Issue 27 - September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE’S ALL-SINGING, ALL-DANCING MEDIA BUSKERS

SEPT. 10, 2015 KNOXMERCURY.COM

1 / N. 27

V.

Who are these people who perform on the streets of downtown, and what are their stories?

NEWS

University Workers Protest Haslam’s Proposal to Outsource Jobs

JACK NEELY

Remembering Keith Bellows and the Mark He Made on Knoxville

MOVIES

The Knoxville Film Festival Premieres The Ace Miller Story

OUTDOORS

A Last Look at Boomsday—From the Tennessee River

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

Your career path is here.

Sept. 10, 2015 Volume 01 / Issue 27 knoxmercury.com

CONTENTS

“We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.” —Dolly Parton

16 The Buskers of Knoxville

NEWS

COVER STORY

Knoxville has a long history of street musicians, with some of the earliest noted public performances of what became known as “country music.” This tradition took something of a hiatus for the last few generations, to the point where many assumed busking was illegal on Knoxville’s streets. But with the rebirth of downtown—and with a more realistic view of what’s permissible by the police—busking has returned. So who are these people who perform on the streets of downtown, and what are their stories? We asked a few of them how they came to be buskers.

Mercury Meetup #5: Sunspot

14 Private-Sector Insecurities University of Tennessee employees fear they will lose their jobs under a new proposal from Gov. Bill Haslam looking to outsource building operations and maintenance for many state agencies, including the university system.

Meanwhile, privatizing government duties has a mixed record, as Clay Duda reports.

Meet us at Sunspot this Thursday, Sept. 10 at 5 p.m. We’ll raise a toast to you!

DEPARTMENTS

OPINION

A&E

4 Letters 6 Howdy

10 The Scruffy Citizen

22 Program Notes: An interview with

Start Here: Photo by Bart Ross, Believe It or Knox!, Public Affairs, Quote Factory.

PLUS: Words With … David Thomasson

44 ’Bye

Finish There: Restless Native by Chris Wohlwend, Crooked Street Crossword by Ian Blackburn and Jack Neely, Spirit of the Staircase by Matthew Foltz-Gray

Jack Neely remembers the man who gave him his start: Keith Bellows, world-traveling editor.

12 Small Planet

Patrice Cole celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning.

CALENDAR the director of The Ace Miller Story.

23 Shelf Life: Chris Barrett clues us

in on what new movies to borrow from the library.

24 Music: Joe Tarr talks with surf-

rock revisionists *repeat repeat.

25 Movies: April Snellings checks out Mistress America.

26 Art: Coury Turczyn goes behind

28 Spotlights: Quintron’s Weather Warlock, Steve Earle

OUTDOORS

40 Voice in the Wilderness

Kim Trevathan braves the Tennessee River—on Boomsday.

FOOD & DRINK

42 Sips & Shots

Rose Kennedy gets excited about Big Orange—moonshine, that is.

the scenes at New York Fashion Week with photographer Andrew Gresham.

September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 3

LETTERS Delivering Fine Journalism Since 2015

ARCHITECTURAL SELF-AWARENESS

I have to admit I have had trouble following your articles on modern architecture. [“Hating Modern Architecture, and Loving It,” Architecture Matters by George Dodds, July 30, Aug. 13, and Sept. 3, 2015] I hope you will publish a summary that will put it all in perspective.

There is one matter with which I would take issue. Three times in your article you refer to “Frank Ghery.” No doubt you were referring to the renowned Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry. You seem to be implying that he is not thoughtful or self-aware.

I was the managing partner of Frank Gehry’s office for a number of years and worked very closely with him. I think it would be impossible to conclude that anyone who has had such spectacular success was anything but thoughtful. His work is very intuitive and not convenient for intellectualizing. That is one of his strengths.

For his entire career he has known exactly who he is and what he’s trying to achieve. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about his designs is that he is able to get them built. This is achieved by establishing a close working relationship with his clients. They come to know him well and trust him as he reveals much about himself in the process. He is very much self-aware.

Gehry has built hundreds of buildings all over the world with clients lined up at his door. So many of his buildings could not be built if there was not a large percentage of the population that liked them. Actually, the most passionate dislike of his work that I’ve heard comes from other architects.

You quote him stating that 98 percent of buildings are “shit.” I think he speaks the truth on this matter. The call for more consciousness about the value of well-designed architecture is much needed and sometimes a gesture of contempt can get that message on the front page of newspapers all over the world.

David Denton Knoxville 4

KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

TOP KNOX SUGGESTIONS

Thanks for coming up with the Top Knox survey to help promote local businesses, personalities, and other features! Since our lovely town is ripe with artists and creativity, perhaps next year’s survey could include an expanded list of artist mediums to highlight Knoxville’s diverse range of talent, such as fiber, sculpture, clay, jewelry, mixed media, wood, leather.

Also, I would have liked to have seen an alternative music category.

Looking forward to seeing the results. Keep up the good work!

Wendy Seaward Knoxville

MEMORIES OF KEITH BELLOWS

I first met Keith Bellows on a March day in New York City in 1988. It was in a Whittle Communications office in the Seagram’s Building on Park Avenue. Keith exuded a charisma and excitement as he said that amazing things were going on in Knoxville, Tennessee. It was a new kind of magazine journalism, and it was a perfect opportunity for me to grow and learn. What I remember most was that Keith made me feel special, something that I’ve heard echoed by many others who were drawn to Whittle in the ’80s, to Keith’s dot.com projects in the ’90s, and to National Geographic Traveler in Washington, D.C., over the past 17 years or so.

Everything Keith said about Whittle turned out to be true. It was an exciting ride, to say the least. The people, including many friends who make the Mercury special, were interesting, remarkable, creative—and have all done cool things since Whittle—like Icarus—flew too close to the sun, melted its wings, and fell into the sea.

It has hit Whittle alumni hard to have lost Keith and his former wife, Shelley Williams, a mentor in many ways to hundreds of graphic designers, on the same day last week. They were both too young, and they had both affected so many lives for the better.

Our thoughts are certainly with their son, Adam, who lives in Asheville.

Keith and Shelley loved their house in Island Home. They also loved their log cabin in Buckhead.

Then Keith bought a place in Happy Valley, near Abrams Creek, I think because he wanted to drink in the Smokies as much as he could, despite a long commute.

Not long ago Mercury contributor Chris Wohlwend asked me to talk to his travel writing class at UT. I got Keith on the phone, and in 10 minutes he told me everything he wanted to tell every travel writer: it’s not the place, it’s the story that you tell about the place; it’s the people who make up the story that you tell about the place.

When we look back on Whittle Communications, it was the people like Keith Bellows and Shelley Williams who make up the story that we tell about the place.

Brooks Clark Knoxville ED. NOTE: See Jack Neely’s Scruffy Citizen column in this issue for more on Keith Bellows.

CORRECTIONS

We misplaced the “h” in Frank Gehry’s name, as noted above. Also, in Rose Kennedy’s Sips & Shots column about Knox Whiskey Works distiller Ryan Catlett, it should have noted that he served four years in the Air Force, not two.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR GUIDELINES

• Letter submissions should include a verifiable name, address, and phone number.

We do not print anonymous letters.

• We much prefer letters that address issues that pertain specifically to Knoxville or to stories we’ve published.

• We don’t publish letters about personal disputes or how you didn’t like your waiter at that restaurant.

• Letters are usually published in the order that we receive them.

Send your letters to: Our Dear Editor Knoxville Mercury 706 Walnut St., Suite 404 Knoxville, TN 37920 Send an email to: editor@knoxmercury.com Or message us at: facebook.com/knoxmercury

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

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

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

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

Charlie Finch Corey McPherson CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

David Luttrell Shawn Poynter Justin Fee Tyler Oxendine CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS

Ben Adams Matthew Foltz-Gray

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

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

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

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

Paper to Pixels The Knox County Public Library Foundation is taking on its most ambitious project: to digitize all the copies of one Knoxville newspaper from 1922 to 1990. organization of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Great Depression, the beginning of air travel, the formation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Manhattan Project, a few football championships, the dawn of television, the Civil Rights era, and Knoxville’s World’s Fair.

It’s a 68-year thicket of cultural and technological change, political turbulence, and interesting stories that can’t be told until they’re found.

Why digitize a newspaper? Almost all modern history depends on newspaper research.

Although any given article may be incomplete or biased, a newspaper story is very often the only surviving account of an important event in American history. To anyone seeking the history of a movement, or a business, or an organization, or a family, newspapers are indispensible.

Old newspapers are already more convenient than most people realize. For many years, Knoxville newspapers have been saved on microfilm. Lawson McGhee Library on Church Avenue has an almost-complete collection of both the Knoxville Journal and the Knoxville News Sentinel on rolls of microfilm. Any citizen can visit the library and read them on the library’s hand-cranked readers.

Howell Carter holding newspaper at the

One good example of how digitization might revolutionize Knoxville’s story is in the realm of popular music. This era witnessed the early days of radio and the dawn of the careers of Roy Acuff, Chet Atkins, and many others. How often were these former Knoxvillians mentioned in the paper before they were famous?

Right now we don’t have any practical way of knowing.

Knoxville Journal, January 21, 1925.

However, these physical systems offer two PHOTO CORTESY OF Digitization will change all that. Library card challenges. You have to visit the libraries in C.M. MCCLUNG HISTORICAL COLLECTION, holders of all ages will be able to peruse stories person, during business hours, to use them. That’s cmdc.knoxlib.org by subject. a problem for people of limited mobility and for those who don’t live in the Knoxville area. Scholars in other countries, in Potential donors need not allow their impressions of the current leaderparticular, have wished to be able to study old Knoxville newspapers when ship of the News Sentinel discourage them from donating to this cause. The looking into Knoxvillians of international interest, like bluesman Brownie project will not involve anything published by the News Sentinel after 1990, McGhee or filmmaker Clarence Brown. or any content generated on behalf of that newspaper’s current publisher.

A bigger problem, though, is that the libraries’ thousands of rolls of microfilms, though mostly chronological, are not indexed. At present, you can’t search old newspapers for a particular subject, whether an individual or a business, except through the library’s paper files. The McClung Collection keeps separate subject and biographical files, which are alphabetized in cabinets. Though better than most other libraries’ resources, they are incomplete at best and very spotty before the 1960s.

Searches still have to be done by cranking through microfilm. A thorough study of one month of one newspaper can consume more than a day’s work. Even if you go to that trouble, tired eyes still miss things.

The Paper to Pixels project is aimed at digitizing the Knoxville News Sentinel from 1922 to 1990. This 68-year period includes the Knoxville-based

And the project will benefit research into other media by identifying dates of significant events that can then be looked up in the Knoxville Journal, other publications, and other sources. Often just identifying the date when something occurred becomes the key to finding a mother lode of useful information from multiple sources.

Digitizing 68 years of newspapers is not a simple process. If this campaign is successful, NewsBank, Inc., one of the nation’s leaders in this field, will digitize 24,820 daily newspapers covering that era, almost a million pages in all, at 60 cents a page. The Knox County Public Library Foundation, an adjunct to Friends of the Library, is seeking to raise $600,000 to complete this project.

For more information, or to support the Paper to Pixels campaign look up knoxlib.org/foundation.

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 September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 5

Illustration by Ben Adams

HOWDY

Believe It or Knox!

BY Z. HERACLITUS KNOX The Tennessee River is formed by the union of the French Broad and the Holston, just upstream from downtown Knoxville. Few if any rivers in the world reverse their general course for so long, flowing, in the Tennessee’s case, hundreds of miles south and then hundreds of miles north. Water leaving Knoxville will eventually reach green shores in the states of Alabama and Ohio before returning southward again with the Mississippi.

“When in Doubt Consult Your Inner Child or Mural Artwork Gay Street Knoxville TN I” by Bart Ross (bartross.com)

QUOTE FACTORY “ When the egg and butter were proposed, my first question was: ‘Is that part of their branding?’”

—Peter Ahrens, Knoxville’s director of plans review and inspections, explaining his thought process to the News Sentinel in turning thumbs-down to Magpies Bakery’s idea to erect anthropomorphic egg and butter figures on the roof of its building. The proposal ran afoul of the city’s new sign ordinance, which forbids advertising on rooftops. Owner Peggy Hambright declares Ms. Egg and Mr. Butter to be art, and will take them to the Zoning Board of Appeals.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS

9/10 MERCURY MEETUP #5: SUNSPOT THURSDAY

5-8 p.m., Sunspot (2200 Cumberland Ave.). Free.

We’re taking it to the Strip for our monthly meetup!

Come on by Sunspot to meet the staff of the Knoxville Mercury and tell us what’s on your mind. Or ask us questions—we’re friendly!

6

KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

The Battle of Fort Sanders, the deadliest Civil War battle in East Tennessee, which left hundreds dead and wounded, LASTED ONLY 20 MINUTES! Knoxvillians who attended the often-risqué stage show Earl Carroll’s Vanities at the Tennessee Theatre in 1934 were treated to a new pop song that would become well known in years to come, “Cocktails for Two.” A celebration of the end of national Prohibition, it would be recorded by numerous major stars, including Bing Crosby and Duke Ellington. Because of its place on the tour, Knoxville heard it before the rest of the nation did, even though in 1934 cocktails WERE STILL ILLEGAL IN KNOXVILLE! In fact, no Knoxville restaurant could legally fill a cocktail order until the city passed liquor by the drink, 38 years later!

9/11 ‘WE WILL REMEMBER: THE FREEDOM 9/15 MEETING: PUBLIC RECORDS CHANGE 9/16 BOOKS SANDWICHED IN: ROB FROST ENGINE’ FRIDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

Noon, East Tennessee History Center. Free.

4-6 p.m., 12 Oaks Executive Park (5401 Kingston Pike, Building 2, Suite 350).

Noon, East Tennessee History Center auditorium.

Free.

East Tennesseans responded to the shock of 9/11 by volunteering in rescue and cleanup efforts, as well as a campaign to help the New York City Fire Department replenish its fleet, raising $950,000 for the Freedom Engine.

Mickey Mallonee, Diana Morgan, and Shelba Murphy will share their experiences organizing the fundraising campaign and working with New York officials. Info: easttnhistory.org

Does having free access to public records matter to you?

If so, you might want to pay close attention to this meeting being held by Tennessee’s Office of Open Records Counsel.

It’s considering revisions to the state’s open records laws that could allow officials to charge for simply inspecting documents. If you want to attend, you must sign up in by Friday, Sept. 11: comptroller.tn.gov/openrecords.

Former city councilman Rob Frost will lead a discussion of Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in the Minor Leagues of Baseball by John Feinstein. And beyond this enlightening look at Triple-A ball, you’ll also benefit from supplies of free Cracker Jack®.

Keep Independent Journalism Alive in Knoxville!

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All of the above, plus exclusive KNOXVILLE MERCURY LEVEL TRAVEL MUG only available to supporters. $75 PARTNER All of the above, plus four tickets to our ANNUAL FUNDRAISING $200 PATRON LEVEL CONCERT at the Bijou Theatre and pre-show party.

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September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 7

RE-ELECT

HOWDY

Fiinbarr

Sforau aunders city council cit Primary Election September 29, 2015 Early Voting: September 9-24

General Election November 3, 2015 Early Voting: October 14-29

“Keep Knoxville an active, growing, thriving community”

WORDS WITH ...

David Thomasson

BY ROSE KENNEDY David Thomasson is the lead organizer of the inaugural Knoxville Noodle Bowl Festival, held Sept. 16 from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Blue Slip Winery (300 W. Depot Ave.). Admission tickets include unlimited bowls of noodles from five regional chefs and beer tastings from multiple breweries, along with live music.

Thomasson is local co-leader of Chefs Collaborative Knoxville, which works with the greater culinary community to celebrate regional food and foster a more sustainable food supply. Proceeds from the event benefit Friends of Tennessee’s Babies with Special Needs.

Scan this with your smartphone to find out more.

Paid for by ‘Finbarr Saunders for City Council’, Daniel L. Barnett, Treasurer

Is there some sort of contest involved for the chefs?

No contest at all. It’s just all about community fundraising—very casual, lots of fun, and I hope very interactive for all the participants.

How did Babies With Special Needs become the designated charity?

My wife has been a social worker her entire career, always working with the lowest socioeconomic groups, the people in greatest need with the least wherewithal to meet those needs. We have watched over the years, seeing what this organization has done for children with special needs, helping fill the gaps that no other agency does. When I started Farm to Griddle Crepes, where I am chef and owner, I vowed to give them some assistance as soon as I started making enough money. Then this idea came to my head and I said, “Wow, this is it.”

Why noodles?

Who doesn’t like a noodle bowl? We all grew up eating chicken noodle soup as kids and noodle bowls are a classic—a traditional food of the people.

It’s not fine dining, but it’s good food, with endless variations, vegan to pork-belly based. Chef Dan Crowder makes a wonderful ramen bowl, and I don’t know exactly what he or any of the chefs will make, but I guarantee he will make his from scratch and they will all be just delicious. And the beer is an enhancement, a sampling of five from regional and local brewers, all of them at the top of their game.

Do you eat Asian noodle bowls at home?

I certainly do, my wife and I both. They are very convenient. I just made a batch yesterday; they can 8

KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

be busy food for busy people during the week. You can make broth during a day off; mine is always vegetarian-based and I get a lot of good veggies in it and mushrooms. From one gallon, we will have that broth all week, and there are hundreds of types of Asian noodles to cook in it. One we like is an organic wheat udon noodle that we get at Three Rivers Market; it only has to boil seven minutes and then you are sitting down to a warm noodle bowl.

Chefs Collaborative Knoxville is much more recent than the national group?

Chefs Collaborative is 20 years old, founded by a small group of chefs meeting on the big island of Hawaii. Not long after that concept was formed, Boston became the home office, and over time it’s been a New England- and West Coast-based organization, with what they call local organizations in other places. At the time I asked national to form a local in Knoxville and jumped through some hoops, we were the only local in the Southeast or the South, period.

Why did you start Chefs Coalition Knoxville?

For my whole working career, my whole life, my passions have included the environment. I just retired as an environmental scientist. Education is also in my background. And I grew up in my mother’s restaurants and kitchens, and worked in others, and am a food gardener and of course I love to eat. This effort, this reaching out, it combines all my passions; it represents my whole life.

For more information about the event and to purchase tickets: knbf.brownpapertickets.com

If you want this, but you’re looking at this, we can help.

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September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 9

making whomever he talked to feel as if they were, with him, smarter than everybody else, and part of some essential inner circle that was going to turn the world on its ear.

“We’ll get you in here somehow,” he said with his big conspiratorial grin.

I never doubted him, every time I heard him say that over the next two years, as I took jobs proofreading trusts for lawyers or delivering jelly for the Fraternal Order of Police, getting turned down for work in insurance and motel management, as I was trying to pay for a new baby. Keith never forgot about me. I was about to be hired on one project, then a shoo-in for another.

I finally got a toehold on a humor poster for laundromats.

For a guy who works with words, he had an extraordinary physical presence. He always struck me as an athlete trying to get used to street clothes. And he didn’t mind that those clothes were a decade or two out of style. I remember when Whittle was starting to rattle some national cages, one magazine article about the phenomenon made fun of Keith Bellows’ corduroy suit. He shook his head, grinned, and was quickly on to something more interesting.

He’d arrived here during the World’s Fair, when the former Dartmouth hockey player was best known as editor for a hockey magazine. At Whittle he worked on a few manly athletic projects, but, married and becoming a father himself, gravitated toward family and parenting concepts, notably Whittle’s most ambitious launch, Special Reports, which at its

SCRUFFY CITIZEN

Keith Bellows, 1951-2015 One of the nation’s hardest-working travel editors left his mark on Knoxville, too

I

n the wake of his sudden death Saturday before last, dozens of travel-writing professionals have been hailing Keith Bellows as a giant in the industry: “brilliant, a creative genius,” “always scanning the horizon for the next great thing,” “a pusher, a dreamer, a doer, a man on a quest.”

Well-known travel writer and TV host Rudy Maxa, who traveled extensively in Asia with Bellows, credits him with pioneering digital media and the concept of “authentic” travel. Actor/ writer Andrew McCarthy, thanking Bellows for his whole writing career, wrote, “He had a grand vision and loathed the mundane.”

No one in the world had a resume much like Keith’s. Born in the Congo, he grew up in Montreal, but was educated in Scotland. He was always international in his perspective, a globe-trotting writer and editor, for years the man in charge of National Geographic Traveler, maybe the world’s best-regarded travel magazine.

So far, this fact hasn’t been mentioned much: In the middle of all that, he spent 15 vigorous years in Knoxville. And I think he had an effect on the place.

He was at one critical time very interested in this city and its downtown’s revival. For a dozen years he worked for Whittle Communications, as one of that organization’s most dynamic and creative editors. But he also had an uncommon interest in Knoxville itself, in pushing it beyond its perceived boundaries.

I should acknowledge that I might

10

KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

not be in journalism if not for Keith Bellows. At 27, I’d done some freelance writing, but my lack of a journalism degree kept me out of most jobs, even with the local daily. I’d washed out of J-school in two weeks, mainly due to my inability to get along with a demonic machine called the IBM Selectric II, the typewriter that I was told was de rigueur for modern journalism. I lapsed back into the ocean of liberal arts, where I was still allowed to use my manual.

The local publishing phenomenon at the time was a big magazine company called Whittle Communications. They hired hundreds from across the country. Everybody I heard of there had a J-school degree, and most of the staffers I knew about, even the low-level ones, had done an internship at a big national magazine.

I had not. But through friends of friends, I was told the guy to know was Keith Bellows, and he was known to think for himself, and make exceptions. I sent him my unconventional resume, and some clips. He wanted to talk to me.

Whittle was based in the Arnstein Building, overlooking Market Square, and Keith had a corner office. I think it was on the third floor.

Keith greeted me like a friendly lion. He moved around the room restlessly and talked fast, and everything he said was interesting. I was not used to people like that. He talked about hockey and Africa and the urgent importance of family journalism. He had the talent of

Photo by Rebecca Hale/National Geographic

BY JACK NEELY

height produced 36 big glossy magazines a year, all aimed at doctors’ offices. Keith was in charge of that.

His friend Randall Duckett, who still lives here, recalls his style. “He shot from the hip, but he was remarkably accurate. He had a very acute editorial sense.” He adds, “He was bigger than life.”

At Whittle, Keith was in the upper echelons. In my six years there I never even got out of a carrel. Truth be told, in that extroverted, fast-paced, short-form, four-color world, I was never sure I belonged. Keith swam in it like a porpoise. But he always remembered me and stopped and talked, and I had the impression he sometimes wanted me to validate an idea of his, bounce something off me.

He once sent me to New York just to listen to some rock ’n’ roll cassettes in the Seagram’s Building.

At the time, it was a common understanding that Knoxville was a second-rate city, and any efforts to improve it were, at best, quaint. Many who lived here seemed to like it that way. Most Whittle editors, who regularly traveled to Atlanta or New York for fun, were happy to accept Knoxvillians’ own assessments of their city’s mediocrity. Keith wouldn’t buy it. He saw potential in the place.

In the late 1980s, he was a partner, with Ashley Capps and a couple others, in an unprecedented subterranean nightclub called Ella Guru’s, bringing in big names for a small room. He was not involved in booking acts, but he may have been Knoxville’s most enthusiastic advo-

cate for the place, and its lineup reminded me of his reputation at Whittle, getting big names in small magazines. After a couple of memorable years, Ella Guru’s turned out to be too much, too soon. But it raised our expectations of what we could hope to find in a Knoxville nightclub.

Keith kept trying. In fall, 1990, he was involved in an astonishing event called the Knoxville World Festival. It was something we’ve never seen before or since—a convention of kinetic little European circuses, held in tents on World’s Fair Park, plus musical performances, giant puppets, and the world premiere of a groundbreaking new play. It seemed to open a new door for Knoxville. He wanted to make it every year. Hundreds came, but not the hoped-for thousands. I’m not sure Knoxvillians knew what to do with a festival that didn’t involve corn dogs. A decade later, it would have become permanent.

He worked to get high-speed Internet cable—that was before Wi-Fi—to downtown Knoxville. He and Chris Whittle were both convinced by 1990 that the future belonged to the Internet. That day didn’t arrive as fast enough for them.

He loved the area, and lived all over it: first in Seymour, then Island Home, then on Lyons Bend in a house made from a log cabin—then much father out, in a real cabin beside a creek in Happy Valley, in the foothills of the Smokies. He once hosted a small picnic there in honor of one of his favorite freelancers, Elizabeth Berg, before she was an Oprah-approved bestselling novelist.

He commuted to town in a red Mazda RX-7, with an unexplained, and unrepaired, bullet hole in it.

When Whittle finally crashed in ’94, many left, as soon as the job was done. Keith stuck around for a few years. His son Adam and ex-wife Shelley lived here, and he seemed especially interested in what seemed to be about to happen to Knoxville’s downtown. He co-founded a company called WestWorld Media, based in an office above the Blue Moon Bakery in an interesting old Victorian building on West Jackson Avenue, and by 1995 was working in national media and this new thing the Internet. One early project was the heavy-metal band Metallica’s first website. He got involved in Excite.com, one of the early search engines, and helped

launch Baby Center, a California-based parenting website. He started another company with his colleague Randall Duckett, the Media Development Group, which still exists here, now run by Randall’s wife, Maryellen. In those days, MDG were creating a Sunday-paper insert for kids, sponsored by Disney.

It was always fun to run into Keith in the Old City; he was always off on some new venture, convinced, more than I was, that downtown was just about to bloom, with upscale residences and restaurants and nightclubs and independent high-tech media companies. Back in the early days of Metro Pulse, I felt lucky that Keith Bellows was still in town, years after Whittle’s collapse, still driving national media and pushing this interesting new Internet thing—and right around the corner from us.

But around ’97, he got offered a job nobody could turn down. National Geographic Traveler was an old-fashioned print magazine, but being its editor counts as one of the best jobs in the world. Downtown Knoxville did bloom, but Keith’s career was blooming elsewhere. In the job that he held for 17 years, Keith saw much of the world. As much fun as it was to have him here, the world was where he belonged. He lived an a adventure, a life most young journalists aspire to live. He gave one of the early TED talks, naturally about an African adventure.

Although Keith had been suffering from liver disease, his death a few days ago was unexpected.

In a coincidence that can only be called bizarre, he died the same weekend his former wife Shelley Williams died. Shelley, who stayed in Knoxville, was a talented art director who worked for Whittle, too, and 25 years ago, they were a creative power couple. And they died the same weekend. You hear about such coincidences among long-married couples, but Keith and Shelley had been divorced and living apart for at least 20 years.

He was due to be here this week, for a rare return visit to see old friends and have a look around. I hadn’t talked to him in years, and was looking forward to catching up. I was interested to know what he thought of the place in 2015, now that downtown has become a legitimate travel destination, curious about whether Knoxville looks something like he pictured it would. ◆

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

MEETUPS Join us at our Monthly Mercury Meetup.

Thursday, September 10,

5 p.m. - 8 p.m. at

Sunspot 2200 Cumberland Ave, Knoxville, TN 37916

This is a great opportunity for the business owners and residents of Knoxville to stop by and tell us what’s on your mind!

We hope to see you there.

September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 11

SMALL PLANET

Information Warriors TCWP’s 50 years of environmental advocacy has been based on data and analysis

BY PATRICE COLE

I

t’s 1966, and a group of about 20 Oak Ridge scientists who hike and socialize together are planning their campaign against the latest threats to some of their favorite wild places. The federal government has proposed yet another road that would fragment the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and TVA wants to build a dam that would flood Obed River gorges in the Cumberland Mountains. Well-educated and informed, confident of the power of the political process, these friends decide to organize as Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning, becoming the first and so far only environmental advocacy group focused on protection of the natural lands and waters of Tennessee.

The Smokies road was eventually defeated, and the Obed became the first National Wild and Scenic River in Tennessee, but there was hardly any time to celebrate before new destructive plans came to light. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was hot to build the highest dam east of the Mississippi River, which would have impounded the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, and TVA had proposed dams for the Little Tennessee and Duck Rivers.

The Tellico Dam and one on the Duck River got built, but the Big South Fork was spared and permanently protected

12

KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

by federal designation as a National River and Recreation Area, one of TCWP’s greatest achievements to date.

Half a century later, a few of those charter members are still engaged in activism characterized by reliance on scientific data, rational analysis, and sophisticated political pressure. Making and keeping more public lands for recreation and conservation has been their main thrust, and sharing information has been their primary tool. Whenever possible, they have educated public officials face-to-face, operating on the premise that if you know better you do

better. In the spirit of the times, when civil rights activists were taking to the streets, members of the infant TCWP chartered a bus to make the long trip to Washington DC to speak directly to members of Congress and the Secretary of the Interior. Later, they took Sen. Howard Baker and other key officials on rafting trips down the Obed River to show exactly what we had to lose.

But their most effective tool for informing and engaging the public to influence decision-makers has been their quarterly newsletter. Now available online, the TCWP newsletter is a model of efficiency in disseminating the facts on good and bad things that are afoot locally, regionally, and sometimes nationally regarding a host of environmental concerns.

It further empowers readers by giving concrete suggestions on taking action and includes up-to-date contact information for key federal and state officials.

That newsletter is still edited, and much of it written, by Dr. Liane Russell who, with her late husband Bill Russell, was among that group of friends who started TCWP. If you think you are too busy with job and family to be an environmental advocate, consider that the Russells raised two children while working as mammalian geneticists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory where they discovered, among many other things, that the Y chromosome is what makes a male mammal a male.

They are the only married couple who both individually won the prestigious Enrico Fermi Award for scientific advancements in energy-related research.

TCWP is emblematic of thinking

Making and keeping more public lands for recreation and conservation has been their main thrust, and sharing information has been their primary tool.

globally and acting locally. A recent newsletter explains the link between global climate change and extreme weather, then goes on to introduce the new Climate Knoxville consortium of local groups seeking action to address climate change. Much of their energy has been focused on designation of wilderness areas in Cherokee National Forest and passage of state laws such as those establishing state scenic rivers, trails, and natural areas. But they also developed and maintain the 11-mile long North Ridge Trail as part of the Oak Ridge greenbelt system, and they worked to gain protected status for small, ecologically significant areas known as Cedar Barrens and Worthington Cemetery in Oak Ridge.

The Land and Water Conservation Fund is an especially crucial national issue of their focus at this time. Created by Congress the year after TCWP incorporated, the fund was supposed to use money collected from offshore oil and gas drilling to support conservation of public lands and waters. Instead, Congress has diverted more than $17 billion to uses other than conservation over the years. Despite that, the program has permanently protected nearly five million acres of public lands in such iconic places as the Grand Canyon and the Appalachian Trail. Now the principle source of funding for federal acquisition of public lands for recreation and habitat preservation is set to expire on Sept. 30. Bipartisan polling has found strong public support for the fund, but unless Congress hears from a significant number of those who want it reauthorized, and kept from being continually raided for unrelated purposes, places as near and dear to us as the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Cherokee National Forest, Big South Fork, and the Obed River will suffer.

If this has any meaning for you, please take action. The TCWP newsletter tells you exactly who to contact, how to contact them, and even how to frame you message. The newsletter and email alerts are available to members and non-members alike, but you might consider joining this highly respected organization that was started in our local atomic city by some of the most important scientists of our times.

Next year is its 50th anniversary.

There might be a party. ◆

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY 13

Private-Sector Insecurity University workers protest Gov. Haslam’s sweeping proposal to outsource state jobs to contractors

BY CLAY DUDA

C

lutching a sign that reads “TN is not for sale!”, India McAfee stepped into a line with 150 or so other people picketing along Cumberland Avenue Thursday afternoon. He joined chants directed at passing motorists—“Hey Haslam, step off it!

Put people over profit!”—fishing for a few honks in support of people like himself, University of Tennessee employees who fear they will lose their jobs under a new proposal from Gov. Bill Haslam looking to outsource building operations and maintenance for many state agencies, including the university system.

UT workers and supporters took up positions at both ends of the Strip, one group in front of the College of Law and another by the Pilot gas station, voicing opposition to changes organizers say could affect more than 1,000 jobs at UT Knoxville alone—and that’s not including other state offices with local operations that may be handed over to a contractor with the lowest bid.

14

KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

Two guys still wearing their gray maintenance uniforms held up a banner that has Haslam’s head superimposed on the body of Miley Cyrus, riding a wrecking ball. It read: “Haslam - tearing UT down brick by brick.”

For McAfee, the threat of being laid off from a state job once thought to be secure is nothing new. He joined the UT Facilities Services staff just two years ago after losing a maintenance gig at Lakeshore Mental Health Institute, which was shuttered in 2012 as the state shifted some mental health services to private contractors.

“I have 11 years with the state under my belt, and it’s hard looking at going through another layoff phase,” says McAfee, 42. “I need a job.”

Tom Anderson has tended to the UT campus for more than 14 years.

He says the school, its students, and, ultimately, the community will suffer if their jobs are outsourced. Nobody knows the ins-and-outs of the university, or what it takes to keep it

running, like he and the other staffers do, and contracting with an outside company could siphon off money away from the local economy, he says.

“This plan sucks, to put it succinctly,” says Anderson, a buyer with Facilities Services who helped organize this public protest in conjunction with United Campus Workers, a union representing more than 1,600 higher education employees across the state. “We’re all really dedicated to the university. We’re like a close-knit family, and we’ve had families working here for generations.”

Speculation over what might become of several thousand state jobs has incensed public employees and supporters in recent weeks as reports surfaced of a sweeping proposal to privatize the management of a still-unknown number of buildings and support services currently being run by the state of Tennessee. Those plans first came to light after the Department of General Services posted a request for information, or RFI, online Aug. 10 seeking responses from companies that might be capable of taking on the broad swath of work, covering 19 types of positions from food operations to providing security and emergency preparedness for many state agency buildings, including colleges and universities, state parks, prisons, and others. An RFI is the first step in the bidding process that may or may not end in a contract being issued for the work, though state officials say it’s no indication of the final scope for a contract or even if it will move

forward. Calls and emails seeking comment from the governor’s office were not returned.

Adding fodder to the fire, a recently leaked timeline seems to put those plans on the fast track, with a target date of Aug. 1, 2016 for a contractor to take over those responsibilities following a competitive bidding process.

“This is merely gathering information to see what vendors are out there. The state in the past has outsourced facility management, the operations of certain general government buildings, and this is just looking at the possibility of expanding that further,” says General Services spokesman David Roberson. “The RFI is written as broadly as possible to cover all the different types of property the state owns, but it doesn’t mean the state is going to write a contract for all of those.”

The state in 2012 outsourced management of some facilities to Jones Lang LaSalle, a commercial real-estate firm out of Chicago, in a deal that would later come under fire by state auditors after the contract was amended and expanded from $1 million to more than $10 million without any rebidding process. A 2013 audit report also highlighted potential conflicts of interests where JLL stands to benefits from recommendations it could make to the state, specifically related to signing bonuses for building leases.

While it’s impossible to know what may happen if this most recent bid to outsource more public jobs and state responsibilities goes through (or even if it will, for that matter), the privatization of government services isn’t exactly a new phenomena. Other municipalities, from small cities to the federal government, have dabbled—or, in some cases, plunged—into public-private partnerships in recent decades with varying results. Haslam contends that privatizing some state services will save money and improve services, while critics say any savings would come of the backs off employees in reduced wages and benefits.

Tennessee may be the first state to look at literally handing over the keys to a private company, but there is a breadth of research and case studies out there that show outsourcing can be a mixed bag.

Seeing how far things can go only takes a few hours drive down Interstate 75 to Sandy Springs, Ga. The

“I have 11 years with the state under my belt, and it’s hard looking at going through another layoff phase. I need a job.”

— INDIA MCAFEE

affluent Atlanta suburb has earned distinction as one of the most outsourced towns in America, garnering international press in publications like The New York Times and The Economist for its unique take on governance. After the city incorporated in 2005, it turned to the private sector for pretty much every service outside of public safety. Aside from its police and fi re departments, it has only seven employees.

While the approach has made headlines—the Economist story ran with the title “Here’s how to do it”—a 2014 analysis from Iowa State University comparing costs and quality of services between Sandy Springs and four demographically similar, neighboring towns over a five-year period found that Sandy Springs performed below average.

Overall, Sandy Springs spent more money per capita to function—as much as 30 percent more than its counterparts some years—and underperformed each year compared with other cities using a more traditional public model, although each town did outsource some operations, and some even used the same contractor. The study noted each city saved money after ditching CH2M-Hill, of Englewood, Colo., as a service provider.

“Perhaps these findings are not as damning for the ‘Sandy Springs model” as it is for the city’s relation to CH2M-Hill,” author Jack Feldman notes. “Each city that restructured its government service model away from CH2M-Hill found cost savings and/or performance increases after doing so.”

Back in 2000, economist Graeme Hodge analyzed 135 instances of government privatizing services in the United States and other countries around the world for his book Privatization, finding there was a mean cost savings of about 14 percent when public tasks were handed over to the private sector. Out of all 39 cases studies examined in detail, all but 12 netted savings; however, his research did little to gauge the quality of services those companies delivered, which has been an issue for some offices.

Tennessee has been credited with jump-starting the modern prison privatization boom when in 1984 it contracted out operations of the Hamilton County Penal Farm in Chattanooga and a juvenile facility near Memphis to Corrections Corporation of America, a Nashville-based company that has since grown to be the largest private incarceration overlord in the country. Again, the idea was to farm out the work in efforts to cut costs, but a number of studies by

state and federal offices since then have found little if any differences in per-inmate expenditures, according to summations in a 2001 U.S. Department of Justice report.

Today, CCA operates six facilities in the state, including three prisons and three county lock-ups, but there have been no shortages of complaints and even some lawsuits related to its practices here in Tennessee and other states. Idaho in 2013 canceled its contract with CCA after the company admitted to falsifying staffi ng reports to make it appear some mandatory guard posts were fully staffed when, in fact, they were left vacant. It later reached a $1 million settlement over accusations of fraudulent billing and understaffi ng. Last month a spokesperson told the Tennessean that CCA did not respond to the state’s most recent RFI for facilities management.

City of New York officials fi red contractor Hewlett-Packard and even looked into fi ling criminal charges after the information technology giant reportedly over-billed millions and performed work some city officials deemed as sub-par while working to upgrade a 911 dispatching system around 2009, according to an audit and New York Times report. Issues with the operating system may have cost lives, The New York Times reports, and the city in 2014 took control back from the private fi rm hired to operate the call center, Northrop Grumman.

The federal government may have also overspent when outsourcing some national security work, according to reports by the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit dedicated to rooting out government waste. A witness for the watchdog group testified at a Senate hearing in 2011, noting the federal government paid contractors 1.6 times what it would have cost public employees to perform the same intelligence work. The feds outsourced approximately 28 percent of its intelligence workforce that year.

“The argument for outsourcing services is that, by outsourcing services on which the government holds a monopoly, free-market competition will result in efficiencies and save taxpayers dollars,” the POGO report cited in the Senate reads, “But our study showed that using contractors to perform services may actually increase rather than decrease costs to taxpayers.” ◆

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September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 15

Knoxville has a long history of street musicians, with some of the earliest noted public performances of what became known as “country music.” This tradition took something of a hiatus for the last few generations, to the point where many assumed busking was illegal on Knoxville’s streets.

But with the rebirth of downtown—and with a more realistic view of what’s permissible by the police—busking has returned. So who are these people who perform on the streets of downtown, and what are their stories? We asked a few of them how they came to be buskers.

16

KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

Jamey Sanders

dox Ro b e r t C . M a d I moved here 43 years ago and I taught business management at the university for about 30 years and retired 14 years ago. I’ve played the saw off and on for 65 years, I didn’t play it every day. I saw a fellow on the stage 65 years ago playing it. I liked the sound of it, so I went home and got my dad’s carpenter saw out and banged around on it until I figured out how to make a note and then I kept going until I could change notes. I played a carpenter saw for quite awhile and then started buying musical saws. This one I’ve had for about a month; it came from France. It’s kind of the Cadillac of saws. Some people don’t know what it is and some say they haven’t heard it since they were

children, but it’s an old-timey instrument. It was popular in the country when people didn’t have money for musical instruments, so they would play the saw and they’d play the washboard and spoons. Anything they had around the house that they could make music with.

I used to play the saxophone and a little bit on the piano. My mother was a piano teacher and I wasn’t a very good student. I grew up in San Antonio and I was born in Birmingham, but we moved to San Antonio when I was about 2 and a half years old. I grew up there, worked at the University of Texas, and then taught at different universities for a few years until I landed in

Knoxville at UT. I’m 78 years old, pushing hard on 79. I used to come down here and have lunch or get coffee and watch people, then I’d go home and play my saw. And my sons, they’d come over to the house and they’d say, “Why don’t you take your saw and go down to the Square? You can spend all day and watch people.” And you know, if you’re watching people, they don’t like you looking at them—unless you’re playing a saw. And then they don’t care, you could sit and stare at them all day long. So I started that last September and I couldn’t believe people were actually willing to hear me play, and I was enjoying it.

I come down for the farmer’s market and in the evenings when it gets a little cooler. I’ll be sitting home thinking, “What can I do?” And then I’ll think, “I’m going down to the Square to play.” It’s fun. You see the most interesting people in downtown Knoxville, and I enjoy it. (Liv McConnell & Jack Evans)

I’m reading my poems that I wrote myself as I grew up. I never knew they were really good until I read it to someone one day, and they said, “You should get your poems out.” And so I took the advice, I bought myself a chalkboard and chalk, and sat out here and started reading poems. I have nothing to do besides doctor’s appointments, I must do something with my spare time. I have epilepsy, neurofibromatosis.

I was homeless before. I recently just got in the YWCA, I’ve been there a month now. I had a place of my own, I had a mental breakdown in a group home and they kicked me out after they made me sign off my lease, and made me drop out of school, too, and I haven’t been able to get back into school and that’s really bothering me. So I ended up being homeless. My mom let me stay with her for a couple weeks, and my aunt let me stay with her for a couple weeks, but she wanted rent money and I didn’t have money then so I had to go to KARM and stay there. I was homeless for about three months.

[Selling poetry] helps me to not be isolated, and I have a habit of doing that. So for me to force myself to come out here and read poems, it makes me feel good because it makes me feel like people are liking what I wrote myself, something I created myself, and it makes me feel good that I made someone else happy, too.

I don’t sell my poems, I do it for free. If they want to give me money, its all up to them. I feel like they should be able to come down to a place and not be bothered by people to pay for something that they can find on their phone or at a store or a fancy restaurant, like you hear music there or a fancy poem there. It should be free and you should not make someone pay you to make you hear something you wrote, especially if you don’t know if they’re going to like it.

It makes me feel good that I can write these poems and that I have a talent even though I’m the youngest of my family. It feels good that I can do something. (McCord Pagan) September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 17

Jeremiah Welch When I first came out to Market Square, I think people were just shocked to see an African-American cellist with dreadlocks. You don’t really see that that often, in a classical musician at that. I get all types of looks, I really do. You’ll have someone come by with their face snarled up at me, then you’ll have somebody come by and say, “Oh my gosh! That’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever heard.” I didn’t even know this was busking (at first). I didn’t know what a busker was. I just call it practicing. I had really bad stage fright, so one of my friends advised me to go outside and play. I needed an environment that would put a little stress on me, but one that wasn’t high-stakes. Now I don’t mind if a person stops because I just love practicing outside, I can breath, and I’m free. It’s really wonderful.

Sometimes I’ll be out here when it rains—if I can find a good place to sit under one of the roofs so my cello won’t get wet—and I just play to see what kind of colors I can get from the rain. I get joy from watching people and I get peace from being in cool places, (and I think) “How can I translate that with the cello?” I come out here a lot just to get that type of experience and intuition, and that tangible instruction.

I was born and raised in Knoxville. I’ve been playing the cello for 10 years. I started off in the eighth-grade at Vine Middle Magnet School. By the time I got into high school I had joined the Knoxville Youth Symphony, and from there I got into the Cello Studio at the University of Tennessee. I got my bachelor’s in music, string performance with a solo concentration, so I’m a classically-trained cellist.

My grandmother who passed away, her name is Sharon Welch, I used to be around her a lot and she would say, “You have to watch what you put in your ears,” and “You can’t listen to everything rap,” so I used to listen to classical and jazz (on the radio). I could just listen to it and it would just take me away, and now music just gives me a peace of mind. It’s kind of a cleansing things for me.

I just graduated from UT, but I don’t own a cello. I volunteer at The Joy of Music School, so they let me use their cello since I give lessons there. The cello I did have was a gift from a Knoxville Symphony Orchestra cellist. They gave me their old cello when I was in high school, but my junior year of college someone broke into my apartment and stole it. That almost made me give up. I was one of those under-resource kids who just happened to find my talent and be at the right place at the right time. Cellos are expensive. They range from a couple thousand dollars to $100,000. I talked to my professor about it and he told me that if I can get my hands on a $7,000-$8,000 cello I can grow on it.

I’ll start in October giving concerts at the Emporium Center to help me raise money for a cello. There’s also a GoFundMe out for it: gofundme.com/ jeremiahscellofund (Clay Duda) 18

KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

“ Bo a k a ( i h d o B

”)

I’ve only been playing banjo for probably two weeks. I played guitar for 10 years and then I got sick of it, decided I’m going to play something else.

Right now I’m actually trying to save up some money to buy this banjo from my friend before I get out of town next week. Everybody and their grandpa nowadays plays the guitar. You come out here to the Square, you’re going to see 10 guitar players just about every day. It kind of doesn’t have much novelty to it like the banjo does. A lot of people, just cause I’m sitting here holding a banjo, they’ll come up and want to talk to me. If I was sitting here just holding a guitar, no interest, you know? Everybody’s bored with guitar.

I’ve been out traveling around for a good while now, pretty much since I was 17. I’m almost 27 now. I started off just hitchhiking, and then in my hitchhiking adventures I met some train-hoppers, and I didn’t know people still did that, and so I was like, “Wow, I’m gonna give that a whirl one day.” And so I started hopping trains, and then I became obsessed with the railroad, and then I got good at it. So now I can ride around the country for free pretty much anywhere I want to go.

Sometimes I feel like I’m going to do this for the rest of my life, sometimes I feel like I’m ready to settle down and just be a farmer. I travel out of sheer contempt and resentment towards the way society functions today. I don’t really want much to do with it, you know? I’d rather just be young, dumb, and free. Just modern society, I don’t get it.

I think in my past life—I was probably born in the late 1800s—I was probably a hobo that got thumped in the head by a railroad cop and died right there next to the tracks or something, who knows? I was born in western North Carolina, the mountains. Growing up I lived all through the mountains, nowhere in particular. I was born right outside of Asheville, though. I don’t like going there no more. There’s too many other places to see. I’ve still got a few more states to check off my list. I’m hoping to go conquer the Pacific Northwest this year before winter comes around, go ride some trains out there, do bum stuff. From there I have no idea what I’m going to do. I’ve tried to do the 9 to 5, I’ve tried to stare at computer screens, I’ve tried to work factory lines, and I don’t know, I’d rather just find odd jobs farming and landscaping. (Jack Evans)

September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 19

Bill Page

Jay Fi n e I’ve been coming out here for a couple of years; I know all the regulars out here. I love rock and roll, I love folk, blues, jazz, I write my own stuff. So it’s all a combination of everything. Right now, I’ve got the Rolling Stones right here, I’ve got Steve Miller Band, Replacements, some Kinks, the Beatles.

The cash helps, it definitely helps, but I’m also coming out here because I like to sit out here on a beautiful day and play music. I’m not worried about if I make too much money here—as long as I can make enough to get out of the parking garage, I’m fine. Here lately, Market Square has not been very generous to the musicians who come out here. I don’t know if it’s been overcrowded by too many people or what, but when I first started out here, I was making about $40 to $60 every weekend I came out here. Now it’s a little down.

Hope they don’t complain when all the musicians are gone.

If you come out here with just the mindset of trying to make a bunch of money, you’re probably going to get disappointed after a couple of hours. I try to work on my own music and have certain personal goals, because right here there’s not as much pressure as ‘Okay, I’m going to get paid $300 for four hours here.’ It’s just whatever. I can experiment all I want and write all I want without having to worry about what they really think, because if they’re not going to pay, it doesn’t matter. For people who want experience playing in front of people, this would be a great place to come out. A lot of professionals started out that way. Chet Atkins busked on Market Square. Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash—they [were] just walking around playing. That’s all they did. (Jack Evans)

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

I’m originally from Ohio, but my family moved to Maryville in 1970. Save for one other fellow who used to play in the Old City, I’m probably one of the oldest ones here. I was in the Old City for a while, and I’ve played here in Market Square after they developed it down here, so it’s just myself and one other sax player who were the first ones to play down here. And I’ve fought court cases against cops trying to stop me, and in all the communities that I knew, there’s never been a law against playing. The first time the police tried to stop us, all the business owners got behind us and emailed the law department, and they emailed right back, “There’s never been a law against playing on the street here.” … Later on, two rookie cops tried to stop me, and we basically beat them in court several times. It’s very clear now that it’s legal to play music on the street in Knoxville. They don’t give us any problems anymore. The ordinance says you can’t block pedestrian paths, you can’t play past 10 o’ clock, and you can’t be plugged in. That’s the only thing the ordinance says. I’ve always abided by that.

I’ve always leaned much towards folk music.

I like a lot of other kinds—jazz and swing and things like that—there’s a lot of other stuff, but I always lean much more towards folk music, because I’m very much into lyrical content. I say I do about 15 songs for the mundane minds that have only listened to commercial radio all their life, so I have to do songs that are familiar to them. But I always intersperse that with four or five songs from public-radio artists or even some 50-cent tapes from people I’d never even heard of that I bought at Goodwill and just has a great song, a great family-oriented song. I do much more family-oriented stuff—I don’t play bars, I don’t play big noisy places where no one’s listening at all anyway. The thing you don’t get in bars and other places like that is children. The children are the only ones aware out here anyway—everyone else is on their cell phone. But the children know what you’re doing…

It used to be, when I first started in the Old City 14 years ago, if someone’s reaching in their pocket as they’re approaching me, they’re reaching in their pocket to tip me. Now they’re reaching in their pocket to get their cell phone. It’s been a little harder, but it’s still enjoyable to me. It’s my way of serving the community. I’ve been playing music for 40-some years, and I’m still just basically a rhythm guitar player, but that’s why I incorporated harmonica into everything I do, so I have a lead. I’ve played harmonica longer than I

have guitar. I’ve never played in bands. It’s funny—all the musicians I know in town, but no one ever seems to have a desire to start a band with me or anything, or even most of the time ask me to come up and play. Every once in a while I’ve sat in, but not very often. But that’s alright with me. I’ve pretty much got down what I play, and I play it my way anyway.

I’m a writer even more so than playing music. I hitchhiked all over the country for 15 years with nothing, basically, but I would sit up all night long in Waffle Houses, places like that, writing poetry. I’ve written well over 7,000 poems.

For what I write, I have a lot of content—a lot of it’s based on how to live a peaceful life, a non-judgmental life, how to be broader in your thinking and explorative. Somebody doing their sappy love song, their personal life love song, it’s not that important to me.

When you’re playing on the street particularly, so many people pass you by. If there’s

one line in that song that sticks in their head, it makes them think or could change their whole life. I look for songs that have a little philosophy in them but also make them think about their family, about their loved ones. I’m out here almost any time when it’s not raining. Like I said, that’s my way of serving the community. I’ve got a very, very minimum Social Security, and I just got housing after 15 years of homelessness. But I love this community. So many people have helped me here so many times along the way. I’ve never been to school, never been married, anything like that, but I go to the Downtown Grill and Brewery and I’m hanging out with judges, architects, professors, journalists.

I’m so proud of Knoxville, just the people as a whole for developing the downtown area and how it’s so alive now, compared to eight, nine years ago when it was absolutely dead. Now it’s fully alive, and I’m really proud. I brag about Knoxville anywhere I go. (Jack Evans)

Christina Young I’m most recently from Carrboro, N.C., but I’m on the road. I’m headed towards Texas, so I’m just stopping different places, seeing what’s up. First time in Tennessee… I’ve just been around here most of today, got in pretty late last night. I like the vibe. I’m visiting my sister [in Texas], but I’ve also never really been out there. It’s time to explore, find myself, and play music. [Performing] has been a recent thing. My roommate’s a musician, and he was hosting an open mic recently, and he was like, “Christina, you should come out.” So ever since then I’ve been doing open mics, small gigs, stuff like that. This is my second time busking. It’s a hard gruel. It’s not really enough to pay for the parking.

It’s hard, but it’s really good practice for me to just play for myself and not care about the audience or the reaction or the fact that someone’s actually listening to you. It’s just good practice to play in front of people.

I’ve been playing different instruments for a long time, but I’ve only just started to write my own stuff recently. When I was a kid, I couldn’t hold a tune, so that’s funny. I’ve obviously learned a little bit since then. I took piano lessons, like classical piano, and I was always good at the musical side of it but didn’t like to practice, so it didn’t really go anywhere. Now that I’ve been using it to write songs, it’s a lot more helpful.

I’m going to Chattanooga tonight, and Nashville after that—it’s a little intimidating, because everyone’s trying to make it there. I will definitely not shine at the open mics, so it’ll be interesting, And then Tuscaloosa and New Orleans, Baton Rouge possibly. It would be nice to get a little bit more change to help out with the travels, but it’s not really cutting it—$1.50 is not really where it’s at right now. (Jack Evans)

Do you have a favorite busker?

Share your pictures of your favorite Knoxville buskers and we’ll put together an album at facebook.com/knoxmercury.

September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 21

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P rogram Notes

Heart of Gold A documentary of boxing legend Ace Miller and his protégé “Big John” Tate premieres at the Knoxville Film Festival

L

ocal filmmaker Blake McKinney is publicly premiering his documentary, Legends of Appalachia: The Ace Miller Story, with his co-director and writer Doug McDaniel at the Knoxville Film Festival, which runs from Sept.

17-20 at Regal’s Downtown West Cinema 8. The movie follows the path of John Tate, Miller’s protégé, to the World Heavyweight Championship— and Miller’s impact on Knoxville itself.

What are people learning about Ace Miller through this documentary that they did not know before?

The way he would help kids out in the community. The emphasis of the Golden Gloves program is that everything’s free. It’s hard with some kids wanting to play sports. If you want to play football you have to buy your cleats, if you want to play basketball you have to buy your shoes.

But with boxing and Golden Gloves, if you just show up, the only thing you have to pay for is hand wraps, and if you can’t pay for it, they’ll take care of it with a donation. [Miller] did a really good job, he didn’t broadcast it that he did all this other stuff. [Miller] was a professional boxing trainer first, but he was a big player in the community.

game plan going to go out the window or are you going to remember your training? That’s a really good correlation for life. Life’s not always that easy, and who are you when the going gets tough?

He taught a lot of people that lesson.

So for people uninterested in sports and boxing, what can they take away from this documentary?

I think the life lessons of perseverance, learning how to overcome obstacles, and kind of just pushing forward with a good group of people around you. That’s one integral part of the movie, no one ever says that loudly. Ace always had his team, John Tate always had his team of people that were there to help him along. For me, it’s a good illustration to life, you have to have good people around you, people that will push you to be the best version of yourself.

He gave kids a chance to kind of learn something about themselves and have a goal to work toward. When it’s just you and one other guy in a boxing ring, it’s just you. When you get punched in the nose what are you going to do? Is the

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Shelf Life: New Films

KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

In the Magnolia area to the Chilhowee Park area, he was very beloved in a lot of communities. He was the kind of guy that would literally give you the shirt off his back. There’s been lots of different stories about him. A kid that showing up to the gym without any shoes on. He stopped practice, he put the kid in his truck, drove him to Walmart and got him three pairs of shoes, came back, and then they started practicing. Just time and time again, things like that.

What was it about Ace that made him a local celebrity?

I think it was his demeanor. The way that he waved the flag for Knoxville, he loved this city. He had opportunities to go train at Detroit, New York, or Memphis, but he never wanted to leave here, he wanted to build Knoxville into the amateur boxing capital of the world. That was his ultimate goal. And he did, for a while.

We had Sugar Ray Leonard come and

fight here, a lot of different names, like Big John Tate won the heavyweight title of the world.

Why did you pick the John Tate angle to focus on for this documentary?

I think because that was Ace’s most successful boxer. He had a lot of really good boxers before and after John Tate, but that was the one that went the farthest. So we felt like that story could resonate more nationally, outside of Knoxville, with someone that actually climbed the mountain and got to the top.

What’s the most important thing to take away from the film?

The most important thing would be the giving spirit and the communal spirit of Ace Miller. That’s the one thing that I think resonates the most, and you can see it in everyone telling the stories, that they really loved him and knew he was a good man. I think it’s a pretty universal story, too. You don’t have to know where Chilhowee Park is, or where Magnolia is, to understand how compassionate he was.

—McCord Pagan

WHAT

Knoxville Film Festival

WHEN

Can you give us some of those cool stories about Ace?

There was a couple bar-fight stories. I think we left one in, but there was a couple where he would basically get everybody riled up, and then step back and let everybody else handle it. So that was really funny. He was not a big man in stature, he was like 5 feet 8 inches, and he was not an imposing man at all. They called him “the Colonel,” but he had this zeal about him where he could just control people, in a good way. That’s what really helped him connect with boxers. You feared him, but you didn’t really know why. He was a good man, but a little rough around the edges.

How important was Ace Miller to Knoxville?

For people that already know about Ace, what new things can they learn about him from this documentary?

Music: *repeat repeat

Sept. 17-20 (The Ace Miller Story screens Saturday, Sept. 19 at 5:30 p.m.)

WHERE

Regal Downtown West Cinema 8 (1640 Downtown W. Blvd.)

HOW MUCH $10-$50

INFO

knoxvillefilmfestival.com

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Movies: Mistress America

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Art: Andrew Gresham

Shelf Life

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Privacy, Celebrity, and Confession New films hitting the shelves at the Knox County Public Library 435 Union Ave. nothingtoofancy.com

BY CHRIS BARRETT CITIZENFOUR

When we want our mobile devices to know exactly where we are so they can guide us to the nearest latte or oil change, we are likely to concede the sacrifice of some privacy in exchange.

But surely my cell phone service provider would never intentionally share or sell information that might later incriminate me or someone I know? According to this documentary

by Laura Poitras, that only happens many millions of times per hour. NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden purports that Americans have entered a brief transitional period, following which privacy will no longer exist. The format of this film is genius. Snowden anonymously approached the filmmaker and journalist Glenn Greenwald in 2012 and 2013. Together, the Greenwald and Poitras met with Snowden in Hong Kong and elsewhere for extended interviews on the subject of his knowledge and proof of the U.S. government’s illegal surveillance programs. The result is one expert on the subject interviewing another expert on the subject, while a third expert on the subject trains cameras and microphones in an extremely intimate, tense, and volatile setting.

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA

A terrifically pretty film full of terrifically pretty people. Juliette Binoche portrays an actress asked to return in middle age to a play that helped launch her career decades earlier. The arc of the plot on stage is an affair between an established actress and her younger female assistant. Having played the assistant in her youth, Binoche is now cast—by reality and the producers—as the older character, in the process of

exiting her prime. The dialogue for most of the film is lifted from the play, as Binoche rehearses with her assistant, played by Kristen Stewart.

Thoughts on aging—gracefully and otherwise—are brought to mind, along with the ravages of celebrity.

THE BRIDGE

This stark 1959 fi lm was among the fi rst artistic and widespread acknowledgments to come from Germany that the country’s role as aggressor during World War II had been a terrible idea and no good had come of it. Set during 1945, only a band of teenage schoolmates are left to defend their village from advancing American forces. Director Bernard Wicki does not fl inch from the inevitable violent trauma and destruction. In the years since its release, The Bridge has been embraced in Germany and abroad as a necessary confession of sorts.

GAME DAY GEAR YOU WON’T FIND ANYWHERE ELSE!

THE SALT OF THE EARTH

Filmmaker Wim Wenders could probably make interesting and watchable films about how he chooses a wine to accompany a meal or his laundry schedule. The best we can hope for is his chancing upon a subject that justifies and benefits from his near-limitless sensitivity and visual storytelling skills, which is the case here. The film focuses on the breathtaking work of Brazilian documentary photographer Sebastião Salgado. Rather than making a film about pictures and the people who take them, Wenders orchestrates conversations with Salgado and others such that the artist’s process is revealed and the viewer feels as if he or she has engaged with the photographer’s subjects. ◆ September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 23

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Music

Keeping It Simple *repeat repeat gives surf rock a modern twist

BY JOE TARR

T

he fi rst rock band that Jared Corder formed when he moved to Nashville in 2009, Oh No No, was known for its elaborate, eccentric stage shows.

“We were just as outrageous as possible, wearing crazy costumes and throwing confetti all over the place. It was about having ridiculous fun,” Corder says, adding. “We weren’t as focused on the songwriting or music.”

When that band folded in 2012, Corder wanted to do something a little more not serious, exactly, but enduring.

“I had focused so much on the live show, just to get people’s attention,” he says. “With that in mind, I started writing songs to say something, whether it be about love or my family, so I have something I can be proud of.”

The name was inspired while Corder was showering one day and noticed instructions on a shampoo bottle called to “lather, rinse, repeat repeat.” But it also fits the band’s simplistic credo, of simple repeating chords.

Corder grew up in Southern California and was well-steeped in the traditions of surf rock. The group’s retro feel is in keeping with the vibe of bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Strokes, and the Ravonettes. The Nashville Scene described the group as “Dick Dale’s snot-nosed grandkids.”

“A lot of the surf rock you hear, is very Dick Dale or garage rock,” he says. “We try to mix the two and have it polished.”

The resulting act, *repeat repeat,

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

takes its inspiration from surf rock and California beach music of the ‘60s. It’s a three-piece band, with Corder on guitar and vocals, Andy Herrin on drums, and Corder’s wife, Kristyn, on vocals.

While there’s certainly a surf-rock influence, *repeat repeat gives the genre a modern twist, with each member adding his or her own interpretation. Corder was reared on West Coast punk and ska, his wife brings in a more hippie California sound ala the Mamas and the Papas, while Herrin’s influences lean more

toward ’90s alternative rock.

The simplistic song structure contrasts with Corder’s musical background. He got his degree in classical music at Arizona State, where he played guitar. The shift toward something simpler was a welcome change.

“I had spent so many years studying this intricate music, but I wanted to do something minimal,” he says. “With a simple hook you can say a lot more sometimes. It’s almost more of a challenge to take three chords and a couple of words and quote unquote dumb sound and build on that. It can be really good challenge.”

Most *repeat repeat songs begin with Corder writing a melody and chorus, which he then plays for his wife.

“She’ll help me figure out if it fits with the vibe of the band,” he says.

“Sometimes she’ll say, ‘try to make it more surfy or more ’60s sounding.’

Then I’ll fi nish verse and choruses.

And then we meet as a band and flesh out the song.”

Despite the band’s good-time vibe, Corder says he’s been trying to tackle headier themes with the music.

“Speaker Destroyer” is about how he grew up in the church but later tried

to separate what he genuinely believed from what he had been taught.

“Animal” is about the sometimes strained relationship he had with his dad growing up.

But even when getting a little deep, Corder says he avoids anything “too sobering. We don’t want to throw people off to go from lovely surf rock songs to dark songs.”

The group released its debut album, Bad Latitude, last year. “We hadn’t really toured much,” he says.

“Now that we’ve been on the road we’ve gotten really tight musically and vocally.” *repeat repeat’s sophomore effort, Floral Canyon, is now being mastered and is set to come out next year. In the meantime, the group plans on touring extensively, with regular stops in Knoxville, which Corder calls “a second home.”

The city has given warm greetings to both of his bands. And *repeat repeat played its fi rst festival in this year’s Rhythm N’ Blooms.

“The reception was really incredible,” Corder says. “Ever since then, we’ve just had awesome shows in Knoxville. It’s probably our favorite city to play.” ◆

WHO

*repeat repeat

WHEN

Friday, Sept. 11 at 10 p.m.

WHERE

Preservation Pub (28 Market Square)

INFO

scruffycity.com

Movies

Generational Shift Director Noah Baumbach takes a screwball turn with the kinetic Mistress America

BY APRIL SNELLINGS

T

here’s as much Preston Sturges as Woody Allen in Mistress America, the latest film to team writer/ director Noah Baumbach with actress/co-writer Greta Gerwig.

Skirting the line between sweet and acerbic, Baumbach’s second film of 2015 (following March’s While We’re Young) is a zippy, entertaining, and very funny movie that blends screwball comedy with pensive, even melancholy undertones.

Gerwig stars as Brooke, a Holly Golightly for a generation that often seems to value narcissism and misguided introspection over meaningful connections with other humans. She’s the quintessential New York girl, and maybe, the film hints, the last of a dying breed. Brooke is a dreamer who skates from one professional venture to the next—she calls it “curating her employment”—while essentially squatting in

an illegal Times Square apartment.

She’d like to develop a TV series, or possibly an app, when she’s not busy thinking about designing clothes or almost being an interior decorator. In reality, or at least Mistress America’s version of it, Brooke is a spin-class instructor teetering on the edge of opening a restaurant.

Brooke is at once obnoxious and endearing, a feckless, self-centered whirlwind of chatter and activity. She’s the sort of person who would almost certainly be insufferable over the hours and days and years that make up a real-life relationship, but for the breezy 84 minutes that make up Mistress America, Gerwig imbues her with unabashed, endlessly quotable charm.

She’s the unstable nucleus of Baumbach’s whirling Bohr’s atom of a movie, but she’s not actually the main character. That role goes to Lola

Kirke’s Tracy, a lonely, 18-year-old Barnard freshman with dreams of becoming a writer, and has trouble fitting in. She knows what she probably should do, but has trouble doing it. She’s never met Brooke, but Tracy’s mother (Kathryn Erbe) is about to marry Brooke’s father, so Tracy calls Brooke up one day to introduce herself. Before the younger girl knows what’s hit her, she’s drawn into Brooke’s vibrant, frantic life.

Their meeting catapults Mistress America into the first of its two terrific comic sequences: a chaotic, intoxicating night in the city that sees Tracy stumbling along in Brooke’s wake.

Gerwig quickly asserts herself as not just an engaging leading lady but also a very funny one—someone who, at her best, conjures the daffy energy of Carole Lombard and the saucy charm of Claudette Colbert. Her entry

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alone—a self-conscious, theatrical descent down the steps of Times Square—is a marvel of comic timing.

Brooke knows everyone, tries anything, and tosses out one-liners like plastic beads at a Mardi Gras parade. Tracy is instantly smitten.

There’s a darker side to Tracy’s girl crush, though. As she spends time with Brooke, hovering on the sidelines of the (slightly) older woman’s life, she picks up on the fraying edges of her stepsister-to-be—failed relationships, abandoned careers, botched friendships, an inability to follow through with anything meaningful. Tracy, who desperately wants to gain admittance to an elite literary society at her college, begins to co-opt large swathes of Brooke’s life for a singularly unflattering, thinly fictionalized short story.

Trouble ensues, but not before the young women embark on a road trip to Connecticut, where Brooke hopes to hit up a former flame, Dylan (Michael Chernus), for a $42,000 business loan.

Connecticut has long been a favorite destination for screwball-comedy travelers, and Baumbach and Gerwig orchestrate a dizzying sequence of entrances, exits, and rapid-fire repartee that would make Sturges proud. The film’s second half is largely confined to an opulent suburban home, where it becomes a theatrical farce with many moving parts; besides Tracy and Brooke, there’s a boy Tracy hopes to seduce (Matthew Shear); his jealous girlfriend ( Jasmine Cephas Jones); Brooke’s former best friend (Heather Lind), who’s now married to Dylan; a pugnacious neighbor (Dean Wareham, also one of the film’s composers); and, best of all, a pregnant onlooker who’s stranded at the house and must constantly fend off the group’s offers of drugs and booze.

If it sounds ridiculous, it is. But it’s also funny, insightful, and eventually poignant. Like Brooke, Mistress America is so energetic and kinetic that it practically buzzes. It’s a screwball comedy that lives up to the geometric implications of the term, offering up whirligig twists and manic bounce in equal measure. ◆ September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 25

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Slaves to Style Andrew Gresham’s documentary photos expose the banality of fashion

BY COURY TURCZYN

N

ew York Fashion Week starts Thursday, Sept. 10, unleashing dozens of the world’s most famous designers to show off their collections for spring 2016. As anyone who watches reality TV knows, NYFW is the ne plus ultra of glamour and drama, where the industry’s super-egos gather for a week’s worth of triumphant attention-seeking. But for local photographer Andrew Gresham, the runways of Fashion

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

Week are only a temporary facade— the real stories take place backstage.

“It’s just this bizarre, concentrated mixture of the real world coming together and trying to transform itself into something fanciful, ‘glamorous’— the idealized fantasy,” he says. “It is both horrifying and beautiful at the same time.”

Gresham has been shooting Fashion Week shows since 2006, ostensibly on assignment for a now-de-

funct photo service called Fashion Wire Daily. While that job entailed shooting runways and celebrities at nearly 30 shows per season, he was much more attracted to the chaotic scenes found in dressing areas where the models are prepped before being thrust out for public display. Soon, he began shooting more and more photos that none of the wire service’s customers would necessarily be interested in buying—scenes of little elegance or style, but lots of sweat and struggle. In total, he’s attended eight Fashion Week extravaganzas—and has assembled a fascinating collection of photos documenting the work that goes on behind the scenes at the fashion industry’s biggest event. (Which, frankly, he doesn’t find very important in itself: “Fashion could go away and the world would keep on just fine.”)

His black-and-white images are

so striking in part because they’re so unusual—to witness such previously pristine personages looking unkempt, stressed out, and frantic can be a bit jarring. We obedient media consumers are conditioned to accept a flawless depiction of beauty as the standard of the industry. Even the “offbeat” model or couture is polished to a high sheen. In Gresham’s photos, however, we catch the laborers tasked with that polishing—a subject perhaps too mundane for other photographers predisposed to capture beauty.

“I think my approach, especially after the first few times shooting it, was to show the other side—the between moments,” Gresham says, “the moments leading up to what is presented, the creation of ‘the model’ and, really, the banality of it all. We tend to romanticize industries that put on a good front, but the truth is it is still an industry and a lot

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of it is hard work, unglamorous, tedious, everyday living. I would look for those moments when other people were off photographing the more ‘obvious’ ones.”

Of course, anyone can point a camera backstage—the trick is knowing when to press the shutter button.

Gresham’s photos reveal a knack for realizing the critical moment—a woman’s upraised eyes peering over a book, an attendant’s gaze of affection (or is it envy?) toward a prepped model, a floor director’s commandingly outstretched arm. And he finds details that intrigue: a disembodied hand amid

the clutter of a makeup table, or a pair of shoes revealing messily painted toenails. And, yes, there are famous faces here as well—shot inches from the lens, rendering them more personal than haughty.

Gresham shoots with a digital camera, but sets it to black and white.

Why use a format so synonymous with “arty” photography? To keep things simple, he says: “I just think it takes away a lot of the clutter of the color and focuses you more on the subject.”

Gresham’s job these days, in Knoxville, is as a commercial photographer

and designer at Asen Marketing & Advertising. He admits his reliance on black-and-white imagery for his personal work may be a reaction to the lush, colorful images he produces for his job. But either way, it works.

Although he’s not planning on attending this year’s Fashion Week— he’s had his fill—Gresham is still reviewing the vast stockpile of photos he’s gathered over the years. The portfolio you see here is a very small sample—some day, he’d like to have a gallery show, but until then you can see dozens more at his website,

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agreshamphoto.com.

In the meantime, he’s been taking photos of Knoxville from the seat of his car. He likes the idea of taking himself out of the picture, so to speak—of removing any pre-planned stylization, just pointing and shooting on the fly.

“I just wanted to do something simple and direct: You’re driving and you have one second to take the picture.

There’s no thinking about it,” he says.

“Your mind sees something, so you just shoot it, and you don’t realize what you saw until after you look at the picture: ‘Oh, that’s why I took it.’” ◆ September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 27

CALENDAR MUSIC

eptember 10 S SARAH PEACOCK WITH RAE HERRING • 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 SCOTTISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Held on the second and fourth Thursdays of each month. • FREE CALLAGHAN • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • A singer/songwriter whose music blurred the edges between pop, adult contemporary and Americana. • $12 WILL YAGER TRIO • Red Piano Lounge • 8PM STEVE EARLE AND THE DUKES WITH THE MASTERSONS • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • See Spotlight! • $30 THE THIRST QUENCHERS • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine Lounge • 8PM • The Ps and Qs house band.

STONE KOLE’D DUO • Wild Wing Cafe • 8PM HARPER AND THE MIDWEST KIND • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM WEISSHUND • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM SHOOTER JENNINGS AND WAYMORE’S OUTLAWS • Cotton Eyed Joe • 10PM • Since leaving Universal’s country-music division in 2009, outlaw scion Shooter Jennings has done just about whatever he’s wanted to do—a dystopian concept album with Stephen King, a tribute to Italian disco pioneer Giorgio Moroder, a project matching his own taste for ’90s industrial music with the last recordings of his late father, Waylon Jennings. • $10 RAVENHILL • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

NORA JANE STRUTHERS AND THE PARTY LINE • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM NOTS WITH BURNING ITCH AND PSYCHIC BAOS • Pilot Light • 10PM • 18 and up. • $5 September 11 ADDIE BROWNLEE WITH THE HERMIT KINGS • 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 DAVE LANDEO • Wild Wing Cafe • 6PM LIL JON • Old City Courtyard • 7PM • The renowned rapper hosts the ultimate pre-game party. This show is 18 and up. • $15-$30 TIME WARP TEA ROOM OPEN SONGWRITER NIGHT • Time Warp Tea Room • 7PM • Songwriter Night at Time Warp Tea Room runs on the second and fourth Friday of every month. Show up around 7 p.m. with your instrument in tow and sign up to share a couple of original songs with a community of friends down in Happy Holler. • FREE JAM NIGHT • The Church at Bennington Place • 7PM • Jam Night is an event for local musicians of all genres. Come to play or just to listen. • FREE DAVE SLACK TRIO • Pero’s on the Hill • 7PM • Instrumental and vocal jazz standards.

DIALECTS WITH FILTH, RELAPSE, INSIGHTS, AND THE GUILD • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 7PM • All ages. • $10 FREEQUENCY • The Casual Pint (Farragut) • 7:30PM • Acoustic Americana trio.

GRAN TORINO WITH THE HERMIT KINGS • The Standard • 8PM • The popular local ‘90s funk band Gran Torino reunites for one show to celebrate the kickoff of the University of Tennessee football season. Tickets are $30 and can be purchased attickettailor.com. • $30 J.J. GREY AND MOFRO • The Concourse • 8PM • $23-$28 FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE K TOWN MAFIA • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine 28

KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

Thursday, Sept. 10 - Sunday, Sept. 20

Lounge • 8PM VANILLA ICE • Chilhowee Park • 8PM • Yes, it’s the iconic “Ice, Ice Baby” rapper, Robert Van Winkle, performing at the Tennessee Valley Fair. NOTE: You must have a fair admission ticket to attend the concert. Reserved seating tickets are $10. General seating is first come, first served.

THE JAYSTORM PROJECT • Brackins Blues Club • 9PM • FREE BETHANY AND THE SWING SERENADE • Red Piano Lounge • 9PM MIDNIGHT VOYAGE LIVE: RUSS LIQUID WITH THRIFTWORKS AND BLAP DELI • The Concourse • 9PM • Presented by Midnight Voyage Productions and WUTK. 18 and up. • $11 JASON ELLIS • Bearden Field House • 9PM • FREE MIKE BAGGETTA • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz.

• FREE KELSEY’S WOODS • Two Doors Down • 10PM JESSICA LEE WILKES • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE *REPEAT REPEAT • Preservation Pub • 10PM • Nashville up-and-comers *repeat repeat get garage-rock revivalism just right on their debut album, See music story this issue.

AXIS: SOVA • Pilot Light • 10PM • Heavy jams for light heads!

Visceral fireworks lighting up the hemispheres! Fun times with torch tunes and scorch sounds! 18 and up. • $5 THE POP ROX • Wild Wing Cafe • 10PM September 12 LIVE JAZZ AT DOWNTOWN GRILL AND BREWERY • Downtown Grill and Brewery • 12:45PM • Knoxville’s coolest jazz artists perform every Sunday.

MUMBILLY OLD TIME SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 4PM • Bring an instrument, but definitely watch out in case there’s some Mumbillies there. • FREE THE HITMEN • Concord Park • 6PM • Knox County’s summer concert series, Second Saturday Concerts at The Cove, continues this year with live entertainment for the whole family. The free concerts, held June through September on the second Saturday of each month, take place from 6 to 8 p.m. at The Cove at Concord Park, 11808 S. Northshore Drive. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own blankets or lawn chairs. • FREE BUCKCHERRY WITH SAVING ABEL AND SONS OF TEXAS • The International • 7PM • 18 and up. • $20-$30 THE RERUNS • Pero’s on the Hill • 7PM • Knoxville’s premier TV band plays your favorite television themes.

CHRIS LANE W/ LAUREL WRIGHT • Chilhowee Park • 7PM • Chris Lane was just named one of Rolling Stones’ Top New Country Artists to Watch in 2015! He’s performing at the Tennessee Valley Fair. NOTE: You must have a fair admission ticket to attend the concert. Reserved seating tickets are $5. General seating is first come, first served.

HE ROYAL VAGABONDS • Clancy’s Tavern and Whiskey House • 8PM STURGILL SIMPSON • The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson • 8PM • Every few years, a new “save country music” campaign gets kicked off. The most recent poster boy for the movement is Sturgill Simpson, a Kentucky native whose two solo albums, High Top Mountain and Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, have been acclaimed by country insiders, rock critics, and a small but devoted—and growing—fan base. • $25 SENRYU WITH 72ND AND CENTRAL AND THE BILLY WIDGETS • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • All ages. • $5 STEVE RUTLEDGE • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine Lounge • 8PM THE ROMEO KINGS • Brackins Blues Club • 9PM • FREE BEN SHUSTER • Bearden Field House • 9PM • FREE HAROLD NAGGE AND ALAN WYATT • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE KEITH BROWN AND KB3 • Red Piano Lounge • 9PM

ADRIAN AND MEREDITH KRYGOWSKI • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE BOOHER • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Austin, Texas, rock ‘n’ roll.

NILES FOLEY WITH GURUFISH • Scruffy City Hall • 10PM • Rootsy, vintage-inspired rock ‘n’ roll.

GLADIATOR AND BARE WITH EDE GEE • The Concourse • 10PM • Presented by Midnight Voyage Productions. 18 and up. • $15-$20 SOUTHBOUND • Two Doors Down • 10PM BENDER WITH FLORALORIX AND ROOTS OF A REBELLION • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

YUNG LIFE WITH E.T. ANDERSON AND OHIOAN • Pilot Light • 10PM • 18 and up. • $5 SHADY BANKS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM

September 13 SHIFFLETT AND HANNAH • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. • FREE DAVE SLACK TRIO • Pero’s on the Hill • 1PM • Live jazz.

IRISH MUSIC SESSION • Clancy’s Tavern and Whiskey House • 2PM THE FAIRVIEW UNION W/ JAYSTORM PROJECT • Chilhowee Park • 7PM • A rockin’ country music band based out of East Tennessee, performing at the Tennessee Valley Fair with local funk band Jaystorm. NOTE: You must have a fair admission ticket to attend the concert. Reserved seating tickets are free. General seating is first come, first served.

JON WHITLOCK TRIO • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM ROBINELLA • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM LUCIDEA • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

QUINTRON’S WEATHER WARLOCK Knoxville Museum of Art • Monday, Sept. 14 • 7 p.m. • $8 • knoxart.org

Legendary Bayou-boogieman and backroom-inventor Quintron (Robert Rolston) has quite literally learned to harness the ebbs and flows of the Earth to pull sounds for his latest concert series.

Best known for his kooky contraption the Drum Buddy—basically a light-activated drum machine that spins and spits out beats when a photoelectric cell is triggered—the New Orleans-based musician is now back on the bandstand with his latest gadget: a large apparatus that interprets weather patterns and synthesizes tunes around E major. The low-voltage Weather Warlock, as it’s known, pulls in cues from temperature, wind, sun, and rain to squeeze out a variety of ambient tones and harmonics through its all-analog synthesizer. The thing plays virtually nonstop, streaming online at weatherfortheblind.org, but each location is said to have its own climate and environmental factors that shape the heavily repetitive tunes, with things really kicking off around sunrise and sunset. And your chance to hear the monotonous undertones of Knoxville is nigh. Quintron brings the Warlock and backing band to test the atmosphere in East Tennessee. NOLA Musicians Gary Wong and Aaron Hill, plus a handful of yet-to-be-announced locals, will jam along, adding to the environment of sound for this sunset performance that promises an unworldly connection to the waking world. (Clay Duda)

35

Spotlight: Steve Earle and the Dukes

CALENDAR September 14 MY BROTHER THE BEAR WITH MAMADRONES • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-aweek lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE THREE DAYS GRACE • The International • 6PM • Since first catapulting on to the scene in 2003, Three Days Grace consistently connected to audiences via hard-hitting, honest, and hypnotic anthems. All ages. • $30.50-$60 BIG DADDY WEAVE W/ THE KNOXLIFE BAND • Chilhowee Park • 6PM • The Dove-award-winning Christian rock band performs at the Tennessee Valley Fair. NOTE: You must have a fair admission ticket to attend the concert.

Reserved seating tickets are $5. General seating is first come, first served.

WEATHER WARLOCK • Knoxville Museum of Art • 7PM • New Orleans’ junk-rock legend Quintron performs a twilight concert with his remarkable weather-controlled synthesizer. • $8 LANEY JONES AND THE SPIRITS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM September 15 MISSISSIPPI BENDS WITH THE PEA PICKIN’ HEARTS • 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 PRESERVATION PUB SINGER/SONGWRITER NIGHT • Preservation Pub • 7PM • A weekly open mic.

DUSTIN LYNCH W/ TYLER BARHAM • Chilhowee Park • 7PM • Broken Bow Records artist Dustin Lynch performs at the Tennessee Valley Fair, with Tyler Barham. NOTE: You must have a fair admission ticket to attend the concert.

Reserved seating tickets are $12. General seating is first come, first served.

OLD-TIME JAM SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Hosted by Sarah Pickle. • FREE THE MILK CARTON KIDS • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • Grammy-nominated flat-picking harmony duo The Milk Carton Kids have emerged in the last three years as a powerful voice defining the continuing folk tradition. • $27-$37 THE WILD REEDS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM THE BAD DUDES WITH ESE • Pilot Light • 10PM • 18 and up. • $5 September 16 JIMBO SCOTT WITH THE FREIGHTSHAKERS • 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 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 TIME WARP TEA ROOM OLD-TIME JAM • Time Warp Tea Room • 7PM • Regular speed old-time/fiddle jam every Wednesday from 7-9 p.m. at the Time Warp Tea Room. All instruments and skill levels welcome.

TENNESSEE SHINES: CORB LUND AND DANIEL ROMANO • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7PM • Canadian country artists Corb Lund and Daniel Romano team up for this special double bill. Alberta-born honky-tonker Corb Lund is a Juno Award winner (Canadian Grammys) who has multiple Canadian Gold Records to his name. Ontario native Daniel Romano has followed up his 2013 honkytonky heartbreaker Come Cry with Me with the new If I’ve Only One Time Askin’, a

country record infused with the pathos and intensity that makes Romano and his vocal range so captivating. • $10 OPEN CHORD OPEN MIC • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • FREE REO SPEEDWAGON • Chilhowee Park • 8PM • The classic rockers perform at the Tennessee Valley Fair. NOTE: You must have a fair admission ticket to attend the concert.

Reserved seating tickets are $10-$30. No free seating is available for this show.

LONGBRANCH ACOUSTIC OPEN MIC NIGHT • Longbranch Saloon • 9PM BRACKINS BLUES JAM • Brackins Blues Club • 9PM • A weekly open session hosted by Tommie John. • FREE COLE WITH METH DAD, CHIFFON, AND PERSONA LA AVE • Pilot Light • 9PM September 17 THE CHRISTIAN LOPEZ BAND • WDVX • 12PM • FREE VINCE HARRIS DUO • Clancy’s Tavern and Whiskey House • 6PM TRACE ADKINS W/ MAE BETH HARRIS • Chilhowee Park • 7PM • The Grammy nominated and multi-platinum country artist performs at the Tennessee Valley Fair.

NOTE: You must have a fair admission ticket to attend the concert. Reserved seating tickets are $25. General seating is first come, first served.

IRISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Held on the first and third Thursdays of each month. • FREE THE THIRST QUENCHERS • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine Lounge • 8PM • The Ps and Qs house band.

CATS AWAY • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM TATSUYA NAKATANI • Pilot Light • 9PM • Tatsuya Nakatani is a creative artist / percussionist originally from Osaka, Japan who has released over 60 recordings in North America and Europe. His latest project is the Nakatani Gong Orchestra, which builds community ensembles performing on multiple bowed gongs under his direction, as recently presented at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. 18 and up. • $5 SHIMMY AND THE BURNS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Local Americana band Shimmy and the Burns celebrates the release of its new CD. September 18 T SISTERS WITH JERRY SALLEY • 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 WAYNE “THE TRAIN” HANCOCK • The Bowery • 7PM • Wayne “The Train” Hancock has been the undisputed king of Juke Joint Swing - that alchemist’s dream of honky-tonk, western swing, blues, Texas rockabilly and big band. This show is 18 and up. • $12 DAVE SLACK TRIO • Pero’s on the Hill • 7PM • Instrumental and vocal jazz standards.

JAY ERIC • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine Lounge • 8PM THE LONE BELLOW • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • Working with producer Aaron Dessner of the National, the Lone Bellow has created a sound that mixes folk sincerity, gospel fervor, even heavy metal thunder, but the heart of the band is harmony: three voices united in a lone bellow. • $18-$20 THE CALEB KLAUDER COUNTRY BAND • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Caleb has been touring nationally and internationally for over 15 years, first with acclaimed folk-rock band Calobo, a luminary in the Northwest’s burgeoning music scene, and then with the widely celebrated Foghorn Stringband.

FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE

ON SALE FRIDAY, 9/11 AT 10AM!

WEDNESDAY

10.14 8PM

TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE TENNESSEE THEATER BOX OFFICE, TICKETMASTER.COM, OR BY PHONE AT 1.800.745.3000 September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 29

CALENDAR WARRANT • Chilhowee Park • 8PM • Hair-metal survivors Warrant perform at the Tennessee Valley Fair. NOTE: You must have a fair admission ticket to attend the concert.

Reserved seating tickets are $10. General seating is first come, first served.

KATY FREE • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE SHORT TERM MEMORY • Brackins Blues Club • 9PM • FREE THE PACKWAY HANDLE BAND • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Packway’s sound is steeped in old-fashioned bluegrass, but they hold a niche in the American music realm that’s all their own. Clever songwriting, an eccentric mixture of modern folk music, dark themes, old-time religion, affectionate satire of Bluegrass, and devotion to apocalyptic infotainment leave the listener to decide what exactly a Packway Handle is.

AVENUE C • Two Doors Down • 10PM CALEB WARREN AND THE PERFECT GENTLEMEN • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE ANDY DOZIER AND HEAVY SOUL • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM GAMENIGHT WITH FIRE AT THE MARQUEE AND WOLVES • Pilot Light • 10PM • $5 September 19 THE CALEB KLAUDER COUNTRY BAND WITH VALERIE SMITH AND LIBERTY PIKE • 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 OLD-TIME SLOW JAM • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 4PM • A monthly old-time music session, held on the third

30

KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

Thursday, Sept. 10 - Sunday, Sept. 20

Saturday of each month. • FREE THE RERUNS • Pero’s on the Hill • 7PM • Knoxville’s premier TV band plays your favorite television themes.

JT HODGES W/ MORGAN WALLEN • Chilhowee Park • 7PM • ACM-nominated artist JT Hodges performs at the Tennessee Valley Fair, with Morgan Wallen. NOTE: You must have a fair admission ticket to attend the concert.

Reserved seating tickets are $5. General seating is first come, first served.

HAYLEY REARDON WITH BRISTON MARONEY • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Noted for her thoughtful, vivid songwriting and engaging stage performance, Hayley has spent the past five years sharing the stage with acts like Tom Rush, Peter Yarrow, Buskin & Batteau, Christine Lavin, and opening for the likes of Lori McKenna, Mark Erelli, and Catie Curtis. • $10 CODY CANADA AND THE DEPARTED WITH J.C. AND THE DIRTY SMOKERS • The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson • 8PM • $20 FREEQUENCY • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine Lounge • 8PM • Acoustic Americana trio.

THE DIRTY GUV’NAHS • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • The Dirty Guv’nahs add a second Knoxville date to their Farewell Tour. • $27 THE WILL YAGER TRIO • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE BLACK STALLYONZ • Brackins Blues Club • 9PM • FREE BEN SHUSTER • Bearden Field House • 9PM • FREE THE BURNIN’ HERMANS • Two Doors Down • 10PM THE KENNY GEORGE BAND • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE STATE STREET RHYTHM SECTION • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Knoxville funk and soul.

STEAKS • Pilot Light • 10PM • $5 LIVE JAZZ AT DOWNTOWN GRILL AND BREWERY • Downtown Grill and Brewery • 12:45PM • Knoxville’s coolest jazz artists perform every Sunday. • September 20 SHIFFLETT AND HANNAH • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. • FREE DAVE SLACK TRIO • Pero’s on the Hill • 1PM • Live jazz.

JENNA AND HER COOL FRIENDS • Star of Knoxville Riverboat • 3PM • Part of the Smoky Mountain Blues Society’s annual season of summer blues cruises. • $16-$19 FREEQUENCY • Spicy’s • 5PM • Acoustic Americana trio.

LONESTAR W/ HOMER HART • Chilhowee Park • 7PM • Multi-platinum country artist Lonestar plays the Tennessee Valley Fair, with Homer Hart. NOTE: You must have a fair admission ticket to attend the concert.

Reserved seating tickets are $15. General seating is first come, first served.

SOMO WITH JORDAN BRATTON • Tennessee Theatre • 7:45PM • In February of 2014, SoMo released his self-titled debut album, which entered at #6 on the Billboard charts and #1 on the iTunes Album Chart. His breakout single “Ride” was certified Gold and remained in the Top 10 of the iTunes R&B chart for 25 consecutive weeks. • $27.50-$30 THE PAPER CROWNS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM • The Paper Crowns are a husband and wife duo who improvise heavily on acoustic and electric guitar, banjo, and drums…often while singing harmonies.

CLASSICAL MUSIC

September 17 KSO MASTERWORKS SERIES: AMERICAN MASTERS • Tennessee Theatre • 7:30PM • The KSO will open its 80th season with music by American Masters George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein. KSO Resident Conductor James Fellenbaum conducts the KSO in Chadwick’s Jubilee from Symphonic Sketches, Barber’s Adagio for Strings and Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. Van Cliburn Competition Crystal Medalist Sean Chen joins the Orchestra for Gershwin’s Concerto in F. September 18 KSO MASTERWORKS SERIES: AMERICAN MASTERS • Tennessee Theatre • 7:30PM • The KSO will open its 80th season with music by American Masters George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein.

September 20 UT SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA • University of Tennessee Alumni Memorial Building • 4PM • An ensemble recital of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, “Eroica.” • FREE

DJ AND DANCE NIGHTS September 11 RETRO DANCE NIGHT • Hanna’s Old City • 9PM • 80s and Top 40 hits with DJ Ray Funk.

September 12

CALENDAR RETRO DANCE NIGHT • Hanna’s Old City • 9PM • 80s and Top 40 hits with DJ Ray Funk.

September 18 RETRO DANCE NIGHT • Hanna’s Old City • 9PM • 80s and Top 40 hits with DJ Ray Funk.

September 19 RETRO DANCE NIGHT • Hanna’s Old City • 9PM • 80s and Top 40 hits with DJ Ray Funk.

COMEDY AND SPOKEN WORD

September 10 JIM “GOOD OL’ J.R.” ROSS • The International • 8PM • Ross will be performing his comedy routine Ringside. The two hour show features humor and road stories regarding the biggest names and events in pro wrestling history from experiences of Ross’s 40 years in the business. Tickets for the show can be purchased at www.ticketweb.com.

Wrestling fans ages 18+ are invited to choose between $20 advanced, $25 day of, and $50 VIP tickets. • $20-$50 September 12 IMPROV COMEDY CLASS • The Birdhouse • 10AM • A weekly improv comedy class. • FREE September 13 UPSTAIRS UNDERGROUND COMEDY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A weekly comedy open mic.

September 14 QED COMEDY LABORATORY • Pilot Light • 7:30PM • QED ComedyLaboratory is a weekly show with different theme every week that combines stand-up, improv, sketch, music and other types of performance and features some of the funniest people in Knoxville and parts unknown.

It’s weird and experimental. There is no comedy experience in town that is anything like this and it’s also a ton of fun. Pay what you want. Cost: Free - But Donations Gladly Accepted • FREE September 15 OPEN MIC STAND-UP COMEDY • Longbranch Saloon • 8PM • Come laugh until you cry at the Longbranch every Tuesday night. Doors open at 8, first comic at 8:30. No cover charge, all are welcome. Aspiring or experienced comics interested in joining in the fun email us at longbranch.info@gmail.com to learn more, or simply come to the show a few minutes early. • FREE EINSTEIN SIMPLIFIED • Scruffy City Hall • 8PM • Live comedy improv. • FREE September 18 THE FIFTH WOMAN POETRY SLAM • The Birdhouse • 6:30PM • The 5th Woman Poetry slam is place where all poets can come and share their words of love, respect, passion, and expression. It is not dedicated solely women but is a place where women poets are celebrated and honored. Check out our facebook pages for the challenge of the month and focus for our poetry every month.

September 19 IMPROV COMEDY CLASS • The Birdhouse • 10AM • A weekly improv comedy class. • FREE September 20 UPSTAIRS UNDERGROUND COMEDY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A weekly comedy open mic.

THEATER AND DANCE

September 10 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘THE 39 STEPS’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • A hilarious, high-speed spoof of Alfred Hitchcock’s silver-screen classic! Follow handsome hero Richard Hannay from London to the Scottish Highlands and back as he encounters dastardly murders, double-crossing secret agents, and, of course, devastatingly beautiful women.

September 11 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘THE 39 STEPS’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • A hilarious, high-speed spoof of Alfred Hitchcock’s silver-screen classic! Follow handsome hero Richard Hannay from London to the Scottish Highlands and back as he encounters dastardly murders, double-crossing secret agents, and, of course, devastatingly beautiful women.

THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: THE MURDER ROOM • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • A zany spoof of British mysteries set in Bynewood Cottage, on a small estate just a few kilometers from Harrogate, a medium-sized town in West Riding, Yorkshire, in the north part of England. Sept. 11-27. Visit theatreknoxville. com. • $15 LYRIC THEATRE COMPANY: HEMINGWAY’S GHOST • Lyric Theatre • 8PM • Though read off Broadway and elsewhere, “Hemingway’s Ghost” has never been performed on stage until now. Robert Cranny’s new one-man play is a conversation with the man behind the myth. The Lyric Theatre is located in 320 Grove Street in Loudon. The play is recommended for ages 14+ due to strong/sexual language and is sponsored by the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network and i105.3 WFIV. • $15 September 12 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘THE 39 STEPS’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 2PM • 7:30PM • A hilarious, high-speed spoof of Alfred Hitchcock’s silver-screen classic! Follow handsome hero Richard Hannay from London to the Scottish Highlands and back as he encounters dastardly murders, double-crossing secret agents, and, of course, devastatingly beautiful women. Sept. 9-27.

THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: THE MURDER ROOM • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • A zany spoof of British mysteries set in Bynewood Cottage, on a small estate just a few kilometers from Harrogate, a medium-sized town in West Riding, Yorkshire, in the north part of England. Sept. 11-27. Visit http://www. theatreknoxville.com. • $15 LYRIC THEATRE COMPANY: HEMINGWAY’S GHOST • Lyric Theatre • 8PM • The play is recommended for ages 14+ due to strong/sexual language and is sponsored by the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network and i105.3 WFIV. • $15 September 13 LYRIC THEATRE COMPANY: HEMINGWAY’S GHOST • Lyric Theatre • 2PM • The play is recommended for ages 14+ due to strong/sexual language and is sponsored by the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network and i105.3 WFIV. • $15 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: THE MURDER ROOM • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 3PM • A zany spoof of British mysteries set in Bynewood Cottage, on a small estate just a few kilometers from Harrogate, a medium-sized town in West Riding, Yorkshire, in the north part of England. Sept. 11-27. Visit http://www. theatreknoxville.com. • $13

Parents: How do you make sure your child receives the best care?

Look for the Gold Sneaker logo, which identifies licensed childcare facilities in Tennessee that go the extra mile to promote child health & wellness, including: - At least 60 minutes of physical activity per day - Less than 60 minutes of TV or videos per day - A focus on building positive attitudes towards food and exercise - Smoke-free facilities that promote tobacco use prevention

To learn more about the Gold Sneaker program, go to: http://tn.gov/health/topic/goldsneaker To become Gold Sneaker certified in Knox County, please contact Kerri Thompson:

kerri.thompson@knoxcounty.org 865-215-5445

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September 16 September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 31

CALENDAR CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘THE 39 STEPS’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • A hilarious, high-speed spoof of Alfred Hitchcock’s silver-screen classic!

September 17 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘THE 39 STEPS’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • A hilarious, high-speed spoof of Alfred Hitchcock’s silver-screen classic!

THE WORDPLAYERS: WALKING ACROSS EGYPT • Erin Presbyterian Church • 7:30PM • The WordPlayers presents Walking Across Egypt, a comedy adapted by Catherine Bush from the novel by Clyde Edgerton. When Mattie Rigsbee discovers a stray dog on her porch, she decides she’s too old to keep it and calls the dogcatcher. Little does she know that the dogcatcher will open her eyes to a world she never knew existed; a world that includes car theft, prison breaks and a delinquent named Wesley who is as desperate for family as she is. (Recommended for all audiences.) Info: www.wordplayers.org. • $10-$15 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: THE MURDER ROOM • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • A zany spoof of British mysteries set in Bynewood Cottage, on a small estate just a few kilometers from Harrogate, a medium-sized town in West Riding, Yorkshire, in the north part of England. Sept. 11-27. Visit http://www. theatreknoxville.com. • $15 September 18 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘THE 39 STEPS’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • A hilarious, high-speed spoof of Alfred Hitchcock’s silver-screen classic!

THE WORDPLAYERS: WALKING ACROSS EGYPT • Erin

Thursday, Sept. 10 - Sunday, Sept. 20

Presbyterian Church • 7:30PM • The WordPlayers presents Walking Across Egypt, a comedy adapted by Catherine Bush from the novel by Clyde Edgerton. Info: wordplayers. org. • $10-$15 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: THE MURDER ROOM • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • A zany spoof of British mysteries set in Bynewood Cottage, on a small estate just a few kilometers from Harrogate, a medium-sized town in West Riding, Yorkshire, in the north part of England. Sept.

11-27. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $15 September 19 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘THE 39 STEPS’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 2PM • 7:30PM • A hilarious, high-speed spoof of Alfred Hitchcock’s silver-screen classic!

THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: THE MURDER ROOM • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • A zany spoof of British mysteries set in Bynewood Cottage, on a small estate just a few kilometers from Harrogate, a medium-sized town in West Riding, Yorkshire, in the north part of England. Sept.

11-27. Visittheatreknoxville.com. • $15 September 20 THE WORDPLAYERS: WALKING ACROSS EGYPT • Erin Presbyterian Church • 2:30PM • The WordPlayers presents Walking Across Egypt, a comedy adapted by Catherine Bush from the novel by Clyde Edgerton. Info: wordplayers. org. • $10-$15 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: THE MURDER ROOM • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 3PM • A zany spoof of British mysteries set in Bynewood Cottage, on a small estate just a few kilometers from Harrogate, a

medium-sized town in West Riding, Yorkshire, in the north part of England. Sept. 11-27. Visit http://www. theatreknoxville.com. • $13

ART

A1 LabArts 23 Emory Place SEPT. 4: Forgotten Memories 2, lost and found photos curated by Donna Moore and Sara Blair McNally. (6-10 p.m.)

American Museum of Science and Energy 300 S. Tulane Ave. (Oak Ridge) JUNE 12-SEPT. 13: Nikon Small World Photomicrography Exhibit.

Antique Space 1324 Broadway SEPT. 4: Processed: Work by Arrowmont’s Artists-in-Residence (6-10 p.m.)

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts 556 Parkway (Gatlinburg) AUG. 29-OCT. 31: Materialities: Contemporary Textile Art Art Market Gallery 422 S. Gay St. AUG. 31-SEPT. 7: Artwork by Gary Dagnan and Larry Gabbard. An opening reception will be held on Friday,

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Sept. 4, from 5-9 p.m.

The Birdhouse 800 N. Fourth Ave. SEPT. 1-30: Extraordinary Women, paintings by Asa McEwan. An opening reception will be held on Friday, Sept. 4, from 7-10 p.m.

Bliss Home 29 Market Square AUG. 7-SEPT. 30: The Lake House, paintings by Kate Moore. A First Friday reception will be held on Friday, Sept. 4, from 6-9 p.m.

Broadway Studios and Gallery 1127 Broadway Sept. 4-30: Gaudy Gold Frame Show. An opening reception will be held on Friday, Sept. 4, from 5-9 p.m.

(The exhibit will remain on display by appointment.)

Clayton Center for the Arts 502 E. Lamar Alexander Parkway (Maryville) AUG. 26-SEPT. 25: Seeing in Black and White, photographs by Paula Campbell.

Downtown Gallery 106 S. Gay St. SEPT. 4-26: Non-Exempt: A UT Staff Exhibition. An opening reception will be held on Friday, Sept. 4, from 5-9 p.m.

East Tennessee History Center 601 S. Gay St.

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CDs • Vinyl • Movies • T-shirts Turntables • Posters • Tapestries Sunglasses • Incense • Glassware Bring this coupon or show us the ad on your smart phone Sale Items Excluded. Through Saturday, September 12th.

#WINWITHTN SUNDAY - TUESDAY

Go to our Facebook page for info! d Operated S n an inc e ow 1 gr

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

Sign up for our e-letter & visit our digital store at discexchange.com

Trade in your old CDs, movies & vinyl for credit towards the purchase of new & used albums and movies

2615 Chapman Hwy | 573-5710 | discexchange.com Just South of the Henley St. Bridge Across from Shoney’s Mon-Sat 10a - 9p • Sun 12p - 7p Follow Us On Facebook & Twitter | Tickets Unlimited Outlet

CALENDAR APRIL 27-OCT. 18: Memories of the Blue and Gray: The Civil War in East Tennessee at 150 Emporium Center for Arts and Culture 100 S. Gay St. SEPT. 4-26: Artists of Fine Arts Blount; Terra Madre: Women in Clay; Drawn In, curated by Amy Hand; Conversations: Portraits and Other Work by Emily Taylor; and artwork by Jake Livesay. SEPT. 1-8: Frutos Latinos, featuring artwork by the winner of HoLa Hora Latina’s annual arts contest. An opening reception will be held on Friday, Sept. 4, from 5-9 p.m.

Envision Art Gallery 4050 Sutherland Ave. SEPT. 5-30: The Love of Art, featuring work by members of the Tennessee Artist Association. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, Sept. 5, from 5-8 p.m.

Ewing Gallery 1715 Volunteer Blvd.

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

Flow: A Brew Parlor 603 W. Main St. SEPT. 4: A First Friday reception featuring artwork by Jon Putril and music by Blond Bones. 5-9 p.m.

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

Liz-Beth and Co. 7240 Kingston Pike SEPT. 1-26: Country Roads Take Me Home, featuring art by Jim Gray, Theresa Shelton, Eileen McConkey, Sandy Brown, and Ober Rae Starr Livingstone.

McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture 1327 Circle Park Drive SEPT. 11-JAN. 3: Embodying Enlightenment: Buddhist Art of the Himalayas. Ongoing: The Flora and Fauna of Catesby, Mason, and Audubon and Life on the Roman Frontier.

Zach Searcy Projects 317 N. Gay St. SEPT. 4-30: Country Club, new paintings by Eric Cagley. An opening reception will be held on Friday, Sept. 4, from 6-10 p.m. (The exhibit will remain on display by appointment.)

Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church 2931 Kingston Pike SEPT. 11-DEC. 3: An exhibit of artwork by TVUUC members.

FESTIVALS

September 11 DAYS OF THE PIONEER ANTIQUE SHOW • Museum of Appalachia • 12AM • This show will feature over 60 of the finest selection of 18th & 19th century Antique Dealers.

For more information call the museum at 865-494-7680 or visit www.museumofappalachia.org.

TENNESSEE VALLEY FAIR • Chilhowee Park • Our annual

celebration of Americana is back—with live concerts, scary rides, arts & crafts competitions, fair food, and tractor pulls.

VOL KICKOFF PARTY • The Standard • 4PM • The Vol Kickoff Party, sponsored by Sweet P’s Barbecue and Extrovert Media, is supporting Green Magnet (STEAM) Academy and it’s mission: One Community. One Vision.

Every Student. The first section of the Vol Kickoff Party is a free event from 4-7pm and will include games, prizes, djs, sports personalities, soundcheck. The second section of the Vol Kickoff Party is an 8pm-midnight concert featuring Gran Torino and opened by Asheville’s The Hermit Kings. Tickets are $30: tickettailor.com.

September 12 DAYS OF THE PIONEER ANTIQUE SHOW • Museum of Appalachia • 12AM • This show will feature over 60 of the finest selection of 18th & 19th century Antique Dealers.

For more information call the museum at 865-494-7680 or visit www.museumofappalachia.org.

HOGSKIN HISTORY DAY • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center (1936 Liberty Hill Rd, Washburn) • 11AM • Hogskin History Day is a celebration of the history, music, and culture of the Hogskin Valley and surrounding Appalachian communities.

For more information visit our website at www. narrowridge.org or call Mitzi at 865-497-3603. • FREE VILLAMARIA DAY • Clayton Center for the Arts • 8:30AM • Maryville College will host “Villamaría Day,” a celebration of Hispanic heritage and higher education opportunities for Latino communities, in the Lambert Recital Hall.

Programming for Villamaría Day includes presentations, panel discussions and other conversations that address how Latino leaders and allies can join businesses, schools and faith communities to support higher education opportunities for Latino families. • $45-$55 TENNESSEE VALLEY FAIR • Chilhowee Park • Our annual celebration of Americana is back—with live concerts, scary rides, arts & crafts competitions, fair food, and tractor pulls.

September 13 TENNESSEE VALLEY FAIR • Chilhowee Park • Our annual celebration of Americana is back—with live concerts, scary rides, arts & crafts competitions, fair food, and tractor pulls.

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September 14 TENNESSEE VALLEY FAIR • Chilhowee Park • Our annual celebration of Americana is back—with live concerts, scary rides, arts & crafts competitions, fair food, and tractor pulls.

September 15 TENNESSEE VALLEY FAIR • Chilhowee Park • Our annual celebration of Americana is back—with live concerts, scary rides, arts & crafts competitions, fair food, and tractor pulls.

September 16 TENNESSEE VALLEY FAIR • Chilhowee Park • Our annual celebration of Americana is back—with live concerts, scary rides, arts & crafts competitions, fair food, and tractor pulls.

KNOXVILLE NOODLE BOWL FESTIVAL • Historic Southern Railway Station • 5:30PM • The Chefs Collaborative-sponsored event is a family-friendly, casual picnic-style community event to benefit Friends of Tennessee’s Babies with Special Needs, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization working to enhance the potential of infants and young children with disabilities by offering support to their families and the early intervention professionals who serve

865.974.5161

clarencebrowntheatre.com #CBT39Steps

* The actors appear through the courtesy of Actor’s Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 33

CALENDAR them. Single Admission tickets are $25. Family tickets are $50, and include entry for two adults and children under 16.

Entry includes unlimited bowls, beer tasting and non-alcoholic beverages; tickets and additional information are available at knbf.brownpapertickets.com September 17 DUMPLIN VALLEY BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL • Dumpling Valley Farm • 12AM • Three days of outstanding bluegrass bands performing onstage in an old converted dairy barn.

Camping, vendors, and restrooms available on site; festival seating (bring your own chair) and free parking.

Featuring the Lonesome River Band, Balsam Range, Rhonda Vincent and the Rage, and more. • $25-$75 TENNESSEE VALLEY FAIR • Chilhowee Park • Our annual celebration of Americana is back—with live concerts, scary rides, arts & crafts competitions, fair food, and tractor pulls.

September 18 DUMPLIN VALLEY BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL • Dumpling Valley Farm • 12AM • Three days of outstanding bluegrass bands performing onstage in an old converted dairy barn.

Camping, vendors, and restrooms available on site; festival seating (bring your own chair) and free parking.

Featuring the Lonesome River Band, Balsam Range, Rhonda Vincent and the Rage, and more. • $25-$75 TENNESSEE VALLEY FAIR • Chilhowee Park • Our annual celebration of Americana is back—with live concerts, scary rides, arts & crafts competitions, fair food, and tractor pulls.

September 19

Thursday, Sept. 10 - Sunday, Sept. 20

DUMPLIN VALLEY BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL • Dumpling Valley Farm • 12AM • Three days of outstanding bluegrass bands performing onstage in an old converted dairy barn.

Camping, vendors, and restrooms available on site; festival seating (bring your own chair) and free parking.

Featuring the Lonesome River Band, Balsam Range, Rhonda Vincent and the Rage, and more. • $25-$75 TENNESSEE VALLEY FAIR • Chilhowee Park • Our annual celebration of Americana is back—with live concerts, scary rides, arts & crafts competitions, fair food, and tractor pulls.

EAST TENNESSEE PAGAN PRIDE DAY • Sevierville Civic Center • 11AM • The day’s events will feature a variety of workshops and discussions on religious and cultural aspects from the various traditions. Regardless of religious affiliation, this event will offer fun activities for the entire family. Please visit www.paganprideofeasttn.org or Facebook at www. facebook.com/PaganPrideOfEastTn. • FREE JOHN SEVIER DAYS LIVING HISTORY WEEKEND • Marble Springs State Historic Site • 10AM • Marble Springs State Historic Site is pleased to host a weekend of Living History in celebration of the life and times of the first governor of Tennessee, John Sevier, in commemoration of his 270th birthday and 200th anniversary of his death.

JYou can expect to enjoy 18th century demonstrations such as open-hearth cooking; spinning and weaving; blacksmithing; weapons demonstrations, which will showcase period-appropriate firearms; 18th century style militia drills; regional craft demonstrations; historic lectures and more! • $5 per adult (16+); $3 per child (7-15); 6 and under FREE; Parking is free.

September 20 JOHN SEVIER DAYS LIVING HISTORY WEEKEND • Marble Springs State Historic Site • 12PM • A celebration of the life and times of the first governor of Tennessee, John Sevier, in commemoration of his 270th birthday and 200th anniversary of his death. $5 per adult (16+); $3 per child (7-15); 6 and under FREE. Parking is free.

TENNESSEE VALLEY FAIR • Chilhowee Park • Our annual celebration of Americana is back—with live concerts, scary rides, arts & crafts competitions, fair food, and tractor pulls.

FAMILY AND KIDS’ EVENTS

September 10 BABY BOOKWORMS • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • For infants to age 2, must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. • FREE CHESS AT THE LIBRARY • Blount County Public Library • 1PM • Middle and high school students (or any age) are invited to play chess. Tom Jobe coaches most Saturdays in the Teen Central area of the library. On one Saturday of every month, there will be a rated tournament at the Blount County Public Library. • FREE KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE SUMMER ACTING CLASSES • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 4:30PM • Knoxville Children’s Theatre, a non-profit theatre producing theatre for children by children, will hold

week-long, intensive acting classes during August, September, and October. To reserve a seat in any class, or for more information: e-mail Academy Director Dennis Perkins at dennis@childrenstheatreknoxville.com, or call (865) 208-3677. • $180 TODDLER’S YOGI YOGA • Shanti Yoga Haven • 9AM • An energized and calming follow-the-leader Yoga movement and music meditation class, guided by “Hi, funny teacher!” Ms. Donna-Lisa. Ages 2 to 5 yrs old. Mondays & Thursdays 9-10am ‘FIVE CORNERS’ AT CHILDREN’S MUSEUM • Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge • 2PM • Artists Marta Goebel-Pietrasz and Pat Clapsaddle are exhibiting their art works. For more information, call the museum at (865) 482-1074 or see the Children’s Museum web site at www. childrensmuseumofoakridge.org.

September 11 SMART TOYS AND BOOKS ART CLASS • Smart Toys and Books • 10AM • Mommy, Daddy & Me Art Classes are every Friday at 10:00am & 11:00am. Reservations and payment are required in advance. Class fees are non-refundable.

Ages 2+. • $10 ‘FIVE CORNERS’ AT CHILDREN’S MUSEUM • Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge • 2PM • Artists Marta Goebel-Pietrasz and Pat Clapsaddle are exhibiting their art works. For more information, call the museum at (865) 482-1074 or see the Children’s Museum web site at www. childrensmuseumofoakridge.org.

September 12 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE SUMMER ACTING CLASSES

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

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• Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 9:30AM & 10AM To reserve a seat in any class, or for more information: e-mail Academy Director Dennis Perkins at dennis@childrenstheatreknoxville.com, or call (865) 208-3677. • $180 CHESS AT THE LIBRARY • Blount County Public Library • 10AM • Middle and high school students (or any age) are invited to play chess. Tom Jobe coaches most Saturdays in the Teen Central area of the library. On one Saturday of every month, there will be a rated tournament at the Blount County Public Library. • FREE SATURDAY STORIES AND SONGS • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • A weekly music and storytelling session for kids. • FREE GENTLE BARN TOUR • The Gentle Barn • 11AM • Come visit the second Gentle Barn, home to Dudley, Worthy, Indie and Chris. You will get to watch Gentle Barn rescue videos and shop at our gift store.

‘FIVE CORNERS’ AT CHILDREN’S MUSEUM • Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge • 2PM • Artists Marta Goebel-Pietrasz and Pat Clapsaddle are exhibiting their art works. For more information, call the museum at (865) 482-1074 or see the Children’s Museum web site at www. childrensmuseumofoakridge.org.

CALENDAR

KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE SUMMER ACTING CLASSES • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 4:30PM • For more information: e-mail Academy Director Dennis Perkins at dennis@childrenstheatreknoxville.com, or call (865) 208-3677. • $180 ‘FIVE CORNERS’ AT CHILDREN’S MUSEUM • Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge • 2PM • Artists Marta Goebel-Pietrasz and Pat Clapsaddle are exhibiting their art works. For more information, call the museum at (865) 482-1074 or see the Children’s Museum web site at www. childrensmuseumofoakridge.org.

September 17 BABY BOOKWORMS • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • For infants to age 2, must be accompanied by a parent

or guardian. • FREE CHESS AT THE LIBRARY • Blount County Public Library • 1PM • Middle and high school students (or any age) are invited to play chess. Tom Jobe coaches most Saturdays in the Teen Central area of the library. On one Saturday of every month, there will be a rated tournament at the Blount County Public Library. • FREE KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE SUMMER ACTING CLASSES • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 4:30PM • For more information: e-mail Academy Director Dennis Perkins at dennis@childrenstheatreknoxville.com, or call (865) 208-3677. • $180 TODDLER’S YOGI YOGA • Shanti Yoga Haven • 9AM • An energized and calming follow-the-leader Yoga movement

September 14 STROLLER TOUR: CELEBRATING TIBET • McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture • 10AM • Gallery tours for parents and caregivers and their young ones. This month we explore the special exhibit, Embodying Enlightenment: Buddhist Art of the Himalayas. The event is free, but limited, and all attendees must register to attend online.

Registration opens a month in advance and closes the day before the tour. • FREE SMART TOYS AND BOOKS STORYTIME • Smart Toys and Books • 11AM • Storytime with Miss Helen is every Monday at 11:00am. No charge. No reservations required. • FREE September 15 PRE-K READ AND PLAY • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • Pre-K Read and Play is a pilot program specifically designed to prepare children to enter kindergarten. • FREE KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE SUMMER ACTING CLASSES • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 4:30PM • To reserve a seat in any class, or for more information: e-mail Academy Director Dennis Perkins at dennis@childrenstheatreknoxville.com, or call (865) 208-3677. • $180 EVENING STORYTIME • Lawson McGee Public Library • 6:30PM • An evening storytime at Lawson McGhee Children’s Room to include stories, music, and crafts. For toddlers and up. • FREE ‘FIVE CORNERS’ AT CHILDREN’S MUSEUM • Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge • 2PM • Artists Marta Goebel-Pietrasz and Pat Clapsaddle are exhibiting their art works. For more information, call the museum at (865) 482-1074 or see the Children’s Museum web site at www. childrensmuseumofoakridge.org.

September 16 BABY BOOKWORMS • Lawson McGee Public Library • 10:20AM • For infants to age 2, must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. • FREE PRESCHOOL STORYTIME • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • For ages 3 to 5, must be accompanied by an adult. • FREE

Photo by Ted Barron

September 13 ‘FIVE CORNERS’ AT CHILDREN’S MUSEUM • Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge • 2PM • Artists Marta Goebel-Pietrasz and Pat Clapsaddle are exhibiting their art works. For more information, call the museum at (865) 482-1074 or see the Children’s Museum web site at www. childrensmuseumofoakridge.org.

STEVE EARLE AND THE DUKES, WITH THE MASTERSONS Bijou Theatre • Thursday, Sept. 10 • 8 p.m. • $35.35 • knoxbijou.com

Steve Earle has bounced through a dozen personae in his career: neo-outlaw singer-songwriter, tough guy, addict, death-penalty opponent, folkie, convict, hard rocker, poet, New Yorker, novelist.

His country-infused rock has been called “power twang.” And he’s the only actor alive who had recurring roles on The Wire, Treme, and 30 Rock.

He’ll be returning to what made him famous when he performs with his longtime band, the Dukes, at the Bijou Theatre. His latest album, this year’s Terraplane, has hit the country, rock, indie, blues, and folk charts.

Steve Earle is practically an honorary Knoxvillian. He’s visited dozens of times, for big audiences as a rock frontman and for smaller audiences as a poet. He mentioned Knoxville in his 1988 hit “Copperhead Road,” produced the Knoxville band the V-Roys, and once gave an assist to a local historian on a key bit of Knoxville’s blues history. The biggest surprise of all may be that he was asked to write the foreword for the most recent Penguin Classics edition of James Agee’s A Death in the Family.

Can this guy do everything? Come see if you can figure him out. (Jack Neely)

September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 35

CALENDAR and music meditation class, guided by “Hi, funny teacher!” Ms. Donna-Lisa. Ages 2 to 5 yrs old. Mondays & Thursdays 9-10am ‘FIVE CORNERS’ AT CHILDREN’S MUSEUM • Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge • 2PM • Artists Marta Goebel-Pietrasz and Pat Clapsaddle are exhibiting their art works. For more information, call the museum at (865) 482-1074 or see the Children’s Museum web site at www. childrensmuseumofoakridge.org.

September 18 SMART TOYS AND BOOKS ART CLASS • Smart Toys and Books • 10AM • Mommy, Daddy & Me Art Classes are every Friday at 10am & 11am. Reservations and payment are required in advance. Class fees are non-refundable.

Ages 2+. • $10 ‘FIVE CORNERS’ AT CHILDREN’S MUSEUM • Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge • 2PM • Artists Marta Goebel-Pietrasz and Pat Clapsaddle are exhibiting their art works. For more information, call the museum at (865) 482-1074 or see the Children’s Museum web site at www. childrensmuseumofoakridge.org.

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36

KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

September 19 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE SUMMER ACTING CLASSES • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 10AM • For more information: e-mail Academy Director Dennis Perkins at dennis@childrenstheatreknoxville.com, or call (865) 208-3677. • $180 CHESS AT THE LIBRARY • Blount County Public Library • 10AM • Middle and high school students (or any age) are invited to play chess. Tom Jobe coaches most Saturdays in the Teen Central area of the library. On one Saturday of every month, there will be a rated tournament at the Blount County Public Library. • FREE FAMILY AND KIDS’ EVENTS • September 19 • Saturday Stories and Songs • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • A weekly music and storytelling session for kids. • FREE GENTLE BARN TOUR • The Gentle Barn • 11AM • Come visit the second Gentle Barn, home to Dudley, Worthy, Indie and Chris. You will get to watch Gentle Barn rescue videos and shop at our gift store.

‘FIVE CORNERS’ AT CHILDREN’S MUSEUM • Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge • 2PM • Artists Marta Goebel-Pietrasz and Pat Clapsaddle are exhibiting their art works. For more information, call the museum at (865) 482-1074 or see the Children’s Museum web site at www. childrensmuseumofoakridge.org.

September 20 FAMILY FRIENDLY DRUM CIRCLE • Ijams Nature Center • 4PM • Bring a drum or share one of ours. All ages from toddlers to grandparents welcome. Free. Call Ijams at 865-577-4717 ex 110 to register. • FREE ‘FIVE CORNERS’ AT CHILDREN’S MUSEUM • Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge • 2PM • Artists Marta Goebel-Pietrasz and Pat Clapsaddle are exhibiting their art works. For more information, call the museum at (865) 482-1074 or see the Children’s Museum web site at www. childrensmuseumofoakridge.org.

CHARITY AND FUNDRAISING

September 11 LEGACY LUNCHEON FOR THE PARKS • Holston River Farm • 11:30PM • Cheryl Strayed, the New York Times bestselling author of WILD, about her 1,100 mile solo walk on the

Thursday, Sept. 10 - Sunday, Sept. 20

Pacific Crest Trail, is the scheduled speaker for the annual Legacy Luncheon for the Parks on the Holston River Farm at the head of the Tennessee River.

Reservations may be made now online at legacyparks. org or by calling (865) 525-2585.

September 12 SMOKY MOUNTAIN HIKING CLUB APPALACHIAN TRAIL WORK TRIP • Smoky Mountain Hiking Club • 7:30AM • We will work from Low Gap to Camel Gap cutting back vegetation and cleaning water bars. The outing will involve roughly 3,000 feet of climbing. Meet at Comcast on Asheville Highway at 7:30 to carpool or at the hiker parking lot at the Cosby Campground at 8:30. Please contact the leader if you are interested in helping so that tools will be available. Leader: Mark Shipley, mshipley@ townoffarragut.org. • FREE September 17 • POWER OF THE PURSE MOBILE MEALS FUNDRAISER • Rothchild Conference and Catering Center • 11AM • Buy a purse. Feed seniors. Power of the Purse is a Mobile Meals fundraiser to feed seniors in the greater Knoxville area!

Many of these seniors are home bound and depend on the services of Mobile Meals for hot meals.

CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS

September 10 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted.

HEALING THROUGH ART • Cancer Support Community • 1PM • Join the fun as we create mini mosaics together.

Experiment with some fun and easy mosaic techniques using “magic glue” to embellish ceramic tiles. Feel free to bring in old keys, old buttons and beads, shells or anything that can be glued down to your mini masterpiece. RSVP. Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer.

REFRESH YOUR RUN • REI • 7PM • So, you want to be a runner? Whether you are just starting or are getting ‘back on track,’ this class will help you get in the groove and provide training and technique insights to get you back in shape and/or prepare for your upcoming 5-10K or more.

Registration required at www.rei.com/knoxville. • FREE BELLY DANCE LEVELS 1 AND 2 • Knox Dance Worx • 8PM • Call (865) 898-2126 or email alexia@alexia-dance.com. • $12 September 11 YOGA AND QI-GONG BASICS • Shanti Yoga Haven • 6PM • New to Yoga and Qi-gong? Welcome! This beginner’s course will gently guide you every step of the way.

Receive $10 Off your first class when you mention Mercury! Work-study scholarships available. You may walk-in at any point in the course. Each class will be unique, slow paced and gentle for those who may be dealing with arthritis, stiffness, stress, anxiety or other.

September 12 YOGA AT NARROW RIDGE • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 9AM • Saturdays through September. Come stretch, sweat, breathe and release with yoga instruction from Angela Quillen at the Mac Smith Resource Center (1936 Liberty Hill Rd., Washburn) from 9:00 to 10:15 a.m. Wear loose, comfortable clothing and bring a yoga/pilates mat (or any other non-slip rug or mat), a towel to wipe your

brow and some water to rehydrate your body. Namaste. For more information contact Mitzi Wood-Von Mizener at 865-497-3603 or community@narrowridge.org.

September 14 AARP DRIVER SAFETY COURSE • South Knoxville Senior Center • 8AM • For more information, call (865) 382-5822.

September 14 AARP DRIVER SAFETY COURSE • Blount County Courthouse • 9AM • For more information, call (865) 382-5822.

GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 5:30PM • Call 865-5772021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted.

BIKE MAINTENANCE BASICS LEVEL 1 • REI • 7PM • Routine bike maintenance keeps you riding smoothly and prolongs the life of your bike. Join us for this introductory class to help you take care of your bike. Registration required at www.rei.com/knoxville. • FREE THRU-HIKING PANEL DISCUSSION • Calhoun’s (Bearden) • 7PM • Dream of hiking the AT, PCT, CDT? Want information about long distance hiking or thru-hiking? Like beer?

Then join seven local expert thru-hikers at Calhoun’s in Bearden to learn more. Registration required at www.rei. com/knoxville. • FREE September 15 AARP DRIVER SAFETY COURSE • Blount County Courthouse • 9AM • For more information, call (865) 382-5822.

GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted.

YOGA WITH SUBAGHJI • The Birdhouse • 5:15PM COMMUNITY SCHOOL • Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church • 6:30PM • Community School is a free three-evening seminar series to learn about the toxic and radioactive waste from Oak Ridge. Historian Ray Smith begins the series with a presentation, “Stories from the Secret City” on September 15th. The second evening, September 22nd, will feature three speakers including Susan Cange, Manager of the DOE Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management; Ellen Smith, Environmental Scientist and Oak Ridge City Council Member; and Chris Thompson, Deputy Director at the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation Division of Remediation/DOE Oversight Office. • FREE September 16 HOW TO USE TREKKING POLES • REI • 7PM • Thinking about purchasing a set of trekking poles for your next hike?

Perhaps you already have a set but aren’t quite sure how to use them. Let the experts at the REI Outdoor School show you everything you’ll need to know to get in the swing of using poles for all your future adventures.

Registration required at www.rei.com/knoxville. • FREE September 17 AARP DRIVER SAFETY COURSE • Seymour First Baptist Church • 9AM • For more information, call (865) 382-5822.

AARP DRIVER SAFETY COURSE • Everett Senior Center • 9AM • For more information, call (865) 382-5822.

GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted.

CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY: KNIT YOUR WAY TO WELLNESS • Cancer Support Community • 1PM • Whether you are a novice knitter or an old pro, you are invited to bring your own project or join others in learning a new one. Supplies provided. 865-546-4661. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals

Thursday, Sept. 10 - Sunday, Sept. 20

affected by cancer.

PORTRAIT AND LIFE DRAWING CLASSES • Historic Candoro Marble Company • 2PM • Life drawing practice session.

Call Brad Selph for more information 865-573-0709. • $10 BELLY DANCE LEVELS 1 AND 2 • Knox Dance Worx • 8PM • Call (865) 898-2126 or email alexia@alexia-dance.com. • $12 September 18 AARP DRIVER SAFETY COURSE • Seymour First Baptist Church • 9AM • For more information, call (865) 382-5822.

AARP DRIVER SAFETY COURSE • Everett Senior Center • 9AM • For more information, call (865) 382-5822.

YOGA AND QI-GONG BASICS • Shanti Yoga Haven • 6PM • New to Yoga and Qi-gong? Welcome! This beginner’s course will gently guide you every step of the way.

Receive $10 Off your first class when you mention Mercury! Work-study scholarships available. You may walk-in at any point in the course. Each class will be unique, slow paced and gentle for those who may be dealing with arthritis, stiffness, stress, anxiety or other.

SNAPSHOT OR PHOTOGRAPH?: A PHOTO WORKSHOP • Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church • 7PM • How to improve your photographs by just making a few very basic adjustments.

Beginners, intermediate or advanced photographers will all learn helpful hints. Please bring a finger food snack to share. Lemonade will be provided. Program contact: Chuck Janack, cwjanack1@gmail.com • FREE September 19 YOGA AT NARROW RIDGE • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 9AM • Saturdays through September 9:00 – 10:15 am Come stretch, sweat, breathe and release with yoga instruction from Angela Quillen. Join us every Saturday morning in May through September at our Mac Smith Resource Center (1936 Liberty Hill Rd., Washburn) from 9:00 to 10:15 a.m. For more information contact Mitzi Wood-Von Mizener at 865-497-3603 or community@ narrowridge.org.

ETC.

September 10 NEW HARVEST PARK FARMERS MARKET • New Harvest Park • 3PM • The New Harvest Park Farmers Market will be open every Thursday through November from 3 to 6 p.m. The market features locally-grown produce, meats, artisan food products, plants, herbs, flowers, crafts and much more. • FREE KNOXVILLE SQUARE DANCE • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Jubilee Community Arts presents Knoxville Square Dance with live old-time music by The Helgramites and calling

by Stan Sharp, Ruth Simmons and Leo Collins. No experience or partner is necessary and the atmosphere is casual. (No taps, please.) • $7 September 11 LAKESHORE PARK FARMERS’ MARKET • Lakeshore Park • 3PM • FARM vendors will offer a wide variety of spring bedding plants, fresh produce, grass-fed and pasture-raised meats, artisan bread and cheese, local honey and fresh eggs. As the season goes on, they offer the freshest produce possible, including just-picked strawberries, peaches, sweet corn and heirloom tomatoes. • FREE UNION COUNTY FARMERS MARKET • Maynardville • 4PM • Fridays through October at 1009 Main St. Downtown Maynardville 4 to 7 pm. More info call Union Co. Extension Office at 865-992-8038. • FREE September 12

CALENDAR

OAK RIDGE FARMERS’ MARKET • Historic Jackson Square • 8AM • FARM vendors will offer a wide variety of spring bedding plants, fresh produce, grass-fed and pasture-raised meats, artisan bread and cheese, local honey and fresh eggs.

SEYMOUR FARMERS MARKET • Seymour First Baptist Church • 8AM • Home grown and home made produce, honey, baked goods, crafts and more.

MARKET SQUARE FARMERS’ MARKET • Market Square • 9AM • The Market Square Farmers’ Market is an open-air farmers’ market located on Market Square in the heart of downtown Knoxville and is celebrating its 12th season this year. Hours are: Wednesday from 11a.m. to 2p.m. & Saturday from 9a.m. to 2p.m. • FREE September 15 EBENEZER ROAD FARMERS’ MARKET • Ebenezer United Methodist Church • 3PM •6 FARM vendors will offer a wide variety of spring bedding plants, fresh produce, grass-fed and pasture-raised meats, artisan bread and cheese, local honey and fresh eggs. • FREE September 16 MARKET SQUARE FARMERS’ MARKET • Market Square • 11AM • The Market Square Farmers’ Market is an open-air farmers’ market located on Market Square in the heart of downtown Knoxville and is celebrating its 12th season this year. • FREE September 17 NEW HARVEST PARK FARMERS MARKET • New Harvest Park • 3PM • The New Harvest Park Farmers Market will be open every Thursday through November from 3 to 6 p.m. The market features locally-grown produce, meats, artisan food products, plants, herbs, flowers, crafts and much more. • FREE September 18 LAKESHORE PARK FARMERS’ MARKET • Lakeshore Park • 3PM • FARM vendors will offer a wide variety of spring bedding plants, fresh produce, grass-fed and pasture-raised meats, artisan bread and cheese, local honey and fresh eggs. • FREE UNION COUNTY FARMERS MARKET • Maynardville • 4PM • Fridays through October at 1009 Main St. Downtown Maynardville 4 to 7 pm. More info call Union Co. Extension Office at 865-992-8038. • FREE NATIONAL DRIVE ELECTRIC SHOWCASE • Turkey Creek • 4PM • This event will be located just behind the O’Charley’s in Turkey Creek in West Knoxville, and will be near but NOT in or obstructing the Tesla Superchargers located there. If you have an electric vehicle, please join!

For those that would like, stay and go to a group dinner afterwards. • FREE September 19 OAK RIDGE FARMERS’ MARKET • Historic Jackson Square • 8AM • FARM vendors will offer a wide variety of spring bedding plants, fresh produce, grass-fed and pasture-raised meats, artisan bread and cheese, local honey and fresh eggs.

SEYMOUR FARMERS MARKET • Seymour First Baptist Church • 8AM • Home grown and home made produce, honey, baked goods, crafts and more.

MARKET SQUARE FARMERS’ MARKET • Market Square • 9AM • The Market Square Farmers’ Market is an open-air farmers’ market located on Market Square in the heart of downtown Knoxville and is celebrating its 12th season this year. • FREE NATIONAL DRIVE ELECTRIC WEEK SHOWCASE • University of Tennessee • 5PM • East Tennessee Clan Fuels Coalition

will be hosting a National Drive Electric Week event at the UT vs. the Western Carolina Catamounts game. Join us at Gate 21 at Neyland Stadium for hands-on access to electric vehicles and educational information! Please note that we encourage you to come to learn, visit, and kick the wheels, but we will NOT have space for you to bring your electric vehicle. This is a closed space accessible by pedestrians only. • FREE

FILM SCREENINGS

September 11 MOVIES ON MARKET SQUARE • Market Square • 7PM • Bring a blanket or a lawn chair and join hundreds of others under the stars for a night of family fun in front of the silver screen.Every Friday night from September 11 through October 16, Market Square transforms into an outdoor movie theater where folks bring their chairs, blankets and picnic baskets. And you get to Pick the Flicks! • FREE September 14 THE BIRDHOUSE WALK-IN THEATER • The Birdhouse • 8:15PM • A weekly free movie screening. • FREE September 15 TWIN PEAKS VIEWING PARTY • The Birdhouse • 7PM • Bi-weekly viewing parties for every single episode of the cult TV series. Attendees encouraged to dress as their favorite characters. Trivia, Twin Peaks-themed giveaways, donuts and coffee, plus some surprises. Trivia begins at 7:00pm with viewing to follow at 8:00pm. • FREE September 16 SCRUFFY CITY CINE-PUB • Scruffy City Hall • 7PM • Free Wednesday movie screenings. • FREE September 17 KNOXVILLE FILM FESTIVAL • Regal Downtown West Cinema 8 • The Knoxville Film Festival has become the region’s destination for independent cinema, with a variety of local, national, and international films—features, shorts, and documentaries. Info: knoxvillefilmfestival.com September 18 KNOXVILLE FILM FESTIVAL • Regal Downtown West Cinema 8 • The Knoxville Film Festival has become the region’s destination for independent cinema, with a variety of local, national, and international films—features, shorts, and documentaries. Info: knoxvillefilmfestival.com MOVIES ON MARKET SQUARE • Market Square • 7PM • Bring a blanket or a lawn chair and join hundreds of others under the stars for a night of family fun in front of the silver screen. • FREE September 19 KNOXVILLE FILM FESTIVAL • Regal Downtown West Cinema 8 • The Knoxville Film Festival has become the region’s destination for independent cinema, with a variety of local, national, and international films—features, shorts, and documentaries. Info: knoxvillefilmfestival.com September 20 KNOXVILLE FILM FESTIVAL • Regal Downtown West Cinema 8 • The Knoxville Film Festival has become the region’s destination for independent cinema, with a variety of local, national, and international films—features, shorts, and documentaries. Info: knoxvillefilmfestival.com

UP NEXT!

THE MILK CARTON KIDS

WITH THE CONTENDERS

tuesday, september 15 • 8pm

THE LONE BELLOW friday, september 18 • 8pm

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS WITH BLANK RANGE friday, october 2 • 8pm

KATHLEEN MADIGAN thursday, october 8 • 8pm WIMZ PRESENTS:

THE BLACK JACKET SYMPHONY

PERFORMS AC/DC’S BACK IN BLACK

friday, october 9 • 8pm

ON SALE FRIDAY, 9/11 AT 10AM!

Q 100.3 PRESENTS:

WILL HOGE &SUNDY BEST

saturday, november 21 • 8pm

KNOXBIJOU.COM TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE TENNESSEE

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

September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 37

CALENDAR LECTURES, READINGS, AND BOOK SIGNINGS

September 11 WE WILL REMEMBER: THE FREEDOM ENGINE | A BROWN BAG LECTURE • East Tennessee History Center • 12PM • East Tennesseans responded to the shock of 9/11 with an overwhelming outpouring of love and support. Mickey Mallonee, Diana Morgan, and Shelba Murphy will share their experiences organizing the fundraising campaign and working with New York officials. • FREE September 12 UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE PREGAME SHOWCASE LECTURE SERIES • McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture • 4PM • ”Home, Away, and Back Home: How the Language of Music Works.” Wesley Baldwin, professor of music, will discuss the human need to interact with music. He will demonstrate how the language of music engages listeners and evokes various emotions and responses.

Info: pregameshowcase.utk.edu. • FREE September 13 POETS JESSE GRAVES AND DENTON LOVING, AND AUTHOR ROBERT GIPE • Union Ave Books • 3PM • A trio of readings.

• FREE September 14 AN EVENING WITH DR. BILL BASS • Blount County Public Library • 7PM • Dr. Bill Bass, world-renowned forensic anthropologist, will give a presentation about some of the highlights from his lifetime of work. Dr. Bass will have books for sale at the event which will be in the Reading Rotunda end of the main gallery of the library. • FREE September 16 BOOKS SANDWICHED IN • East Tennessee History Center • 12PM • Rob Frost discusses ‘Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in the Minor Leagues of Baseball’ by John Feinstein. For more information, contact Emily Ellis at (865) 215-8767 or eellis@knoxlib.org. • FREE September 18 INTERFAITH CLERGY PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE • Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd • 7AM • Tennessee Interfaith Power and Light welcomes the community to hear how different faith traditions understand the recent climate change encyclical of Pope Francis. Three Greater Knoxville clergy will discuss the recent encyclical on climate change of Pope Francis from the perspectives of their faith traditions. • FREE KRISTA BILLINGSLEY: “STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE AND DISASTER MANAGEMENT IN NEPAL” • McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture • 5PM • Krista Billingsley is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee. Her research examines transitional justice in Nepal and focuses on structural violence and the perceptions of Nepalis affected by conflict as children. • FREE September 19 UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE PREGAME SHOWCASE LECTURE SERIES • ”Leaving Orbit: Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight.” Margaret Lazarus Dean, associate professor of English, will explore what space flight has meant to ordinary Americans in terms of past history and potential future directions. • FREE

MEETINGS

September 10 OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS • Recovery at Cokesbury • 5:30PM • This is an OA Literature Meeting. After a short reading from a book, members may share their experience, strength and hope. Listening will help you find others who have what you want, whether it be weight loss, clarity, joy in achieving and maintaining a healthy body weight, or freedom from the obsession of self-destructive eating behaviors. • FREE CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY LEUKEMIA, LYMPHOMA, AND MYELOMA NETWORKER • Cancer Support Community • 6PM • This drop-in group is open for those with leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma and myeloproliferative disorders and their support persons. Participants will be able to exchange information, discuss concerns and share experiences. Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer.

September 12 THE CAVETT STATION CHAPTER NATIONAL SOCIETY DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION • Blount Mansion • 10AM • The program will be given by Dave Hearnes, Assistant to the Director of Blount Mansion. A talk and a tour of Blount Mansion are planned. .

CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY PROSTATE CANCER NETWORKER • Cancer Support Community • 10AM • This drop-in group is an opportunity for men to network with other men about their experiences with prostate cancer. Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer.

AL-ANON • Faith Lutheran Church • 11AM • Al-Anon’s purpose is to help families and friends of alcoholics recover from the effects of living with the problem drinking of a relative or friend. Have you been affected by someone else’s drinking? If so, please join us on Saturdays from 11:00-12:00 noon at 225 Jamestowne Blvd, Knoxville, 37934 (Faith Lutheran Church).

We are located at the double doors behind the building. Visit our local website at farragutalanon.org or email us at FindHope@Farragutalanon.org. • FREE September 13 SILENT MEDITATION SUNDAYS • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center (1936 Liberty Hill Rd., Washburn) • 11AM • The gatherings are intended to be inclusive of people of all faiths as well as those who do not align themselves with a particular religious denomination. For more information contact Mitzi Wood-Von Mizener at 865-497-3603 or community@narrowridge.org. • FREE September 14 GAY MEN’S DISCUSSION GROUP • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 7:30PM • We hold facilitated discussions on topics and issues relevant to local gay men in a safe and open environment. Visit gaygroupknoxville.org.

September 15 KNOXVILLE COCOAHEADS • Knoxville Entrepreneur Center • 7PM • CocoaHeads is a group devoted to discussion of Apple’s Cocoa and Cocoa Touch Frameworks for programming on OS X (Mac) and iOS (iPhone, iPad). During monthly meetings, members offer tutorials, present their projects, share app ideas, and provide advice to other programmers. Whether you are an experienced developer or just getting started, Knoxville CocoaHeads is a great way to stay current with the latest technologies and improve your programming skills.

September 16

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

Thursday, Sept. 10 - Sunday, Sept. 20

ORION ASTRONOMY CLUB • The Grove Theater • 7PM • ORION is an amateur science and astronomy club centered in Oak Ridge, TN that was founded in April 1974 by a group of scientists at the United States Department of Energy facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. We serve Oak Ridge, Knoxville, and the counties of Anderson, Knox, and Roane.We meet monthly at the historic Grove Theater at 123 Randolph Road, Oak Ridge, TN. We meet at 7:00 PM (1900 hours) on the third Wednesday of each month for coffee and conversation, and our program begins 15 minutes thereafter. • FREE COMITE POPULAR DE KNOXVILLE • The Birdhouse • 7PM • A weekly meeting of the local immigrant advocacy organization.

September 17 OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS • Recovery at Cokesbury • 5:30PM • This is an OA Literature Meeting. After a short reading from a book, members may share their experience, strength and hope. • FREE September 18 INTERFAITH CLERGY PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE • Church of the Good Shepherd • 7PM • Tennessee Interfaith Power and Light welcomes the community to hear how different faith traditions understand the recent climate change encyclical of Pope Francis. Three Greater Knoxville clergy will discuss the recent encyclical on climate change of Pope Francis from the perspectives of their faith traditions. • FREE September 19 AL-ANON • Faith Lutheran Church • 11AM • Al-Anon’s purpose is to help families and friends of alcoholics recover from the effects of living with the problem drinking of a relative or friend. Have you been affected by someone else’s drinking? If so, please join us on Saturdays from 11:00-12:00 noon at 225 Jamestowne Blvd, Knoxville, 37934 (Faith Lutheran Church). We are located at the double doors behind the building. Visit our local website at farragutalanon.org or email us at FindHope@ Farragutalanon.org. • FREE September 20 SILENT MEDITATION SUNDAYS • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 11AM • For more information contact Mitzi Wood-Von Mizener at 865-497-3603 or community@narrowridge.org. • FREE

SPORTS AND RECREATION

September 10 WHOLE FOODS GAME NIGHT • Whole Foods • 6PM • Join us for everything from Candy Land to chess, and feel free to add a pint and a pizza. • FREE September 12 GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS HALF-MARATHON • Heritage High School • 7:30AM September 15 WHOLE FOODS GAME NIGHT • Whole Foods • 6PM • Join us for everything from Candy Land to chess, and feel free to add a pint and a pizza. • FREE September 17 WHOLE FOODS GAME NIGHT • Whole Foods • 6PM • Join us for everything from Candy Land to chess, and feel free to add a pint and a pizza. • FREE

September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 39

OUTDOORS

Voice in the Wilder ness

Heart of Brightness A dark voyage up the Tennessee River to witness the final Boomsday

BY KIM TREVATHAN

L

ike most paddlers, I usually employ my canoe or kayak to escape the cacophony of civilization: motors sputtering, roaring and emitting fumes; people arguing; barbaric yawps of pleasure or pain; boat wakes exploding against the disintegrating shore line; explosions. This Labor Day weekend, I decided to paddle toward all of this, into a high concentration of humanity gathered around the Henley Street Bridge for the final Boomsday, which would be my first.

My greatest fears involved parking and traffic, and the yellow kayak was my ticket, I thought, to escape this anxiety that had kept me away from the previous 27 Boomsdays. My first plan, to paddle from the mouth of the Little River, in Blount County, upstream to the show, guaranteed me a good parking spot. But then I began to consider that this would be a 20-mile paddle and that most of the sea-worthy vessels leaving Boomsday would be traveling west with me, in the dark, on the way home.

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

Plan of attack number two: launch from Island Home Park, about three miles upstream of downtown, on the south side of the river, and hope that the boat traffic would be more sedate, the craft smaller and slower than the westbound flotilla.

Mine was the only car at Island Home Park around 6. A man in a pontoon tied to a tree had this response to my plan of attack: “Don’t do it.”

“That’s what you got to watch out for,” he said, gesturing toward the channel, where a small runabout loaded with a dozen souls motored past. Its transom had only a few inches of freeboard.

“Kids are out there driving their daddies’ boats for the first time,” he said. The one with the flag out there, he said, almost ran into the bank. “And there’s another thing to watch out for,” he said, nodding at a boat pulling a wakeboarder toward the point of the island where small planes landed.

When the show ends, he said, that’s when the real fun begins. Chaos

in the dark. Captains less than sober.

My kayak was still on top of my car. I could drive home and watch this thing on TV without breaking a sweat.

Just as I was considering my fate, a half dozen kayakers arrived. I told them, “The guy in the pontoon down there says ‘don’t do it.’”

A woman with an electrified mane of gray hair stepped forward from the group: “We do this every year, fourth of July and Labor Day. Don’t worry. The police are fantastic.” This was delivered in a Boston accent full of optimism and authority. She sounded like a female version of Car Talk.

Impatient to be under way, I put in ahead of the kayaking group. There were frequent wakes from a variety of craft but nothing I couldn’t manage.

The put-in under the South Knoxville Bridge on the north side of the river was jammed with trailers and vehicles, and as I rounded the bend near Southern States Asphalt, the pontoon guy’s description rang true.

The entire river seemed blockaded by

boats. I hadn’t seen any other paddlers, but I saw every kind of motorboat: from the Star of Knoxville paddlewheeler and houseboats up to 60-feet long to bass boats, speedy looking runabouts, and a couple of sailboats. The default seemed to be the pontoon.

The aroma of grilled meat supplanted the smell of petroleum products. A syrupy ballad blared from the left bank, hip-hop downstream from the right bank. Boat horns blared and people let loose highpitched whoops of celebration.

The first kayakers I saw sat low in a tandem boat clinging to the iron bar ladder on one of the piers holding up the Gay Street Bridge. The guy in the stern, in big sunglasses and a camo headband, leaned way back, and the bow paddler sat up straight with a Nikon in his hands. The sunglasses guy predicted a downsized show, but the camera man hoped for a grand finale.

As I chatted with them, floating a few yards from the pier, a Tennessee Wildlife Resources boat puttered up to me.

“Are you planning on staying here long?” asked the officer looming above me in his green uniform with the holstered pistol on his belt.

Looking back on it, this sounded really smartass, though I didn’t intend for it to be. I said, “I had planned on staying for the fireworks show.”

What he meant was that I was sitting in the middle of the navigational channel and needed to move. He asked if I had a white light, and I flashed my headlamp at him. He was clearly unimpressed but found it acceptable.

“That’s a really nice camera you’ve got,” he said. “I hope you don’t lose it.”

I paddled away from the pier toward the left bank where Baptist Hospital used to be. It was a couple of hours before show time, and I tooled around between anchored boats.

One elderly woman, startled by my appearance off the stern of her pontoon, said: “I hope you don’t get run over.”

On another boat, a woman stood up to shout something I asked her to repeat: “I bet that’s a easy riding

OUTDOORS One elderly woman, startled by my appearance off the stern of her pontoon, said: “I hope you don’t get run over.”

thing, ain’t it?” I think that was it.

General mirth on the pontoon deck.

Almost everybody was affable and subdued, and I began to think that a kayak was the way to go at this thing, circulating here and there among the anchored boats for the best perspective on the coming show. If I didn’t like where I was or who was around me, I could leave without the fuss of pulling up an anchor and starting a motor.

As night fell, the horn blasts increased in frequency. A couple of dogs on the top of a double decker pontoon barked at the horn blowers. I winced in empathy for what was in store for their sensitive ears.

Between a sailboat full of kids and the double decker, I saw what looked like a flotilla of lighted Christmas trees drifting across the forbidden zone in front of the first row of boats. It was the crew from Island Home Park, their kayaks festooned with multicolored lights from bow to stern. A TWRA guy told them to get back behind the line.

Marie, the ringleader with the Boston accent, said they wondered where I had gone. They had had “munchies” back at the park that they’d wanted to share with me.

They drifted away and tied up to a boat on the front row. “He’s a kayaker!” said Marie of the big boat skipper, her voice carrying up to the spectators on the Gay Street Bridge. I stayed in my slot next to the kudzu-covered banks below the old hospital site, near the sailboat, which exuded something like the odor of burning leaves.

The lights on the Gay Street Bridge went out. Henley Street Bridge went dark. Garbled words came from a loudspeaker. I could hear “wel-

come.” And the spectacle began. And then it was over. It seemed to last about a half-hour.

I fell in with the group of Christmas tree boats and we hugged the south bank back to the park.

“Deadfall on the right! Deadfall on the right!” shouted Marie as we passed under the Gay Street Bridge.

A man and a couple of kids were having luck catching smallmouth, which given the traffic and the noise, went against everything I thought I knew about fishing.

We seemed to be the fastest moving group among the east-bound boats. There was no panicked exodus.

People were actually put-putting home in their motorboats, maintaining their low speed beyond the “No Wake” zone.

At one point, we came upon the “Swan Boat,” where a group of a dozen or so had a small campfire lit.

They were singing along to Randy Newman’s “Sail Away.” Most of us joined in.

We arrived at our takeout without incident. My car was still there, even though the sign I parked in front of said I would be towed after 9:30. It was nearly 11.

One of the kayakers held a flood light as we disembarked and scaled the 4-foot bank. I felt a glow of goodwill, a gladness for having been a part of something big. Marie had been right about the professionalism of the police and the good behavior of the general populace. I never thought I’d say such a thing, but the experience made me sad that Boomsday was ending. One could only hope that the admirable maritime etiquette continued year-round, without the extra police presence and the incentive of the spectacle. ◆ September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 41

FOOD

Sips & Shot s

Orange Spirits Yep, now you can drink in your Vols fervor via Big Orange moonshine

BY ROSE KENNEDY

W

ill Perkins attended East Tennessee State University for undergrad and University of Memphis for law school. The only academic thing he ever did at the University of Tennessee was study for the bar exam.

And yet, the man is a lifelong fan of the Vols. He celebrated his 35th birthday Sept. 7 and estimates he’s been wearing Big Orange, oh, 35 years and a day now.

And to his delight, he is now also able to drink and sell Big Orange— moonshine of that name and color distilled by Ole Smoky Tennessee Moonshine, based in Gatlinburg.

Though he did pass that bar, Perkins serves as general manager for the company’s “outpost” at the Island in Pigeon Forge, which opened in October 2014.

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

“I am not wearing a suit and tie at the moment,” he notes happily. “Not ever, at work.”

The original Gatlinburg hub opened in 2010, seemingly minutes after Tennessee passed a law allowing the distillation of spirits. Both it and the outpost began producing the Big Orange flavor moonshine last fall.

Perkins is careful to note that although the color is “as close to Big Orange as we could make it, and way closer than Adidas, when they were the UT outfitter,” the Big Orange moonshine is not in any way affiliated with the university or licensed by it.

This year, Big Orange is a bit stronger—70 proof versus 40. It’s on the sample line at the Island, a huge, airy, high-rafters barn of a tasting room and retail store. A tiny shot, tipped by a peppy young server in

contemporary country gear, is citrusy, a little tart, a little sweet. And, wait for it—with a bit of a clear, hot, unrefined alcohol kick at the end.

Both locations are selling lots of it, so are distributors nationwide. Of course, the locals are wild for it, and this season Ole Smoky will indulge them with some orange and white labels. Out of the region, though, lots of fans have never even heard of the Vols, or seen a sea of fans wearing the same color as this moonshine—they just like the taste.

At the distilleries, which are open every day from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. (though samples don’t start until noon on Sundays, compliant with state law), Big Orange will rotate out with the other seasonals, probably at the end of football season. In the liquor stores in all 50 states and across the globe that stock Ole Smoky spirits, though, it’s available year-round.

The widespread availability sort of amazes Perkins, who’s been with the company from the start.

“I made the transaction for the first sale ever; a guy from Minnesota bought some home-style,” he says.

“We were absolutely smaller then, and while we all thought tourists might buy some to take home, I don’t think anybody really had any idea how it would take off. I never imagined it would be so worldwide, available in other countries, at military bases.”

Perkins imagines he first sampled moonshine, the not-legal kind, in high school. (“Don’t let my parents read that,” he jokes.) About that same time, as a teen in ’98, he got to see most of the games associated with Tennessee’s national championship, including the heart-stopping Tennessee-Arkansas buzzer-beater touchdown from Travis Henry.

Last year at this time, Perkins was opening this store and missed every single Vols game.

This year, he’ll make up for the omission, and is predicting nine wins for the Vols. Here’s how he figures it: “We made the bowl game last year when we came out with Big Orange moonshine. Now we’ve made it more potent, so I’m predicting even bigger things for the team, too.” ◆

MIX OR SIP:

Big Orange Moonshine Ole Smoky Moonshine at the Island in Pigeon Forge general manager Will Perkins’ personal favorite way to imbibe Big Orange moonshine is from a jar. As in sip from the jar—a quart canning jar like the old timers used, no shot glasses as intermediaries. But he also employs “fancier” ideas. “It’s got a great flavor if you put it in sweet tea or with a Sprite on the rocks,” he says.

Fancier still, but mighty potent, is his “Orange Fashioned,” which involves these steps: 1. Muddle a moonshine cherry with sugar.

2. A dd three parts bourbon or Tennessee whiskey and 1 part Big Orange moonshine.

3. Mix it in a glass (or jar) over ice.

4. Garnish with a moonshine cherry.

Between the 70-proof moonshine, the alcohol in the bourbon, and the alcohol content of the cherries, which are soaked in 100 proof alcohol, can I say “Go Big Orange?”

Or, as Perkins and the folks at Ole Smoky constantly remind us, “Always ’shine responsibly.”

September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 43

’BYE

R estless Nat ive

Ace How Jerry Miller became the main force behind Knoxville’s boxing scene

BY CHRIS WOHLWEND

T

he characters who worked at the Knoxville newspapers in the 1960s were not confined to the newsrooms. One of the more memorable—the powers-that-be would have said “notorious”—was a pressman named Jerry Miller. No one called him Jerry. He was known as Ace. I had encountered Ace Miller a couple of times before I went to work at the Journal, probably in a poolroom, and had laughed at his patter. But it was during my time at the Journal that I really got to know him.

When there were union-management disputes at the newspaper, the pressmen held a strong position—they could hold up the printing of the paper, a major problem for a daily publication. And the pressroom, with its newsprint and the dust that resulted from a massive press running at capacity, provided tinder for dangerous fires.

During the seven years that I worked at the Journal, there were several pressroom fires. They would always be small, confined to one corner of the pressroom, but they would always bring both the fire department and lengthy delays of the paper’s publication.

And they would almost always happen during thorny contract negotiations.

So when I saw Ace, I would jokingly ask him when the next fire was scheduled, just so “I can be prepared to get out of the building.”

Or, if I ran into him on the street or at the poolroom when I was with someone else, I would introduce him as being “in charge of setting fires in the pressroom.” He would just laugh

44

KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

and launch into a story, often about his role as a boxing coach/manager.

In 1971, through a connection at the newspaper, Ace became the main force behind Knoxville’s boxing scene.

Gene DeMont, a News Sentinel employee and former boxer, had been in charge of it for years; when he retired, Ace took it over. He soon made Knoxville a nationally known magnet for would-be masters of the boxing ring.

Though he had never been a boxer—he may have fooled around in the ring a few times when younger— he parlayed a keen skill as an observer and his native smarts into a well-deserved reputation as one of the best coaches in the country.

He was a master of promotion as well. Knoxville was soon attracting boxers from other parts of the country who wanted to train with Ace. Success often followed. Ace recognized those with the necessary skills and drive to succeed. And he was an expert motivator.

Olympians Clinton Jackson, Bernard Taylor, Big John Tate, Johnny Bumphus—all trained with Ace. But his influence wasn’t only with ring skills. His interest in the well-being of his fighters was well known. At the 2012 memorial service after his death of a heart attack at age 72, testimonials to the things Ace Miller did to keep kids off the streets and off drugs went on and on.

The former boxers’ emphasis was on his influence on their lives, on how much he cared about how they were doing outside the ring as well as in it.

On Saturday, Sept. 19, at 5:30 p.m., a 90-minute movie on Ace by

documentarian Blake McKinney, The Ace Miller Story, will air as part of the Knoxville Film Festival at Regal’s Downtown West complex.

The movie came about, McKinney says, when he was talking with his cousin BreAnna Miller, Ace’s granddaughter, about “how he touched so many people in and around the Knoxville area; I was also telling her about how I would like to make a personal documentary about someone that could tell a good story while also illustrating universal themes.

“We kind of put two and two together and decided to make the film about his life and what he meant to the people around him.”

Part of the idea was the creation of something that BreAnna’s children could see to get to know who their grandfather had been. “What we did not realize was that it would serve as

BY IAN BLACKBURN AND JACK NEELY

a learning experience for BreAnna as well,” McKinney says. “Many of the stories she was hearing for the first time gave her a better understanding of what Ace meant to the community.”

As befits a great yarn-spinner like its subject, the film includes many tales of Ace—from the East Knoxville boxing gym that now bears his name to New York City, to South Africa, to Finland. In Helsinki, hankering for a biscuit like he enjoyed at Ruby’s, the longtime Burlington café where he was a regular, he joined the hotel chef in his kitchen and showed him how to make them. For a gregarious storyteller like Ace, there was no language barrier. He was just teaching, like he did with the kids who showed up at his gym. ◆ See Program Notes on page 22 for an interview with The Ace Miller Story director Blake McKinney.

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September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 45

’BYE

Spir it of the Staircase

BY MATTHEW FOLTZ-GRAY

46

KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 10, 2015

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 19, 2015

September 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 47