 recording “Cream and Sugar Blues,” includes the line, “Gonna build you a cabin down on Jackson Avenue.” Better known were the Tennessee Chocolate Drops, who lived in the area in the late 1920s, and recorded an instrumental called “Vine Street Drag” (or Rag), a reference to the street the preceded Summit Hill Drive. Carl Martin, Ted Bogan, and Howard Armstrong formed the core of the group, who went on to make a living as musicians in Chicago, and later reunited as “Martin Bogan and Armstrong” to make more recordings in the 1970s. In a “Heartland Series” interview, Willie Seivers of the Tennessee Ramblers-she was perhaps the first female lead guitarist to make country-music recordings--remembered meeting Howard Armstrong at Jackson and Central, and learning blues technique.

Ida Cox (1896-1967), the blues and jazz singer-songwriter nationally famous in the 1920s and ’30s for recordings like her own composition, “Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues,” moved to East Knoxville when she retired after a stroke. For the last 20 years of her life, she did most of her performing as a member of the choir at the Patton Street Church of God, which was near the intersection of Patton and Willow. She made one final jazz recording, the album Blues for Rampart Street, with the Coleman Hawkins Quintet, in 1961.

1903 Sanborn Map courtesy of Knox County Public Library.

Until the 1950s, speakeasies in the East Jackson area sometimes attracted major performers like Cab Calloway. However, with the mass demolitions associated with urban renewal and the construction of James White Parkway in the 1960s, old Cripple Creek

became more industrial, and quieter at night than it had ever been before, but maybe some of its spirit is coming back.

Partly because the Cripple Creek area is recently the subject of developers’ interest, Knox Heritage is bringing a spotlight to the neighborhood by way of their annual photography contest for the Art & Architecture Tour. The Cripple Creek area is a bit of a challenge, because there’s only a little historic architecture left--but to make it easier, they’re including the Old City in the contest boundaries. Photographers should take photos in the area east of Gay to First Creek and Jessamine Street, and submit them to Knox Heritage by April 27. The winning scenes will be the basis of a Cripple Creek Crawl walking tour on June 5. For more information, see www.knoxheritage.org.

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 April 9, 2015

April 9, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 7

ARCHITECTURE MATTERS

The Delible Lightness of Building UT’s new structures reveal a shift in values BY GEORGE DODDS

“’Course I’m respectable. I’m old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.” —Noah Cross, Chinatown (1974)

istory, both long past and recent, demonstrates the veracity of screenwriter Robert Towne’s famous aphorism, voiced by the equally famous John Huston. Leaving aside politicians and sex-industry workers for the moment, our concern is with “ugly buildings,” or, more to the point, unpopular buildings. The great challenge is conserving a structure, ugly or not, long enough to become “respectable” and worthy of conservation or repurposing. The current generation of policy-makers, developers, and designers are the first to confront a problem that is unique to history: what to do with buildings in need of substantive repair and expansion that range in age from 30 to 90 years, designed in a manner that the general public never fully embraced. While all periods of architecture enjoy ebbs and flows of popularity, 20th-century modernism, which began its emigration to the United States during the inter-war years and took hold in the U.S. in key realms only after the war, was never accepted domestically in this country and had mixed success in the governmental and civic arenas. One need only compare the McCarty Holsaple McCarty-designed Lawson McGhee Library (1971) on the

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

corner of Walnut Street and Church Avenue to the Robert A.M. Stern-designed Nashville Public Library (2001) on axis with William Strickland’s State Capitol (1859) to get a clear sense of the American public’s continued disquietude with modernity, particularly when it comes to our public monuments. The casual observer would be forgiven for thinking the Nashville library far closer in age to the Strickland building than to our local library. It’s a curious thing when a building that is now over 40 years old presents a more strikingly “modern” expression than one finished during the current millennium. Not surprisingly, the Lawson McGhee may suffer the fate of all middle-aged “ugly buildings,” as it has long been in need of expansion and updating. Architects, and culture in general, exhausted the 19th and entered the 20th century not having a clue about what or how one ought to design, for the public or privately. Little has changed in that regard during the current epoch. Here in Knoxville, we have our own conflicted architectural histories to confront. And they are legion. Among the recent cases of late is the Carolyn P. Brown Memorial University Center on the University of Tennessee’s main campus. Its imminent demise has garnered virtually no press to date, which speaks volumes. Completed in the mid-1950s, the Brown Center was the first example of 20th-century modernism built on the

Knoxville campus, designed by the local firm Barber McMurry Architects, which was designing some of the finest contemporary architecture in the region at the time. The center was cited, along with several nearby buildings, as deserving of preservation and protected with landmark status in a 2005 report issued by a UT Faculty Senate committee. In 2012, Knox Heritage included it among its annual list of the Fragile Fifteen. While some unfortunate alterations and additions in the 1960s marred its grace, the original building still sports elegant proportions, modest minimal details, and some refined architectural moments inside and out. Moreover, it had appended to it a parking garage designed by one of Knoxville’s finest architects of the post-war period, Robert B. Church III, the demolition of which in March 2012 caused some consternation on campus. The Brown Center will be razed and completely replaced by 2017. Several nearby buildings, also cited in the Faculty Senate report, were demolished along with the garage for the project. The new student center will be 50 percent larger than Brown, comprised of a gaggle of shops, a food court, a multitude of branding opportunities, and an expansive galleria, all of which will have far more in common with West Town Mall than Ayers Hall. Since the new center is financed with student-generated funds, it is unclear if it will be a naming opportunity, as they say in the nonprofit development industry. The financing of its construction notwithstanding, it would seem prudent to identify a donor to endow its maintenance and its adjacent landscape and gardens, particularly as the delay of essential upkeep has become the touchstone of the university’s recent decision to begin an ambitious building campaign of very limited-duration structures (the university center excluded). With shrinking budgets and growing needs, state legislatures, Tennessee’s included, are understandably uninterested is spending money more than once on the same building. How, then, does a major research-oriented institution that traces its roots back to George Washington’s presidency confront such an essential conundrum as this? In doing so, the university has come to the ruthless albeit common sense business model of planning to replace a cheaper grade

of building—largely dormitories—every generation, rather than going hat in hand to Nashville for funds to renovate a building intended to last a century or more. Some will be wholly new construction. Several, however, require the university to demolish brick and concrete dormitories that have already endured for several generations to construct new dorms designed to last for only one. This reality-based strategy of planning the physical future of the state’s flagship campus represents a subtle yet profound shift in values. From the beginning of what we call culture, institutions sponsored buildings programs intended to physically and visibly represent, on a large scale, the highest values of an organization. While values change from one institution to another, they share a constant: time. Institutions are, by definition, intended to endure the vicissitudes of time—to adjust, maintain, to last and outlast. So, too, are the buildings in which they are wrapped. Yet planned obsolescence, long central to the business plan of automobile manufacturers and land developers, is now institutionalized in the building fabric of one of our state’s most important institutions. When major buildings on the state’s flagship campus are equated to commodified educational (or entertainment) delivery devices, it seems critical to note a dip in the barometric pressure, a reordering of things, a change of state. After all, who is represented by these public places if not us? They are not only ours by virtue of the tax dollars that finance them or support their maintenance, they indelibly represent us, our values, our place in time. After all, what are public buildings if not monuments, and what are monuments if not markers of community memory? It seems worth asking, what are we trading in exchange for these more delible places and the erasures they demand, whether it is for a university center or a dormitory? When the efficacy of civilization trumps the difficult conservation of culture, something is lost in its wake. Rethinking Noah Cross’ salty quip, in the end, this is a cultural and political issue far more than an architectural problem. Where some may see only “ugly buildings,” others see monuments to memory that are not nearly as indelible as one may think.

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www.survature.com April 9, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 9

SMALL PLANET

High Ridges, Low Points As development picks up, will builders voluntarily adhere to the Ridge and Hilltop Protection Plan? BY PATRICE COLE

magine yourself somewhere, anywhere in Knox County. Look up from your hand-held device for a moment and regard the landscape around you. What do you see? Buildings, probably, as well as roads, billboards, pavement, maybe lawns and ornamental plantings. From many, if not most, locations you would likely also see a green-clad ridge. Now imagine that ridge denuded of its trees, large areas of bare soil persisting and eroding year after year, tall buildings perched on top and jutting from the steep slopes. Would you feel like you’ve lost something of value? What? Sadly, this exercise doesn’t require a vivid imagination. You can live that experience from many places today in our fair city and county. The Ridge and Hilltop Protection Plan adopted by both local governments a few years ago was intended to address the problems associated with certain kinds of development on our high points, but the non-binding nature of the plan might render it useless. The narrow ridges and valleys that trend northeast to southwest have become a defining characteristic of this region. Development naturally started in the more accessible valleys, leaving the ridges as highly visible bands of forest. While the built environment can and should be

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

pleasing to the eye, patches of green within the urban landscape increase property values and quality of life. Our unique network of linear green spaces adds beauty and outdoor recreation opportunities as well as wildlife habitat. On the other hand, the very nature of those steep higher elevations makes them more vulnerable to deforestation, excessive grading, and visually obtrusive development.

force to study the issue and make recommendations. The task force began frequent meetings in 2008, and was comprised of developers, landscape architects, engineers, foresters, lawyers, conservationists, and city and county officials. The Metropolitan Planning Commission facilitated the process and produced the written plan, which can be accessed from their website (knoxmpc.org). The task force looked at ordinances and guidelines that other Southeastern cities with ridges and mountains had created to limit disturbance in these vulnerable areas while balancing conservation and development interests. Common elements of these ordinances were narrower road standards and shorter building setbacks to reduce the amount of slope that had to be cut away, as well as restrictions on building and utility structure heights to keep them below the average height of the tree canopy. Hundreds of local citizens attended public meetings in 2009 to learn about the task force’s work and express their opinions. There was overwhelming support for conserving the natural character of hillsides and ridges as well as the rights of private property owners. The plan that was eventually adopted focuses on residential construction since that is the most common type of development on steep slopes. Development guidelines focus on adapting structures to the terrain

Knox County commissioners even inserted an amendment making it abundantly clear that this plan has no teeth.

Several developments in recent years had raised concerns about damage to the local scenery, and when KUB erected a water tower rising 180 feet above Chapman Ridge across the river from downtown, the public outcry was sufficient to spur the creation of a joint city-county task

and using construction materials and colors that blend with the surroundings. Tree preservation is encouraged with the recommendation that at least 85 percent of trees within 100 feet of a ridge top be kept in place. Building heights would be limited to 35 feet, a typical three-story building.

Principles are proposed for making utility structures less obtrusive, such as using ground-mounted water tanks instead of towers, tucking them into hollows instead of ridge crests, painting them with earth tones, and keeping the surrounding trees to camouflage them. The plan also suggests several mechanisms for creating natural areas and ridge conservation corridors by giving developers economic incentives, appealing to private and corporate donors, and encouraging public purchase of land with low development potential. Forested ridges could be an excellent addition to our greenway system that is already one of the most extensive in the state, but that is currently almost exclusively in valleys. An analysis of the consequences of implementing the plan concluded that, even with the proposed limits on where and how development could proceed, there is ample opportunity to accommodate growth in Knoxville and Knox County. Open space created by adherence to the plan would increase property values, especially for sites adjacent to parks and trails. Public health and safety would be improved as air pollution, water pollution, and the risks of landslides are reduced. Species richness is highest on the ridges, so there would be ecological benefits. The Ridge and Hilltop Protection Plan was created during the Great Recession when development pressure was at its lowest in many years, but there was of course resistance to anything that would limit what could be done on a parcel of land. Unlike Brentwood in Tennessee, Georgia’s Fulton County, and Asheville, N.C., which have enacted ordinances to protect the value of their ridges and mountaintops, our plan is entirely voluntary. Knox County commissioners even inserted an amendment making it abundantly clear that this plan has no teeth. As the economy continues to recover and the pace of development accelerates, it remains to be seen how well local developers will voluntarily follow the plan’s recommendations. In the absence of regulation, local citizens might need to inspire, encourage, and if necessary admonish our development community to do the right thing. The plan tells them how to do it. We might need to tell them why.

FEATURING MUSIC BY

KIRK FLETA | DIXIEGHOST | BASEBALL THE BAND WWW.KNOX-EARTHFEST.ORG April 9, 2015

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t was a compromise of sorts. Last June, the University of Tennessee’s Board of Trustees approved a policy requiring students to “opt-in” to authorize about $20 of fees to go towards student-organized programming—in lieu of having the General Assembly act on threats to reduce UT’s funding after legislators objected strenuously to the second annual Sex Week, an event co-founded by students Brianna Rader and Jacob Clark in 2013. The policy’s language says students can opt out of paying for “programming that may be considered by some to be controversial or personally objectionable.” The fee allocation did reduce student programming money by about $49,000, according to outgoing Student Government Association president Kelsey Keny, whose election automatically made her the chair of the Student Program Allocation Committee when it was created last year. Sex Week 2015 received funding for just eight of its 35 proposed events. The Legislature would seem to have gotten what it wanted. But not, perhaps, the desired end result. That’s because Sex Week lives on this week (running through April 11), just as envisioned by its organizers, with all 35 events being offered, from the wildly popular drag show and three presentations by nationally famed sex educator Megan Andelloux to sessions on “Queering Medicine: LGBTQ + Health” and “An Owner’s Guide to Your Package: Vagina Edition.” The sex-ed symposium is treading new ground with 30 new topics among the sessions, such as first-time coverage of disability and sex, the ethics of sex work, and biphobia.

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

UT’s controversial Sex Week is happening

Along with advancing content, current Sex Week organizers say they have clung to the spirit and values established by co-founders Rader and Clark, who were officially condemned by the Tennessee Legislature before last year’s event. A big part of that tradition is providing sex education to students from Tennessee who came up through the state system’s mandated abstinence-only sex-education policies. “We are changing perceptions of sex, consent, and power-based violence at a cultural level by giving students the appropriate tools to engage in constructive conversations,” says co-chair Nickie Hackenbrack. “The most positive outcome of this type of environment is sexual assault prevention.” Sexual Empowerment and Awareness at Tennessee (SEAT), Sex Week’s founding body, emphasizes a mission of “sex positivity, the positive reception of others’ sexual expression regardless of personal views and embracement of sexuality as fundamental to the human experience.” Trained by Rader and Clark last spring, Hackenbrack and her co-chair, Summer Awad, appear to be academic powerhouses just like their mentors. Hackenbrack is a senior in the Chancellor’s Honors Program, studying biology, German, and anthropology, and she aspires to medical school. Awad is a sophomore Haslam Scholar in sociology and interns at the Center for the Study of Youth and Political Conflict. Aided and abetted by board member Alexandra Chiasson, a senior in English, the higher-ups in Sex Week have also preserved the organization’s edge and tradition of pushing the limits of acceptable

right now with a new team of organizers—and a surprising lack of legislative outrage BY ROSE KENNEDY

communication. In early April, SEAT released a promotional slide show parodying the animal cruelty public service announcements that play to Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel.” Instead of sad animals, they featured sad faces of UT students with captions describing their bad sex education experiences. The first slide reads “They told me I couldn’t do it in the butt, that it was ungodly;” the second, “If you give head, you’ll get cavities.” But perhaps the most notable similarity between this year’s cochairs and their predecessors is their hustle. They, too, have spent countless hours organizing speakers and evaluating surveys. They also overcame the funding shortfall—and their failure in the appeals process—with private donations and academic departments’ sponsorship, similar to how Clark and Rader funded the first Sex Week in 36 hours after state legislators defunded it in a surprise move while students were on Spring Break. This does not mean the book is closed on the debate over how funding went down, however. The organizers say they still feel like it included some bias and discrimination. “We have a panel called ‘Loosen-

ing Up the Bible Belt,’ and they funded that, but the religious roundtable with many representatives from other denominations—they decided not to fund that,” Hackenbrack says. They did receive funding for sessions called “Science of Orgasm” and “Your Hair Down There,” so it wasn’t so much that the allocations committee steered away from provocative topics—more that they chose only to fund exclusively heterosexual topics, Hackenbrack says. One of SEAT’s faculty supporters, professor Joan Heminway, says that while the committee naturally needed to identify funding criteria, “some of the criteria the committee used resulted in at least the appearance that certain types of events—notably religious and LGBT events—were discriminated against or marginalized.” Keny and Assistant Vice Chancellor of Student Life Mark Alexander, who sits as a staff representative on the programming allocation committee, refute the claims of bias. “All the events proposed were considered,” Alexander says. “There was just a limit on available funds. … In fact, the committee funded a number of LGBT topic events this year. They just did not happen to be the ones proposed by SEAT.” WHO’S GONNA FILL THEIR BOOTHS? After two years of co-founders Brianna Rader and Jacob Clark running the University of Tennessee Sex Week, the 2015 edition is being organized by co-chairs Nickie Hackenbrack (left) and Summer Awad, who brought 35 sessions of upbeat sex ed, including Friday’s exhibition of Southern Sexuality at 1010 Gallery.

Keny, who Hackenbrack describes as a “big Sex Week supporter,” notes that SEAT events did receive 15.4 percent of all available funding. “At their meeting alone—we have a few meetings each semester—we had around 25 organizations applying for funds,” Keny says. “And Sex Week gave us priority order of their funding, and we went down the list as provided in determining what we could and could not fund.” Next year’s funding process will be even more challenging for the organizers of Sex Week. The committee, Alexander says, has set a $200 minimum cost for events to be considered at all next year. SEAT already must submit separate applications for each of its events, dividing its considerable marketing expenses by 35. Many of its events will not meet the minimum, some of them costing as little as $30-$40. Part of the problem, Heminway says, is that the committee must look at each event individually, even if that event is part of a larger program. “This type of funding system makes it harder for student organizations to create balanced, coordinated, multi-event programs,” Heminway says. “That’s what SEAT strives for in its Sex Week program every year.” Next year will have SEAT once again finagling and pleading, writing and defending, and undoubtedly eyeing sources of funding beyond student event fees. And therein lies another irony: The whole Sex Week participation process is offering a very valuable educational process of its own. “Before this year, I thought I knew how to public speak and write an essay,” says Hackenbrack. “Thinking on my feet has changed everything, and really enhanced my critical thinking skills. And writing 35 grant applications helps my job and educational future in oh so many ways.” And the week-long event may even be drawing academic achievers to the very school that is neglecting to fund its activities. One such is Geoffrey Hervey, a SEAT executive board member and freshman in the Haslam Scholars Program. “Sex Week’s existence told me there would be a safe space for me and my peers on UT’s campus,” Hervey says. “That helped me make the decision to spend my undergraduate years here.”

HOMEWRECKER? One of North Broadway’s last historic houses may be demolished for a retail food center BY S. HEATHER DUNCAN

century-old home many consider the most beautiful on Broadway may be doomed to demolition unless someone is willing to match the $1.27 million offer recently made by a developer. The Craftsman house, which was owned for more than 50 years by former Knoxville city councilman Paul Howard, is one of the last homes on a mostly commercial stretch of North Broadway and is not protected by historic zoning. Howard died in 2014, and his will requires the sale and division of all his property among his heirs. Howard’s son Tim Howard, a retired developer, says the family has signed a non-legally binding letter of intent to negotiate for the sale of the house with a Chattanooga developer. The developer is interested in demolishing the house to build a commercial building that would potentially be leased to a prominent national retail food chain such as Walmart Neighborhood Market. Another house next door owned by a family member would not be part of the deal. Centerpointe Church next door on North Broadway has signed an agreement with the developer to sell the church property for about $2.3 million, contingent upon the sale of the Howard property next door, says Centerpointe pastor Jim Millirons. He says even if the deal falls through, he thinks that the church may still put the building up for sale.

“The sale of the property affords the church a tremendous opportunity of ministry in the inner city,” he says, emphasizing that the church will not leave the neighborhood. He says Centrepoint plans to open multiple campuses and a new ministry center. In May, the church will begin holding Sunday worship services at Whittle Springs Middle School, he says, and the congregation is considering other potential worship spaces. The Howards are in an earlier stage of negotiation than Centerpointe. Knox Heritage is helping Tim Howard get the word out that the family would like to find another buyer willing to match the developer’s price but keep the house intact. The property includes 2.4 acres with gardens, a gazebo, and lit tennis courts. The home was designed by University of Tennessee graduate Charles Hayes for his brother, building contractor Lynn Hayes, and built around 1910. His father started renting the house about 1948 and purchased it in the 1960s, Howard says. Paul Howard made improvements such as adding extensive oak paneling inside and recently won a Knox Heritage award for his maintenance of the home, which even has two kitchens. Tim Howard says he and his two surviving brothers got along but were not close at the time his father wrote his will. “I think Dad was concerned rather than to take a chance on

families getting in a fight, it was best to sell and just disperse the funds,” he says. The youngest Howard brother lived in the house until a few months ago. But Tim Howard says none of the heirs is both willing and able to buy the house from the estate. “I don’t want to see Dad’s home torn down, and I’d like to see his legacy move forward,” Tim Howard says, recalling that his father’s construction business handled a UT hospital addition and several hotels built during the 1982 World’s Fair. “My heart is to see a Christian nonprofit, if possible, buy it and the church next door to allow both to be used for the Lord’s work,” Howard says. He says Knox Heritage asked the family to donate it but “we can’t do that.” He was approached by a startup Christian nonprofit only hours after WBIR aired a story about the house this week, but he hasn’t had a chance to talk with the group. Other nonprofits that operate through his church are unable to pay the asking price, he says. Neither can Knox Heritage, says executive director Kim Trent, but she wants to see the home endure. She says the Howard family has about six or seven months to find another buyer. “It’s an iconic structure on Broadway,” she says, noting that the area was once residential before being slowly gobbled by commercial development. “The response on our Facebook page has just blown up,” says Trent, who posted information about the house Monday. “People in North Knoxville are very upset that this might be happening.” Facebook commenter Jimmy Ryan wrote: “This is completely absurd. This developer has to lack any form of vision or creativity in order to pick one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture along all of Broadway, offer $1.27 million to demolish it, and completely overlook the vast amount of vacant properties along Broadway that are ripe for development.” He and others suggested better locations in the same area of North Broadway for a grocery store, such as the former Broadway Sound site. Trent says City Council is considering an ordinance that would delay demolitions of historic buildings; depending on if and when it passes, it might be a way to buy time to come up with an alternative to tearing down the house. April 9, 2015

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he history of the Rhythm N’ Blooms Music Festival—Knoxville’s biggest music fest, and now an unofficial civic marker of the arrival of spring—is dotted with happenstance and luck, both good and bad. In fact, its evolution over the course of six years, from a well-intended roots-music complement to the Dogwood Arts Festival to a standalone event expected this year to draw 20,000 people from around the country, parallels pretty closely the career of its creator, Chyna Brackeen—a series of gambles that paid off and bad fortune turned to good, all inspired by unerring instincts and a passion for music. Brackeen, the owner of Attack Monkey Productions, started Rhythm N’ Blooms in 2010 on a shoestring budget. It was a rocky beginning, with sparse attendance and a headliner stranded across the Atlantic Ocean. But the festival took hold that year and has grown exponentially since,

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

Despite a rocky start, Chyna Brackeen has cultivated the Rhythm N’ Blooms Music Festival into Knoxville’s most popular musical event BY MATTHEW EVERETT spreading across downtown with an increasingly impressive range of local, regional, and national Americana performers (and rock, pop, soul, R&B, and otherwise uncategorizable acts). The roots of Rhythm N’ Blooms go back to 2009. After a brief career as an opera singer and a stint at AC Entertainment, Brackeen found herself working at the Knoxville Botanical Garden and Arboretum in East Knoxville. As soon as she saw the site, she knew she wanted to stage a concert series there. “The first show I promoted there was Dar Williams,” Brackeen says. “She said to me, ‘You can’t name one plant on this property. I do shows at

zoos and gardens and these sorts of places all the time, and usually they’re a total cluster—really nice people, but they don’t know how to produce a concert. You know how to produce a concert, but you don’t know anything about botany. What are you doing? You’re in the wrong line of work.’” Brackeen followed Williams’ advice—and her own instincts. She soon quit her job at the garden and started Attack Monkey Productions, a music management and promotion company, taking a chance on a brand-new local band led by her neighbor, singer/songwriter/guitarist Cruz Contreras. (One of Brackeen’s first moves as Contreras’ manager

was to convince him that the group needed a name. They became the Black Lillies.) If managing an unknown band was a challenge for Brackeen’s new company, starting a new music festival with almost no budget in six weeks would prove to be an even bigger one. Because of her connections with the Botanical Garden, Brackeen met with organizers of the Dogwood Arts Fair in early 2010 to discuss programming music as part of an ongoing effort to broaden the festival’s appeal. “The budget was literally abysmal,” Brackeen says. “It was really terrifying, and anybody should have walked away from that, honestly. The other thing was, this was in mid February, and they wanted to have a festival in April. It was one of those moments were I could have walked away and everything would have been fine. But I was at a point in my life where I was starting my business—I

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mean, I was basing my business on managing a band that was costing me money, not making me money, so I’m obviously not making great financial decisions at this point in my career.” The first Rhythm N’ Blooms was a blueprint for how not to stage a music festival. The main venues—the Bijou Theatre, Market Square, and clubs in the Old City—were too spread out for the small audience, and sometimes Brackeen was the only person in the audience at the Bijou shows. Brackeen and the other organizers handed out free wristbands to the festival on Market Square to encourage attendance. The weekend’s headliner, the chamber-pop cellist Ben Sollee, was trapped in England by the environmental fallout from the eruption of a volcano in Iceland. “I was standing up at every performance to announce, ‘The only person you’ve heard of on this lineup is not going to be here,’” Brackeen says. The final day of that first festival,

however, planted the seed for what’s happened since. “The last day of the first year, when we went to the Botanical Garden, suddenly every single person who had a ticket to the festival was there. It was like, ‘Oh! There are people! And they’re really having a good time,’” Brackeen

says. “After that first year, we all kind of looked at it like, we know we have something really special, we know that people who were there had such a great experience—there’s something here that we’ve got to keep growing. But god, are people ever going to buy tickets?” That’s no longer a problem. The

The festival has gotten bigger and better every year, with headliners like Amos Lee, Dawes, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, and Justin Townes Earle, a strong supporting cast of local performers, and blossoming attendance numbers.

festival has gotten bigger and better every year, with headliners like Amos Lee, Dawes, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, and Justin Townes Earle, a strong supporting cast of local performers, and blossoming attendance numbers. (Last year’s Rhythm N’ Blooms had 12,000.) The Sunday shows at the Botanical Garden have reached capacity; for the first time, this year’s festival will take place entirely in the Old City, in venues along Jackson Avenue—Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria, Pilot Light, Boyd’s Jig and Reel, Lox Salon, the Standard, and the Cripple Creek Stage under Interstate 40 and Hall of Fame Drive. “That should make things easier, because we’re not building two festivals in one weekend,” Brackeen says. “One of the challenges is that people tell us every year that their favorite day was at the Botanical Garden, so we’re trying to create an experience that will evoke some of that and give people what they love about that.” April 9, 2015

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At the Crossroads THE DIRTY GUV’NAHS Cripple Creek Stage Friday, April 10, at 8:30 p.m.

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

here’s going to be a special moment for Dirty Guv’nahs singer James Trimble this weekend. He and his band have performed at several festivals over the years with Southern California fellow travelers the Delta Spirit—always as openers. “We’ve actually been at festivals where we’ve been on stage before the Delta Spirit, but here they’re actually before us,” Trimble says. “But it’s because its our hometown. We get to be last at this one. We’ve been at other festivals in other cities and it’s been like, ‘Hey, we’re the band that usually plays before you.’” It’s hard to believe that the Dirty Guv’nahs haven’t played Rhythm N’ Blooms before. The local roots/ Southern rock band, known for its incendiary live shows, is an ideal fit for Knoxville’s biggest roots-rock festival. (They’re performing Friday, April 10, 8:30 p.m. on the Cripple Creek Stage.) But the Guv’nahs are also one of Knoxville’s busiest bands, maintaining a heavy schedule of touring for

the past nine years in between a sequence of increasingly accomplished albums. “We got asked to play, and obviously the answer was yes—why wouldn’t we do it?” Trimble says. “It’s an exciting festival. It’s been growing. I’ve been to see two or three shows. There’s always been a lot of local bands involved—we’re honored to be asked to play. If there’s one thing we love to do, it’s wave the Knoxville flag.” This year’s Rhythm N’ Blooms happens to fall during a period of reflection for the band, which is winding up support of last year’s album, Hearts on Fire, and considering its next project. “We’ve been working on new music,” Trimble says. “We would like to do a live record. People say to us all the time, you’re a live band, you’re a live experience, and I want that captured.” After that, the band may head in a new direction. Or not. Either way, the

decision will be a serious one. “We’re trying to figure out our direction—like every band, you’re always writing music and always trying to stay busy,” Trimble says. “We’ve got this certain genre and this certain thing we’ve developed, and it’s our career, but we’re trying to always ask the question, do you just keep doing more of the same or do you try to expand? And it’s a hard question, once you get into your 30s and you’re in a band. But it is still fun. We’ve never had that big hit—we may never have that. But we know what we are. So the question is, do you keep on doing that or do you try something outside the box?” —Matthew Everett

All-Star Late-Night Jam Session featured up-and-coming country music acts like Roy Acuff, Archie Campbell, Kitty Wells, Chet Atkins, Don Gibson, and the Louvin Brothers. The difference is that this will be a late-night jam session with a loose format and even looser musicians exploring decades of local music traditions. “There’s such a rich music history here,” Contreras says. “All kinds of music has come though here and made its mark, especially with a lot of the old radio shows. We wanted to do something late here, a high-energy show.” Contreras has rounded up a backing band to join him for the midnight set—Black Lillies drummer Bowman Townsend, bassist Clint Mullican, former Lillie Tom Pryor on pedal steel, and fiddler Kimber Ludiker of Della Mae. They’ll be joined, at various points, by Contreras, Scott Miller, Jill Andrews, Mike McGill, Cereus Bright, Subtle Clutch,

Josh Oliver, ex-BR549 frontman Chuck Mead, Johnson City singer/songwriter Amythyst Kiah, and Nashville’s Margo Price. The only rule is that none of the performers can play their own songs. “Everyone is probably going to do two songs a piece,” Contreras says. “We’re all coming up with different ideas. I don’t really want to say exactly what it is—a lot of it is still being worked out. … There’s some songs where the artist will bring up their own band and we’ll just step aside. Some groups we’ll collaborate with and some groups we’ll back up. We’ll definitely have to get a few songs where everybody gets up there—jams like this, you can plan it how you want, but that stuff just ends up happening. We want everybody to have a good time, hang out, and if there’s a song where they want to jump in, just get in there.” —Matthew Everett

THE MIDNIGHT MERRY-GO-ROUND The Standard Saturday, April 11, at Midnight

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he Black Lillies are inextricably connected to Rhythm N’ Blooms—the band’s manager is the festival’s organizer, and they’ve played the festival three times. In 2010, in fact, the Black Lillies ended up as accidental headliners when Ben Sollee was stranded in England by that year’s volcanic event in Iceland. The Lillies are busy this spring, though, completing a new album for fall release, so frontman Cruz Contreras will host a night of Knoxville- and East Tennessee-themed music from an all-star lineup of local and regional bands and solo performers (with a little assistance from Virginia and Nashville). The Midnight Merry-Go-Round (Saturday, April 11, midnight at the Standard) is a nod to the old Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round, a long-running series on Knoxville radio station WNOX that

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DELTA SPIRIT

Cripple Creek Stage Friday, April 10, at 6:45 p.m.

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anged-up trash cans, teetering stacks of vintage Casios, and guitars tossed around like rag dolls are all fair game when Delta Spirit takes the stage. Since releasing their first EP in 2006, the rowdy group of San Diego natives—singer/guitarist Matt Vasquez, multi-instrumentalist/vocalist Kelly Winrich, guitarist Will McLaren, bassist Jon Jameson, and drummer Brandon Young—has made it a point to stage performances that are as high-powered as possible, packing out massive festivals with fans looking to soak in their energetic brand of hook-heavy roots rock. “I think the largest crowd that we ever pulled at a music festival was, like, 30,000 at Lollapalooza, and that was pretty crazy,” Vasquez says. “It’s like being on steroids and then somebody giving you a bunch of cocaine or something. You’re just trying to make people go as insane as possible.”

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But while the band makes it a point to max out their energy live, Vasquez’s deeply personal lyrics—an autobiographical account of dealing with bullies, a wistful love letter to his wife, a handful of conflicted odes to the West Coast—inject a level of intimacy into performances that listeners can connect with. “You have those intimate songs where you can look at people and see that they know the song and they had a moment with that song before they came to the show that night,” Vasquez says. “You get to share that amazing time with them. And I really love that so much.” In 2007, Delta Spirit bunked up in a California cabin to record their full-length debut, the sunny, strummy Ode to Sunshine. After following up with three more releases, the band members decided it was time for a change. So they headed east, to

Brooklyn, landing in a Hurricane Sandy-damaged studio in Greenpoint. The result? 2014’s diverse, moody Into the Wide. “Surprisingly, I was able to get a lot of solitude while I was in New York,” Vasquez says. “I worked on so many songs in our studio up there. And I mean, there were happy songs, but the ones that people sort of veered to were the sad ones. We just had such a huge collection of songs.” The massive stash of material came in handy. Vasquez has just finished making a solo record with the remaining songs, scheduled to come out early next year. “Now that I’ve gotten all of those other songs out, I’m really focusing on just kind of starting fresh,” he says. Since releasing Into the Wide, the band has largely moved on to other locations. Vasquez says that the geographic

shift will definitely play a role in putting together the band’s next release. “It’s going to be a new experience because now I’m in Austin, Texas, back home where I grew up. Two of the guys are in California and two of the guys are in New York,” he says. But for now, the band is together and hitting the road for a spring tour that will bring them to Rhythm N’ Blooms (Friday, April 10, 6:45 p.m. at the Cripple Creek Stage). The festival marks the first time the band will be in Knoxville since playing at the now-defunct World Grotto in 2008. “All the bourbon in Tennessee and Kentucky just rocks my world,” Vasquez says. “Why the hell would we not want to come back to Knoxville? Good music, good people, good food. And we get to play a festival for you guys. It should be fun. It should be insane.” —Carey Hodges

RHYTHM N’ BLOOMS 2015

Schedule Highlights With more than 100 bands— including headliners the Decemberists, Drive-By Truckers, the Dirty Guv’nahs, and Delta Spirit—you can’t see or hear it all. (And we can’t write about it all.) Focus on what you can get to or want to hear—there’s no regret or shame at a festival as packed with good options as this year’s Rhythm N’ Blooms. But a little planning can help, so here’s a quick guide to some of the best bets outside the big names.

Friday, April 10

Saturday, April 11

Sunday, April 12

SUBTLE CLUTCH

WORKSHOPS

KRISTINA TRAIN

This youthful band has made the big step from Market Square buskers to legit industry up-and-comers with an RN’B slot and last year’s debut EP, Southern Wind, a mix of classic bluegrass, Mumford and Sons, the Violent Femmes, and the Band. Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 6:30 p.m.

WILLIAM WILD

Local folk-rock trio William Wild (it’s a band, not a guy) made an impressive debut last year with their Avett-styled self-titled album, full of lustrous chamber-folk and impeccable harmonies. Pilot Light • 8:30 p.m.

THE SUFFERS

Big soul, R&B, and rock ’n’ roll from a big band—this Gulf Coast combo has 10 members, including a full horn section. The Standard • 8:45 p.m.

LIL IFFY’S FINAL SPELL

Wil Wright starts the final phase of his career as the wizard rapper LiL iFFy, timed to the release of his last album under that name. This show kicks off a final tour that will lead to one last iFFy performance on New Year’s Eve. Pilot Light • 11:15 p.m.

THE WANS

The Wans expand Nashville’s garage-rock palette with a dose of swirling psychedelic guitars—more Brian Jonestown Massacre than the Black Keys—on last year’s debut album, He Said, She Said. Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 12:45 a.m.

Check out seminars on the creative and business sides of the music industry, from songwriting to publicity and how to get a gig. The Emporium Center • 1-7 p.m.

*REPEAT REPEAT

Crunchy lo-fi guitar pop representing Nashville’s thriving garage-rock scene. The Standard • 2:45 p.m.

STEVEN WESLEY

There’s not much straight-up country at RN’B, but maybe Wesley is enough—the Canadian troubadour’s songs recall George Strait, Chris LeDoux, and Randy Travis. Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 4:45 p.m.

COUNT THIS PENNY

Wisconsin transplants Count This Penny come home to East Tennessee, bringing a brace of sophisticated, melancholy folk-rock songs with them. Lox Salon • 5:30 p.m.

6 STRING DRAG

The reunited ’90s No Depression standard-bearers incorporate classic R&B and rock ’n’ roll influences on their first album in 16 years, the aptly titled Roots Rock ’n’ Roll, released earlier this year. Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10 p.m.

New York-born, Georgia-raised Kristina Train has lived in London since 2010; her moody 2012 album Dark Black captures her multidimensional background, with classic songbook influences, moody ambient production, and an emotionally arresting vocal performance. Pilot Light • 1 p.m.

BEAR MEDICINE

This Lexington band offers tiny, minimalistic songs with subtle impressionistic details on its 2014 album, The Moon Has Been All My Life. Pilot Light • 3 p.m.

J.D. MCPHERSON

Oklahoma rocker J.D. McPherson mixes up fans and critics who had tagged him as a simple retro act on his new album, Let the Good Times Roll—there’s as much contemporary indie as Fats Domino on the new record, to admirable effect. Cripple Creek Stage • 6:15 p.m. —Matthew Everett

WHISKEY SHIVERS

The rambunctious Austin newgrass quintet takes on the Violent Femmes in a surprising late-night set that promises to be one of the weekend’s highlights. Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 12:30 a.m.

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY 19

P rogram Notes

RETRO GRADE BY NICK HUINKER

The Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight The Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight (2007) BASSIST/VOCALIST BEN OYLER: In terms of the capacity to realize written material or musical ideas—in both a technical and aesthetic sense—I don’t think I’ve ever played in a better band.

Back in Black New album, lineup changes for the Black Lillies

t’s been an interesting few months for Black Lillies frontman Cruz Contreras: he will be busy running a late-night local-music showcase at Rhythm N’ Blooms this weekend (see page 17), and he and his bandmates have been working for the last couple of months in Nashville on a new album, their fourth, set for release in the fall. “We’re getting some new sounds and textures and styles,” Contreras says about the new record, which was recorded at Nashville’s House of Blues Studios with producer/engineer Ryan Hewitt. “It’s going to be a lot to listen to, and it’s going to surprise people—we followed our creative hearts on this one. When we’re listening back to the tunes in the studio right now, we’re like, ‘Whoah, what have we done?’ Getting over your inhibitions and not overthinking it and just taking the songs to a place where they’re fully realized—if the song wants to rock, then rock all the way. If the song wants to be intimate and focused and small, go that way. It’s going to be a ride from beginning to end.” That’s not all the news from the Black Lillies, though. Longtime members Tom Pryor and Robert Richards announced their departures

from the band in February, leaving Contreras to recruit new players for the band’s upcoming spring tour dates. Sam Quinn, formerly of the everybodyfields and a notable local singer/ songwriter on his own in recent years, has signed on to play bass for upcoming shows in Texas, on the East Coast, and in California and the Midwest. For some of those shows, the band will be augmented by Nashville session guitarist Megan McCormick and Asheville’s Matt Smith on pedal steel; for others, they’ll be joined by Atlanta singer/songwriter Michelle Malone on guitar and Phil Sterk on pedal steel. Those arrangements are only for the near future, Contreras says. “You don’t replace players in your band, especially when they’re as talented as Tom Pryor and Robert Richards,” he says. “We’re all friends— we’re family, we’re buds. It’s not a matter of replacing them. That’s not even an option. But we have to figure out how to move forward. Luckily, there’s a lot of talented musicians out there. For the time being, if you go to a Black Lillies show, there’s going to be different artists featured.” —Matthew Everett

Music: Zappa Plays Zappa

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

Classical The Magic Flute

Beginning with its very first shows in early 2006, Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight unleashed a jaw-dropping mangle of free jazz and noise metal, which quickly came to incorporate surf, prog rock, and even carnival music, all carried across with both fury and goofy, self-aware wit. For 20 minutes at a time, there was only untethered id and the technical wizardry that sold it, from Chris Rusk’s schizoid drum precision to Manjit Bhatti’s saxophone squawk. After less than two years of stealing high-profile shows and a quietly self-released EP, Midnight Bomber played their last show in late 2007, and Knoxville’s been a little less dangerous ever since. Visit knoxmercury.com for the full interview and check out the EP at midnightbomber.bandcamp.com. GUITARIST WILLIAM MAHAFFEY: The [Evil] Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight is a character on The Tick. I’m not sure if anyone else really liked the name as much as me, but it was the one they disputed the least.

PRODUCER JASON BOARDMAN: They were definitely my favorite band in town while they were together. … I was just blown away that they could be so technically precise and so wild at the same time. Especially Manjit, who only started playing saxophone just before they got together. I first met him through Midnight Bomber and just assumed he’d been playing all his life.” OYLER: I wouldn’t say that I especially liked making it, and I wasn’t—and am still not—totally happy with the result. I think some of those songs are great, but I would’ve liked to have applied more time and discipline to the recording process. RUSK: I am totally proud of it. Hear that drumming? Nice! I wish I could find a copy so I could listen to it again. Do you have one? MAHAFFEY: Chris was a busy fellow and Manjit went to Germany for school so we thought we would just call it quits while we were ahead. … We tossed around the idea of getting back together a couple of years ago but we were all pretty busy, particularly Manjit, milking cows.

DRUMMER CHRIS RUSK: I think playing with Midnight Bomber was probably the most difficult music I have ever played. … There are difficulties with other projects I drum for, but with Midnight Bomber, so much counting.

Ben Oyler works at Three Rivers Market and plays in Pleases. Chris Rusk works as a booking agent, drums for Royal Bangs and the Sniff, and fronts Ex-Gold. William Mahaffey is the director of the Knoxville Horror Film Festival. Manjit Bhatti works with his wife Colleen Cruze Bhatti on their peerless dairy farm, and was too busy milking cows to reminisce about his thrash jazz band.

Movie Review Furious 7

Book Review: Girl in a Band

Inside the Vault

Southern Exploration New letters reveal folk icon Guy Carawan’s first impressions of the South

BY ERIC DAWSON

n the summer of 1953, folk singers Guy Carawan, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Frank Hamilton lit out from New York City to take a trip through the South. Over six weeks, they traveled from the North Carolina coast to New Orleans, spending much of their time in the Appalachian mountains, hearing a lot of music and making some themselves. Carawan lent his journal from the journey to folk-music scholar Ron Cohen, author of Rainbow Quest, a celebrated 2002 book about American folk music and culture. Cohen believes this trip was such a seminal event in the then burgeoning folk-music revival that he summarizes it in the book’s introduction, arguing that the trip sets the stage for all that was to follow in the 1950s and ’60s. Recently, Guy’s wife Candie found a series of letters that Guy wrote to his girlfriend at the time. Candie compiled them in a manuscript and donated a copy to the Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound. These letters offer a more detailed, intimate account of their travels and his thoughts while in the midst of the trip. Carawan, at the time 26 years old and based in New York, wanted to visit a coastal farm in Mesic, N.C., where his father had grown up. From there he would explore the South, the source of

so much of the music he loved and performed. In Mesic, they encountered Carawan’s Uncle Claude and Aunt Nancy. Already the trio were faced with the contradictory culture they would repeatedly encounter on the trip. “It’s hard to reconcile their Jim Crow outlook with the wonderful qualities they have,” Carawan wrote. He wanted to record music from the African-American community, but his aunt warned him against it. Stopping in Merry Point, N.C., they met union organizer Bill Levener, who convinced them to leave town immediately. A fish factory had been burned down recently and the three outsiders made good suspects, even though it was widely suspected that the owners had burned the factory themselves. Low on funds, they tried busking in most towns they stopped in, but frequently police stopped them. At a revival, they were singled out by the preacher, threatened with damnation if they did not turn to Jesus. “We’ve been taken for everything from mountain hillbillies, Texas cowboys, country farmers, dust bowl refugees, to hoboes and sometimes city fellers,” Carawan wrote. In Naces Springs, Va., they stayed with A.P. Carter in his “old torn down shack—full of old pictures, song sheets

and books,” sleeping in a “bug-eaten bed.” It was a pitiful sight, but they had a splendid time making music with the “grand-daddy of all mountain and country folk singers.” Then on to Asheville, where they met with singing lawyer Bascom Lamar Lunsford, who had launched the Asheville Folk Festival in 1928. Lunsford was an influential figure for Carawan, but on meeting him, Carawan thought him a “reactionary aristocrat.” Lunsford wanted to know if the three men were Communists; he was galled to see that vocal leftist Pete Seeger wrote the liner notes to his just released Folkways album. Before his travels, Carawan seemed to have romantic, if not naive, ideas about the music and culture of the South. After spending time and playing music with its inhabitants, he began to see how complex and complicated Southern culture could be. Seeing progressive ideas thriving at the Highlander Folk School in Grundy County, Tenn., inspired Carawan to eventually take up residence as the school’s music director. Carawan was impressed upon meeting Highlander director Myles Horton and particularly taken with Claude Williams, a former fundamentalist preacher who became a union organizer and civil-rights activist and, as a result, was beaten by the Ku Klux Klan and booted out of the church. “It’s encouraging to find a place like this in the South—carrying on its program and being well-liked in the community,” he wrote. “They’ve had a history of struggle against initial opposition … but have won some community support and protection. There’s a whole gang of wonderful people here.” Guy and Candie Carawan would soon join that gang of wonderful people, and make history as civil-rights leaders, environmental activists, and folk music collectors. Inside the Vault features discoveries from the Knox County Public Library’s Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound, a collection of film, video, music, and other media from around East Tennessee. TAMIS will celebrate the lives of Guy and Candie Carawan with music, artwork, and films at the East Tennessee History Center on Friday, April 10, from 6-9 p.m.

As Sweet As It’s Going To Get Poems By Dawn Coppock As Sweet As It’s

Going To Get

AS HEARD ON

poems k Dawn Coppoc

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April Readings and Events

April 11, 2pm Book Launch Party Poets in Preservation Series Knox Heritage-Westwood April 19, 2pm Literary Reading Union Avenue Books April 9, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 21

Music

Brilliant Chaos Dweezil Zappa pays tribute to his father Frank with a full-album performance of One Size Fits All BY RYAN REED

“T

his is not nostalgic music—this is music from the future,” says Dweezil Zappa. He’s referring to the compositions of his father, Frank— the innovative guitarist, bandleader, and producer who recorded roughly 100 albums before dying of prostate cancer in 1993. For the past nine years, Dweezil has been paying tribute to Frank’s sprawling catalog through a series of tours dubbed Zappa Plays Zappa, exposing his dad’s material—a mix of prog rock, jazz, classical, musique concrete, and unclassifiable experimentation—to a new generation salivating for the sonically weird. The band’s latest trek features a full-album performance of 1975’s One Size Fits All, one of the most iconic Zappa albums—and Dweezil’s excited about bringing these idiosyncratic songs back to life. “It is a favorite record of mine, as well as a fan favorite,” says the guitarist, commenting on the album’s blend of virtuosity, melody, and humor. “With it being the 40th anniversary, I’d like to shine a light on that to say, ‘Look, this stuff is 40 years old, and it still sounds like nothing on the radio.’” No One Size track—really, no Zappa song, period—better exemplifies that brilliant chaos than “Inca Roads,” a multi-tiered, UFO-themed epic that evolves from a marimba-led groove to complex rhythmic sections to a phaser-heavy guitar solo that ranks among Frank’s most melodic. On the record, it clocks at just under nine minutes—onstage, the piece can often run up to 15.

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

“It’s a hallmark song in terms of showcasing Frank’s specific strengths as an artist and composer,” Zappa says. “In that one song, you have these difficult interludes with this very rhythmically diverse, intervallic melody. But then on top of all of those challenges, you have the improv sections. The genius of the way that song is crafted, in a live situation, because of the improvisational sections, every time that song is played, it’s going to be different. You can hear that song 100 times, and it’s never going to be the same version. That’s the genius of Frank’s music throughout his records—he’s created this living, breathing catalog where, when the

music is performed live, it’s going to be different no matter what.” Critics have always been hot and cold with the Zappa discography. (For a good laugh and/or eyeroll, check out Robert Christgau’s take on the jazz-fusion masterpiece Hot Rats.) But Dweezil’s tasteful touring project— along with a recent massive Zappa reissue campaign—has helped bring about a renewed appreciation for his father’s work. The Zappa Plays Zappa tours serve as a perfect primer for newcomers, compiling his most sonically savory songs. But the band brings a fresh vitality to this music, offering Dweezil a platform to showcase his formidable guitar skills. For the unacquainted, it’s easy to look at Dweezil—the son of a divisive music icon—as a musician of privilege, a product of lucky genetics. But he’s taken his own weird, winding path to rock stardom. As a child guitarist, he learned scales and exercises from legends like Eddie Van Halen and Steve Vai, and he recorded his first single, 1982’s solo-heavy “My Mother Is a Space Cadet,” at age 12. Later in the decade, he found work as a VJ on MTV (the very network his father so despised) and took a few bit parts in Hollywood films like Pretty in Pink. He eventually returned to his first passion with his 1986 debut LP, Havin’ a Bad

Day, and four subsequent solo albums of virtuoso hard rock. Inspired by the success of Zappa Plays Zappa and the further development of his guitar technique, Dweezil composed his upcoming sixth record as a summation of all his formative influences. Funded by an ongoing PledgeMusic campaign and set for a May release, the album ventures from expansive prog rock to guitar renditions of pieces by the Bulgarian Women’s Choir to the Arabic-metal mania of “Dragon Master,” for which he composed music based on “ridiculous heavy-metal lyrics” written by his dad. “There’s a little story that goes through the whole thing—not that it’s a concept album,” he says of the release. “I wanted to make a record where I could retrace the steps of what got me interested in music—not only for guitar and music elements but even for the sound of certain things that are on records that I grew up liking. So there’s some ’60s-sounding stuff, some ’70s-sounding stuff, some modern stuff. But it’s all cohesive because all the songs feel like they belong together, and it’s a collection of all the things I really like.” For now, with Zappa Plays Zappa, Dweezil’s career is moving forward by looking back. By examining his roots, he’s discovering where he could grow.

WHAT Zappa Plays Zappa WHERE Bijou Theatre (803 S. Gay St.) WHEN Wednesday, April 15, at 8 p.m. HOW MUCH $29.50-$75 MORE INFO knoxbijou.com

Classical

Theatrical Effects UT Opera Theatre performs Mozart’s final opera, The Magic Flute BY ALAN SHERROD

ne of the many intriguing moments in Milos Foreman’s 1984 film, Amadeus, depicts Emperor Joseph II and his court discussing the language of an opera that is to be commissioned from newcomer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. While the emperor desires an opera in German and his chamberlain advocates “plain German for plain people,” the Italians in the court argue that Italian is the language of opera and that German is “too brutal for singing.” Of course, the Emperor gets his way and Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) is commissioned. While the facts of the commissioning are true, the scene itself is completely fictionalized, as is the film’s general premise of court composer Antonio Salieri as a vindictive antagonist. However, there is an important historical truth lurking behind the creative license. The emperor, in fact, spurred nationalistic feelings in a late 18th-century German-speaking Europe that yearned for alternatives to the dominating repertoire of French and Italian opera. Generally, the choice was to elevate the humble German Singspiel, a combination form of sung music and spoken dialogue in the vernacular, to loftier results. It is in this spirit of popular theater in a Singspiel form—a form not unlike American musical comedy—that Mozart’s final opera, Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), from 1791, was born. The libretto for The Magic Flute was written by Emanuel Schikaneder, the impresario of the Theater auf der Wieden, a theater in the suburbs of Vienna, for production there. Schikaneder, a quintessential man of the theater. He was fond of elaborate

theatrical effects that he used liberally in his productions, had a magnetic stage persona as an actor and possessed considerable skills as a writer. Mozart was attracted to Schikaneder for his unusual character, but also for his ability to make money with his productions. Mozart wrote the opera’s role of Papageno, the wandering bird-catcher, to feature Schikaneder’s performance abilities. In addition, Mozart and Schikaneder were both Freemasons and proceeded to fill the production with loads of veiled Freemason symbolism that is stilled discussed and debated today. The University of Tennessee Opera Theatre returns to downtown and the Bijou Theatre this weekend with a production of The Magic Flute—one that seeks to fulfill the ideal of Singspiel for the audience by performing the spoken dialogue in English, and in a somewhat shortened form, but with the humor and essential exposition intact. Those familiar with the opera will undoubtedly consider this a real positive. UTOT stage director James Marvel sees another positive. “We decided to produce The Magic Flute as an opportunity to showcase our undergraduate talent,” he says. “In addition to providing roles for all of the graduate students, all of the undergrads have roles as well. The chorus, for example, is made up entirely of people who are not playing their primary roles during that given performance.” Traditionally, UTOT has used double-casting over multiple performances; this production will be no exception. “The two casts are well balanced and quite different from one another,”

explains Marvel. “As always, I attempt to give each individual the opportunity to explore their role in the way that inspires them most as an individual.” UT voice professor Andrew Wentzel highlighted one particularly interesting opportunity in casting. “[Audiences] saw Mattia D’Affuso in two baritone roles last year, Figaro in Barber of Seville and Guglielmo in Cosi fan Tutte. This year, he is making the difficult switch to tenor—and Tamino will be his first fully exposed tenor role.” While returning to the Bijou as a venue is a plus for UTOT’s audience as well as its performers, the move comes with its own set of issues. “As always, producing in the Bijou puts a huge financial strain on our production resources,” Marvel admits. “As you will remember, Barber was quite minimal in terms of the set. Similarly, the set for The Magic Flute is the same as the set for Medea, only painted differently and with a backdrop I purchased from a show I recently did in New York. These concessions were necessary to afford being in the Bijou, but the students are united in their belief that performing in the Bijou is important for their artistic growth.” The UT Symphony Orchestra will be in the Bijou pit under UTOT music director and conductor Kevin Class.

WHAT UT Opera Theatre: The Magic Flute

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April 9, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 23

Movie R e view

Grand Theft Auto Though marred by its frenetic ambition, Furious 7 lives up to its title BY APRIL SNELLINGS

he most bonkers of Furious 7’s many bonkers moments hinges, naturally, on a bonkers car. How bonkers is it? It is so bonkers that it comes with people; If you’re good for the $3.4 million asking price, you get a team of “flying doctors” who can be instantly mobilized to repair your car anywhere in the world if, say, Vin Diesel steals it and drives it through some plate-glass windows while hopping it from one of the Etihab Towers to the next. It’s got seats stitched with gold and headlights lined with diamonds. I mention this because it’s both a plot point and a perfect metaphor for the movie as a whole. The latest installment in the long-running, high-grossing franchise is an exercise in manic overindulgence that is by turns exhilarating and numbing. It’s the most uneven entry since the 2009 reboot, and, for me, the jaw-dropping highs don’t quite cancel out the ham-fisted lows. But it delivers spectacle on a scale that’s tough to match, and offers a classy and heartfelt send-off for late co-star Paul Walker. It feels a little silly to discuss the plot of a movie whose entire raison d’être is to beat up mountains with flying cars, but here goes: Furious 7 picks up immediately after the previous installment’s post-credits sequence, which saw Jason Statham kill off franchise regular Han (Sung Kang). Statham’s character, a former black-ops killing machine called Deckard Shaw, sets the wheels in motion for Furious 7 when he hospitalizes DSS Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and tries to blow up Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his extended family, which includes former FBI agent Brian O’Connor (Walker). Dom and Brian set out for

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

revenge, making new enemies and new allies as they go. Also present are tech geek Tej (Ludacris), fast-talker Roman (Tyrese Gibson), and amnesiac badass Letty (Michelle Rodriguez). If all of that makes sense to you, you’re a franchise fan and you’re in good hands. Otherwise, you’re just here for the car chases and there’s a rocky road ahead of you. Director James Wan, best known for outstanding, slow-burn shockers such as Insidious and The Conjuring (and, okay, Saw), takes over from series regular Justin Lin, and he occasionally finds wonderful, unexpected beats in the movie’s neck-snapping chaos. Most of those moments involve Furious 7’s central gimmick. Early in the flick, Brian tells his son that cars don’t fly. That is, of course, a call to

arms for Wan’s army of stunt performers and effects artists. Brian’s lack of imagination is both setup and punchline for the bulk of Furious 7’s most outlandish—and dopily satisfying—action sequences. Cars drop from airplanes, hurtle over cliffs, and sail between the aforementioned Abu Dhabi towers as the globe-trotting gang pursue their targets from the mountains of Azerbaijan to the streets of Los Angeles. It’s not just the cars that defy gravity. Thanks to the addition of Thai martial artist Tony Jaa (Ong-Bak) to the admittedly bloated cast, Furious 7 supplements its vehicular madness with acrobatic fight scenes; some of its coolest moments belong to Jaa, who runs up walls and spits out scenery as a snarling (if dramatically superfluous) heavy. About that cast, though: There are just too many people doing too many ridiculous things for far too long, and the movie suffers for it. Statham is a lot of fun as a homicidal supervillain, and Kurt Russell classes up the joint as a shadowy U.S. government agent known only as “Mr. Nobody.” But once you add in a completely wasted Djimon Hounsou as yet another villain and likable Game of Thrones vet Nathalie

Emmanuel as an imperiled hacker in need of rescuing, the central revenge plot becomes so diluted that the eventual third-act smackdown is less than satisfying. It’s fun to watch bad guys get punched with muscle cars, but it’s helpful if we can remember why we’re mad at them in the first place. That is, until its final moments, when Furious 7 gets around to the elephant in the room: the awful death of Walker during a break halfway through production. It’s a loss that is dealt with seamlessly throughout the movie, using unseen footage from previous installments, the casting of Walker’s brothers as stand-ins, and some mostly undetectable digital sleight of hand. But after all the heavies have been dispatched, Wan and co. switch gears for a flawless and incredibly moving send-off that offers both genuine emotion and dramatic heft. Good luck getting through it with dry eyes. To be honest, I prefer the low-rent efficiency of the first installment to the delirious one-upmanship that is taking over the series. But I’ll still buckle up for the almost guaranteed eighth entry, in hopes that it’ll pare down the cast and put a little more rubber on the road.

Book R e view

Girl Talk Kim Gordon’s new memoir of her life in and out of Sonic Youth is both cool and raw BY BRYAN CHARLES

mong the photos scattered throughout Girl in a Band, Kim Gordon’s elliptical new memoir, is a rather striking one of her with Kurt Cobain. Gordon is speaking, her back to the camera, and Cobain, whose public face so often conveyed bitter irony, is staring at her with unguarded awe. Sonic Youth, the avant-rock band Gordon co-founded in New York in the early ’80s, was by then indie royalty and Gordon herself a kind of icon. Beautiful and mysterious, she anchored the band with her steady bass playing and projected endless cool from within the midst of the guitar storms unleashed by Lee Ranaldo and Gordon’s longtime husband, Thurston Moore. Sonic Youth’s influence is difficult to overstate. Their early support of Nirvana and Pavement alone, to name just two of the now legendary groups that benefited from their mentorship, produced ripples that reach us to this day. The band was an agent of political change, too, advancing an unabashedly feminist world view that, in the early ’90s, thanks also to riot grrrl, D.C. hardcore, and other cresting movements, briefly became de rigueur. I had a dim memory of seeing a very pregnant Kim Gordon playing with Sonic Youth on TV. She mentions this in passing (turns out it was on Letterman) in a chapter on the formation of her clothing line, X-Girl, that reads as both fabulous and unglamorous—traveling to Tokyo for a fashion show with Sofia Coppola

but also a 5-month-old baby—Gordon’s daughter, Coco—who won’t sleep through the night. It’s a tricky balance, and one Gordon ably sustains in the rock-lifestyles passages of the book. Gordon grew up in Los Angeles, and even in her formative years future luminaries appear. Her high-school boyfriend is Danny Elfman, whose Simpsons theme song will echo through eternity, and after graduating she works for Larry Gagosian, assembling cheap frames for mass-produced prints. Gagosian would become one of the world’s most powerful art dealers, but at the time Gordon meets him he’s selling art books in the street. The figure who exerts the most control over her early life, however, and plays a significant role in shaping the cool exterior she will one day present to the world, is her older brother, Keller. Highly intelligent and “almost unbearably articulate,” Keller suffers a series of breakdowns and is ultimately diagnosed as schizophrenic. “[M]aybe because he was so incessantly verbal, I turned into his opposite, his shadow—shy, sensitive, closed to the point where to overcome my own hypersensitivity, I had no choice but to turn fearless,” Gordon writes. Two pages earlier, she writes, of that shyness and sensitivity, that it’s as if she “can feel all the emotions swirling around a room. And believe me when I say that once you push past my persona, there aren’t any defenses there at all.”

This was the line—it comes early, on page 12—where I gave in to the book. I have always liked Sonic Youth more in theory than in practice and felt no great need to learn their origin story or parse the messy details of their split. But Gordon’s prose—fittingly, for a child of Los Angeles—is pure Didion cool, the perfect tool for her sociological and personal explorations. L.A. in the late ’60s has “a sense of apocalyptic expanse, of sidewalks and houses centipeding over mountains and going on forever.” Soon, of course, the scene shifts to New York, which often appears as two opposed entities: the crumbling metropolis of Gordon’s ’80s memories and the gleaming “city on steroids” it is today. And then there is the divorce. It’s heartbreaking, really, and also utterly banal: Gordon’s accidental discovery of her husband’s much younger mistress, the anguished confrontations, tearful apologies, vows to stop followed by further betrayals. I’m not alone in having assumed Thurston Moore wasn’t the type to firebomb his marriage this way. But then, what do any of us know? I can tell you he was the major stumbling block to my fully embracing Sonic Youth. I guess I just never liked his voice. Kim Gordon’s voice, on the other hand—raw and vulnerable and still somehow reserved—I would gladly follow anywhere.

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Beautiful and mysterious, she anchored the band with her steady bass playing and projected endless cool …

April 9, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 25

CALENDAR Thursday, April 9

Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • Free Saturday, April 11

DAIKAIJU WITH THE MUTATIONS • Pilot Light • 10 p.m. • $5 JIMMY DAVIS • WDVX • Noon • Free JIMMY DAVIS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville)

ANYONE’S GUESS WITH ANNANDALE AND AUTUMN REFLECTION • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 7 p.m.

• 8 p.m.

• All ages. • $8

GRACE NOTES FLUTE ENSEMBLE • Blount County Public

MARY BRAGG • WDVX • Noon • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate

Library • 7PM • FREE DANIKA HOLMES • Blue Slip Winery • 8 p.m. • $15 MISTY MOUNTAIN STRING BAND • Preservation Pub • 10 p.m. THE PATIO PIRATES • Mulligan’s Restaurant • 7PM PELLISSIPPI STATE INSTRUMENTAL CONCERT • Pellissippi State Community College • 7p.m. • Free SAM QUINN AND TAIWAN TWIN • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10 p.m. SILVER SCREEN ORCHESTRA WITH MILKTOOTH • Scruffy City Hall • 8 p.m. TURBO SUIT • The Concourse • 9 p.m. • 18 and up. • $5 Friday, April 10 CAPTAIN IVORY • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10 p.m. BRIAN CLAY • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9 p.m. • Live jazz. • Free EXMAG WITH M!NT • The Concourse • 9 p.m. • $10-$15 GINGER PALE ALE WITH ERRONEOUS JONES • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM HOT CLUB OF SAN FRANCISCO • Clayton Center for the Arts (Maryville) • 8 p.m. • $22-$36 • See Spotlight on page 32 LABRON LAZENBY AND LA3 • Preservation Pub • 10 p.m. • Knoxville blues. AARON LEWIS • Cotton Eyed Joe • 10PM • At the heart of Staind’s loud, angst-laden music are the confessional lyrics and introspective personality of frontman Aaron Lewis. Staind sustained a decade of popularity before Lewis broke free with a solo career in 2011, refashioning himself as a conservative country singer on his 2011 EP, Town Line. In 2012, he prepped his full-length country debut, The Road, which appeared toward the end of the year. • $20

Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • Free DIXIEGHOST WITH KRIPPLE KREEK • The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson (Maryville) • 8 p.m. • Free TIM AND JODI HARBIN • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10 p.m. HIP-HOP FOR HUNGER • The Concourse • 7:30 p.m. • Featuring Young Gunz, Good Boy Collective, Plunderphonics, and The Exception. JAZZSPIRATIONS LIVE CONCERT SERIES • Holiday Inn (World’s Fair Park) • 7 p.m. • Radio air-personality and jazz artist Brian Clay hosts and performs with regional and national smooth-jazz recording artists. Visit www. jazzspirationsLIVE.com. • $20-$30 DAVIS MITCHELL AND DM3 • Preservation Pub • 10 p.m.

MADRE WITH HARRISON ANVIL AND BIG COUNTRY’S EMPTY BOTTLE • Scruffy City Hall • 8 p.m. RHYTHM N’ BLOOMS MUSIC FESTIVAL • The Old City • Spring comes to downtown Knoxville with the city’s biggest music festival, part of the Dogwood Arts Festival, featuring performances by dozens of rock, country, folk, and Americana bands, like headliners the Decemberists, Drive-By Truckers, the Dirty Guv’nahs, and Delta Spirit, plus Cruz Contreras’ tribute to Knoxville music history and seven venues. • $30-$60 • See cover story on page 14 THE STREAMLINERS SWING ORCHESTRA • Knoxville Museum of Art • 6 p.m. • Spring is here, and it’s time to jump, jive and wail with Knoxville’s favorite swing band. • $15 TUATHA DEA • Preservation Pub • 8 p.m.

WHISKEY BENT VALLEY BOYS WITH DANIKA HOLMES AND JEB HART • WDVX • Noon • Part of WDVX’s Blue

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

R.B. MORRIS WITH GREG HORNE AND DANIEL KIMBRO • Laurel Theater • 8 p.m. • $12 NED VAN GO • Preservation Pub • 8 p.m. THE POP ROX • Mulligan’s Restaurant • 7:30PM RHYTHM N’ BLOOMS MUSIC FESTIVAL • The Old City • $30-$60 • See cover story on page 14

SIDECAR SYMPOSIUM WITH WHISKEY BENT VALLEY BOYS, PLANKEYE PEGGY, AND SKUNK RUCKUS • Scruffy City Hall • 8 p.m.

THE WILL YAGER TRIO • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9 p.m. • Live jazz. • Free Sunday, April 12 LIVINGSTONE • Preservation Pub • 10 p.m. RHYTHM N’ BLOOMS MUSIC FESTIVAL • The Old City • $30-$60 • See cover story on page 14 SHIFFLETT AND HANNAH • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. • FREE SWINGBOOTY WITH THE JAZZPHONICS • Ijams Nature Center • 5:30 p.m. • Live local jazz. • Free Monday, April 13 THE 9TH STREET STOMPERS WITH MATT FOSTER • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE 9TH STREET STOMPERS • Preservation Pub • 10PM BROKEBACK WITH CHRIS BROKAW • Pilot Light • 10PM • $10 THE CROSSROADS STRING BAND • Stutter’s High Gravity Tavern • 9PM • FREE Tuesday, April 14 HINDER • The International • 7PM • Hinder, the multi-platinum Oklahoma City rockers, are gearing up for their fifth studio album When the Smoke Clears (set for

Photo by Uwe Faltermeier

MUSIC

Thursday, April 9 - Sunday, April 19

SIR RICHARD BISHOP Pilot Light (106 E. Jackson Ave.) • Thursday, April 16 • 10 p.m. • $10 • 18 and up • thepilotlight.com

When Rick Bishop falls for a guitar, he falls hard. During his last stop in Knoxville a few years ago, with the band Rangda, he spent over an hour in Hot Horse playing a Gibson Sunburst hollow body. He couldn’t really afford the asking price but was so enamored with it he couldn’t bear to have anyone else own it. So he got an advance on his tour money from his bandmates and bought it. Last year, Bishop became fixated on a guitar he came across in a small luthier’s shop in Geneva, where he was living for a six-month residency. Given the expense of Switzerland, the 19th-century guitar was even more out of his price range than the one he found in Knoxville, but he found himself returning to the shop to play it. It haunted him day and night until he finally relented and bought it. It’s the guitar he plays on his most recent album, Tangier Sessions. Recorded in a week of sessions on a rooftop in Morocco, it’s entirely improvised, and Bishop’s most effortlessly enjoyable album yet. That’s saying something for a catalog that runs 30-plus albums, from harsh electric efforts (2006’s While My Guitar Violently Bleeds) to more lyrical pursuits (check out “Tennessee Porch Swing,” from 2007’s Polythestic Fragments), and 2009’s tribute to Egyptian guitarist Omar Khorshid, The Freak of Araby. (That’s not counting the five dozen or so albums he recorded as a member of Sun City Girls.) Peripatetic by nature, whenever possible the Arizona native and current Oregon resident visits Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and other far-flung destinations where he can soak up the local culture and music. (He frequently uploads photos of amazing paintings and statues from Thailand on his Twitter account.) Throughout his career, he’s borrowed from just about any guitar style you can name, with Tangier Sessions leaning heavily on Middle Eastern, North African and Indian influences. He is, no kidding, one of the greatest guitarist you may ever hear. (Eric Dawson)

Talk Show: Jay Nations

Spotlight: Hot Club of San Francisco

Talk Show

CALENDAR

Vinyl Revivalist

Owner Jay Nations discusses the 30th anniversary of his local music-scene institution, Raven Records BY COURY TURCZYN

n 1985, a couple of years after graduating from the University of Tennessee with a degree in advertising, Jay Nations was stuck working at Circuit City and wondering what to do with himself. As fate would have it, the owner of a local record store on the Cumberland Avenue Strip made the unwise decision to import a pound of marijuana from Jamaica, which resulted in his imprisonment. Nations joined the store as a temporary manager and then eventually bought it and renamed it Raven Records. His refashioned shop wasn’t just a place to buy records—Raven soon became a nexus for the Knoxville music scene, a place where local musicians could not only sell their records and promote their shows but also find work behind the counter. Nations shut down the store in 1994 at the depths of the vinyl market but he continued to ply his trade, first online and then at record shows around the country. Finally, in 2011, as new LPs became increasingly popular, Nations went back to retail, opening Raven Records and Rarities with business partner/movie memorabilia magnate Jack Stiles. Next week, Nations and Stiles will be celebrating Raven’s 30-year legacy as a local music-scene institution. On Wednesday, April 15, starting at 6 p.m., at Relix Variety Theatre, they’ll be holding a Raven movie night, featuring a documentary on the ’80s Knoxville music scene (and Raven’s role in it) by Brad Reeves; David Keith’s opus The Curse; the Morristown-shot Evil Dead; and their mutual favorite, Blue Velvet. On Thursday, April 16, starting at 6:30 p.m., at Relix Variety Theatre, Raven’s band party will showcase the musical talents of former Raven employees: Todd Steed and the Suns of Phere, Tina Tarmac

and the Burns, featuring Sara Washington, and Itchy and the Hater Tots, featuring Brian Waldschlager. When you opened Raven, what was the record-shop scene like back in the mid-’80s? It was mostly chain stores—it was Turtle’s and Cat’s and me. There weren’t any other indies. It’s hard to think of that now, ‘cause there’s like five indies now. I was all alone. It was so freakin’ great! I had a monopoly there for a while as far as buying and selling records, because CDs really started kicking in around ’87 and people were panic-selling records and panic-buying records at the same time. Were you a record collector yourself before getting into the business? My record collecting started when I was about 16. I grew up in Kingsport and I got set up with a little stereo for my birthday, so I went up to the Montgomery Ward record department and brought home In the Court of the Crimson King [by King Crimson], which had the craziest album cover of anything in there. I didn’t know a thing about it, but I said, “I’m going to take a chance on this.” Do you ever have a record come into the shop that you just have to keep for yourself? A guy came in with a banana cover of the first Velvet Underground album. A little piece of the banana had peeled off but it was intact and it was in mono. He knew what it was and we came up with a price, and I said, “I’m keeping that one.” One I discovered in a collection later was a mono Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, which I think was the last mono mix that they put out and it was only on promo, so that’s kind of a key piece, because I really love the Stones. Is it getting harder to find stuff

now that collecting memorabilia and records is more popular? It’s a little more of a challenge, plus people want more new vinyl, so I have to buy more low-margin stuff. And if you buy the wrong stuff, you have a lot of dollars tied up in stuff that’s not working for you. But I think vinyl’s going to stick around—if the damn industry doesn’t shoot themselves in the foot as they always consistently do by making stuff too expensive or too limited or not high enough quality. In my opinion, you ought to be able to walk in and buy a brand-new record for $15 consistently all day long. But they price them so that wholesale on a lot of stuff is $18, so you’ve got to sell it for $25 or a little less.

Record Store Day SATURDAY, APRIL 18

This year’s bacchanalia of limited-edition physical media is being celebrated at no less than six Knoxville locations: Basement Records, Disc Exchange, Lost and Found Records, McKay’s, Raven Records & Rarities, and Wild Honey Records. A couple of shops are taking it to 11 with live music performances: THE DISC EXCHANGE 2615 CHAPMAN HIGHWAY

Noon: Cold Water Festival 1 p.m.: Erick Baker 2 p.m.: Somebody’s Darling 3 p.m.: 3 Mile Smile 4 p.m.: Josh Oliver 5 p.m.: Kelsey’s Woods 6 p.m.: Subtle Clutch 7 p.m.: Heart and Soul LOST & FOUND RECORDS 3710 N. BROADWAY

11:45 a.m.: Kelle Jolly 12:45 p.m.: Kelsey Rae Copeland 1:45 p.m.: Blaine Band 2:30 p.m.: Tina Tarmac and the Burns 3:30 p.m.: Webb Wilder 4:45 p.m.: Tim Lee 3 5:45 p.m.: Black Atticus 6:30 p.m.: Cancelled (No, really.)

April 9, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 27

CALENDAR release via The End Records/ADA this spring). All ages. • $20-$25 CARY HUDSON • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM

KNOXVILLE JAZZ ORCHESTRA: A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • Vocalist Claird-

ee pays homage to two great innovators in the performance of American popular song: Carmen McRae and her friend and mentor, Billie Holiday. • $32

PIGEONS PLAYING PING PONG WITH ROSSDAFAREYE • The Concourse • 8:30PM • $5-$7

TODD DAY WAIT’S PIGPEN WITH THE LOST DOG STREET BAND • Preservation Pub • 10PM Wednesday, April 15

3 MILE SMILE WITH KEITH KENNY • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE FATHER MURPHY • Pilot Light • 10PM • Father Murphy is the sound of the Catholic sense of Guilt. A downward spiral aiming at the bottom of the hollow, and then digging even deeper. Father Murphy over the years became one of the most mysterious and enigmatic musical entities coming out of Italy, part of that community that Simon Reynolds and Julian Cope started to call the new

Thursday, April 9 - Sunday, April 19

“Italian Occult Psychedelia.” • $5

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 THE CASEY GREEN TRIO • The Bistro at the Bijou • 7PM • Live jazz. • FREE KEITH KENNY WITH LINES WEST • Preservation Pub • 10PM R.A.L.F. • Scruffy City Hall • 8PM TIME SAWYER WITH CLAY MATTHEWS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7PM • Part of WDVX’s Tennessee Shines live-broadcast concert series. • $10 ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • $29.50-$75 • See music story on page 22 Thursday, April 16 10 STRING SYMPHONY • The Harmony House • 9PM • 10 String Symphony is an arena for mesmerizing acoustic innovation. Although difficult to categorize, their music is instantly recognizable as a blend of two distinct but equally vivacious musical voices, encompassing “aggressive, almost discordant, celtic and dare I say punky string-chording experimentations” (The Bluegrass Situation). Visit www.10stringsymphony.com. • $10 SIR RICHARD BISHOP • Pilot Light • 10PM • $10 • See Spotlight on page TK BLACKFOOT GYPSIES • Preservation Pub • 10PM

435 Union Ave. nothingtoofancy.com 28

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

THE BROCKEFELLERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM

THE BROTHERS BURN MOUNTAIN • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM LOTUS • The International • 8PM • One of the defining and most popular acts in live electronic music, Lotus has crafted a unique musical style outside of simple genre limitations. Equal parts instrumental post-rock and electronic dance, the band’s distinguishing feature is the ability to maintain a decidedly unique musical voice and remain current while bucking passing trends. • $19.50-$30 MANDO SAENZ WITH OH JEREMIAH • Scruffy City Hall • 7PM THE WILHELM BROTHERS WITH THE EMILY MUSILINO BAND • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE Friday, April 17 THE BIG PINK • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • A 7 piece band that plays the music of The Band, Bob Dylan, Joe Cocker and several other Americana/Rock and Roll groups from the 1960’s to present day. THE BLACK CADILLACS • Disc Exchange • 2PM • The

Black Cadillacs will perform for Record Store Day at the Disc Exchange in support of their new self titled EP. Those fans who purchased their new EP will be eligible to win a pair of tickets to their show later that night at the Bijou Theater and will also have a chance to be the first person allowed into the Disc Exchange on Record Store Day 10 minutes before anyone else. • FREE

THE BLACK CADILLACS WITH SOL CAT AND JOHNNY ASTRO AND THE BIG BANG • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • The Black Cadillacs are a 5-piece rock band from Tennessee with an original sound that includes influences from 60’s era rock and roll to more modern grunge and indie rock. With a focus on high energy live shows and a near constant touring schedule, the band is building a reputation as a road-hardened live act you don’t want to miss. • $15-$17 THE BREAKFAST CLUB • The International • 8PM • The popular regional ‘80s cover band. • $10-$20 CLYDE’S ON FIRE • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE DJ DRAMA • NV Nightclub • 9PM • $5 WILL DORAN • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE

BRADFORD LEE FOLK AND THE BLUEGRASS PLAYBOYS WITH THE GHOST OF PAUL REVERE • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime

CALENDAR concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE FREEQUENCY • Mulligan’s Restaurant • 7:30PM • Folk-pop and covers with three-part harmony. MAX GARCIA WITH THE GHOST OF PAUL REVERE • Preservation Pub • 8PM

MIC HARRISON AND THE HIGH SCORE WITH GUY MARSHALL • Preservation Pub • 10PM JAMEY JOHNSON • Cotton Eyed Joe • 10PM • Eleven-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Jamey Johnson is “one of the greatest country singers of our time,” according to the Washington Post. In 2012, the Alabama native released his fifth studio album, a tribute project to late songwriter Hank Cochran. The Grammy-nominated Living for a Song: A Tribute to Hank Cochran paired him with Willie Nelson, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Ray Price, Elvis Costello, George Strait, Vince Gill and Merle Haggard. • $25 LEFTFOOT DAVE AND THE MAGIC HATS • Knoxville Museum of Art • 6PM • Originally formed in 1966 under the name Soul Sanction, this fabulous 9-member band became one of the legendary bands of East Tennessee, and they are one of the all-time favorites at Alive After 5. With their combination of keyboards, horns, and guitar, blended with a variety of male and female vocals, Soul Connection covers a wide musical spectrum of Rhythm & Blues and Soul, all done with infectious energy and unmistakable style. • $10

POWERKOMPANY WITH GILLIAN AND THE CRUMBSNATCHERS • Scruffy City Hall • 10PM BEN SCHUSTER • Kristtopher’s • 9PM • $5 TAUK WITH BACKUP PLANET • The International • 9PM • TAUK is heavy instrumental rock fusion. The transcendent instrumental band seamlessly brings together genres as diverse as melodic rock, fusion, gritty funk, progressive rock, ambient, classic rock, hip hop and jazz. • $7-$10 THE WILHELM BROTHERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM Saturday, April 18 3 MILE SMILE • Disc Exchange • 3PM • FREE ERICK BAKER • Disc Exchange • 1PM • Erick Baker will perform for Record Store Day at the Disc Exchange before performing later at the Bijou Theatre later that night. Erick will also be producing an episode about Record Store Day and the Disc Exchange for “Tennessee Uncharted”, a local show he hosts on PBS. • FREE ERICK BAKER • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • $25 BEATCLUB • Mulligan’s Restaurant • 7:30PM BLACK ATTICUS • Lost and Found Records • 5:45 p.m. • Part of Lost and Found’s Record Store Day celebration. THE BLAINE BAND • Lost and Found Records • 1:45 p.m. • Part of Lost and Found’s Record Store Day celebration. THE BROADCAST • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM HUSKY BURNETTE • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM KELSEY RAE COPELAND • Lost and Found Records • 12:45 p.m. • Part of Lost and Found’s Record Store Day celebration. THE DEER RUN DRIFTERS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM •

FREE

Store Day celebration.

DENDERA BLOODBATH WITH POLLY PANIC • Pilot Light •

UT BATTLE OF THE BANDS • Scruffy City Hall • 8PM WEBB WILDER • Lost and Found Records • 3:30 p.m. •

10PM • $5

NICK DITTMEIER AND THE SAWDUSTERS WITH MAX GARCIA CONOVER • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE NICK DITTMEIER AND THE SAWDUSTERS • Preservation Pub • 8PM THE GOLDWATER FESTIVAL AUDIAL ART COLLECTIVE • Disc Exchange • 12PM • FREE JELLY ROLL • The International • 8PM • Checking in at six feet one inches and over 350 pounds, not to mention covered in tattoos, it’s impossible to ignore Nashville rapper Jason “Jelly Roll” DeFord in a room. His unique combination of introspection, melody, and punchlines has struck a chord with an ever-growing nationwide fan base and continues to impress. • $10 KELLE JOLLY • Lost and Found Records • 11:45 a.m. • Part of Lost and Found’s Record Store Day celebration. KELSEY’S WOODS • Disc Exchange • 5PM • FREE KUKULY AND THE GYPSY FUEGO • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Kukuly and the Gypsy Fuego is a Knoxville based band performing originals and swing jazz standards like “After You’ve Gone” and “Minor Swing.” They are influenced by Kukuly’s Latin roots adding Argentine tangos and Brazilian bossa novas as well as European and American jazz traditions. • $12 THE TIM LEE 3 • Lost and Found Records • 4:45 p.m. • Part of Lost and Found’s Record Store Day celebration. HAROLD NAGGE AND ALAN WYATT • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE JOSH OLIVER • Disc Exchange • 4PM • Having toured with the everybodyfields, Jill Andrews, Mandolin Orange, and Sam Quinn + Japan 10, Josh Oliver has carved out a name for himself as a solo artist as well with his distinctive, tear-soaked vocals and cinematic, decisively southern, acoustic landscapes. • FREE PREACHER STONE WITH OTIS • The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson • 8PM • $15 BRAD PUCKETT • Wagon Wheel • 10PM • $5

SILENT HORROR WITH LA BASURA DEL DIABLO, THE CASKET CREATURES, AND THE CRYPTOIDS • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • A spring break horror-rock showcase. All ages. • $10 SOMEBODY’S DARLING • Disc Exchange • 2PM • A little bit Gary Clark Jr. with a hint of ZZ Ward, the talented five piece jam bluesy rock ‘n’ roll tunes that are big and commanding in every possible way - from lead singer Amber Farris’ impressive vocal chops and wild blonde hair to the band’s ballsy rhythm section and grooving guitar licks. • FREE SUBTLE CLUTCH • Disc Exchange • 6PM • Subtle Clutch will perform for Record Store Day at the Disc Exchange in support of their new album “Southern Wind.” • FREE TINA TARMAC AND THE BURNS • Lost and Found Records • 2:30 p.m. • Part of Lost and Found’s Record

Part of Lost and Found’s Record Store Day celebration. Sunday, April 19

BRADFORD LEE FOLK AND THE BLUEGRASS PLAYBOYS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM ALVIN YOUNGBLOOD HART • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 7PM • A devout follower of the “no barriers” approach carved out by veteran performers like Gatemouth Brown and the late/great Doug Sahm, Hart aims to delight the masses and points to challenge the so-called blues purists. • $6-$20 PRESTON LEATHERMAN • Preservation Pub • 10PM SHIFFLETT AND HANNAH • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. • FREE UT SMALL JAZZ ENSEMBLE • University of Tennessee Natalie L. Haslam Music Center • 6PM • FREE

OPEN MIC AND SONGWRITER NIGHTS

Thursday, April 9 BREWHOUSE BLUES JAM • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8 p.m.• Free Friday, April 10 TIME WARP TEA ROOM OPEN SONGWRITER NIGHT • Time Warp Tea Room • 7PM • FREE Monday, April 13 BLUEGRASS AND BREWS OPEN JAM • Stutter’s High Gravity Tavern • 7PM • FREE Tuesday, April 14 BARLEY’S OPEN MIC NIGHT • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM OLD-TIME JAM • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15 p.m. • Hosted by Sarah Pirkle. • Free

DJ AND DANCE NIGHTS Friday, April 10

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, April 11 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, April 12 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

Live Music | Dancing | Spirits | Food & Fun! 865-525-6101 • KNOXART.ORG

SELECTED FRIDAYS @ 6:00 - 8:30pm SPRING SERIES

April 10th featuring

The Streamliners Swing Orchestra April 17th featuring

Leftfoot Dave & The Magic Hats

April 24th featuring

Soulful Sounds Revue May 1st featuring

Robinella

865-525-6101 KNOXART.ORG LIKE US ON c

ALIVE AFTER FIVE KNOXVILLE MUSEUM OF ART

CLASSICAL MUSIC Friday, April 10

UT OPERA THEATRE: THE MAGIC FLUTE • Bijou Theatre • 8 p.m. • $20 • See preview on page 23 April 9, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 29

CALENDAR Saturday, April 11

UT OPERA THEATRE: THE MAGIC FLUTE • Bijou Theatre • 2:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. • $20 • See preview on page 23 KSO POPS SERIES: THE MUSIC OF QUEEN • Knoxville Civic Auditorium • 8 p.m. • KSO will perform Windborne’s Music of Queen featuring Guest Conductor Brent Havens and vocalist Brody Dolyniuk. • $22-$60 Sunday, April 12 UT OPERA THEATRE: THE MAGIC FLUTE • Bijou Theatre • 2:30 p.m. • $20 • See preview on page 23 Monday, April 13 BARKADA SAXOPHONE QUARTET • University of Tennessee Alumni Memorial Building • 6PM • FREE Tuesday, April 14 UT SPRING CHORAL CONCERT • University of Tennessee Alumni Memorial Building • 8PM • FREE Thursday, April 16

KSO MASTERWORKS SERIES: BEETHOVEN’S ‘PASTORALE’ • Tennessee Theatre • 7:30PM • Guest conductor Vladimir Kulenovic leads the KSO in this spirited program featuring music by Smetana, Rachmaninoff and Beethoven. The program opens with the lively Overture to The Bartered Bride by Czech composer, Bedrich Smetana. The orchestra will be joined by guest artist Antti Siirala for Rachmaninoff’s expansive

Thursday, April 9 - Sunday, April 19

and virtuousic Piano Concerto No. 1. The second half of the program features Beethoven’s musical portrait of nature: Symphony No. 6, “Pastorale”. • $13-$83

UT WIND ENSEMBLE, SYMPHONIC BAND, AND CONCERT BAND • University of Tennessee Alumni Memorial Building • 8PM • FREE Friday, April 17

KSO MASTERWORKS SERIES: BEETHOVEN’S ‘PASTORALE’ • Tennessee Theatre • 7:30PM • $13-$83 SPRING UT PERCUSSION ENSEMBLE • University of Tennessee Natalie L. Haslam Music Center • 8PM • FREE Saturday, April 18

OAK RIDGE SYMPHONY: “INTERNATIONAL FLAVORS” • Oak Ridge High School • 7:30PM • Featuring Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 (“Italian”), Camille Saint-Saens’ Danse Bacchanal, from Samson and Delilah, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Tahiti Trot, from the Golden Age, and Nicolia Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capricio Espagnol. Tickets and additional information may be found at www.oakridgesymphony.org, or by calling the Oak Ridge Civic Music Association office at 865-483-5569. • $25 Sunday, April 19 MARBLE CITY OPERA • Market Square • 12PM • MCO will be presenting music from local Knoxville composers: Trey Daugherty’s “A Death in the Family,” based on a novel by

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SHAKY KNEES 2015 MAY 8-10! Stay tuned to WUTK and Follow our social media for more chances to qualify. Grand prize drawing Friday, May 1

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

James Agee; and Songs for soprano by Wendel Werner. • FREE READY FOR THE WORLD MUSIC SERIES: EAST ASIA • University of Tennessee Natalie L. Haslam Music Center • 2PM • Guest artists (TBA) are prominent scholars and artists who champion the exotic and illustrative world of East Asian chamber music. • FREE

OAK RIDGE WIND ENSEMBLE/COMMUNITY BAND SPRING CONCERT • Oak Ridge High School • 3:30PM • Featuring guest director Walter McDaniel, former UT assistant band conductor. Visit www.orcb.org.

KNOXVILLE CHORAL SOCIETY: BRAHMS’ REQUIEM • Clayton Center for the Arts (Maryville) • 6PM • $20

COMEDY AND SPOKEN WORD Monday, April 13

QED COMEDY LABORATORY • Pilot Light • 7:30 p.m. • QED ComedyLaboratory is a weekly show with different theme every week that combines stand-up, improv, sketch, music and other types of performance. Tuesday, April 14 THE ASIA PROJECT • University of Tennessee • 7PM • As an aspiring novelist/astronaut/oil painter/brain surgeon/

ninja, Asia never thought spoken word poetry would be his calling. But as with everything else we encounter in life while dealing with the illusive astrological joke we’ve come to know as destiny, here Asia stands: a cancer survivor who was won audiences throughout the country with a spoken word show that has been nothing less than an honest and genuine testimony of his life- a spoken word show that is always inspiring, sometimes gut-wrenching, and most often times comical buffoonery. At the UT University Center. Thursday, April 16 ALIX OLSON • University of Tennessee • 7PM • Alix Olson is an internationally touring folk poet and spoken word performer. At the UT University Center. Sunday, April 19 BILL BURR: THE BILLY BIBLE BELT TOUR • Tennessee Theatre • 8PM • Bill Burr is an American comedian or a comedian from the North American Union, depending on when you read this. He grew up outside of Boston, Massachusetts and did fairly poorly in school, despite the fact that he applied himself. Having first gained notoriety for his recurring role on the second season of Chappelle’s Show, Bill developed a comedic style of uninformed logic that has made him a regular with Letterman, Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon. • $37.50-$45.50

CALENDAR THEATER AND DANCE

FOOTHILLS COMMUNITY PLAYERS: AUDITIONS FOR ‘THE SOUND OF MUSIC’ • Chilhowee Club (Maryville) • 6:30PM

Thursday, April 9

• Free

CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘A SHAYNA MAIDEL’ •

THE WORDPLAYERS: ‘TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE’ • The

Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30 p.m. • A powerful and deeply affecting portrait of a family in the aftermath of the Holocaust: two sisters, one a survivor of Nazi concentration camps, the other brought up as an American, meet in 1946 after a separation of almost 20 years. Directed by Terry Silver-Alford. March 26-April 12. • $15

Square Room • 7:30PM • Part of the WordPlayers’ series of staged readings at the Square Room. • FREE Thursday, April 16

KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: ‘SHREK: THE MUSICAL JR.’ • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 7 p.m. • Based on Disney’s blockbuster animation franchise. March 27-April 12. • $12 Friday, April 10 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘A SHAYNA MAIDEL’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30 p.m. • March 26-April 12. • $15

KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: ‘SHREK: THE MUSICAL JR.’ • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 7 p.m. • March 27-April 12. • $12

MOMENTUM DANCE LAB: ART MOVES • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. • Choreographers collaborate with local musicians and artists whose work has been selected to be a part of the Dogwood Arts Festival’s Regional Fine Art Exhibition. • $15 Saturday, April 11 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘A SHAYNA MAIDEL’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30 p.m. • March 26-April 12. • $15

KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: ‘SHREK: THE MUSICAL JR.’ • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. • March 27-April 12. • $12

FOOTHILLS COMMUNITY PLAYERS: AUDITIONS FOR THE SOUND OF MUSIC • Chilhowee Club (Maryville) • 2 p.m. • Auditionees are asked to prepare a song to sing a cappella, unrelated to the show, no longer than 32 bars or 1 ½ minutes, and to prepare to sing a pre-arranged portion of a song from the show, which can be found on FCP’s website. Performances will be August 7 – 9, 2015 at the Clayton Center for the Arts. • Free CASHORE MARIONETTES • Clayton Center for the Arts (Maryville) • 2PM and 8PM • At the age of 11, Joseph Cashore created his first marionette from clothespins, wood, string and a tin can. Cashore has been performing full-time since 1990 across North America, Europe and Asia. He has received numerous awards including a Pew Charitable Trusts’ Fellowship for Performance Art, based upon his artistic accomplishment. He has also received a Henson Foundation Grant, an award intended to help promote puppetry to adult audiences. • $20 Sunday, April 12 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘A SHAYNA MAIDEL’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 2 p.m. • March 26-April 12. • $15

KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: ‘SHREK: THE MUSICAL JR.’ • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 3 p.m. • March 27-April 12. • $12

MOMENTUM DANCE LAB: ART MOVES • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 2 p.m. • $15 Monday, April 13

CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘THE THREEPENNY OPERA’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • With a haunting jazz score and biting lyrics, Brecht’s masterpiece of epic theater originated the popular songs The Ballad of Mack the Knife, Soloman Song and Pirate Jenny.For mature audiences. Contains adult content and language, and gunshots. April 16-May 3. • $22-$42 Friday, April 17

CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘THE THREEPENNY OPERA’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • April 16-May 3. • $22-$42

PELLISSIPPI STATE AND DUCK EARS THEATRE COMPANY: ‘THE TEMPEST’ • Pellissippi State Community College • 6:30PM • A magical storm. A shipwreck. Monsters and magic. Revenge, forgiveness and true love. Playgoers will find these and more in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” April 17-26. • $12

THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: AN INSPECTOR CALLS • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8 p.m. • J.B. Priestley’s supernatural absurdist mystery about guilt, money, power, and sex. April 17-May 3. • $15 Saturday, April 18

FOOTHILLS COMMUNITY PLAYERS: AUDITIONS FOR ‘THE SOUND OF MUSIC’ • Chilhowee Club • 2PM • Free PELLISSIPPI STATE AND DUCK EARS THEATRE COMPANY: ‘THE TEMPEST’ • Pellissippi State Community College • 6:30PM • April 17-26. • $12

CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘THE THREEPENNY OPERA’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • April 16-May 3. • $22-$42

THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: AN INSPECTOR CALLS • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8 p.m. • April 17-May 3. • $15 Sunday, April 19

CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘THE THREEPENNY OPERA’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 2PM • April 16-May 3. • $22-$42

PELLISSIPPI STATE AND DUCK EARS THEATRE COMPANY: ‘THE TEMPEST’ • Pellissippi State Community College • 2PM • April 17-26. • $12

THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: AN INSPECTOR CALLS • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 3 p.m. • April 17-May 3. • $15

FESTIVALS Friday, April 10

PELLISSIPPI STATE FESTIVAL OF CULTURES • Pellissippi State Community College • 4 p.m. • Food, music and festivities will fill the evening as Pellissippi State Community College celebrates diversity at its eighth

annual Festival of Cultures Friday, April 10. The event features performances by the Carib Sounds Steel Band, Caribbean Dancers of Atlanta, Chinese Dancers of Atlanta and Hardin Valley Thunder, Pellissippi State’s student bluegrass ensemble. Additionally, the Festival of Cultures offers children’s activities such as balloon art, glitter tattoos and face painting, a magic show, exhibits from Pellissippi State’s own international students, and international food. • Free Friday, April 17 DOGWOOD ARTS FESTIVAL • Market Square • 11AM • With quality arts and crafts booths, arts in action, performing arts, culinary arts demonstrations and tastings, and an expanded children’s creation station, several blocks of downtown Knoxville are transformed into a lively street fair for the Dogwood Arts Festival. There will be more than 60 local and regional juried artists exhibiting and selling their original work in mixed media, clay, drawing/pastels, glass, jewelry, leather, metal, painting, photography, sculpture, and wood. • FREE Saturday, April 18 EARTHFEST 2015 • World’s Fair Park • 10AM • There will be over 100 exhibitors and attractions, and as always, it’s a free, zero-waste event for the whole family, including your pets. Over the past 16 years, EarthFest has become East Tennessee’s premier Earth Day event. And it’s not simply a celebration of the planet. From an interactive educational scavenger hunt and vintage pop-up clothing shop, to kid-friendly activities and a fuel-efficient car showcase, EarthFest has something for everyone. • FREE DOGWOOD ARTS FESTIVAL • Market Square • 10AM • With quality arts and crafts booths, arts in action, performing arts, culinary arts demonstrations and tastings, and an expanded children’s creation station, several blocks of downtown Knoxville are transformed into a lively street fair for the Dogwood Arts Festival. • FREE Sunday, April 19 DOGWOOD ARTS FESTIVAL • Market Square • 11AM • With quality arts and crafts booths, arts in action, performing arts, culinary arts demonstrations and tastings, and an expanded children’s creation station, several blocks of downtown Knoxville are transformed into a lively street fair for the Dogwood Arts Festival. • FREE

SPORTS AND RECREATION

Saturday, April 11 WAR AT WINDROCK • Windrock Park • 7:30 a.m. • Runners will have the option of tackling a grueling 50K course through the wind farm or an abbreviated, yet punishing, 11 mile trail run. For more information, visit www.dirtybirdevents.com. • $35-$70 VALOR FIGHTS 22 PRO/AM MMA • The International • 6 p.m. • Live MMA. 18 and up. • $35-$65 TENNESSEE ASSOCIATION OF VINTAGE BASE BALL • The Knoxville Holstons and Emmett Machinists kick off the 2015 season of local 19th-century rules base ball. •

UP NEXT!

ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA

“ONE SIZE FITS ALL” 40TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR

wednesday, april 15 • 8pm

THE BLACK CADILLACS w/ Sol Cat and Johnny Astro & The Big Bang friday, april 17 • 8pm

AER

w/ Jez Dior and Packy monday, april 20 • 8pm

HOME FREE FEW TICKETS REMAIN!

thursday, april 23 • 8pm

JASON BONHAM LEDtuesday, ZEPPELINmayEXPERIENCE 5 • 8pm WIMZ PRESENTS

THE BLACK JACKET SYMPHONY PERFORMS EAGLES’ HOTEL CALIFORNIA saturday, may 9 • 8pm

ON SALE FRIDAY, 4/10 AT 10AM!

ANJELAHBONJOHNSON QUI QUI PRESENTS

sunday, july 26 • 8pm ALSO UPCOMING!

Erick Baker • 4/18 - SOLD OUT! Jenny Lewis • 5/12 Jeff Daniels & The Ben Daniels Band • 5/19

KNOXBIJOU.COM TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE TENNESSEE

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

April 9, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 31

CALENDAR

Thursday, April 9 - Sunday, April 19

Noon • Free Thursday, April 16

University of Tennessee • 7PM Tuesday, April 14

WINDROCK PARK SPRING JAMBOREE • Windrock Park •

TWIN PEAKS VIEWING PARTY • The Birdhouse • 7PM •

Guided rides, ATV Rodeo, rock crawl, poker run, Windrock Wide Open, Windrock Challenge, Drag Race, Mud Bog and Dash for Cash are just a few of the activities at the Jamboree. For more information, call 865-435-3492 or visit www.windrockpark.com. Friday, April 17 WINDROCK PARK SPRING JAMBOREE • Windrock Park • For more information call 865-435-3492 or visit www. windrockpark.com. Saturday, April 18 WINDROCK PARK SPRING JAMBOREE • Windrock Park • For more information, call 865-435-3492 or visit www. windrockpark.com.

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 Friday, April 17 UT FILM COMMITTEE: ‘INHERENT VICE’ • University of Tennessee • 7PM • In 1970, drug-fueled Los Angeles detective Larry “Doc” Sportello investigates the disappearance of a former girlfriend in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2014 movie. At the University of Tennessee University Center. Saturday, April 18 UT FILM COMMITTEE: ‘THE ROOM’ • University of Tennessee • 8PM • Johnny is a successful banker who lives happily in a San Francisco townhouse with his fiancée, Lisa. One day, inexplicably, she gets bored of him and decides to seduce Johnny’s best friend, Mark. From there, nothing will be the same again in Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 cult classic. At the University of Tennessee University Center.

FILM SCREENINGS Thursday, April 9

EAST TENNESSEE PBS COMMUNITY CINEMA: THE HOMESTRETCH • Scruffy City Hall • 6 p.m. • The Homestretch follows three homeless teens in Chicago as they fight to stay in school, graduate, and build a future. Friday, April 10 UT FILM COMMITTEE: ‘HORRIBLE BOSSES 2’ •

THE HOT CLUB OF SAN FRANCISCO Clayton Center for the Arts (502 E. Lamar Alexander Parkway, Maryville) • Friday, April 10 • 8 p.m. • $22-$36 • claytonartscenter.com

The long-running swing-jazz ensemble the Hot Club of San Francisco occupies a space similar to Michael Feinstein or Pink Martini—tireless preservationists of and advocates for a fading style of music who nevertheless emphasize pleasure over education. Bandleader Paul Mehling has been playing swing, Dixieland, and assorted variations on old-timey jazz since the 1970s, but his true love is the gypsy jazz of Belgian-French guitarist Django Reinhardt; with the Hot Club, he’s fashioned an institution dedicated to the hot jazz Reinhardt and his musical partner, Stéphane Grappelli, invented (or at least perfected) in the 1920s with their band Quintette du Hot Club de France—melancholy, melodic, romantic guitar-and-violin instrumentals that combine pre-World War II jazz with traditional Romani music from Eastern Europe. On a dozen albums over the last 20 years, the band has performed classic Reinhardt/Grappelli tunes along with a mix of jazz standards, rock and pop covers, and gypsy jazz originals. For this performance, they’ll be accompanying the screening of two silent stop-motion animation features by the Russian-French filmmaker Ladislaw Starewicz from the 1910s. (Matthew Everett)

FIT YOUR WHOLE DAY IN. Cross it all off the list with cars by the hour or day. Gas and insurance included. www.zipcar.com/knoxville

Knoxville Residents join for $25 membership fee: $60 driving credit: $60 Offer expires 6/30/2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

Knoxville Students, Faculty, and Staff join for $0 membership fee: $25 driving credit: $35 Offer expires 6/30/2015

CALENDAR ART

A1 Lab Arts 23 Emory Place APRIL 9-10: Loopy, a BFA capstone exhibition by Allan Namiotkiewicz. Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts 556 Parkway, Gatlinburg MARCH 30-MAY 9: A Naturally Picked Stacked Attraction of Glitz, the 2015 artists-in-residence exhibition. Art Market Gallery 422 S. Gay St. APRIL 3-30: Artwork by Marilyn Avery Turner and Gray Bearden. Central Flats and Taps 1204 N. Central St. APRIL 3-29: New artwork by Beth Meadows and Matthew Higginbotham. Clayton Center for the Arts 502 E. Lamar Alexander Parkway (Maryville) APRIL 2-30: Dogwood Arts Festival Synergy Student and East Tennessee Educator Art Exhibition. Emporium Center for Arts and Culture 100 S. Gay St. APRIL 3-25: Dogwood Arts Regional Fine Arts Exhibition APRIL 3-30: I Wish I Could Fly, paintings by Angel Blanco. Ewing Gallery 1715 Volunteer Blvd. APRIL 10-17: MFA Thesis Exhibition featuring James Boychuk-Hunter, David Harman, Tamra Hunt, and Kevin Varney

Knoxville Convention Center 701 Henley St. APRIL 3-19: The Art of Recycling, a sculpture exhibition

celebrating National Recycling Month. Knoxville Museum of Art 1050 World’s Fair Park Drive JAN. 30-APRIL 19: • LIFT: Contemporary Printmaking in the Third Dimension and Contemporary Focus 2015. 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. 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. Urban Bar 109 N. Central St. APRIL 3-MAY 30: Paintings and drawings by Charlie Pogue.

Westminster Presbyterian Church Schilling Gallery 6500 Northshore Drive THROUGH APRIL 26: Monoprints by Marilyn Avery Turner and needlepoint pillows by Coral Grace Turner.

LECTURES, READINGS, AND BOOK SIGNINGS Thursday, April 9

AMY GREENE: THE LONG MAN • Union Ave Books • 6 p.m. • New York Times bestselling author Amy Greene will read from her most recent novel, Long Man, which has just been released in paperback. • Free Monday, April 13

WILMA S. DUNAWAY: “MY JOURNEY: APPALACHIA, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISM, AND REVISIONIST SCHOLARSHIP” • Howard H. Baker Center for Public Policy • 5PM • FREE Tuesday, April 14 STFK SCIENCE CAFE • Ijams Nature Center • 5:30PM • Neil Greenberg, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, will discuss “Design With Nature” at the first seasonal installment of the Spirit and Truth Fellowship of Knoxville’s science forum. • FREE Wednesday, April 15 BOOKS SANDWICHED IN • East Tennessee History Center • 12PM • Knox County Public Library’s monthly book program features Knoxville attorney Wanda Sobieski discussing A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power by Jimmy Carter. For more information, contact Emily Ellis at (865) 215-8767 or eellis@knoxlib.org.. • FREE Thursday, April 16 KATHRYN HOLMES AND LAUREN MORRILL • Union Ave Books • 6PM • Young adult authors Kathryn Holmes and Lauren Morrill will read from their new and forthcoming books, The Distance Between Lost and Found and Trouble with Destiny. • FREE Sunday, April 19 DAWN COPPOCK: ‘AS SWEET AS IT’S GOING TO GET’ • Union Ave Books • 2PM • Knoxville poet Dawn Coppock will read from her new book. • FREE

FAMILY AND KIDS’ EVENTS Saturday, April 11

DOGWOOD ARTS FESTIVAL CHALK WALK • Market Square • 8AM • The Chalk Walk comes back in its seventh year and remains one of the fan favorites among our visitors in April! The street painting festival, whose origination as a featured event of Dogwood Arts, drew inspiration from a 16th century Italian happening, turns Knoxville’s downtown sidewalks into a seemingly infinite canvas for the region’s most talented professional and April 9, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 33

CALENDAR student artists. • FREE

Wednesday, April 15

FARRAGUT BOOK FEST FOR CHILDREN • Founders Park •

VETERANS FOR PEACE BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP •

10AM • Sponsored by the Farragut Arts Council and the Knox County Library Farragut Branch, this free event will feature storytellers, book signings by local authors, art activities, and cookie decorating. • FREE Saturday, April 18 BIG ORANGE STEM SYMPOSIUM • University of Tennessee • 9:30AM • Students interested in careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics are invited to attend the event. The symposium is free, but participants should preregister online at https://tiny.utk. edu/boss. Students will begin the day with a cornerstone activity called “Everyday Science: No Junk in my DNA!” Afternoon breakout sessions will feature hands-on activities relating to food science, the science behind tree planting, and the nuts and bolts of engineering. For more information, visit http://tiny.utk.edu/boss. • FREE

Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 6p.m. • Jerry Bone and Doug Cox, member of Veterans For Peace Chapter 166, will lead a discussion of the book War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges. Interested participants should read the book before coming to the first session. It would be helpful to let Jerry know that you are coming by emailing him at geraldwbone@gmail. com. • Free Thursday, April 16 THE SOUTHERN LITERATURE BOOK CLUB • Union Ave Books • 6PM • Union Ave Books’ monthly discussion group about Southern books and writers. • FREE

CLASSES

Saturday, April 11

AARP DRIVER SAFETY CLASS • Oak Ridge Senior Center • 8:30 a.m. • Call Carolyn Rambo at (865) 382-5822. Thursday, April 16 GARDENING TRENDS WORKSHOP • Roane State Community College(Oak Ridge) • 6:30PM • Just in time for the Arboretum’s Spring Plant Sale on April 16, Dr. Sue Hamilton will talk about new plants we should add to our gardens and trends in the gardening world. The program is open and free to the public. Dr. Hamilton is Director of the UT Gardens, Plant Sciences Department. To learn more about this lecture or the UT Arboretum Society, go to the Arboretum website. For more information on the program, call 483-3571.

MEETINGS

Monday, April 13

GAY MEN’S DISCUSSION GROUP • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 7:30 p.m.-9 p.m. • We hold facilitated discussions on topics and issues relevant to local gay men in a safe and open environment. Visit gaygroupknoxville.org. Tuesday, April 14 TUESDAYS WITH TOLSTOY • Lawson McGee Public Library • 6PM • Knox County Public Library is pleased to partner with the University of Tennessee’s Department of Modern Languages to present Tuesdays with Tolstoy throughout April to encourage readers to try Tolstoy’s classic story of passion. More information is available at http://mfll.utk.edu/tolstoy/. • FREE HARVEY BROOME GROUP OF THE SIERRA CLUB • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 7PM • Bill Reeves will present an overview of the activities of the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency’s (TWRA) Biodiversity Division. All Harvey Broome Group - Sierra Club Meetings are free and open to the public. For additional information contact Mac post - mpost3116@ aol.com, 865-806-0980 • FREE 34

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

ETC.

Thursday, April 9

‘CRY HAVOC!’: WAR, DIPLOMACY, AND CONSPIRACY IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND RENAISSANCE • University of Tennessee • 8a.m. • The dangers, intrigue and violence of medieval and early modern warfare and statecraft will be the focus of the 12th annual Marco Symposium at the University of Tennessee from April 9 to 11. • Free Friday, April 10

‘CRY HAVOC!’: WAR, DIPLOMACY, AND CONSPIRACY IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND RENAISSANCE • University of Tennessee • 8a.m. • Free

JUBILEE!: A TRIBUTE TO GUY AND CANDIE CARAWAN • East Tennessee History Center • 5:30PM • A tribute to the musicians, songwriters, and activists Guy and Candie Carawan, featuring live music, films, and art. • FREE • See Inside the Vault on page 21. Saturday, April 11

‘CRY HAVOC!’: WAR, DIPLOMACY, AND CONSPIRACY IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND RENAISSANCE • University of Tennessee • 8a.m. • Free

THE GREAT LLAMA RACE • World’s Fair Park • 11 a.m. • The Great Llama Race is a foot race in which local celebrities are paired with a Knoxville school and a llama provided by Southeast Llama Rescue. The race will be run in heats, with the final heat determining 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners. The winning schools will win a percentage of funds raised to go to a project of their choice. Southeast Llama Rescue will also receive a percentage of the funds raised, with the remainder of the money going to Casa de Sara, a non-profit that provides education, healthcare, and nutrition to children in the Americas. All proceeds will go to sponsor their elementary school in La Guardia, Bolivia. DOGWOOD ART DETOUR • 10AM • Dogwood Art DeTour is a two-day event where local artists welcome the public into their actual studio space to experience the working creative process as the artist demonstrates the making of a work of art. All studios will have completed works of art for sale. Visit http://www.dogwoodarts.com/ dogwood-art-detour/ for a list of participating studios. • FREE MARBLE SPRINGS STORYTELLING • Marble Springs

State Historic Site • 2PM • Live! Professional Storytellers entertaining with Humor, Traditional, Historic, Appalachian and Tall Tales. Fundraiser. Easy Access. Free Parking. Bring Chairs. In Pavillion. Sponsored by the Gov. John Sevier Memorial Association. • $7 Sunday, April 12 DOGWOOD ART DETOUR • 10AM • Dogwood Art DeTour is a two-day event where local artists welcome the public into their actual studio space to experience the working creative process as the artist demonstrates the making of a work of art. All studios will have completed works of art for sale. Visit http://www.dogwoodarts.com/ dogwood-art-detour/ for a list of participating studios. • FREE Tuesday, April 14 DISABILITY RESOURCES AND TRANSITION FAIR • Blount County Public Library • 4:30PM • Whether you’re a young adult about to graduate from high school or whether you were in a car accident or suffered a stroke that changed your life and physical, social or mental abilities, there are numerous resources in the Blount County community to help you achieve a better quality of life.For people with disabilities or their families or those who work with them, this fair will provide valuable information about community resources and local businesses. • FREE Wednesday, April 15 DWEEZIL ZAPPA GUITAR MASTERCLASS • Bijou Theatre • 3PM • For the price of a fuzz pedal, learn techniques from the son of Frank Zappa. Dweezil Zappa’s music camp Dweezil has a motto “Learn And Destroy.” It refers to destroying the boundaries that confine music creativity. • $75 Saturday, April 18 UT ARBORETUM SOCIETY SPRING PLANT SALE • University of Tennessee Arboretum (Oak Ridge) • 9AM • Proceeds from this sale and other Society fund-raising events go toward the operating expenses and endowment fund for the UT Arboretum. For more information on the program, call 483-3571. • FREE

RIVER AND RAIL THEATRE COMPANY INAUGURAL FUNDRAISER • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 7:30PM • River & Rail will produce nuanced, character-, and story-driven theatre that touches on topics that different socio-economic, religious, ethnic, and racial groups in Knoxville encounter distinctively, but rarely discuss collectively. Theatre has long been a diverse art form, incorporating fine art, dance, composition, music, and various other multimedia arts into a single performance. We will seek to establish a precedent of inter-art collaboration, inviting the distinct artistic talents present in Knoxville to come together. New work is a pillar of our artistic vision; within our first 2-3 seasons we will begin a new play series wherein we will fully produce a play developed by River & Rail.

Poetry Week

Brought to you by the Cultural Attractions Committee

APRIL 13-17, 2015

COMEDY DAY

LOVE POEMS IN THE AFTERNOON: POETRY READING

with Dr. Marilyn Kallet, Director of the Creative Writing Program & Claire Dodson, Editor-In-Chief of The Daily Beacon Free and open to the public.

Monday, April 13 UC Room 226 2:30-3:30 PM

VERSUS/VERSES DAY THE ASIA PROJECT

spoken word poet. activist. cancer survivor.

Free for opted-in students and $5 cash/check at the door for opted-out students and general public.

Tuesday, April 14 UC Ballroom 7 PM

ROMANCE DAY

BUT AFTERWARDS YOUR LOVE: A POETRY READING with Stephanie Dugger, Graduate Teaching Associate in the English Department Free and open to the general public.

Wednesday, April 15 UC Room 226 2:30-3:30 PM POETRY CONTEST AWARDS AND RECEPTION

THE DEPARTMENT OF MODERN FOREIGN LANGUAGES THE DEPARTMENT OF MODERN FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES PRESENTS AND LITERATURES PRESENTS

LEOTOLSTOY F

Wednesday, April 15 UC Ballroom 7 PM

FAVORITES DAY ALIX OLSON

Folk poet, spoken word performer

Free for opted-in students and $5 cash/check at the door for opted-out students and general public.

Thursday, April 16 UC Auditorium 7 PM

AN ODE TO OLE TENNESSEE OPEN MIC NIGHT

APRIL 23-24, 2015 TOLSTOY & CELEBRITY... or: How They Stole Tolstoy’s Pants

Online signups at facebook.com/utkcac or at the performance Free and open to the public

Friday, April 17 UC Room 226 5-6:30 PM

MICHAEL DENNER, STETSON UNIVERSITY

APRIL 23, 5 PM, ART & ARCHITECTURE BUILDING, ROOM 113 Lectures, Presentations, Readings, Performances throughout both days FOR COMPLETE SCHEDULE VISIT

mfll.utk.edu/tolstoy

THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 2015 5 PM KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

ART & ARCHITECTURE BUILDING, ROOM 113 Keynote Lecture: TOLSTOY & CELEBRITY... or: How They Stole Tolstoy’s Pants

FOOD

Home Palate

OLIBEA 119 S. Central St., 865-200-5450 olibea.net Mon.–Sat.: 7 a.m.–1 p.m

Sunrise Celebration The most important meal of the day gets its due at OliBea BY DENNIS PERKINS

hether or not breakfast is the most important meal of your day, 2014 was a big year for the growth of restaurants specializing in the morning meal. Knoxville, too, saw a number of breakfast joints open, including corporate chains with encyclopedic menus and smaller locally generated efforts. Honestly, I haven’t made a complete survey of all these new spots, but that’s partly because once I got to OliBea, I decided to stick with it for a while. This new addition to the Old City combines tasteful creativity with an attention to the details of good cooking that make it a joyful way to celebrate sunrise. That’s not to say that it’s perfect on every front, but the food is good, unique, and toothsome. The place is airy, with a cheerful, almost minimalist mien that gives it a

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

sense of urban efficiency. It’s small, and on weekends that becomes a challenge for the hordes who gather with their appetites trained for OliBea’s distinctive menu. You’ll find that menu on a blackboard near where you order, pay, look at sweet stuff, and dress your coffee. Fortunately, there are some small paper copies for closer inspection. But this may be the only real complaint I have about the place—too many activities are crowded into one small spot and an accidental meeting of my coffee and your elbow has the potential to ruin an otherwise delightful morning. The food includes a number of options in the form of the OliBea Plate—choose your egg, bread, potato, and a side option that includes bacon and tempeh bacon, too. But it’s the

inventive plates with a Southwestern or Tex-Mex feel that make this place distinctive. The dish that first captured my affection was the house taco. Simple details shouted an understanding of the principles of good cooking—balance, contrast, texture, flavor, surprise. The soft, flour tortilla was grilled golden brown and crunchy in spots—a perfect imperfection that testified not only to the quality of the house-made tortilla, but also demonstrated attention to the pleasures of textural contrast. Next came the chorizo, luxurious and mildly spicy, then the bite of the carrot (a spicy crunch, pickled, perhaps, with jalapeño?) that brought an extra shot of both heat and tartness that enlivened the bite yet again. I’m pretty sure it’s the best taco I’ve had in a long time. Likewise, the carnita tostada—another winner—is a lesson in balance and the studied construction of good food. Typically, I avoid tostadas because there’s no good way to eat them—one application of knife and fork and the whole construction shatters like so much glass. But once again, the restaurant’s house-made tortillas contribute mightily—these fried wafers of flour crackle and crunch happily but aren’t perilously brittle. Their crunch is important in this tower of lush pork confit, soft refritos, and fried egg. Sadly, the whole thing would have been

much better if my egg hadn’t been overcooked—but even without the loveliness that a bit of runny yolk would have contributed to the dish, it was still a beautiful thing. The pork layer seemed to have a slight tang, perhaps owing to some vinegar element that continued the theme of contrast and balance, and gave the confit a delicious lift. The rich earthiness of the refritos was also elevated by the warmth of salsa roja and little spikes of flavor from a sprinkle of cilantro and diced raw onion. The menu includes a nice Tennessee Benedict and a really interesting stuffed acorn squash, which—rightfully—puts quinoa on the breakfast table. Don’t miss the daily specials that are listed on a long roll of white paper hanging on the wall like some Titan-sized roll of paper towels. On an early visit, I enjoyed a pozole verde that was warm and comforting, with a gentle heat, mounds of pulled chicken, and plump kernels of hominy. The dish was diminished only by chicken that was a little dry, but perhaps that observation would go unnoticed since the soup itself was well-made and balanced. All said, it’s a lovely and refreshing take on breakfast. It’s also a beautiful example of how a novel approach to food can be sensible, trendy and, I hope, long-lived.

Photo by David Luttrell

FOOD

PETE’S COFFEE SHOP

Notable Knoxville Breakfast Noshes COSMO’S CAFFE 5107 Kingston Pike, 865-584-8739 shopgourmetsmarket.com This longtime Bearden favorite (located in Gourmet’s Market) is one of the only places in town where you can order Toad in the Hole for breakfast, and it’s the only place to offer the lovely Frog in the Ditch: two fried eggs nestled into grilled Italian bread and topped with sausage and Cotswold cheese. They offer a full menu of interesting eats, from chocolate-chip pancakes to an All-Vol omelet that’s finished with a dollop of sausage gravy. And there’s nowhere else close where you can opt to break the fast with a side of Irish bacon, avocado, smoked salmon, or bread pudding. Mon.-Fri.: 7 a.m.–3 p.m., Sat.: 8 a.m.–3 p.m. PETE’S COFFEE SHOP 540 Union Ave., 865-523-2860 petescoffeeshop.com There’s no surprise here—Knoxville’s favorite diner is always crowded because the food is always good. Pete Natour and family offer a traditional diner breakfast with some special touches, including a fantastic fresh spinach-and-mushroom omelet. They serve a marble rye that’s dense and delicious enough to top with syrup. It’s also the friendliest place in town—and you’ll almost always find a Natour hovering over the grill. Breakfast Hours: Mon.-Fri.: 6:30 a.m.–11 a.m., Sat: 7 a.m.–2 p.m. THE PLAID APRON 1210 Kenesaw Ave., 865-247-4640 theplaidaproncafe.com Chef Drew puts out an all-around winner of a morning meal, but his “build your own” breakfast sandwiches always hit the right spot and are a great deal, too. Still, it’s hard to resist the options that show the chef’s touch, like a sausage omelet with goat cheese and caramelized onions or one with bacon, chard, and garlic cheddar. Breakfast Hours: Mon.-Fri.: 7 a.m.–10:30 a.m., Brunch: Sat: 8 a.m.–2 p.m. —Dennis Perkins April 9, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 37

’BYE

Spir it of the Staircase

BY MATTHEW FOLTZ-GRAY

TALK TO US 38

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 9, 2015

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At this Point

Incurable Romantic And feeling positively medieval BY STEPHANIE PIPER

read a news story today about scientists who recreated a medieval potion based on instructions found in an ancient manuscript. The recipe called for garlic and cow bile, among other homely ingredients. The result was a liquid that wiped out an MRSA infection when other antibiotics had failed. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s one of those stories that makes me wonder how far we have really come. Skeptics would point out that a thousand years ago, people routinely died of ailments that today are cured with one round of meds. Life was shorter then, and unless you were rich, it was relentlessly hard. Wars raged nonstop over religion, land, and treasure. Random violence was a fact of daily existence. Some of that sounds like way back then, but more of it sounds like now. We may have instant gratification through technology, but we also have Sandy Hook and ISIS. We live longer, but not necessarily better. We have vast stores of information and dwindling reserves of wisdom. Our medieval ancestors had the unicorn

tapestry and the Ghent altarpiece and the Book of Kells. We have Kim Kardashian and Twitter. I confess to being a medieval nerd. Given a shot at time travel, I would set the dial for somewhere between the 12th and 14th centuries. Growing up in New York, I haunted the Cloisters, a reconstruction of a medieval monastery overlooking the Hudson River. On spring days, the interior garden was a kind of oasis, scented with hyacinths and the blossoms of espaliered pear trees. Water bubbled from a fountain transported piece by piece from some mossy Gothic ruin. When I was a student in Paris, I sometimes climbed the 387 steps to the heights of Notre Dame and lingered among the gargoyles. The view was spectacular, but it was the musty scent of old stone, the worn treads of the curving staircase that I remember. Eight hundred years of footsteps, eight centuries of people trudging upward, stopping for breath, pressing on. My favorite museum was the Cluny, built on the site of Roman

baths and full of echoing, tapestry-hung rooms and crowded with Madonnas. There was one in particular I loved, a young girl carved from wood. She wore a faded gilt dress and was visibly pregnant and clearly joyful. She might have walked in from a side street in the quartier, so at home did she seem there. The first time I saw the cathedral of Chartres, I thought it was an optical illusion. Rising out of the plain like a vision, the spires pointing skyward, it seemed to demand some response, something beyond a quick scramble for the guidebook. Like Notre Dame and my other favorite medieval haunts, Chartres is hors du temps, outside of time. In its dim interior, the shadows fall as they did in 1220, and 1350, and 1480. The air smells of incense and dust and prayer. The woman lighting a candle might be wearing jeans and ballet flats, but her face in the flickering

â&#x20AC;&#x2122;BYE

light is timeless. She could be the wife of a 12th-century stonecutter, or a noble lady from a nearby chateau. A learned professor once warned me about romanticizing the Middle Ages, delivering a brisk lecture on sanitary conditions, the Black Plague, and the odds of surviving childbirth. Not everyone had access to the garlic and cow bile potion, after all. I get it. But I wonder if anyone will ever romanticize the 21st century. A thousand years from now, will they preserve antique cellphones and iPads, puzzle over the design of devices made to be replaced annually? I think of the stone steps and the gargoyles, the ageless sight of a cathedral rising from wheat fields. I think of the artisans who would not live to see the whole but built their part as though the world depended on it. Maybe the world did. Maybe it still does.

BY IAN BLACKBURN AND JACK NEELY

I wonder if anyone will ever romanticize the 21st century. A thousand years from now, will they preserve antique cell phones and iPads, puzzle over the design of devices made to be replaced annually?

April 9, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 39