USE FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY
SEPT. 24, 2015 KNOXMERCURY.COM
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V.
NEWS
New iPads in Schools Cause I.D. Concerns
JACK NEELY
Paper vs. the Internet: Which Will Last Longer?
MUSIC Local Folk Duo Pale Root Finds Harmony
FOOD
Knoxville UnCorked Goes All-In Authentic Italian
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KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 24, 2015
Sept. 24, 2015 Volume 01 / Issue 29 knoxmercury.com
CONTENTS
“Farming is a profession of hope.” —Brian Brett
NEWS
12 High-Tech
Learning Curve
The Knox County Schools system is preparing to deploy iPads to every student at two middle schools, inching closer to the goal of giving all students access to personal high-tech instruction. But the tech push is causing some growing pains as schools and parents grapple with the challenge of setting up secure accounts for children under 13, as S. Heather Duncan reports.
14 Hemp Pioneers
COVER STORY
As incredible as it may seem, hemp is now legal in Tennessee—at least for industrial farming and use in manufactured goods, with plenty of restrictions attached. Nearly 50 farmers across the state have signed up for a tightly regulated Tennessee Department of Agriculture pilot program to try a hand at growing the state’s inaugural crop. Can these early pioneers give rise to a new industry in Tennessee, or will their struggles be for naught as the cannabis plant continues its tango with the federal government and the realities of farming economics set in? Clay Duda visits some hemp cultivators in East Tennessee.
13 Navitat Update The state last week received an inspection report of changes to the Navitat Canopy Adventure course at Ijams Nature Center and is likely to decide in the next week whether the attraction is safe to re-open after a patron died there in July. S. Heather Duncan digs in.
Join Our League of Supporters! No, really—this is a difficult thing to pull off by ourselves. Find out how you can help at knoxmercury.com/join.
DEPARTMENTS
OPINION
A&E
4 Letters 6 Howdy
8 The Scruffy Citizen
20 Program Notes: An interview with
Start Here: Photo by Bart Ross, Believe It or Knox!, Public Affairs, Quote Factory.
38 ’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 takes note of the disappearance from the Internet of the Metro Pulse story archives.
10 Architecture Matters
George Dodds maps the intersection of power, politics, and architecture.
CALENDAR skateboard filmmaker Cal Oaks.
21 Shelf Life: Chris Barrett points us toward new releases from some favorite troublemakers.
22 Music: Matthew Everett gets to the Pale Root of things.
23 Classical Music: Alan Sherrod
reviews KSO’s season-opening concert.
26 Spotlights: The Weekend of Many Festivals
FOOD & DRINK
36 Home Palate
Dennis Perkins revisits an old haunt to discover a new menu— at Knoxville UnCorked.
24 Movies: April Snellings celebrates Black Mass.
September 24, 2015
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 3
LETTERS Delivering Fine Journalism Since 2015
DOING WHAT’S RIGHT
It’s rare when a politician speaks— and clearly says what’s on his mind and shares what’s in his heart. So it was, at the Counting the Cost Tour on Sept. 1. at Concord United Methodist Church, that state Sen. Richard Briggs addressed an audience of citizens meeting in support of Insure Tennessee, a bill he co-authored with state Sen. Doug Overby. The senator’s message was simple and direct. This bill should be law because it makes economic sense. It makes sense because it strengthens the Tennessee hospital system. It makes sense because it will create much-needed jobs to the state. It makes sense because it will cost Tennessee taxpayers nothing extra. And, it makes sense because it’s the right thing to do. The senator’s points included the following. The money to pay for this bill comes from two major sources: • Cuts made to Medicare: from 2015 to 2022, $415 billion in ordinary Medicare is being cut from the hospitals to pay for Medicaid expansion, and $156 billion is being cut from Medicare Advantage nationally. • Taxes and penalties: $893 billion is projected to be raised from new taxes on things like medical devices and “Cadillac” insurance plans, as well as penalties collected from employers not providing healthcare for workers, individuals without insurance, and other areas. This includes a tax that the hospitals offered to impose on themselves. “Hospitals like the University of Tennessee—and Vanderbilt and the medical centers in Memphis—received previously from the federal government what is called ‘Disproportionate Care
Funds’ because they handle so many cases of people with no insurance,” the senator explained. The government in effect cut Medicare down but offset it by eliminating uncompensated care, and leaving hospitals better off and in a stronger financial situation. But the state refused the Medicaid expansion and still got the cuts. What happens after 2020? According to the plan, the federal government gradually cuts its portion from 100 percent to 90 percent from 2017 to 2020, but the hospital association’s tax on themselves will more than cover the 10 percent, so it costs Tennessee taxpayers nothing extra. Briggs took on the naysayers who say you can’t trust the federal government, we can’t trust the hospitals and that they’ll renege. He did that by calling out the specific page, section, and paragraph of the waiver that says if either the government or the hospitals renege during the two-year pilot program, the program ends automatically. And, he pointed out, the hospitals can’t afford to get out: “They put up $1 and get $10 back. It’s a pretty good deal.” Support for Insure Tennessee is both wide and deep. While both senators are seemingly in the very lonely minority in Nashville who want Insure Tennessee to happen, they’re far from alone across communities in the state. “But what gives us strength, those of us who support this, is that we have some very powerful allies that are with us.” Briggs went on to list a number of them, including the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce, the Tennessee Business [Roundtable], the Tennessee Hospital Association, the Tennessee Nurses’ Association, and the Tennessee Medical Association. “And, more importantly, as you
“While both senators are seemingly in the very lonely minority in Nashville who want Insure Tennessee to happen, they’re far from alone across communities in the state.”
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saw from the polls, the Tennessee people support this also. And the reason all of those people support that is because it’s the right thing to do.” 280,000 to 300,000 Tennesseans will be insured, and 24,000 veterans and their families will have insurance. Briggs turned his attention to another bright spot in this bill, saying that we’ll have an economic boom of more than $6-7 billion over five years [Ed. Note: Projections from the Tennessee Justice Center put that figure around $5.7 billion.], 15,000 new jobs, the equivalent of five more Volkswagen plants. Implied but not stated are the nurses and hospital staff whose jobs are secured, and the hospitals in rural communities that will keep their doors open. Briggs closed his brief speech with a reflection, saying that when, some 20 years from now, the members of this Legislature look back upon their accomplishments, it won’t be the guns in parks or naming the salamander as state amphibian. The body’s finest accomplishment will be that “we passed a program that gave insurance to nearly 300,000 of our citizens.” It’s rare when a person gets to be in an audience of citizens to hear a politician speak—and that politician clearly says what’s on his mind and shares what’s in his heart. We in the audience were proud to have shared the moment. Joseph Malgeri Dandridge
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
INTERNS
Jordan Achs Marina Waters
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
Earning a master’s degree in public administration opens the doors to a wide range of public service careers, including government administration, community or nonprofit management, and government relations.
Master of Public Administration (MPA)
Designed for working professionals with online and evening classes. Available in Knoxville, classes held at the LMU-Duncan School of Law. www.LMUnet.edu AHSS@LMUnet.edu 1.800.325.0900, ext. 6203 September 24, 2015
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 5
Illustration by Ben Adams
HOWDY
Believe It or Knox! BY Z. HERACLITUS KNOX Willie Sievers, guitarist for the Tennessee Ramblers, who recorded at the St. James Hotel on Wall Avenue near Market Square in 1929 and 1930, is believed to be THE FIRST FEMALE LEAD GUITARIST IN COUNTRY MUSIC! These recordings will be included in the Knoxville Sessions box set due to be released internationally by Bear Family Records of Germany.
“The Dancer Script Or Tennessee Amphitheater Knoxville, TN I” by Bart Ross (bartross.com)
QUOTE FACTORY “ WHEREAS, the decision in Obergefell purporting to overturn natural marriage flies in the face of reality, the created order, and the law of nature, just as if the Court were to claim authority to strike down the law of gravity or other natural laws…” —From the “Tennessee Natural Marriage Defense Act,” a bill introduced last week by Rep. Mark Pody, R-Lebanon, and Sen. Mae Beavers, R-Mt. Juliet with the intent to void the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage. And confusing the laws of nature with the laws of man in the process.
PUBLIC AFFAIRS
9/25 ART FAIR KMA 2015 FRIDAY
6-9 p.m., Knoxville Museum of Art. $95. This second annual event raises funds to support the museum and presents art for sale by artists from the region and across the United States. It opens Friday with a gala event that includes a cocktail party, silent auction, and VIP access to the art for sale. It continues through Sunday with a free art fair that’s open to the public. Info: knoxart.org
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9/26 FIRST CREEK CLEANUP SATURDAY
9 a.m., parking lot at Sixth Avenue and Cottage Place. Free. Remember our cover story a few weeks ago about how polluted Knoxville’s creeks are? Here’s an opportunity to help clean one up, sponsored by the Old North Knoxville community group. Volunteers will help remove trash from the grassy areas of the greenway, wooded side areas, and in the waters of First Creek. (You must wear hip waders to enter the creek.)
9/29 PRIMARY ELECTION DAY TUESDAY
All day, all around town. Free It’s the city of Knoxville primary election! Of course, several candidates are not facing opponents (well, there is a write-in candidate running for mayor), and most of the City Council races only have two candidates who’ll be going on to the general election. So the race you want to pay attention to is City Council At-Large Seat C, which has four candidates. Go vote!
Originally from Illinois, George Franklin Barber (1854-1915) became one of America’s most successful Victorian residential architects by way of his mail-order house plans! Barber houses, known for their elaborate ornamentation, are still cherished across the country, even on the West Coast. However, the nation’s highest concentration of Barber houses is in Knoxville. At least two UT football players have died as the result of injuries suffered on the gridiron. The first was 20-year-old halfback Bennett Jared, from Buffalo Valley, Tenn. A substitute halfback in 1915, he was carrying the ball in a game against Vanderbilt at Nashville’s Dudley Field when, after a one-yard gain, he was clobbered by a pile of Commodores, and wasn’t able to get up. Vanderbilt won the game 35-0. Few knew how badly Jared was injured, but he spent his final months as a quadriplegic. He died about 21 months after his injury.
10/1 ANNUAL BULB SALE THURSDAY
9 a.m.-3 p.m., Historic Ivan Racheff House and Gardens (1943 Tennessee Ave.). Free. Did you know that the Tennessee Federation of Garden Clubs makes its state headquarters right here in Lonsdale’s Ivan Racheff House and Gardens? So you just know they’re going to have some prime bulbs! Sales benefit maintenance at the site, which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.
Louie Bluie The annual Louie Bluie Festival is held each year at Cove Lake State Park, about 30 miles north of Knoxville off I-75, but it celebrates the legacy of a musician who kept things lively in downtown Knoxville in the 1920s and early ’30s. Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong (19092003) was born in Dayton, Tenn., but grew up in LaFollette. His was a musical family, and he learned several instruments, favoring mandolin and fiddle. These instruments are today most often associated with country music, but Armstrong’s tastes went more toward blues and jazz. In the 1920s, the Armstrongs sometimes came to Knoxville to perform, on the streets and at least once on local radio station WROL, before that station was famously associated with country music and Cas Walker.
“country” musicians, notably Chet Atkins, were strongly influenced by jazz guitar, especially that of French gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt, whose recordings were available here in the 1930s. In late 1929 and early 1930, the Tennessee Chocolate Drops made recordings for Brunswick at the St. James Hotel, on Wall Avenue near Market Square. Their recordings of “Vine Street Rag” and “Knox County Stomp” still exist, and are among the most interesting offerings of the Knoxville Sessions recording project, to be produced by Bear Family Records of Germany in 2016.
Howard Armstrong eventually moved to Knoxville, where he befriended several offbeat local musicians, especially a local blues guitarist with a distinctive style. Carl Like many Southern blacks during the Martin (1906-1979) is usually associated with Depression, the Chocolate Drop members the Piedmont style of blues, which has Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong (center with fiddle) with his musical ended up in Chicago, where their eccentric vaudeville and ragtime influences and is more form of blues was not always as instantly brothers, including bassist Roland, at right, around 1925. intricate and diverse than Mississippi Delta popular as the fact that Armstrong could blues. Born in Virginia, Martin moved to sing the blues in Italian, which he’d learned from immigrant ironworkers in Knoxville as a kid with his older brother, “Blind Roland” Martin, who was LaFollette. Armstrong could also sing in Yiddish, which he learned from known as a fiddler. Carl Martin could play anything with strings, but was first Jewish merchants in Knoxville, and other languages that endeared him to known here as a wizard on the bowed bass. Chicago’s ethnic neighborhoods. Armstrong, who claimed he could play 22 instruments, found a worthy partner in Martin, and the two began playing together with various other instrumentalists, and even lived together in East Knoxville on Yeager Street, with other members of Martin’s family. Neither the house nor the street exists today, but their home was located in a densely populated neighborhood near the river, in an area now blanketed by James White Parkway. With other musicians, they became known as the Tennessee Chocolate Drops. About 75 years later, that name later inspired the name of another band with a similar style, the Carolina Chocolate Drops. They often performed informally in barber shops, pawn shops, and cafes up and down Vine Street, near what’s now the Old City. They were known for a style of jazz played on string instruments: guitar, fiddle, banjo, and mandolin. In the 1920s and ’30s, musical styles were not as strictly defined as they are today. Many early “country” hits were actually blues, like Uncle Dave Macon’s “I’ve Got the Mourning Blues.” Banjos and fiddles were common in both black and white jazz combos in the 1920s. Several of Knoxville’s early
The three reunited in their 60s, as a revivalist group called Martin, Bogan, and Armstrong, and made records, to much wider acclaim than they had enjoyed in their youth. After Martin’s death, Armstrong and Bogan returned to Knoxville to perform at the 1982 World’s Fair. In 1985, well-known documentarian Terry Zwigoff made a film about Howard Armstrong, called Louie Bluie, which was broadcast nationwide on PBS. A later film about Armstrong, Sweet Old Song, also got national exposure, in 2002. Armstrong returned to Knoxville occasionally in his 90s, once to perform a two-hour show at the Laurel Theatre. Howard Armstrong, who began his career in music playing on the street before radio, lived into the Internet era, as a rare symbol of a time and place where country, jazz, and blues flowed together. The Louie Bluie Festival, this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., celebrates the music and spirit of Howard Armstrong in Cove Lake State Park, not far from LaFollette, where he spent his childhood. Admission is free, but donations are encouraged.
For more information see louiebluie.org
The Knoxville History Project, a new nonprofit organization devoted to the promotion of and education about the history of Knoxville, presents this page each week to raise awareness of the themes, personalities, and stories of our unique city. Learn more on www.facebook.com/knoxvillehistoryproject • email jack@knoxhistoryproject.org September 24, 2015
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 7
SCRUFFY CITIZEN
Pixels to Oblivion Metro Pulse’s online archives vanish overnight BY JACK NEELY
W
e’d been wondering when this shoe might fall. Last week we learned that someone associated with the Journal Media Group, the News Sentinel’s corporate owner, disconnected or allowed to lapse several years’ worth of the archives of Metro Pulse, removing public access to them via the Internet. As a result, you can’t Google our old articles at metropulse.com anymore. Maybe you didn’t do much of that anyway. I did, daily. Metro Pulse’s online archives constituted the Internet’s single biggest source of free written information about Knoxville’s history and culture. There were thousands of stories there, about everything from professors to politicians, from tycoons to tamales. For the first time in about 20 years, my old column “Secret History” no longer exists on the World Wide Web, except in cases where one was cached for other purposes. We once hailed the Internet as the new wonder that was going to make everything published available to everybody everywhere forever. Metro Pulse adapted fairly early, and had been published on the Internet since the mid-1990s. We never charged for reading it. It took some of us a few years to trust the new reality. We used to keep a paper index of our stories. Wellthumbed, it made things easy to find, and we kept the paper records until at least 2004. Eventually the Internet made things even easier. We stopped paying attention to our index, and our paper archives. As
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the years passed, with a move or two, all that paper was neglected, forgotten, and ultimately dumped. When a state library project to put Metro Pulse on microfilm came along, we were lucky to be able to patch together, from a couple of personal collections, an almost-complete master collection, for that purpose. Today I’m glad we went to that trouble. At the time, though, the microfilm project seemed a little quaint. I wondered if MP would be the last newspaper to be photographed for library microfilm, and if anyone would ever look at it there. Obviously, the Internet was the main thing. In the future, people will just Google our stories. We once believed that whatever we published would be forever available to be appraised, used, quoted, archived for any purpose, for generations to come. Most of the work I did for Metro Pulse was about Knoxville history, and over the years, I’ve often heard from journalists, students, authors, and librarians from many other states and half a dozen foreign countries who found my old articles, sometimes several years after they were published, and made good use of them. One of my compelling motives in working long hours with minimal conventional compensation is that when people Google my hometown in any part of the world, they’ll run across one of the stories I’ve told about Knoxville and maybe conclude that the place is at least interesting. On Wikipedia, dozens of entries
about Knoxville subjects are footnoted with hundreds of links to Metro Pulse articles. It’s not surprising, because there are a lot of Knoxville subjects no one else ever covered. As of last week, all those links are dead. Some are surprised the News Sentinel and their old or new out-ofstate corporate bosses in Cincinnati or Milwaukee allowed anything associated with Metro Pulse to stay up for almost 11 months since they shut the paper down. They owned Metro Pulse fair and square, and could have shut it all down right away. They had no profit-related reason— which, in the corporate world, means no reason at all—to keep it available to the public. Corporations are run for the enrichment of far-flung shareholders. Maintaining Metro Pulse’s availability to the public might even be contrary to their purposes. The erosion of Metro Pulse’s online presence began before that. Several months after E.W. Scripps bought Metro Pulse, they built a new website for the paper, and as an unexpected result, the old website’s stories didn’t make the transition. Suddenly, perhaps inadvertently, many years of our work became much harder to find online. Of course, it’s a bit of an irony. Lately I’ve been giving talks and writing articles supporting the library’s “Paper to Pixels” efforts to digitize, and make permanently available and searchable, old issues of the Knoxville News Sentinel. Meanwhile somebody associated with the News Sentinel, for whatever purpose, has been doing the opposite to my work. It’s hard to blame the poor News Sentinel. They’ve got other things to worry about than keeping a troublesome old weekly paper available to the public. And it’s a problem all around. The whole Internet sometimes seems
like a giant coral reef of dead links. “ERROR 404 NOT FOUND” is becoming a more and more common result of a search. Many, many Wikipedia and other informational website footnotes are dead links. Even in the digital era, we’re still humans. We’re forgetful, we get distracted, we let things lapse. This week the Internet seems vaporous. Most of its content will stay just as long as some distractable human thinks it may someday be profitable. The Internet’s advantage over paper, we always heard, was that it did not yellow and crumble after 60 or 70 years. Paper does yellow and crumble, as you can tell from a trip to the vertical files at any library. I frequently find value in typing paper held together by a paper clip that began rusting during the Truman administration. At the McClung Collection are files containing crumbling but still legible paper articles from the 1800s. But this week, on the Internet, you can’t find most of the articles I wrote in 2014. Both newspaper clippings in cardboard files and electronic stories on the Internet are mortal. Paper’s known longevity is greater than your lifespan, or mine, with minimal care. Electronically stored journalism is turning out to be, comparatively, something like a hamster. Right now, in the year 2015, the surest and in some cases only way to find most of the work I’ve ever done in my life is in paper files in steel cabinets in the public library. Thank God for the library. Even though it’s 2015, they still clip newspapers, and sort the articles into subject files. I’m proud to say they do clip the Knoxville Mercury. Maybe they know something we don’t. ◆
This week the Internet seems vaporous. Most of its content will stay just as long as some distractable human thinks it may someday be profitable.
Re-Elect
Nature MEETS Nurture
WHERE
MEET
Dudley, OUR MOST FAMOUS RESIDENT!
The Gentle Barn is a place of refuge for creatures of all kinds— humans as well as animals. Come out and visit the farm, meet our animals, and hear their stories. Rediscover kindness and compassion through them. We’re open to the public every Saturday and we look forward to meeting you soon!
Register today at www.gentlebarn.org/tennessee
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OPEN SATURDAYS 11-1 / SCHOOL FIELD TRIPS / BIRTHDAY PARTIES / PRIVATE TOURS / SPECIAL NEEDS GROUPS
September 24, 2015
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 9
ARCHITECTURE MATTERS
Modern Architecture and Politics (Part 1) How architecture can both display and conceal power BY GEORGE DODDS
T
he making of architecture has always been a political act, not limited to seats of governments or the houses of elected leaders. In the second of my three-part series, “Hating Modern Architecture,” I described how Louis VII of France reacted when he saw, for the first time, the architecture of Saint Denis, which in the distant future would be called Gothic. This was important for Louis, not simply because it was a new and “modern” manner of building; it excited him because it could be called “French,” at a time when French-ness was still a nebulous thing. The same was true 600 years later when the builder of Strawberry Hill, Horace Walpole, published his pamphlet defending modern taste in gardening practices in 18th-century England. As things turned out, Gothic architecture was no more French than it was German or English. In 16th century Italy, for example, many still knew it as building in “the German manner.” As for Mr. Walpole’s defense of English gardening, he knew well that the English gardens about which he wrote were more Chinese in origin than English, and that the French sometimes did them better. Further confusing the issue of national identity, by the time Walpole had completed his influential booklet, there was already a stunningly huge and beautiful picturesque landscape garden in what was then the independent state of Anhalt-Dessau (now part of post-war Saxony-Anhalt, Germany).
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The Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Kingdom, consciously based on French and English models, was revered for being both innovative and modern. One would think from all of this confusion that political leaders would have given up adopting national architectural or landscape styles. Yet, architecture and the scaping of large tracts of land remains a popular source of asserting power by another name. While today one can visit such landscapes as George Vanderbilt’s erstwhile bachelor getaway at Biltmore, the gardens at Louis’ hunting lodge at Versailles, or the many picturesque landscapes in Southern England (Stourhead, Stowe, Chiswick, and Twickenham), originally these were designed for an extremely small group of courtiers, familiars, and peers. In fact, of all these, Wörlitz was opened to the public more than half a century before Central Park. On Sundays, with the guidance of a Lex Hortorum, or “Laws of the Garden,” hoi polloi were permitted in for a limited time. One was handed a guidebook delineating one’s comportment: “It is not allowed: to walk in the garden or the mansion in hobnailed boots; …to have meals…in the garden or mansion; [or] to cover the wall or statues with graffiti.” Seems little to ask of strangers. In the buildings Prince Anhalt set in this picturesque landscape, common folk saw such technical innovations as sash windows, retractable beds, sliding doors, and dumb waiters. While it may not be
so obvious today, for the prince to dedicate so much land (55 square miles or almost one-half present-day Knoxville) for pleasure gardens rather than food production is yet another sign of power and control. Knoxville’s City County Building, the University of Tennessee’s Andy Holt Tower and Ayres Hall, or the TVA towers all telegraph, through their locations, size, and character, that these are seats of power wherein decisions for the many are (or were once) made by the few. The same holds true, albeit through different means, domestically. The homes of those who live on higher elevations (with views and breezes and from which water drains) tend to be more politically connected than those at lower depths (absent views and wind, and where water collects). When we pass a curvaceous tree-lined driveway, the end of which we cannot see, it is because we are not empowered to see the end. Gated communities are much the same. Then there is the convention center phenomenon, a commonplace way for many American cities to make both a commercial and political statement about their status. They are second only to the promotion of publicly funded stadiums for professional sports teams, although neither prove very profitable. Knoxville’s center, sandwiched between Henley Street and World’s Fair Park, was certainly built more to send a signal than to house the multitude that groused for exhibition space in the Marble City. And now that Nashville has done the same but exponentially larger, it seems time to seriously consider other uses for the largely under-utilized venue—a new public/ private use that could help bridge the gap between the east and west sides
of downtown’s worst street. Seats of learning have always been sources of power, although administrators at state-operated universities are loathe to admit such. We have a good example on the west side of Henley. It’s well known that the oldest and most celebrated part of UT is “The Hill,” topped by Ayres Hall that fronts onto one of the university’s most clearly defined and attractive spaces. If the Knoxville campus of UT has a crown, many would argue that Ayres is its jewel. Recently restored, the work has been honored, and deservedly so, by professional organizations for its architectural and technical merit. The university administration, the architects who restored it, and even the university’s own Campus Heritage Plan (2009), consistently refer to Ayres as collegiate Gothic. Architects proposing new projects for the Knoxville campus to university committees show images of Ayres (including details) to demonstrate how their new project evokes the collegiate Gothic-ness of Ayres. In its Sept. 11 press release announcing the opening of the first half of the new student union, the university explained: “The new facility represents a contemporary approach to collegiate gothic architectural design, which seeks to honor both UT’s heritage and its promise for the future.” Yet, a recent thesis on Ayres Hall by a Master’s candidate in the UT graduate architecture program successfully argues that the collegiate Gothic designation is one of several ironies and misnomers surrounding the building’s history. The distinction between Elizabethan Revival (which it is) and collegiate Gothic (which it is not), however, goes far beyond establishing stylistic exactitude for its own sake; it speaks to the politics of
Consistent with a certain East Tennessee tradition, there was much consternation at the time—not so much about tearing down a venerable and beloved building, but rather the cost of constructing the new one.
Photo courtesy of the Calvin M. McClung Collection. cmdc.knoxlib.org
the university, then and now, and the powerful role architecture plays in both displaying and concealing power. When it was razed to make room for Ayres, College Hall (1826) was the oldest building on campus and in the city. By the time it was demolished, a cupola had been added to the roof, adding a bit of charm to an otherwise Calvinist block of a building. Were it extant today, it would be a profoundly important artifact as it would on any American campus—a virtual ur-hut of UT’s “academical village,” to borrow Thomas Jefferson’s famous phrase. Despite a letter published in the Sentinel from John Staub (the well-known Knoxville-born architect of Hopecote Manor and Eugenia Williams Estate, both excellent UT-owned properties) arguing for the preservation of its “beautiful heritage,” the university chose demolition and modernization, which they saw (and sadly often still see) as being at odds with preservation. Consistent with a certain East Tennessee tradition, there was much consternation at the time—not so much about tearing down a venerable and beloved building (Staub notwithstanding), but rather the cost of constructing the new one. Not long after Old College was built, a Tennessee legislator attacked it as “a monument of folly,” “a tomb of extravagance,” and “a building for the rich man’s son….” Much the same sort of baseless diatribe was printed in the local press surrounding the planned construction of what became known as Ayres Hall after the university’s president, Brown Ayres, died in 1919, as construction was beginning. This concern about
perception over reality is, perhaps, one of several reasons why Ayres Hall was designed, not in collegiate Gothic—one can find exemplars from this same time period on college campuses across the Northeast—but in Elizabethan Revival. The latter is marked, not only by its classical structure (overall formal symmetry) but, more importantly, it is simpler in detail, with fewer flourishes, and lower cost. Ayres Hall had to be both the jewel in the crown and, at the same time, not a particularly shiny bauble, without all of the bling that one finds at the Quadrangle Dormitories (1894-1911) at the University of Pennsylvania or Graduate College (1911-17) at Princeton. In four years, UT can mark the 100th anniversary of the death of President Ayres and the birth of Ayres Hall (the commencement of construction). Size, location, quality of materials, character, are all indexes of architecture’s ability to both represent power, and to literally make it present in our lives. That Ayres chose the character of the more discreet Elizabethan Revival over the flashier Gothic is less a stylistic issue than it speaks to the president’s desire to use architecture to mark the university’s entry into a modern age. Like Louis and the Abbot Suger, the latter of whom was the chief architect of Saint Denis, President Ayres wanted for the University of Tennessee a modern building for a modern time. That he chose to do so with such a sizable building at the same location as College Hall, at the expense of preserving the university’s history, is a problem UT has yet to resolve. Yet, as it is a seat of higher learning, one can hope. ◆
K E L LY A B S H E R for CITY COUNCIL
A strong commitment to commerce, community & culture.
ABSHER CITY COUNCIL www.KellyAbsher.com Follow on Facebook: Kelly S. Absher for City Council Twitter: @kellyabsher Paid for by the Absher Election Campaign, Blake Valentine, Treasurer September 24, 2015
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 11
N NCA R DU AT H E . HE BY S
HighTech Learning Curve As Knox County Schools implements a new iPad program, identity security becomes a concern
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he Knox County Schools system is preparing to deploy iPads to every student at two middle schools, inching closer to the goal of giving all students access to personal high-tech instruction. But letting children use the iPads at home introduces a new level of complexity: Now it’s not just about the tool, but also the identity of the person using it. The tech push is causing some growing pains as schools and parents grapple with the challenge of setting up secure accounts for children under 13. Bearden and Carter middle schools were among just 13 schools in the country chosen to participate this year in the Verizon Innovative Learning Schools Program, which provides a personal tablet for each student to bring between school and home. The initiative provides extra teacher training and a coach to help them set learning goals, enhanced by the tablets. The hardware comes with 5-gigabyte monthly data plans. To use
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them, students must set up an Apple ID, which lets students access content like personal contacts, calendars, and photos on multiple devices. But these IDs are normally not available for children under 13, except through a special Apple for Education process. Bearden and Carter sent home notes asking families to create their accounts in advance by filling out and bringing back a form with their child’s password, security questions, and answers. This has fueled some debate on social media among parents concerned (or, in some cases, outraged) about the security risks this might pose. Theresa Nixon, director of institutional technology for the school district, says the form will remain in the possession of the student from the time it is brought back until it returns home. An instructional coach at each school will help the students through the process of entering the information from their forms into a special kiosk that will register their Apple ID. At no time will the teacher or any other
school employee have possession of the form, nor make a copy, Nixon says. Another page of the parent packet includes a parent signature granting permission for creating the Apple ID, and only that will be kept on file at the school. (That page also, incidentally, gives permission for the school to reset the password on the student’s behalf.) One possible security gap is that although all students at each school are being asked to bring in their Apple ID forms on the same day (they were due last Wednesday at Carter and Friday at Bearden), the information will be entered over the course of several weeks (between Sept. 17 and 25 at Carter, and between Sept. 21 and Oct. 2 at Bearden). Students will, in most cases, gradually be given opportunities to enter their information during homerooms, Nixon says. Until then, the middle schoolers must keep up with their passwords and security questions as they await their turn at the kiosk. And when they’re done, it will be up to the tween to get the form back home. “My bet is that 90 percent of those kids will just toss it in the nearest trash can and not think about it,” says Victor Agreda Jr., a Knoxville tech pundit who long ran a leading blog about Apple and its products. “What they should do is take these and shred them.” Agreda points out that some of the security questions could be used for other future accounts—such as bank accounts. “In two or three years, if they got into the hands of someone else, they could be used to hack any number of accounts,” he says. He adds that the form is a little unclear, so some parents who already have a family Apple ID believe they’re being asked to provide their existing Apple ID and password. And even the new accounts will fully belong to the child, with the option to be used independently for the future, once they turn 13. A security lapse at the beginning could follow a student many years. The district’s method for creating the IDs is not the process described by several easily-available Apple for Education documents available online. Apple did not return a phone call seeking an interview or clarification. Freddie Cox, systems administrator for the school district, says Apple provided the password/security form to the school district. Nixon says the Knox County Law Department also signed off on it.
Cox says Apple allows more than one way for children under 13 to establish accounts. One route is through a parent establishing a sub-account under his or her own Apple ID, unrelated to the school. Through the school, Cox says, Apple allows either the kiosk method that Knox County is using, or the one described in Apple documents online: The school requests accounts for each student, then sends an email to the parents, who must then create their child’s Apple ID online at home. “The main issue is once that initial email goes out to parents, then all the burden of setting up account falls on the parent, and they’re not able to receive any assistance from us,” Cox says. “Apple is actually preparing to change this program next year because they have seen the frustrations with the original deployment plan.” Nixon says some case studies also found the email method sometimes took months to deploy and resulted in less than half of parents creating accounts so their children could use the provided technology. “This (version) is a special program with schools to try to get the largest number of students enrolled,” she says. However, parents don’t have to send in the information form if they aren’t comfortable with it, Nixon says. (The letter sent to parents doesn’t clearly state that they can do otherwise. It says: “To expedite the process on the deployment nights, we would like to have students create their accounts in advance…. We ask that you complete the last page and submit (sic) back to the school [bold in original].” Nixon says the middle school principals are letting parents know that families may simply wait to create the account at the school kiosk on deployment nights, which will be in early October. She compares filling out the form to a Walt Disney World Fast Pass that will reduce wait times on deployment night. Either way, parents must show up that night to pick up their child’s iPad. Nixon says schools will provide optional makeup registration days over fall break. Although some parents are voicing concerns online, Nixon says the principals at the middle schools have not heard similar security complaints about the Apple ID setup. And when it comes to the big picture, most everyone is on board with the goal: Tablets or computers
for all, equipped with apps that will allow students to peruse their assignments at home and check their practice before repeating mistakes. The school system launched this effort in 2013 with a competition in which schools could apply to be among 10 pilot locations to receive devices for each student. But Bearden and Carter are benefiting from another program, the
Verizon Innovative Learning Schools initiative first launched in 2012 in partnership with the International Society for Technical Education. An ISTE-supported evaluation showed that in each of two consecutive school years, students at participating schools made stronger gains in mathematics and science than students at comparison schools. In Knox County, at 17 schools
Navitat Update Treetop adventure course awaits state approval to reopen at Ijams Nature Center after fatality BY S. HEATHER DUNCAN
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he state last week received an inspection report of changes to the Navitat Canopy Adventure course at Ijams Nature Center and is likely to decide in the next week whether the attraction is safe to re-open after a patron died there in July. The course alterations passed inspection, although Navitat had not finished installing all replacement equipment planned. Asheville-based Navitat, founded in 2010, opened its Knoxville location July 17. Five days later, an 18-year-old Georgia man named Gregory Horan fell and became entangled in his Navitat safety equipment. He died a week later. A third-party inspection afterward found that the equipment was unsafe due to a design flaw and poor compatibility between elements in the safety system, issues Navitat and the inspector said were unprecedented in the industry. The state suspended Navitat’s permit to operate. Navitat, whose Asheville adven-
ture courses include a set of racing ziplines between mountain peaks, fully intends to reopen its Knoxville location, says Chief Operating Officer Dylan Burt. The process has taken months because the company replaced all the belay systems on the treetop course, he says. The state is not in a rush, either. “We’ve been taking our time with this case because of the significance of the fatality,” says Kim Jefferson, administrator for the Tennessee Department of Labor Workplace Regulations and Compliance Division. “I want to go over it with a fine-toothed comb. (This week) I’ll know whether we’ll be asking for more remedial action before reopening. I’d rather for them to achieve additional compliance, to be sure we do all we can do to be sure no one else loses their life as a result of this type of accident.” The Navitat course consists of six “trails” between trees. Bridges, ziplines, swings, nets and other elements are built 10 to 60 feet in the air. The course is near the visitors’ center of the non-profit Ijams; in fact, Navitat’s customer front desk greets visitors before they even reach the Ijams information desk. Paul James, executive director of the nature center, said this week he did not want to discuss Ijams’ financial arrangements with the private company. But he has said in previous media interviews that it was to share in the Navitat revenue. The centerpiece of Knoxville’s popular “urban wilderness,” Ijams has been at the forefront of efforts
(including Carter and Bearden Middle), each student in at least some grades has an assigned iPad, MacBook, or Chromebook. Elementary schools generally provide personal devices only to fourth- and fifth-graders, according to an email from district spokesperson Melissa Ogden. Younger students have five per class to share. The exception is Mooreland Heights Elementary, which has iPads
for all the children in the school. For all these schools, “We are continuing to review the data, but we have seen strong indications where teachers are using the technology to transform learning there has also been strong growth,” Ogden wrote in an email. But as schools themselves are continuing to learn, even getting started takes a lot of work and planning. ◆
to enhance outdoor recreational tourism in Knox County. James declined to answer questions about the origin of the Navitat partnership. But he says Ijams has been working with Navitat through the inspection process. “It’s been a difficult summer,” he says. “We hope they will reopen and be successful.” The new inspection report is the first step. Dated Sept. 3, it was submitted last week by Katie Dickerson, director of operations with Challenge Design Innovations of Pineola, N.C. She is the same inspector who evaluated the course immediately after the accident. “Per the observable conditions of the inspected components, the course is in ‘safe and operable’ condition and ready for use with operator training provided by a qualified person,” states the report. But not all Navitat’s new equipment was available for testing. For example, a single full-body harness was available during inspection and used to function-test the course. New tree tethers had been ordered to limit the potential fall distance for taller patrons but had not arrived. Jefferson says the state will require paperwork and receipts proving that all the new equipment has been installed before the operating permit can be reinstated. On the trails, Navitat had completed adjustments Dickerson had called for during her previous evaluation. In this second report, Dickerson suggested that Navitat take new measures to limit unauthorized use of the course. (There is no fence around the Navitat area and it is easily accessible from nearby Ijams trails.) She also suggested that Navitat consider getting an updated “As-Built” letter from an engineer showing changes from the original plans. Dickerson evaluated only the equipment, not Navitat’s instruction, training, or practices. When asked
whether Navitat had plans to make any operating changes in addition to equipment changes, Dylan Burt with Navitat referred questions to communications officer Abby Burt. Abby Burt responded in an email that “out of respect for the family and those most closely involved, I cannot answer these incident-related questions at this time”—although the question was not about the incident. The tragedy did highlight a weakness in state oversight. Jefferson says that although adventure courses and ziplines (which fall under the category of “amusement devices” in Tennessee) are supposed to be inspected by a third party before receiving a state permit, the state was checking only that the inspector was certified by a state-recognized trade association—in this case, the Association for Challenge Course Technology. (According to Navitat’s website, Dylan Burt even serves on the association’s Operations Certification Standards Committee.) However, the inspector who first certified the safety of the Navitat course was John Walker, an ACCT-approved inspector whose firm designed the course and who is a partner in the Navitat business. He obviously didn’t qualify as being a “third party” with no financial interest in the company. Jefferspm says the state now verifies that inspectors also have no financial relationship before approving a permit. Dickerson and her company fit the bill, she says. Despite missing most of what might be considered the prime season for adventure recreation, Navitat hasn’t lost its operational window for 2015. The course is envisioned to be open Fridays through Sundays year-round in good weather, Dylan Burt says. So in September or beyond, the course may be reopened to potentially bring new visitors (and revenue) to Ijams and Knoxville. ◆ September 24, 2015
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 13
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ucked in the hollows of Cocke County about an hour east of Knoxville, where rolling Tennessee hills meet the peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains, Charles Mason has turned his lush-green farmland into a testing ground. The 67-year-old cattle rancher, real estate investor, and sometimes-farmer took a chance this year planting a new, experimental crop he hopes will bring a big return when harvest rolls around this fall— and in the years to come—but it’s a gamble that may net him little more than headache. “When I fi rst heard about it, well, I guess I just looked at dollar signs,” Mason says with a smooth, Southern drawl. “If it yields what it’s supposed to, I feel it could be a good cash crop for a lot of people, and maybe it’s something that can help my son maintain the farm.” Spriggy upshoots with slender five-point leaves now cover fields long reserved for grazing cattle or staples like soybean, hay, or tobacco. The sweet, skunky smell these plants give off drifts out over the barbed-wire fencing and security gates that cordon off the property and down desolate backcountry roads where every neighbor seems to know every other. Clouds still cling low to nearby mountaintops on a cool September morning as Mason steps from his silver Chevrolet truck on a winding gravel road that leads into his 143acre property. He likes to joke that he lives on the golf course, and today he looks dressed for a casual round on the links in a dark polo shirt, loose-fitting khakis, and a pair of penny loafers he says he doesn’t mind getting dirty. But right now, it’s all about business. He’s out to meet a state inspector who will test three fields of this new crop to ensure it doesn’t attract attention from law enforcement or run afoul of carefully-worded state law that cleared the way for its cultivation. Mason is growing one of the state’s fi rst legal industrial hemp crops in more than 70 years. That’s right, weed’s cousin is now legal in Tennessee—at least for industrial farming and use in manufactured goods, with plenty of restrictions attached. He signed up this spring, along with nearly 50 others across the state, for a tightly-regulated Tennessee Department of Agriculture pilot program to try a hand at growing the
“I think there’s a clear distinction between both forms of the cannabis plant (marijuana and hemp), but both forms have massive benefits to our lives and the environment we live in.” —REP. JEREMY FAISON, R-COSBY
state’s inaugural crop. Out of 12 people growing in East Tennessee, Mason’s spread is by far the largest at 60 acres, and he’s the only local growing on a commercial scale. Bills reclassifying hemp away from its notorious relative, marijuana, and setting up guidelines to grow it for research purposes (although farmers are still free to sell their crop after harvest) sailed through a staunchly conservative state Legislature last year. Key lawmakers say they were looking to give local farmers a competitive edge in this new realm of agriculture that many believe is poised to take off in the United States, potentially giving rise to a multi-million-dollar industry. Sponsored by
East Tennessee legislators Sen. Frank Niceley, R-Strawberry Plains, and Rep. Jeremy Faison, R-Cosby, the hemp bills met little to no opposition, passing with unanimous approval in the Senate and a 88-5 vote in the House of Representatives. “This, to me, is a farming issue,” Niceley says, adding that even he was surprised the bill passed the fi rst time it was put up for a vote. “Since the Republicans have taken over down there (at the state capitol), we pass bills that give freedoms back to people. I saw Kentucky trying to legalize hemp and realized that we can grow anything they can grow, and if this industry is going to come about there might be a need for more hemp
than one state can provide, so I dropped the bill.” Hemp has long earned a bad rap due to its shared characteristics with marijuana, but more than a dozen states have now legalized it for commercial or research purposes. Both hemp and marijuana are types of cannabis, yet hemp contains minuscule amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana that makes people feel high, and the state tests regularly to make sure of it. Faison admits he was pretty ignorant about the nuances of cannabis until a friend called him a few years back and started talking up hemp, but now he recognizes that it has benefits, he says, and others with traditionally conservative values are also coming around. “I think there’s a clear distinction between both forms of the cannabis plant (marijuana and hemp), but both forms have massive benefits to our lives and the environment we live in,” he says. “In my opinion the cannabis plant is just about the most beneficial plant God gave us. I want to continue Tennessee opening up its views to the cannabis plant, be it medical marijuana or industrial hemp.” But after decades of being outlawed, few people today know much—if anything—about growing hemp in Tennessee. There are no pesticides or herbicides rated for its use, no processing facilities or established markets to take it after harvest, no legacy seeds or best practices, and the federal government still lumps it with other illegal narcotics, though it has lightened up some in recent years. Many people do see potential in its plethora of uses and the more than $500 million global hemp market, and for farmers struggling to hold on to their way of life—and for others intertwined with the plant’s future—getting in on the ground floor of an industry that could take off (again) in the United States was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Yet, the plant is still technically illegal, and experts say the industry still has a ways to go before hemp transforms into a viable cash crop. Can these early pioneers survive this start-up environment and give rise to a new industry in Tennessee, or will their struggles be for naught as the cannabis plant continues its tango with the federal government and the realities of farming economics set in? September 24, 2015
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 15
HEMP RISING?
Charles Mason, at top, sees potential in hemp as a cash crop for Tennessee. He planted about 60 acres this year in Cocke County, which he plans to harvest for fiber and oil. Hemp stalk and seed can be used to make more than 25,000 products, from furniture and auto parts to food and beverages, according to the North American Industrial Hemp Council.
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Judy Jones sees benefits in hemp and other uses for the cannabis plant, though she’s quick to draw a distinction between hemp—with no psychoactive properties—and medicinal marijuana. Jones is not a farmer, but her interest in the plant’s future led her to apply for a TDA permit to grow 50 acres of hemp this year in East Tennessee. (She asked that her exact location not be published due to safety concerns.) “I’m very interested in the oils and such, and the byproducts of the hemp stalk because it has so many uses. In Kentucky, they’re already using it as bedding for horses and other animals, then there’s hempcrete, which is kind of like concrete but instead of using rocks it’s using hemp and lime,” Jones says. “It’s an amazing product. People need to kind of get past the ‘getting high’ thing and start using hemp for the thousands of uses it has.” Like some other fi rst-time Tennessee hemp farmers, this year Jones didn’t plant as much as she planned. Instead of 50 acres, she seeded just two, mainly due to the issues of getting seeds in and hiring help to plant. She’s also learning as she goes, basically putting out the seed and watching it grow. What happens next is… well, that’s the next thing to learn. Jones and other small-time growers will likely harvest and cure their crop by hand, then look for an outside organization to process it into fiber and hemp oil. Or she may just sell it in bulk through a cooperative taking shape with the Tennessee Hemp Industries Association, a local chapter of a national non-profit pushing hemp legalization and market development. Mason, too, still isn’t 100 percent sure of exactly what he’ll do come harvest time. He’s looking to reap his acres with a combine machine, then dry the plants in a rented building before processing them. He may buy a press to extract seed oil, or he may look to send it off to an out-of-state facility for processing this year. The only problem is, the hemp must fi rst be processed to a certain extent before legally being allowed to move across state lines. Even moving it off his property requires a permit by the TDA, which farmers may appreciate if the boys in blue pull them over on the way to market.
Then, after processing, they’ll need to fi nd a buyer for whatever product they’re selling. That may be easy, but many officials say it’ll likely take time for a reliable market to develop. Jones says she hopes to produce high-quality oil, which could be used for medicinal purposes, though TDA officials note that, without approval from the federal Food and Drug Administration, farmers must be careful not to label oil for human consumption. The North American Industrial Hemp Council estimates there’s more than 25,000 products that can be made with hemp, including furniture, textiles, car parts, construction material, food, and beverages. But while other countries around the world have continued using it over the years, farming, processing, and manufacturing knowledge has stagnated in the U.S. since it was made illegal in the mid 20th century. Hemp seed can be a food source, and hemp farmers in Australia, where growing the plant for fiber is legal, have been pushing the government to clear it for human consumption. Advocates there estimated a $1 billion global market for hemp food, the Newcastle Herald reports. Its fibers are also rising in popularity for use in construction materials such as hempcrete (similar to concrete), insulation, and auto parts. German car companies have more than tripled their use of natural fibers, including hemp, to about 15,500 tons since 1999, according to ABC News reports. Those fibers, mostly used to make plastics, are often lighter and sometimes stronger than synthetic and metal-based components. In recent years French automaker Peugeot S.A. has stepped up its use of hemp as a replacement for fiberglass in some components, such as mirror and windshield wiper mountings, according to a company announcement. It mentions that the use of hemp and other natural fibers isn’t exactly new in the auto world: “It was actually done in the U.S.A. by Henry Ford while hemp was legal in 1941,” a spokesman notes. “The experimental model’s body was 70 percent made of fibers from field straw, cotton fibers, hemp, and flax. The other 30 percent consisted of soy meal and bio-resin fi llers. Ford’s successful prototype was tagged as the vegetable or hemp car.”
“It’s definitely been a learning experience, and it’s going to be a learning experience for years to come.” —CHARLES MASON, FARMER
POTENTIAL IN THE PAST
Processed hemp isn’t illegal in America, but growing it has been since 1937 when Congress passed the Marihuana Tax Act, legislation that essentially banned cannabis cultivation following a national anti-drug campaign against “devil weed” and heavy lobbying from businessmen with ties to the paper industry, according to multiple reports. “The mythical connotation that all hemp is narcotic arose in the 1930s in great part through an active campaign engineered by William Randolph Hearst and Harry Anslinger,” writes Sterling Evans in his 2013 book, Bound in Twine. “Hearst worried that hemp fiber could replace wood pulp, of which he had huge land holdings and investments for his newspaper, the New York Journal. Anslinger, essentially America’s fi rst ‘drug czar’ … combined his family connections to DuPont Chemical (which had recently produced a new chemical treatment process for converting wood pulp to paper) and his government position to outlaw the growing of hemp.” Racial and economic tensions also played a role. A perceived link between marijuana and crime rose in the American conscience in the years following the Mexican Revolution in 1910, when many Mexican immigrants—some who used the marijuana recreationally—flooded into the states, according to a PBS Frontline report. With the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s, anti-immigrant sentiment intensified as many more Americans worried foreigners would snatch up jobs during a time of mass unemployment. Before the early 20th century, however, America’s history was very much intertwined with the hemp plant. The United States Constitution was drafted on hemp paper, the fi rst
flag was sewn of hemp fiber, and a number of the country’s founding fathers—including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson—grew hemp and encouraged others to do the same. In 1619, the Virginia Legislature even passed a law mandating that every farmer grow hemp, which at the time was allowed to be exchanged as legal tender in that state as well as Pennsylvania and Maryland, Frontline reports. It eventually earned the nickname of “Kentucky hemp” due to its popularity among farmers there in the 18th and 19th centuries, Evans writes. Hemp saw a brief resurgence in the U.S. during World War II when the federal government launched a “Hemp for Victory” campaign aimed at boosting production of ropes for ships. But in recent times, America has imported its hemping needs mostly from our neighbors to the north in Canada, where it’s been legal to farm since 1998. The United States brings in an estimated $580 million worth of hemp annually, according to a 2015 study by the Congressional Research Service. The idea that money flowing to Canada could be made local is, in part, what motivated Tennessee Sen. Niceley to introduce SB 2495 last year, he says. “No one could ever explain to me why an American farmer couldn’t raise a crop a Canadian farmer could,” Niceley says, “It (the prohibition of hemp) was almost like a protection bill that protected Canadian farmers from honest competition with American farmers.” Thus far, 13 states have approved statutes allowing the commercial sale and production of hemp, including Tennessee, according to an analysis by the National Conference of State Legislatures. The others are California, Colorado, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, North Dakota,
John Rochelle, a plant inspector with the Tennessee Department of Agriculture, collects a randomized sample of 36 clippings from a hemp field in Cocke County on Sept. 10, 2015. The cuttings are sealed in evidence bags and shipped to a lab in Nashville to test levels of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana that makes people feel high. To be legal, hemp must contain less than .3 percent THC.
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The University of Tennessee is taking an active role in hemp research. Here, UT Tobacco Specialist Eric Walker stakes out 10-foot-square sections in a hemp field near Greeneville for herbicide trials.
Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia. Seven other states have programs limited to research, including Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Nebraska, New York, and Utah. For its part, the federal government still classifies hemp with marijuana as an illegal narcotic, but it has loosened restrictions slightly in recent years. Early last year Congress approved the Agricultural Bill of 2014, which, among other things, defi ned industrial hemp as cannabis with less than .3 percent THC (marijuana is usually upward of 5 percent THC) and authorized universities and state agriculture departments to conduct hemp research and pilot programs. Those federal provisions are key when it comes to hemp in Tennessee. All farmers growing hemp in the state are technically conducting research as part of the state’s pilot program, but there is no limit to how long a pilot program may run or how many acres are sown for research, TDA officials say. The state will likely keep issuing licenses for hemp research unless something changes to prohibit it on the federal level, says David Waddell, a TDA manager who worked with the state Legislature to fi ne-tune and implement Tennessee’s hemp bill. “We basically weaved our way between federal law and state law to come up with a program broad enough for us to get some data research done to see if hemp will work as a crop in Tennessee, and to deal with the federal situation as it is,” Waddell says. “Agriculture research for some projects in corn and soybeans goes into the thousands of acres, and millions of dollars in crops. It would be hard for the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) to say, ‘oh, you can only have 1,000 acres just because it’s hemp.’” Both Niceley and Faison say the law may need some tweaking as the industry takes shape and folks learn more about growing the plant, but cannabis may be here to stay in Tennessee—as long as a market emerges.
UNFORESEEN HURDLES
Mason dove in this year, but now he’s not sure it’s going to pay out. He sunk more than $25,000 to plant hemp this season, from clearing land to purchasing seeds and getting them in the ground. He was hoping to turn a profit, but now he’d be happy just to 18
KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 24, 2015
recoup his investment. “This is what I consider a total loss,” Mason says, looking out over a 10-acre field choked in weeds. “It’s defi nitely been a learning experience, and it’s going to be a learning experience for years to come. They told us up front the fi rst year may not be profitable, but I think there needs to be a little more light out there (on the process) before we invest any more money.” Fortunately for him, not all of Mason’s fields look so rough, although they’re not exactly to levels he’d like to see. Plantings expected to reach 6- to 8-feet tall this time of year hover in the 2- to 3-feet range, with a few ambitious sprouts coming up about waist-high. On a recent walk-through, TDA plant inspector John Rochelle noticed a die-off of about 5 to 10 percent of plants in Mason’s largest plot. The plants have already withered and browned, though he isn’t sure why. “This is the only CRS1 (type of hemp) field I inspect, so I have nothing to compare it to,” Rochelle says. Mason paid a premium for that CRS1 hemp seed, a more expensive variety of five types the TDA imported from Canada this year, under the assumption that it would yield more and produce a higher-quality seed and fiber than some other varieties offered. But his results are varied. One 10-acre field has been overpowered by weeds, another 20 acres is still mostly barren dirt after seed didn’t sprout, and his largest 30-acre plot is short but mostly thriving. He tried different seeding methods to see which works best—no one really knows—but he and other farmers have said the biggest issue this year has been timing. Seeds, which have to be procured by the state and cleared through the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, were slow getting into the hands of farmers. Mason and others say they hoped to plant in late April or May, but instead many weren’t able to get seeds in the ground until late-June through mid-July, about half-way through growing season, which impacts plant size and yields. The TDA imported 38,190 pounds of hemp seed this year, all of which came from certified growers in Canada, aside from a small shipment brought in from Australia at the
request of the Tennessee Hemp Industries Association, according to TDA spokeswoman Corinne Gould. Forty-seven people were approved to grow a total of 1,595 acres of hemp in Tennessee this year, although some did not plant as much as planned due to delays getting seeds. One shipment that arrived in Memphis was sent back to Canada after the carrier, FedEx, discovered the package contained hemp seed, which the company considered a narcotic, Gould says. That increased the price for three varieties of hemp seed—CFX1, CFX2, and CRS1—to about $4.40 per pound. Two others were offered at about half that price, Finola for $2.67 and Canda at $2.33 per pound. Other delays were attributed to the DEA slow-walking necessary paperwork to import the seeds. The state passes on its expenses to the farmers, from seeds costs to $35-per-hour for random testings and inspections. Folks also have to shell out $250 for a license regardless of how much hemp they plan to grow. Mason put out about 25 pounds of seed per acre (a guestimation after consulting with hemp farmers in Canada and Kentucky), roughly $6,600 worth in all. That field that didn’t sprout was a $2,200 loss just in seed. While Mason has the largest operation in East Tennessee, the most prolific hemp growers are concentrated in the middle and west parts of the state. According to TDA figures, farmers applied to grow a total of 534 acres in Fayette County and 200 acres in Lauderdale County near Memphis, and 216 acres in Maury County near Nashville. A big challenge in year one of hemp production is figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Technically, by virtue and by state law, all hemp farmers in Tennessee are conducting research. They’re tracking just about everything they can, stuff like planting dates, germination rates, any issues with weeds or disease, yields, and just about anything else that factors into raising a successful crop. “One of the biggest problems growers had this year were weeds, and since hemp is still illegal at the federal level, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) hasn’t labeled any pesticides or herbicides for use on this particular crop, so nothing is legal to use on industrial hemp,” Waddell says. “Usually if it’s planted early enough hemp drowns out any
other weeds, but a lot of the farmers got planted so late, many weeds came up as fast as the hemp did.” Some universities, including the University of Tennessee, are taking an active approach to hemp research. This week UT plans to start testing 15 types of herbicides across two, one-acre hemp fields growing in different regions of the state, one in Greeneville to the east and another in Springfield north of Nashville. “Initially, we just planned to focus on the different varieties, plant them and get yields to see which was best, but since we planted later in the season we decided to screen for herbicides instead,” explains Eric Walker, a tobacco specialist who’s overseeing UT’s work with the cannabis plant. “We’re going to spray different herbicides across the five varieties (of hemp) to see if any herbicides out there will work. Once we find that out, then it’s up to chemical companies whether or not they want to pursue a label to allow those herbicides to be used for industrial hemp. It looks like we’re a couple of years away, minimum, before anything is released (for commercial use).” And that’s the thing—while plenty of folks are excited about hemp’s potential as a new cash crop for Tennessee, there’s still a lot of developments needed to get it there. Even if a herbicide isn’t licensed for commercial use, the research being conducted at UT should add to the body of knowledge about cultivating hemp and help farmers down the road, says Bill Brown, dean of research in the Institute of Agriculture at UT Knoxville. The university may expand its research to other areas of the state with different climate and environmental factors next year, he says, but for AG-hands looking to make a living off this sticky, yet impotent brand of cannabis, those improvements may not come soon enough. “I think some of the expectations a year ago was that this was just going to be a cash cow, that if you planted it you would be able to tap into this worldwide, $600 million hemp market, but that’s just not true,” Waddell says. “I think that has been a disappointment for some, that there wasn’t a ready hemp market, but that will come with time.” ◆
@KNOXMERCURY.COM
Go online to view more photos and an interactive map of hemp farming in Tennessee. September 24, 2015
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 19
A&E
P rogram Notes
Skate-Film Auteur Cal Oaks premieres his second full-length skateboard feature, Terrarium
C
al Oaks has wanted to be a skateboard filmmaker since the age of 9, when he got his first camera for Christmas. That was just 10 years ago. He started out by recording miles of tape of his friends in action, traveling to skate parks throughout the Southeast, and hanging out at Pluto Sports, where he learned local skating lore from “the older cats that worked there.” Later, he graduated to a ’90s-era Sony VX1000 digital camcorder and started collecting Super 8 cameras. Now he’s got two skateboard films under his belt, plus support from a range of skate-centric corporate sponsors, from PF Flyers shoes to Bixby combs to Grant’s Golden pomade (which he uses—you may have noticed him as the rockabilly-cool barista at Old City Java). His new film, Terrarium, is premiering at Striped Light this Friday.
So why is your film called Terrarium?
I think the name comes from a combination of ideas and feelings. First of all, the South, and Knoxville in particular, is a humid gut of a place and not unlike a terrarium. We are surrounded by beauty—right in the middle of it all—but we are also loaded down with horrible pollution. I see the streets, the asphalt, concrete structures, and those patches of earth that work their way out of them as decorations in a terrarium. It is a thriving environment, but it is an environment I am stuck in, so I (we) utilize those intrusive structures to express ourselves.
Although I traveled around quite a bit during the production, shooting film and video in New York, San Francisco,
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Shelf Life: New Music
KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 24, 2015
Who’s in it?
I guess because of age, work, and all the obstacles of life, it was difficult to get locals to commit for full parts like you might see in a traditional skateboarding video. Because of this, it is broken up into short montages and has a theme of day footage, dusk footage, and night footage, all separated accordingly. It worked out well this way. Several locals have clips, but I suppose the most featured are D.J. Griffis and Erik Phillips.
What do you want to show audiences with this film?
My Generation, my first full-length, was shot all on a Sony VX 1000, which for years has been the industry standard for skate filmers. I love that camera and still shoot with it some today, but I wanted to try something different and take a new approach. My Generation also featured a lot more skaters and featured each skater in their own full part. Terrarium alludes to a certain narrative. I use that term loosely, because there is no narrative at all, really, but one gets the sense of story with this one. And where My Generation was shot on digital video, Terrarium is shot on DSLR and Super 8 film. One way both films are similar is that I’m not putting it straight on the Internet, and that’s pretty rare these days. I think it’s important to create something that is tangible. Everything is put straight on the Internet now and is forgotten in a heartbeat. There are a handful of filmers out there like myself that still believe in putting in the extra work to create something that has more meaning and will last in the underground skate culture. I direct, shoot, edit, and hand-package my own work—cradle to grave.
You’ve got some sponsors lined up— who are they, and how do they help?
I aim to show audiences a unique approach on not only the skating in the film but also the filming and the layout of the whole video. I want to leave the kids that skate here something to inspire them to work with what they’ve got. Skateboarding in a small town is a struggle, but I’ve managed to work with what I have and constantly try to create something. I’d really hope to encourage kids now and kids in the future of Knoxville skateboarding to be able to watch my film and feel like they can go out and accomplish something just as rad!
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Music: Pale Root
Yes! I am truly blessed with all of the support I have received from the sponsors. Northern Co. is one of my favorite underground skate companies. I’m stoked to have them supporting my vid. Grant’s Golden brand is a pomade company that I’m a brand ambassador for, along with Thee Teen Aged, Richer Poorer, We Are Grits, the Sleeping Horse, and Bixby combs. Over the past year I have started to nurture relationships with many companies that are related to the skate industry. I believe in their product, and they believe in what I do, so it has been a great relationship thus far. The local skate shop, Pluto, and the coffee shop I work at, Old City Java, are also supporting the film by donating goods to hand out. In fact, all of these companies have sent me product to toss out at the premiere and are also promoting my video via social media. Striped Light has been an amazing supporter also. Not only have they opened up their doors for this event and loaned me their press to print part of my disc package, but they are so ingrained in this community in the short time they’ve been here and really seem to want to make a real difference in Knoxville. Their vision to promote art and give people tools and resources they need to pursue things like that really gives me hope for this town. —Coury Turczyn
WHAT
Terrarium
WHEN
Friday, Sept. 28, at 8 p.m.
WHERE
Striped Light (107 Bearden Place)
Photo by Shawn Poynter
Is it principally about the Knoxville skating scene?
San Diego, and Los Angeles, I wanted to make sure the video was centered in the South. It’s primarily shot in Knoxville with a few clips filmed in Nashville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta. Knoxville is home now, and it made more sense to me that it showcase Knoxville. The terrarium of Knoxville is a unique one in that the spots we skate are rough and gnarly, unlike the smooth concrete you might find on the West Coast or the endless “lines” you find in New York or Boston.
This is your second film so far—how is it different from your first one?
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Classical Music: American Masters
HOW MUCH Free
24
Movie: Black Mass
Shelf Life
A&E
Wild Men New music at the library from some favorite troublemakers CHARLES LLOYD WILD MAN DANCE (BLUE NOTE)
During a conversation years ago, Chicago-based jazz percussionist Kahil El’Zabar was bemoaning the fate of pianist Thelonious Monk. In El’Zabar’s view, Monk was an innovative and original force in American music who had spent his lifetime underappreciated and undercompensated, only to be canonized and commodified once it was over. It seemed natural to ask who he thought was playing now and on a path to suffer similarly. El’Zabar had an answer ready: Charles Lloyd. The saxophonist and composer— closing in on his 80th year—has managed to generate a long-running string of surprising and surprisingly beautiful improvised music. This six-part suite, recorded live in 2013, is fluid and pretty and, like all of Lloyd’s best work, manages to feel simultaneously dangerous yet comforting.
ANDRÁS SCHIFF FRANZ SCHUBERT: SONATAS, IMPROMPTUS AND MOMENTS MUSICAUX (ECM)
Pianist András Schiff has long been a friend to the music of Franz Schubert. Not everyone can successfully embrace the composer’s penchant for emphatic instrumental whispering. Until very recently, Schiff has been decidedly unfriendly to the notion of period instruments. He denounced the trend, persuasively, as a fad that encouraged listeners to pay attention to the wrong things. Here, he performs Schubert’s music on an instrument made during the composer’s short lifetime. The compact, interrelated pieces are fabulous, with a vast range of tempo and dynamics. Schiff’s playing is superb; if he was trying to make amends to this instrument and its fellows, he
probably has. Does the music sound better or more authentic than it would on a Steinway? A moot point. The music of Franz Schubert—one of the most prolific members of that first string of DWM composers—will always sound like a sensitive and gifted young man racing to see what might be accomplished in 31 years.
GIDON KREMER AND KREMERATA BALTICA NEW SEASONS (DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON)
Latvian violinist and conductor Gidon Kremer probably made his Cold War-era keepers very uneasy. It’s impossible to know where his loyalties lie. The man has nailed Bach’s music for solo violin but he has also made himself the premier interpreter and champion of Astor Piazzolla. Here, Kremer and the chamber orchestra he has spent the last 20 years mentoring bend their collective ear toward a broad range of 20th- and 21st-century music. Philip Glass’ Violin Concerto #2, The American Four Seasons, is a treat. Kremer is featured soloist, and he is accompanied by his home region’s best and brightest, all doing their best to impress and flatter their maestro.
HAPPY HOLLERPALOOZA
STREET FAIR
Saturday Sept. 26th, 12 noon - 5 pm
North Central Street between Baxter Ave. & Scott Ave.
LIVE MUSIC FOOD TRUCKS MOTORCYCLE SHOW RAT RODS CAR SHOW TAI CHI RUMMAGE SALE 40+ LOCAL ARTISANS & VENDORS KNOXVILLE ZOO ANIMALS KIDS’ ACTIVITIES BOUNCE HOUSE PHOTO BOOTH
THE KINKS THE SINGLES COLLECTION (CASTLE RECORDS)
Speaking of the basic repertoire, thanks to the patron who pointed out the embarrassing absence of this set from the collection. (Visit knoxlib.org to suggest a purchase.) Released on Pye Records during the 1960s, these songs demonstrate that this music hall band from North London was capable of amazing stylistic diversity—from calypso to country—and may well have influenced more of the following generations than the Beatles or the Stones. Nice one, Davies brothers. ◆
PRESENTED BY HAPPY HOLLER NEIGHBORHOOD BUSINESSES Central Flats & Taps • The Chop Shop • Fleet Tire • Foam Rubber & Fabric Outlet • Fred’s Alignment • Friends Antiques • Magpies • Mid Mod Collective • Raven Records • Relix • Retrospect • Three Rivers Market • Time Warp Tea Room September 24, 2015
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 21
A&E
Music
Roots Revival Pale Root quietly settles into its own spot in a crowded local Americana scene BY MATTHEW EVERETT
J
ordan Burris and Aaron Freeman didn’t plan on being in a band together. After they were introduced to each other by mutual friends a few years ago, the two singer/ songwriters teamed up to share some shows at local bars—Burris would perform his songs, Freeman would play his. “One evening after a few beers we just decided to try and write something of our own,” Freeman says. “We finished the song that night and sat back and thought, well, that wasn’t so bad, huh?” The pair’s weekly practice sessions turned into a regular songwriting workshop, and a few months later they acknowledged what was becoming increasingly obvious. “At some point we’d written 20 or so songs and we’re more or less exclusively playing together only, so we figured we’d make it official and name our little band and cut a record,” Burris says. That album, the band’s self-titled debut, was recorded this spring at Wild Chorus Studios with Scott Minor and released earlier this month. The disc showcases an enhanced version of Pale Root’s laid-back folk rock, with additional contributions from Daniel Kimbro (bass), Jason Day (keyboards), and Shayne Ivy (drums). “We wanted a live sounding record, like the Band’s Music From Big Pink, and I think we achieved that
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KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 24, 2015
tone,” Burris says. “I think having the extra instruments changed the dynamics of some of the tracks but I don’t feel it was ever detrimental to the voice of the songs. The spirit of the work is there but I think the true nature of our sound is when it’s just Aaron and myself.” Burris and Freeman had followed different routes to becoming solo singer/songwriters. Burris had studied in East Tennessee State University’s bluegrass program and
spent seven years pitching songs in Nashville; Freeman had played in a couple of college bands while attending Tennessee Tech, then continued writing songs and performing when he landed in Knoxville. Those pedigrees are reflected in their work together: Freeman’s taste for contemporary songwriters like Ryan Adams and Darrel Scott provides a balance to Burris’ penchant for bluegrass and traditional folk. As Pale Root, they’ve quietly settled into their own spot in Knoxville’s crowded Americana scene—intimate, confessional music grounded in tradition. At various times, the duo’s music recalls Neil Young, Jackson Browne, the Everly Brothers, and the Avett Brothers. It’s a surprisingly full and mature sound from just two people. “Our overall tone and sound is really just what happens when Jordan and I play together,” Freeman says. “I don’t remember us ever planning to sound a certain way. It’s just kind of how it came out. I’ve got a little more experience with more modern folk, while Jordan has a more of an ear to writers from much earlier on. So, I suppose whatever our sound is comes from that.”
Playing has a duo presents some challenges—a late-night audience at a bar can threaten to drown out the band’s unassuming acoustic songs and intricate harmonies, and there’s only so much you can do with two voices and two guitars. But Burris and Freeman think they’ve only just started to reach their potential together. “I think being a duo can have limitations if you approach it as two people playing the same song together,” Burris says. “But we approach the songs we write not just in terms of the structure of the chords and the lines in the verses but also from the arrangement of our individual part. We spend an awful lot of time on our harmonies, getting our pronunciations of the words synced up so it becomes one sound rather that two voices saying the same thing. Then we do the same with the guitar parts. Aaron hammers and picks more bass-driven rhythm, while I cross-pick notes in the higher register. “I think our music sounds fuller than a lot of bands with five instruments—we are a band, just maybe not in the conventional sense of the word.” ◆
WHO
Pale Root
WHERE
Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (200 E. Jackson Ave.)
WHEN
Tuesday, Sept. 29, at 10 p.m.
INFO
barleysknoxville.com
Classical Music
A&E
American Jubilee KSO opens its important new season with a celebration of American composers BY ALAN SHERROD
I
t’s not uncommon at all to hear words like “polyphony” and “fugue”—words that refer to multiple independent melodic ideas occurring simultaneously—in or around Knoxville Symphony Orchestra concerts. However, in the case of the orchestra’s 2015-16 season, which opened last weekend, the season itself may prove to be quite fugue-like in a sense, a season in which individual concert programming competes for attention with the intrigues of the audition process for KSO’s next music director and conductor. And, as if any more drama was necessary, this comes at a time when the orchestra is performing at an impressively high level of both technique and art. Although the conductor audition concerts do not begin until next month, this month’s opener, American Masters, led by KSO resident conductor James Fellenbaum, was a clear indicator of how competing concerns might color the season. One focus, of course, was the concert’s programming dedicated to American composers. Fellenbaum chose four works, by George Whitefield Chadwick, George Gershwin, Samuel Barber, and Leonard Bernstein, that have broad audience appeal but are nonetheless compositionally complex and engaging. A parallel focus was the orchestra itself at its current threshold moment, performing a first-of-the-season concert under Fellenbaum that was as energetic, entertaining, precise in detail, and scrupulously musical as any season opener in memory. Fellenbaum opened with Chadwick’s 1895 “Jubilee” movement from his Symphonic Sketches, a work that deserves more attention as a representative of American music. The work drips with impressionistic hints of cheerfulness and turn-of-the-century optimism, textured by the warmth of nostalgia-inducing melody. Fellenbaum’s close
attention to the Americana flavor of the work banished any idea that this was a mere jubilant overture to open a concert. The program then moved to the 1920s and the jazz-flavored world of George Gershwin and his Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra. The work enjoys a rather odd distinction in world-music circles; it is revered, respected, and universally adored by American audiences for its idiomatic musical descriptions of a slice of American history. But condescension toward the work seems to run high in Europe, where performances are relatively rare by the heavy-hitter orchestras. Pianists who record it tend to be younger or open to works outside European traditions. Thankfully, the concerto is being embraced by pianists like Sean Chen, who joined Fellenbaum and KSO for the work. The 26-year-old Chen, who was the Crystal Award winner at the 2013 Cliburn Competition, gave the piece a picturesque personality that favored flowing passage work over raw frenetic percussiveness. Chen understood that the major melody in the first movement is the backbone of the work and allowed its recurrences to bridge the rhythms and jazzy harmonies, blurring the lines between tonality and dissonance and drawing the listener in deeper and deeper. Fellenbaum chose the Samuel Barber Adagio for Strings, the well-
known orchestration of the second movement of his Quartet for Strings, to showcase the KSO strings. The work, which has been used in television and movies to accompany depictions of overpowering emotion and heartbreak, succeeds just as strongly in a concert-hall setting. In addition to the gorgeous and sensuous string tone of the KSO, Fellenbaum’s interpretation of the work’s balance and musical punctuation was simply sublime. For the close, Fellenbaum moved to the mid 20th century and another work adapted for the concert hall, Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. The nine-section piece is a feast of orchestration and instrumental color given its ’50s flavor by xylophones, vibraphones, bongos, and whistles and from a broad array of wind instruments, including several different clarinets and a saxophone. While the music itself feels familiar, its changing rhythms and multiple meters are still enticing and challenging for audiences and musicians. This performance was crisp and remarkably clean, with a tightly accomplished rhythmical push-and-pull that drew the listener from section to section. As in the other pieces on the program, Fellenbaum’s control of the spicy flavor and pace was impressive, setting a high bar for the conductors in the remainder of the season. ◆
KSO’s first concert of the season was as energetic, entertaining, precise in detail, and scrupulously musical as any season opener in memory.
UP NEXT!
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
LEFT FOOT DOWN REUNION SHOW
WITH TREE TOPS
friday, october 16 • 8pm ON SALE FRIDAY, 9/25 AT 10AM!
DELBERT MCCLINTON HENRY CHO A JOHNNYSWIM CHRISTMAS friday, december 4 • 8pm
friday, december 11 • 8pm
sunday, december 20 • 8pm
KNOXBIJOU.COM TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE TENNESSEE
THEATRE BOX OFFICE, TICKETMASTER.COM, AND BY PHONE AT 800-745-3000
September 24, 2015
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 23
A&E
Movie
Battle of the Bulger Johnny Depp’s performance makes up for Black Mass’ other disappointments BY APRIL SNELLINGS
M
ovies about mobsters are weirdly seductive and morally problematic ventures. I love the genre and I’m fiercely entertained by its best works, but I’m also aware that it has a tendency to romanticize truly awful people. Director Scott Cooper also seems keenly aware of that dichotomy, and he comes down firmly on the side of stripping gangsters of their folk-hero appeal. The result is the relentlessly bleak yet absorbing mob-boss biopic Black Mass, inspired by the exploits of legendary crime lord/FBI informant James “Whitey” Bulger. Bulger is perhaps best known for the 16 years he spent evading capture after he went on the lam in 1994, but Cooper’s film is more concerned with his rise to power on the mean streets of South Boston throughout the 1970s and ’80s. Using a series of police interviews with low-level mob soldiers as its framing device, Black Mass hinges on
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KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 24, 2015
the uneasy—and highly illegal—alliance that formed between Bulger, played by a heavily made-up Johnny Depp, and FBI agent John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), whose man-crush on Bulger stretches back to their days playing cops and robbers as kids in their impoverished Irish neighborhood. They might be on opposite sides of the law now, but Bulger and Connolly share a common enemy: the mafia outfit that’s threatening to take over Bulger’s territory. In his zeal to make a name for himself by taking down the Italian crime family, Connolly recruits Bulger as an informant, essentially offering to look the other way on all but Bulger’s most violent crimes in exchange for whatever intel he’s willing to share. The catch, of course, is that Bulger is both smarter and infinitely more cunning than Connolly, so the balance of power quickly shifts in Bulger’s favor. Bulger frequently and blatantly violates Connolly’s only
rules—no drugs and no killing—as he uses his status as a protected informant to become Boston’s most notorious mobster. Much like the psychopathic criminal at the center of its story, Black Mass often finds itself doing the wrong things, but doing them very well. Cooper’s film flirts with greatness in nearly every beat, but it always opts for the same blood-soaked territory that’s been covered by generations of mob flicks before it. Much of the best material hovers at the edges of the story, only to be ultimately abandoned in favor of recounting Bulger’s litany of violent offenses. There’s an untapped goldmine in the relationship between Bulger and Connolly, but the film never delves beneath its surface. It also struggles to make good use of its great supporting cast, relegating Kevin Bacon’s hard-nosed FBI boss and Juno Temple’s dim-witted hooker to exactly the sort of one-note roles you’d expect from those cursory character descriptions. Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Bulger’s politician brother, seems especially wasted as the film devotes more and more screen time to the shootings, beatings, and strangulations that eventually landed Bulger and his buddies a staggering number of life sentences.
It’s all well made and beautifully acted, and Black Mass is seldom less than engaging. But maybe we’ve just seen it all too many times—the territorial chest-thumping, the paranoia, the ominous asides on the dangers of disloyalty. As solid as it is, Black Mass feels like a minor entry in a canon of better, or at least more remarkable, movies. Even its most electrifying moment—a dinner scene that finds Depp switching from jovial to menacing and back again with alarming agility—is too evocative of one of cinema’s greatest gangster freak-outs for its own good. Black Mass frequently and willfully conjures the spirit of wiseguys past, but it lacks the wit and punch of Goodfellas, say, or the operatic allure of The Godfather. Whatever you might think as the final credits roll, there’s one indisputable fact: Depp’s performance is reason enough to see it. It’s a welcome departure from the parade of flamboyant weirdos that have made up the bulk of Depp’s resume over the past decade. He does some of the best work of his career here, underplaying a role that might have lent itself to caricature, and he’s absolutely compelling. The film itself doesn’t stand to shoulder-to-shoulder with the best gangster flicks, but Depp makes Black Mass impossible to ignore. ◆
September 24, 2015
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 25
CALENDAR
Thursday, Sept. 24 - Sunday, Oct. 4
MUSIC
Thursday, Sept. 24 CHERUB • The International • 8PM • Cherub is a sexy electro-pop duo that is the dance love-child of 80’s funk, and pop-music from the future. The members of Cherub, Jordan Kelley and Jason Huber, share a love for honest original music and vibrant live performance, with a common goal to share a little bit of sex, a little bit of drugs, and a whole lot of love with people across the globe. Presented by Midnight Voyage Productions and WUTK. 18 and up. • $17-$35 COMMUNITY CENTER • The Birdhouse • 9PM • Community Center, a Baltimore-based chamber rock band, writes storytelling songs and has a live act featuring saxophone, accordion, violin, cello, clarinet, and highly-arranged vocals. Community Center has performance residencies in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Boston, and their live shows have been winning over diverse audiences since they’ve have made the jump into full-time touring. DEAD HORSE TRAUMA WITH BURNING TURLEY • Longbranch Saloon • 7PM GLOOM WITH ILLUSTRIOUS AND I, DIVINE • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • All ages. • $8 DAVE KENNEDY • Clancy’s Tavern & Whiskey House • 6PM TIM LEE 3 WITH IAN THOMAS AND THE BAND OF DRIFTERS • Preservation Pub • 10PM • The Tim Lee 3’s new album, 33 1/3—named after, obviously, the speed at which LPs rotate on a turntable and, not so obviously, the fact that Tim and Susan Bauer Lee have been married for 33 years and a few months—is, like its predecessors, full of inventive, melodic guitar rock with pop instincts and bar-band muscle. A collection of first-rate songs, performed with confidence and charm. 21 and up. • $3 MAGGIE LONGMIRE WITH JEREMIAH AND THE RED EYES • 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 SCOTT MCMAHAN • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM THE THIRST QUENCHERS • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine Lounge • 8PM • The Ps and Qs house band. Friday, Sept. 25 CINDI ALPERT AND THE CORDUROY JAZZ TRIO • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine Lounge • 8PM THE BEARDED • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE THE BIG PINK • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • A 7 piece band that plays the music of The Band, Bob Dylan, Joe Cocker and several other Americana/Rock and Roll groups from the 1960’s to present day. LUCY DACUS WITH HEADFACE AND THE CONGENITALS AND MANATREE • Pilot Light • 10PM • 18 and up. • $5 THE DAWN DRAPES • Preservation Pub • 8PM • Soulful psychedelic rock. 21 and up. THE DIRTY GUV’NAHS: THE FAREWELL TOUR • Tennessee Theatre • 8PM • Local roots-rock heroes the Dirty Guv’nahs announce their final hometown show, part of a series of summer and fall dates that constitute a farewell tour for the band, which announced its breakup in May. • $27 FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE DOUG GIBSON • Clancy’s Tavern and Whiskey House • 6PM MARTIN HARLEY WITH MINTON SPARKS • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national 26
KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 24, 2015
THE WEEKEND OF MANY FESTIVALS A football-free Saturday in early fall is cause for celebration—or at least a good reason to schedule events so they don’t compete with Vols home games. With the Big Orange on the road and mild weather in the forecast, local civic organizations are packing a full season of fall festivals into one September weekend. Choose from Greek Fest, a Latin American celebration, a North Knox block party, or, a few miles up the road, a music festival that connects jazz, country, and the blues, in honor of one of East Tennessee’s most accomplished musicians. Or, with some creative scheduling, try to hit them all.
GREEK FEST St. George Greek Orthodox Church (4070 Kingston Pike) • Friday, Sept. 25-Sunday, Sept. 27 • $2 • greekfesttn.com
This annual celebration of traditional Greek culture takes on added significance after a year of hardship for the host church—an embezzlement scandal in early 2015 depleted the church’s bank accounts and an April fire destroyed the building’s elaborate sanctuary. That Greek Fest continues is a small miracle, and a testament to the church community’s fortitude. Show your support by taking part in a full weekend of authentic
Greek food, music, and dance in one of Bearden’s most venerable events. (The sanctuary, usually a centerpiece of the festival, won’t be available for tours this year, but construction on the new sanctuary is expected to begin soon.) Hours are 11 a.m.-10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and 11 a.m.-8 p.m. on Sunday. Admission is $2 for adults; children 12 and under are free. Weekend passes are available for $3.
HAPPY HOLLERPALOOZA Happy Holler • Saturday, Sept. 26 • Noon-5 p.m. • Free • facebook.com/happyhollerpaloozastreetfair
When it was founded in 2006, Happy Hollerpalooza demonstrated the ambitions and aspirations of the merchants and neighbors on the commercial strip of North Central Street between Baxter and Scott avenues. Almost a decade later, most of those ambitions have been fulfilled, and how—this particular subsection of the Downtown North neighborhood is crammed with stuff to do, see, eat, drink, and buy, from stalwarts like the Time Warp Tea Room, the Taoist Tai Chi Society,
and Club XYZ to more recent arrivals like Central Flats and Taps, Raven Records and Rarities, Retrospect Vintage Store, and Three Rivers Market. They’ll all be open for this weekend’s block party, but Hollerpalooza also features local food trucks, live music, kids’ entertainment, arts and crafts vendors, and a bad-ass vintage motorcycle show. Central will be closed to traffic between Baxter and Scott for the festival.
LOUIE BLUIE MUSIC AND ARTS FESTIVAL Cove Lake State Park (Caryville) • Saturday, Sept. 26 • 10a.m.-7 p.m. • Free • louiebluie.org
Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong, the East Tennessee-born mandolin player, fiddler, and artist who’s celebrated every year at the Louie Bluie Music and Arts Festival, is noted for a lot of things—his early career, in the 1920s and ’30s, with the country-blues string band the Tennessee Chocolate Drops, his role as the subject of Terry Zwigoff’s startling 1985 documentary, Louie Bluie. The defining characteristic of his career, though, was the variety of his repertoire, which ranged from country and blues standards to Gershwin, Tin Pan Alley, and other pop songs. The music lineup for this year’s Louie Blue fest is
appropriately diverse, with blues, jazz, folk, and country, and a lot of stuff that falls in between. The headliners are Alvin Youngblood Hart, who specializes in both acoustic and electric blues guitar, and bluegrassers Steve Gulley and New Pinnacle; they’re joined by the Pinnacle Mountain Boys, Sparky and Rhonda Rucker, EmiSunshine, Tennessee Schmaltz, Maggie Longmire, Kelle Jolly and the Will Boyd Project, Dixieghost, Y’uns, the New River Boys, Keith Brown and the BluePrint, and more. It’s all free, thanks to the efforts of the Campbell Culture Coalition.
HOLA FESTIVAL Market Square • Saturday, Sept. 26-Sunday, Sept. 27 • Free • holafestival.org
HoLa Hora Latina, Knoxville’s oldest grassroots Hispanic organization, stages this annual festival of Latin culture, which has grown from a small bloc party on North Gay Street to one of Knoxville’s fall centerpieces in just a few years. This installment, which takes place Saturday from 7 to 10 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., features
salsa, flamenco, and folk dance, South American pop, Latin jazz, and the Cazateatro Bilingual Theatre, plus lots of food from Mexico, Central and South America, Europe, and the Caribbean. —Matthew Everett
CALENDAR Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE BUDDY HONEYCUTT TRIO • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE JACK’D UP • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 10PM MODOC WITH BIG COUNTRY’S EMPTY BOTTLE • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. THE MONDAY MOVEMENT • The Square Room • 8PM • After releasing their debut EP and selling out The Square Room in spring 2015, The Monday Movement is back with new songs, new friends and an ever-growing sound they are excited to share with you. • $10-$12 OTT., PLANTRAE, ALIGNING MINDS • The Concourse • 9PM • Presented by Midnight Voyage Productions and WUTK 90.3. 18+ DAVE SLACK TRIO • Pero’s on the Hill • 7PM • Instrumental and vocal jazz standards. SLIPPERY WHEN WET: THE ULTIMATE BON JOVI TRIBUTE • The International • 8PM • 18+ MIKE SNODGRASS • Bearden Field House • 9PM • FREE SOULFINGER • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM • Funk, soul, and R&B. • FREE THREE STAR REVIVAL • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM VANKALE WITH KILLING GRACE, BELFAST 6 PACK, AND TRANSPARENT SOUL • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 7PM • All ages. • $8 Saturday, Sept. 26 THE AFRO-DISIACS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • A 10 piece Disco/Funk band playing music by James Brown, Earth Wind and Fire, Michael Jackson and many more classic artists. Featuring members of the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra, Shifty and the Headmasters, Baseball (The Band) and Big Pink. JESSE BLACK WITH LA ORQUESTA D’JAIME BONILLA • 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 MARK BOLING • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE THE BURNIN’ HERMANS • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 & up. CLOCKWORK ANGELS • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 9PM • A local tribute to Rush. MATT FOSTER • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM THE GRAHAMS • The Bowery • 8PM • Alyssa and Doug Graham have spent nearly their entire lives exploring music together. Friends since she was 7 and he was 9, they became a couple in their teens, then husband and wife. Somewhere along the way, they also became The Grahams, a dynamic Americana duo who’ve married their love of adventure with a desire to build on foundations laid by their musical predecessors. 18 and up. • $10-$15 GROOVE JUNCTION • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM • FREE THE JAILHOUSE REVIEW • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 10PM JELLY ROLL: HANGOVERS AND HOT CHICKEN TOUR • The Concourse • 9PM • With Alex King. 18+. • $10 DALE JETT AND HELLO STRANGER • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Hello Stranger includes Dale, his wife Teresa, and long time friend Oscar Harris. Singer and musician Dale Jett is a native of Southwest Virginia. The son of Janette Carter and the grandson of A.P. and Sara Carter. Dale and Oscar have been musical partners and friends for over twenty years. Teresa joined them a few years back and the three have been playing and recording together ever since. The Carter Family influence is evident as they continue the unbroken circle of music that Dale grew up with. • $13-$14 KELSEY’S WOODS WITH HANDSOME AND THE HUMBLES •
The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson (Maryville) • 8 p.m. • FREE IRINA KULIKOVA • Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan • 7PM • Presented by the Knoxville Guitar Society. • $20 MARBLE CITY SHOOTERS • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine Lounge • 7PM PLANKEYE PEGGY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up. THE RERUNS • Pero’s on the Hill • 7PM • Knoxville’s premier TV band plays your favorite television themes. • BEN SHUSTER • Bearden Field House • 9PM • FREE TANNAHILL WEAVERS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE Sunday, Sept. 27 THE BROCKEFELLERS • Barley’s Taproom & Pizzeria • 8PM ALBERT CASTIGLIA • Barley’s Taproom & Pizzeria (Maryville) • 6PM • $6-$20 LABRON LAZENBY AND THE BLUES EXPRESS • Ijams Nature Center • 5PM • Knoxville’s premier bluesman brings his band to the “Ijams Has the Blues” outdoor series. • $5 SHIFFLETT AND HANNAH • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. • FREE DAVE SLACK TRIO • Pero’s on the Hill • 1PM • Live jazz. SUNDAY JAZZ BRUNCH • Downtown Grill and Brewery • 12:45PM • Knoxville’s coolest jazz artists perform every Sunday. • FREE SOFIA TALVIK • Preservation Pub • 10PM • Monday, Sept. 28 THE BLUEPRINT • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Local pianist Keith Brown’s cool jazz combo. CHOIR BANG WITH NOX YORC • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. • $3 SOFIA TALVIK WITH YOUNG VALLEY • 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 Tuesday, Sept. 29 DOPAPOD THE NTH POWER • The Concourse • 7PM • Presented by Midnight Voyage Productions. 18+. • $12 KERCHIEF WITH IN THE WHALE • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. • $3 PALE ROOT • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • See Music Story on page 22. SAVANNAH VALENTINO WITH PIRATES CANOE • 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 Wednesday, Sept. 30 JOHN D’AMATO • Longbranch Saloon • 10PM 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 HART STRINGS • 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 THE CHUCK MULLICAN JAZZ BONANZA • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE ONWARD, ETC. WITH THE GHOST PINES, AMERICAN OPERA, AND THE NEW APOLOGETIC • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • A lineup of three acts from the 2015 Warped Tour. All ages. • $8-$10 STRYPLEPOP WITH YAK STRANGLER • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. • $3 TENNESSEE SHINES: THE HILLBENDERS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7PM • Award-winning crowd favorites The HillBenders will perform “Tommy: A Bluegrass Opry” LIVE on our show! The September 24, 2015
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 27
CALENDAR all-star band’s latest record is a spectacular bluegrass breakdown of The Who’s classic album. • $10 Thursday, Oct. 1 GENERATION OF VIPERS WITH BASK AND O’POSSUM • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM All ages. • $8 CALEB HAWLEY • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM THE LACS • Cotton Eyed Joe • 9PM $10 MARBLE CITY SHOOTERS • Market Square • 7PM • FREE MUDDY RUCKUS • Scruffy City Hall • 8PM • FREE SHIMMY AND THE BURNS WITH LAUREN FARRAH AND THE SINGING BUTCHER • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. • $3 THE SHOTGUN RUBIES • 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 THE THIRST QUENCHERS • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine Lounge • 8PM • The Ps and Qs house band. WORDS LIKE DAGGERS WITH FOREVER AND NEVER • Longbranch Saloon • 9PM Friday, Oct. 2 ARMAGEDDON WITH ASCENSION, SCENT OF REMAINS, AND A MARCH THROUGH MAY • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Melodic death metal legion Armageddon, featuring former Arch Enemy guitarist Christopher Amott, will be touting tunes from their Captivity & Devourment full-length, issued earlier this year via Listenable Records. BETTER DAZE • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 10PM THE BLACK LILLIES WITH MARGO AND THE PRICE TAGS AND ELECTRIC DARLING • MARKET SQUARE • 5 P.M. • The Black Lillies recorded their new album, Hard to Please, in
Thursday, Sept. 24 - Sunday, Oct. 4
Nashville with producer Ryan Hewitt (Avett Brothers, Johnny Cash), recruiting a handful of ace session players, including Band of Horses bassist Bill Reynolds and guitarist Daniel Donato. Hewitt’s mantra was “tougher and tighter,” as they plugged away to work out the best studio takes. And the results exemplify that hard work, from the sizzling chamber-folk of “Broken Shore,” a song Lillies frontman Cruz Contreras wrote about his grandfather, a World War II veteran at Iwo Jima, to the soaring hard-rock guitar-solo coda of “That’s the Way It Goes Down.” The band will celebrate the release date with a free show at Market Square on Friday, Oct. 2—the perfect low-key end to a turbulent half-year for the band. • FREE THE BLIND OWL BAND WITH KEVIN GORDON • 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 EMANCIPATOR ENSEMBLE, WAX TAILOR • The International • 9PM • Midnight Voyage LIVE: Presented By Midnight Voyage Productions & WUTK 90.3. 18+. • $17-$20 FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE HARBOR WITH STEPFATHERS • Longbranch Saloon • 9PM J. LUKE • Bearden Field House • 9PM • FREE MISS TESS AND THE TALKBACKS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE THE MOUNTAIN GOATS • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • The Mountain Goats began life in a Norwalk employee-housing studio apartment that had awesome deco tiling on the bathroom floor but little more to recommend the
Recognizing the unique and valuable contributions of Southern Appalachian culture
the 2015
Appalachian Lecture Series AT MARYVILLE COLLEGEI
OPEN MIC AND SONGWRITER NIGHTS
Thursday, Sept. 24 SCOTTISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Held on the second and fourth Thursdays of each month. • FREE Friday, Sept. 25 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
Lambert Recital Hall Clayton Center for the Arts
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Based on the recently published book, “The Civil War Along Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau,” by Dr. Aaron Astor, Maryville College Associate Professor of History. For more information, call 865.981.8241. Dr. Astor will sell and sign copies of his book ($20) following the lecture.
KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 24, 2015
Saturday, Oct. 3 JOHN CALVIN ABNEY AND LEVI PARHAM • 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 ALL THE LITTLE PIECES • Longbranch Saloon • 9PM CYPHER: A HIP-HOP SHOW • The Birdhouse • 9PM • Open mic for the first half of the night, then two featured artists to close out the night. 18 and up. • $5
MATT FOSTER • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up. • FREE FOUR LEAF PEAT • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • Knoxville’s finest purveyors of traditional Irish music. • FREE FULL METAL OCTOBER • The Bowery • 9PM • Featuring Belfast 6 Pack, Bent to Break, Farewell to Kings, and Shadowed Self. • $5-$9 NUTHIN’ FANCY • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 10PM PAGEANT • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. THE RERUNS • Pero’s on the Hill • 7PM • Knoxville’s premier TV band plays your favorite television themes. THE ROYAL BANGS WITH ZACH AND KOTA’S SWEET LIFE • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM BEN SHUSTER • Bearden Field House • 9PM • FREE SPACEFACE • Scruffy City Hall • 10PM • Psychedelic jams.
Sept. 29 7 p.m.
“No Man’s Land: The Civil War Along Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau”
28
place as a living space. Still, you take what you can get, and it was ridiculously cheap. In this room, equipped with a dual-cassette recorder, John D. started setting some of his poetry to music, using a guitar he’d gotten for a few bucks at a nearby strip mall music store. His idea at the time was that eventually his day job would be “poet.” Young men have all kinds of crazy ideas about what they’re going to end up doing for a living. • $20 ANNA ROBERTS-GEVALT AND ELIZABETH LAPRELLE • Laurel Theater • 8PM • $13-$14 SELUAH • Preservation Pub • 8PM • Seluah (members of Rachel’s, Boom Bip, People Noise) perform at Preservation Pub Oct. 2 in support of its new album, Phase III. 21 and up. DAVE SLACK TRIO • Pero’s on the Hill • 7PM • Instrumental and vocal jazz standards. IAN THOMAS AND THE BAND OF DRIFTERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM JONATHAN TYLER • The Bowery • 9PM • $7-$10 THE VIBRASLAPS • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. • $5 WRAY WITH OFFING • Pilot Light • 10PM • $5
DEFEND YOUR FREADOM
All Banned Books 10% off During Banned Book Week! Union Ave Books 517 Union Ave Knoxville, TN 37902 865.951.2180 www.unionavebooks.com
Thursday, Sept. 24 - Sunday, Oct. 4
Sunday, Sept. 27 IRISH MUSIC SESSION • Clancy’s Tavern and Whiskey House • 2PM Tuesday, Sept. 29 PRESERVATION PUB SINGER/SONGWRITER NIGHT • Preservation Pub • 7PM • A weekly open mic. OLD-TIME JAM SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Hosted by Sarah Pickle. • FREE KNOXVILLE SONGWRITER SLAM • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Come and compete for prizes and glory at the first every Knoxville Poetry Slam Singer Songwriter Slam. Bring one musical instrument. 3 original songs under 4 minutes in length. You will perform your song, and 5 random judges from the audience will give you a score between 1 and 10. Highest scoring musicians will move on. Wednesday, Sept. 30 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. BRACKINS BLUES JAM • Brackins Blues Club • 9PM • A weekly open session hosted by Tommie John. • FREE
CALENDAR
Mansions Above,” “In His Care-O,” “God’s on Your Side,” “Give Me Jesus” and “Nothing is Impossible.” Also on the program are arias and duets from “Show Boat,” “Porgy and Bess,” “Tosca,” “Faust” and the opera “Mefistofele.” • FREE OAK RIDGE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA • Oak Ridge High School • 7:30PM • If variety really is the spice of life, music lovers will especially enjoy the 71st season of the Oak Ridge Civic Music Association for 2015-2016 because music director Dan Allcott has planned a season of Baroque to Modern, American Salute to English Invasion and more. The season opener will include Haydn’s Symphony no. 104 “London” performed by the Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra. Then Oak Ridge Chorus will join the symphony in singing Handel’s Coronation Anthem “Zadok the Priest” which will be directed by Seth Maples, the chorus conductor. Also, Wesley Baldwin will perform Elgar’s Cello concerto. Sunday, Sept. 27 KSO CHAMBER CLASSICS: CHAVEZ AND SCHUBERT • Bijou Theatre • 2:30PM • Led by Resident Conductor James Fellenbaum, the Chamber Orchestra will perform Mendelssohn’s Overture to the Hebrides and Weber’s Concerto No. 2 in E-flat Major, featuring Victor Chavez, who is an Assistant Professor of Clarinet at the University of Tennessee. The program will conclude with Schubert’s Symphony No. 2.
DJ AND DANCE NIGHTS THEATER AND DANCE Friday, Sept. 25 RETRO DANCE NIGHT • Hanna’s Old City • 9PM • 80s and Top 40 hits with DJ Ray Funk. Saturday, Sept. 26 RETRO DANCE NIGHT • Hanna’s Old City • 9PM • 80s and Top 40 hits with DJ Ray Funk. Sunday, Sept. 27 LAYOVER BRUNCH • The Concourse • 12PM • Brunch food by Localmotive. Music on the patio. Presented by Midnight Voyage Productions. All ages. • FREE Friday, Oct. 2 RETRO DANCE NIGHT • Hanna’s Old City • 9PM • 80s and Top 40 hits with DJ Ray Funk. Saturday, Oct. 3 TEMPLE DANCE NIGHT • The Concourse • 9PM • Knoxville’s long-running alternative dance night. 18 and up. • $5 RETRO DANCE NIGHT • Hanna’s Old City • 9PM • 80s and Top 40 hits with DJ Ray Funk. Sunday, Oct. 4 LAYOVER BRUNCH • The Concourse • 12PM • Brunch food By Localmotive. Music on the patio. Presented by Midnight Voyage Productions. All ages. • FREE
CLASSICAL MUSIC
Friday, Sept. 25 GUSTAVO ROMERO: SCHUBERT PROGRAM THREE • University of Tennessee Natalie L. Haslam Music Center • 8PM • Gustavo Romero, internationally renowned pianist and recording artist, presents the third of three piano recitals dedicated to the works of Franz Schubert. • FREE Saturday, Sept. 26 KNOXVILLE OPERA GOES TO CHURCH … A CELEBRATION OF TALENT • Fifth Avenue Baptist Church • 3:30PM • A mix of gospel and opera performed by local and guest artists, selections include: “We Fill the Sanctuary,” “In Bright
Thursday, Sept. 24 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: THE LITTLE MERMAID • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 7PM • In a magical underwater kingdom, the beautiful young mermaid Ariel longs to leave her ocean home - and her fins - behind and live in the world above. But first she’ll have to defy her father King Triton, make a deal with the evil sea witch Ursula, and convince the handsome Prince Eric that she’s the girl whose enchanting voice he’s been seeking. Sept. 18-Oct. 4. Visit www.childrenstheatreknoxville.com. • $12 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. Sept. 9-27. Visit clarencebrowntheatre.com. THE WORDPLAYERS: WALKING ACROSS EGYPT • Erin Presbyterian Church • 7:30PM • 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. Sept. 17-27. Visit 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 Friday, Sept. 25 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: THE LITTLE MERMAID • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 7PM • Sept. 18-Oct. 4. Visit www.childrenstheatreknoxville.com. • $12
CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: THE 39 STEPS • Clarence Brown Theatre • 2PM and 7:30PM • A hilarious, high-speed spoof of Alfred Hitchcock’s silver-screen classic. THE WORDPLAYERS: WALKING ACROSS EGYPT • Erin Presbyterian Church • 7:30PM • A comedy adapted by Catherine Bush from the novel by Clyde Edgerton. • $10-$15 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: THE MURDER ROOM • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • A zany spoof of British mysteries. • $15 Saturday, Sept. 26 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: THE LITTLE MERMAID • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 1PM and 5PM • Sept. 18-Oct. 4. Visit www.childrenstheatreknoxville.com. • $12 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: THE 39 STEPS • Clarence Brown Theatre • 2PM and 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. • $15 Sunday, Sept. 27 SQUAWK THE SHOW • The Grove Theater (Oak Ridge) • 3PM and 6PM • These feathered professionals have more going for them than just their good looks. No boring lectures here, these birds will amaze you with their unusual talents such as painting, mind reading, performing card tricks, solving math problems and so much more. The show is quick-paced, written for adults and loved by all ages. Visit knoxvilletickets.com. KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: THE LITTLE MERMAID • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 3PM • Sept. 18-Oct. 4. Visit www.childrenstheatreknoxville.com. • $12 THE WORDPLAYERS: WALKING ACROSS EGYPT • Erin Presbyterian Church • 2:30PM • A comedy adapted by Catherine Bush from the novel by Clyde Edgerton. • $10-$15 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: THE MURDER ROOM • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 3PM • A zany spoof of British mysteries. • $13 Tuesday, Sept. 29 BROADWAY AT THE TENNESSEE: THE ILLUSIONISTS • Tennessee Theatre • 7:30PM • The Illusionists has shattered box office records worldwide and thrilled audiences of all ages with a mind-blowing spectacular showcasing the jaw-dropping talents of five of the most incredible illusionists on earth. • $37-$77 Wednesday, Sept. 30 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘OF MICE AND MEN’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • This classic follows two migrant workers during the 1930s dustbowl depression who drift from job to job across the farms and fields of California, holding fast to their friendship and dream of one day having an acre of land they can call their own. Sept. 30-Oct. 18. BROADWAY AT THE TENNESSEE: THE ILLUSIONISTS • Tennessee Theatre • 7:30PM • $37-$77 Thursday, Oct. 1 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: THE LITTLE MERMAID • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 3PM • Sept. 18-Oct. 4. Visit www.childrenstheatreknoxville.com. • $12 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘OF MICE AND MEN’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • Sept. 30-Oct. 18. BROADWAY AT THE TENNESSEE: THE ILLUSIONISTS • Tennessee Theatre • 7:30PM • $37-$77 MARYVILLE COLLEGE THEATRE: DANGEROUS DISTORTIONS • Clayton Center for the Arts (Maryville) • 8PM • For Maryville College Theatre’s fall main stage production, guest artist Doug James will direct two one-act plays: “Stonewater September 24, 2015
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 29
CALENDAR Raptureâ€? by Doug Wright and “The Most Massive Woman Winsâ€? by Madeleine George. Oct. 1-4. Visit www. claytonartscenter.com. • $10 Friday, Oct. 2 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: THE LITTLE MERMAID • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 3PM • Sept. 18-Oct. 4. Visit www.childrenstheatreknoxville.com. • $12 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘OF MICE AND MEN’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • Sept. 30-Oct. 18. MARYVILLE COLLEGE THEATRE: DANGEROUS DISTORTIONS • Clayton Center for the Arts (Maryville) • 8PM • Oct. 1-4. Visit www.claytonartscenter.com. • $10 Saturday, Oct. 3 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: THE LITTLE MERMAID • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 1PM and 5PM • Sept. 18-Oct. 4. Visit www.childrenstheatreknoxville.com. • $12 OAK RIDGE PLAYHOUSE: THE ADVENTURES OF NATE THE GREAT • Oak Ridge Playhouse • 1PM and 4PM • Who is Nate the Great? Why, he is none other than the sharpest kid detective ever to solve his neighborhood’s mysteries! Oct. 3-4. Visit orplayhouse.com. CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘OF MICE AND MEN’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • Sept. 30-Oct. 18. MARYVILLE COLLEGE THEATRE: DANGEROUS DISTORTIONS • Clayton Center for the Arts (Maryville) • 8PM • Oct. 1-4. Visit www.claytonartscenter.com. • $10 Sunday, Oct. 4 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: THE LITTLE MERMAID • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 3PM • Sept. 18-Oct. 4. Visit
Thursday, Sept. 24 - Sunday, Oct. 4
www.childrenstheatreknoxville.com. • $12 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘OF MICE AND MEN’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 2PM • Sept. 30-Oct. 18. MARYVILLE COLLEGE THEATRE: DANGEROUS DISTORTIONS • Clayton Center for the Arts (Maryville) • 2PM • Oct. 1-4. Visit www.claytonartscenter.com. • $10 OAK RIDGE PLAYHOUSE: THE ADVENTURES OF NATE THE GREAT • Oak Ridge Playhouse • 2PM • Oct. 3-4. Visit orplayhouse.com.
COMEDY AND SPOKEN WORD
Friday, Sept. 25 RODNEY CARRINGTON • Knoxville Civic Coliseum • 7PM • Rodney Carrington is a multi-talented comedian, actor, singer and writer who recorded eight major record label comedy albums, which have sold millions of copies. Rodney recently released two new albums on his brand new record label called Laughter’s Good Records. • $27-$188 Saturday, Sept. 26 MIKE SUPER • Niswonger Performing Arts Center (Greenville) • 7:30PM • Through spectacular illusions and his own inimitable down-to-earth style and personality, Mike Super has pioneered a new form of magic that transcends the “trickâ€?. Sunday, Sept. 27
UPSTAIRS UNDERGROUND COMEDY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A weekly comedy open mic. Monday, Sept. 28 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. Free, but donations are gladly accepted. • FREE Tuesday, Sept. 29 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 • Einstein Simplified Comedy performs live comedy improv at Scruffy City Hall. It’s just like Whose Line Is It Anyway, but you get to make the suggestions. Show starts at 8:15, get there early for the best seats. No cover. • FREE Wednesday, Sept. 30 JULIA PRESCOTT’S “PLEASE LAUGH THIS IS FOR MY ALBUMâ€? TOUR • Pilot Light • 8PM • LA stand-up comedian Julia Prescott is touring the country performing comedy and
IF YOUR NEIGHBOR SMOKES, SO DO YOU. Come dive at the
Philadelphia Qua y this Sunday, Sept. 27, 10am
Secondhand smoke can get into your home from other dwellings, common areas, doorways, cracks in the walls, electrical lines, plumbing, and ventilation systems and there’s NO SUCH THING as a “safe� level of exposure. For information on how to go smoke-free where you live, call the Knox County Health Department at 865-215-5170.
and join us for hot dogs afterwards!
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KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 24, 2015
recording material for her album. • $8
FESTIVALS
Thursday, Sept. 24 MYSTICAL ARTS OF TIBET: SAND MANDALA • McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture • 9AM • Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery will conduct a mandala sand painting in the museum’s Native Peoples of Tennessee gallery beginning Tuesday, September 22, 2015 and concluding on Friday, September 25, 2015. Specific times for the opening and closing ceremonies will be announced at a later date. Though this event is free and open to the public, groups must make reservations by calling (865)974-2144. • FREE Friday, Sept. 25 ART FAIR KMA 2015 • Knoxville Museum of Art • 6PM • The Guild of the Knoxville Museum of Art presents Art Fair KMA 2015 September 25-27. This second annual event raises funds to support the museum and presents art for sale by artists from the region and across the United States. Friday, September 25: A Vernissage/ Opening Preview and Sale takes place from 6 to 9pm. This gala event includes a cocktail party, silent auction, and VIP access to art for sale. Tickets are $95 per person and may be purchased online at knoxart.org/events/ art-fair-kma.html. Saturday, September 26 & Sunday, September 27: The Art Fair takes place the following Saturday (10am-6pm) and Sunday (12noon-4pm) and is free and open to the public. For more information, visit
Thursday, Sept. 24 - Sunday, Oct. 4
www.knoxart.org or email artfairkma@gmail.com. • $95 MYSTICAL ARTS OF TIBET: SAND MANDALA • McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture • 9AM • Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery will conduct a mandala sand painting in the museum’s Native Peoples of Tennessee gallery beginning Tuesday, September 22, 2015 and concluding on Friday, September 25, 2015. • FREE 36TH ANNUAL GREEKFEST • St. George Greek Orthodox Church • 11AM • Despite a fire in April that destroyed the interior of the church, the festival celebrating Greek culture returns! Features include authentic Greek food and pastries, live music, traditional Greek dancing and costumes, and shopping. The popular a la carte menu includes traditional favorites such as roast lamb, gyro, souvlaki, pastichio, spanakopita, Greek salad, Greek pizza and saganaki. Inside you will find delicious, homemade Greek pastries. Children 12-under are free. • $2 FARRAGUT FOOD FESTIVAL • Renaissance Farragut • 6:30PM • A festival of food, drink and fun from some of Farragut’s most popular restaurants. Visit www. farragutbusiness.com/events. • $25-$35 FALL FESTIVAL AND OLD TIMERS DAY • Townsend Visitor’s Center • The Fall Festival and Old Timers day at the Townsend Visitors Center celebrates the traditional music, crafts, Appalachian skills, and heritage of Townsend, East Tennessee, and the Great Smoky Mountains. Saturday, Sept. 26 ART FAIR KMA 2015 • Knoxville Museum of Art • 10AM • This second annual event raises funds to support the museum and presents art for sale by artists from the region and across the United States. Visitors can enjoy individual artist booths featuring original art, free art and craft activities for children, and free photo booth. For more information, visit www.knoxart.org or email artfairkma@gmail.com. • FREE THE SALAMANDER BALL • Knoxville Zoo • 6:30PM • If you’ve ever marveled at the depth, breadth, or beauty of wildlife in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, you are invited to one of the region’s premiere fundraising events that directly supports conservation and science. This family friendly evening encourages you to dress as your favorite Smokies critter and join the staff and board of Discover Life in America (and a few surprise guests!) to celebrate the wondrous biodiversity in GSMNP. This event is for adults and children of all ages! • $75 BIERFEST 2015: PINTS FOR PRESERVATION • Central Flats and Taps • 5PM • Bierfest is an outdoor beer festival featuring 14 local and regional breweries; each brewery offering a variety of specialty beers. 100% of net proceeds will be donated to Knox Heritage. Please purchase tickets online at www.knoxheritage.org or in person at Central Flats & Taps. For more information, visit www. knoxheritage.org. • $25-$50 36TH ANNUAL GREEKFEST • St. George Greek Orthodox Church • 11AM • The festival celebrating Greek culture returns! • $2 FALL FESTIVAL AND OLD TIMERS DAY • Townsend Visitor’s Center • The Fall Festival and Old Timers day at the Townsend Visitors Center celebrates the traditional music, crafts, Appalachian skills, and heritage of Townsend, East Tennessee, and the Great Smoky Mountains. HOLA FESTIVAL • Market Square • The HoLa Festival is a celebration of Hispanic culture and features Hispanic music, dance, food, and other cultural entertainment. The event, that will take place at Market Square in downtown Knoxville, is open to the public without charge and parking in the adjacent city parking lots will be free. • FREE
CALENDAR
HAPPY HOLLERPALOOZA STREET FAIR • Happy Holler • 12PM • North Central Street will be blocked off from Baxter Avenue to Scott Street to provide the people of Knoxville a chance to party in Happy Holler and see all that the area has to offer. This is a family friendly event offering free music, free parking and free admission. Bring everyone you know to enjoy food, handmade crafts, wares, artwork, jewelry and simply wonderful stuff from local vendors. Come dance in the streets and while you’re in the area check out the stores of Happy Holler, because there is certainly something for everyone. • FREE LOUIE BLUIE MUSIC AND ARTS FESTIVAL • Cove Lake State Park • 10AM • Bluegrass and blues come together at the ninth annual Louie Bluie Music & Arts Festival. The festival’s variety of musical styles convey East Tennessee’s rich musical tradition and honor the adventurous, pioneering spirit of festival namesake Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong (1909-2003), who spent his early youth in LaFollette and became a world-renowned musician and artist. For more information, visit LouieBluie.org. • FREE Sunday, Sept. 27 ART FAIR KMA 2015 • Knoxville Museum of Art • 12PM • This second annual event raises funds to support the museum and presents art for sale by artists from the region and across the United States. Visitors can enjoy individual artist booths featuring original art, free art and craft activities for children, and free photo booth. For more information, visit www.knoxart.org or email artfairkma@gmail.com. • FREE OLD GRAY LANTERN AND CARRIAGE TOUR • Old Gray Cemetery • 4PM • Carriage rides and family fun as reenactors tell the story of Landmarks at Old Gray Cemetery. • $10 36TH ANNUAL GREEKFEST • St. George Greek Orthodox Church • 11AM • The festival celebrating Greek culture returns! • $2 HOLA FESTIVAL • Market Square • The HoLa Festival is a celebration of Hispanic culture and features Hispanic music, dance, food, and other cultural entertainment. The event, that will take place at Market Square in downtown Knoxville, is open to the public without charge and parking in the adjacent city parking lots will be free. • FREE
FILM SCREENINGS
Thursday, Sept. 24 EAST TENNESSEE PBS OPEN STUDIOS • East Tennessee PBS • 6:30PM • Join us for this year’s East Tennessee PBS Studios Open House. Public television members, supporters and the general public are invited to tour our station, meet their favorite local show hosts and learn about the exciting and successful educational initiatives occurring across the state as we recognize the hard work of our American Graduate Champions. • FREE Friday, Sept. 25 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 TERRARIUM’ • Striped Light • 8PM • A skateboard film by Cal Travis Oaks, with records being spun by Nathan Moses from Lost and Found Records. Food available from Good Golly Tamale. • See Program Notes on page 20. Monday, Sept. 28 THE BIRDHOUSE WALK-IN THEATER • The Birdhouse • 8:15PM • A weekly free movie screening. • FREE
Tuesday, Sept. 29 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 Wednesday, Sept. 30 SCRUFFY CITY CINE-PUB • Scruffy City Hall • 7PM • Free Wednesday movie screenings. • FREE Sunday, Oct. 4 THE PUBLIC CINEMA: VOILÀ L’ENCHAÎNEMENT • Knoxville Museum of Art • 2PM • Voilà l’enchaînement is a series of monologues and conversations performed by Norah Krief and Alex Descas, who portray a mixed-race couple whose relationship begins, welcomes children, and disintegrates violently, all within the span of thirty minutes. Formally, it’s unlike anything director Claire Denis has done before. Voilà l’enchaînement is a bitter and pensive exploration of commonplace racism. With Matías Piñeiro’s short film “The Princess of France.” • FREE
SPORTS AND RECREATION
Thursday, Sept. 24 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 Saturday, Sept. 26 WALK TO END ALZHEIMER’S • University of Tennessee • 8AM • The Annual Walk to End Alzheimer’s will take place at the University of Tennessee campus on Sept. 26 at 8 a.m. Participants will enjoy walk activities and have a fun morning. Proceeds from this event go toward research, local support groups, 24/7 Helpline (800-272-3900), and educational programs. POKER RIDE FOR WHISKERS AND PAWS • Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson • 11AM • A benefit motorcycle ride for AnimalWorks. • $25 MOONLIGHT HIKE • University of Tennessee Arboretum • 7:30PM • The University of Tennessee Arboretum Society presents a “Moonlight Hike.” The 1.5-mile hike will begin at the Visitors Center near the parking lot. Participants can listen for owls and other night creatures as they journey through the woods. A telescope will be available for anyone who wants a closer look at the night sky. Note: This event is limited to participants age 10 and older. • $5 SMOKY MOUNTAIN HIKING CLUB FAMILY HIKE: DOUBLE SPRINGS GAP • Smoky Mountain Hiking Club • 8AM • Held trail-wide on National Public Lands Day, Family Hiking Day is an opportunity to introduce children to America’s premier footpath and all of the benefits that come from being active and spending time outdoors. Hike: 6.4 miles, rated moderate due to climb over Mt. Buckley on the return. Meet at Comcast on Asheville Highway ready to depart at 8 AM or at the Sugarlands Visitors Center--near restrooms--at 9 AM. Leader: Cindy Spangler, spangler@ utk.edu. • FREE KTC BIG SOUTH FORK TRAIL RACE • Big South Fork • 8:30AM • One of the most well-respected trail races in the east, the Big South Fork Trail Race has attracted avid trail runners from throughout the region. Since its inception in the mid-1990’s, Race Director Bobby Glenn has presented a trail racing classic suitable for hardcore ultra
Open Chord®
Live
Knoxville’s BEST live music venue 6 nights a week! THURSDAY Sept. 24 8pm / $8
Gloom, Illustrious, & I Divine ( DOOM METAL )
FRIDAY Sept. 25 7pm / $8
Vankale, Killing Grace, Belfast 6 Pack & Transparent Soul ( METAL )
SATURDAY Sept. 26 • 9pm / $10 Clockwork Angels ( RUSH TRIBUTE )
8502 KINGSTON PIKE (865) 281-5874 openchordmusic.com
September 24, 2015
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 31
CALENDAR enthusiasts as well as road runners looking for a challenging introduction to off road running.
Thursday, Sept. 24 - Sunday, Oct. 4
add a pint and a pizza. • FREE
Sunday, Sept. 27 SMOKY MOUNTAIN HIKING CLUB: STONE HOUSE • Smoky Mountain Hiking Club • 8:30AM • This hike follows the Old Sugarlands Trail from the Visitor Center for about 2 miles, and then 1.3 miles off-trail via traces of old roads to the “recently rediscovered” Stone House on Big Branch in the upper Sugarlands Valley. Meet at Comcast on Asheville Highway at 8:30 or the Old Sugarlands Trailhead at 9:30. Hike 6.6 miles, elevation gain 700FT. Rated easy although a rock-hop across Big Branch is necessary to visit the house. Leader: Bob Hawthorne, rehawthorne@comcast.net. • FREE Monday, Sept. 28 EAST TENNESSEE KIDNEY FOUNDATION VOLS FOR KIDNEYS GOLF CLASSIC • Cherokee Country Club • 10AM • Former University of Tennessee football players will join the third annual East Tennessee Kidney Foundation “Vols for Kidneys” Golf Classic. The winning team will be awarded a $100 Cherokee Country Club gift card for each team member. Registration is open through Wednesday, Sept. 23 and costs $800 per team or $200 per person. To register, call 865-288-7351 or email katie@etkidney.org. All proceeds will benefit the East Tennessee Kidney Foundation. Tax-deductible donations are accepted online at http://www.etkidney.org. Tuesday, Sept. 29 WHOLE FOODS GAME NIGHT • Whole Foods • 6PM • Join us for everything from Candy Land to chess, and feel free to
ART
A1LabArts 23 Emory Place OCT. 2-16: Chakra Windows, the fall member exhibit, featuring artwork by Preston Farabow, Doris Ivie, Norman Magden, Seva, and more. An opening reception will be held on Friday, Oct. 2, from 6-10 p.m., with presentations and performances by the artists starting at 8 p.m. A closing reception will be held on Friday, Oct. 16, from 6-9 p.m. Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts 556 Parkway (Gatlinburg) AUG. 29-OCT. 31: Materialities: Contemporary Textile Art; SEPT. 11-NOV. 7: Time, a collaborative exhibit of ceramic work by Blair Clemo and Jason Hackett. Art Market Gallery 422 S. Gay St. SEPT. 28-NOV. 1: Paintings by Marie Merritt and pottery by Millie Derrick. An opening reception will be held on Friday, Oct. 2, from 5:30-9 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. By appointment. Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge 461 W. Outer Drive SEPT. 5-OCT. 1: Five Corners, photographs and mixed-media work by Marta Goebel-Pietrasz and Pat Clapsaddle. 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. OCT. 2-31: Artwork by sculptor and installation artist Lorrie Fredette and painter Larry Brown. An opening reception will be held on Friday, Oct. 2, from 5-9 p.m. East Tennessee History Center 601 S. Gay St. APRIL 27-OCT. 18: Memories of the Blue and Gray: The
Blessing of the Animals
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. OCT. 2-30: Tennessee Artists Association Fall Juried Show; Tennessee River: Gem of the South, photographs by Ron Lowery; sculpture by Anna Wszyndybyl; Letters From Vietnam Project; Vols: A 25-Year Retrospective, photographs by Patrick Murphy-Racey. An opening reception will be held on Friday, Oct. 2, 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. Ewing Gallery 1715 Volunteer Blvd. AUG. 24-SEPT. 25: Selections from the Ewing Gallery Permanent Collection. 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.
Knoxville’s First Escape Game
Sunday, September 27 3 p.m. in the Courtyard Join us as we celebrate our faithful companions in the tradition of St. Francis of Assisi and his great love for all God’s creatures.
Business
Product awareness
Company goodwill
Two Rooms Open
r’s
sso The Profe Challenge
There’s never been a better time to “go public.”
T he
Casino Heis
t
Coming Soon!
Knoxville Wall To Wall
900 Henley at Main Across from the Convention Center www.churchstreetumc.org 32
KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 24, 2015
WUOT_Ad_5.5x4.25_WhyWUOT_KnoxMerc.indd 1
9/7/15 9:52 AM
Book Tickets NOW WhichWayOutKnoxville.com 6909 Kingston Pike | (865) 540-3800 (One Block West Of P.F. Changs)
Wed. - Sun. | Book Tickets Online
Thursday, Sept. 24 - Sunday, Oct. 4
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. By appointment Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church 2931 Kingston Pike SEPT. 11-DEC. 3: An exhibit of artwork by TVUUC members.
LECTURES, READINGS, AND BOOK SIGNINGS
Thursday, Sept. 24 ERIC CLINE: “1177 B.C.: THE YEAR CIVILIZATION COLLAPSED” • University of Tennessee • 7:30PM • The first of eight 2015-16 lectures sponsored by the local chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America. Held in the Lindsay Young Auditorium at the University of Tennessee’s John C. Hodges Library. • FREE Friday, Sept. 25 UT SCIENCE FORUM • Thompson-Boling Arena • 12PM • The Science Forum is a weekly brown-bag lunch series that allows professors and area scientists to discuss their research with the general public in a conversational presentation. For more information about the UT Science Forum, visit http://scienceforum.utk.edu. • FREE ROBERT B. CHURCH III MEMORIAL ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN LECTURE SERIES • University of Tennessee Art and Architecture Building • 5:30PM • Internationally recognized architects and designers will visit the University of Tennessee this year to talk about the latest ideas in the field during the Robert B. Church III Memorial Lecture Series. The series, which is free and open to the public, features lectures, films and exhibits. • FREE Monday, Sept. 28 AN EVENING WITH DAVID MADDEN • Carson-Newman University • 7PM • Madden’s 1974 novel, Bijou, an explicit coming-of-age novel with the Gay Street landmark as its hub, is set in a thinly disguised downtown Knoxville, it’s at turns hilarious and appalling, as it follows the adventures of precocious 13-year-old Lucius Hutchfield, a thinly disguised version of David Madden. Though he changed the name of the place to Cherokee, it’s arguably one of the three essential novels about Knoxville, but unlike James Agee’s A Death In the Family and Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree, it’s now out of print. Part of the Carson-Newman University Appalachian Cultural Center’s 2015 lineup. • FREE CATO CLOWNEY: THE FREEDOM TRUNK • Blount County Public Library • 7PM • Items that were utilized to commit crimes of hatred and intolerance are now, ironically, pieces used to teach inclusiveness and nonviolence. Cato Clowney will give a presentation about the “Freedom
CALENDAR
Trunk” at the library. For further information about library programs or services, call the library at 982-0981 or visit the Web site at www.blountlibrary.org . • FREE Tuesday, Sept. 29 AARON ASTOR: “NO MAN’S LAND: THE CIVIL WAR ALONG TENNESSEE’S CUMBERLAND PLATEAU” • Maryville College • 7PM • Dr. Aaron Astor, Maryville College associate professor of history, will open the College’s 2015 Appalachian Lecture Series with a presentation of his book, The Civil War Along Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau, published earlier this year by The History Press. • FREE Wednesday, Sept. 30 BAKER DISTINGUISHED LECTURE: SECRETARY JOHN SNOW • Howard H. Baker Center for Public Policy • 5:30PM • Snow is the former U.S. secretary of the treasury (2003-2006), CEO of CSX Railroads (1988-2003), and administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. • FREE
FAMILY AND KIDS’ EVENTS
Thursday, Sept. 24 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 • FREE Friday, Sept. 25 SMART TOYS AND BOOKS ART CLASS • Smart Toys and Books • 10AM • Reservations and payment are required in advance. Class fees are non-refundable. Ages 2+. • $10 Saturday, Sept. 26 CHESS AT THE LIBRARY • Blount County Public Library • 10AM • 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. FAMILY FUN DAY: CELEBRATING TIBET • McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture • 1PM • Join us for free a free Family Fun Day featuring activities, crafts, tours, and more. We’ll explore our special exhibit, Embodying Enlightenment: Buddhist Art of the Himalayas. All materials will be provided. The program is free and open to the public. Reservations are not necessary. • FREE Monday, Sept. 28 MUSICAL MORNINGS • Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge • 10AM • This activity is designed for toddlers and their caregivers. Free with paid admission or museum membership. http://childrensmuseumofoakridge.org/ musical-mornings. SMART TOYS AND BOOKS STORYTIME • Smart Toys and Books • 11AM • No charge. No reservations required. • FREE Tuesday, Sept. 29 TODDLERS’ PLAYTIME • Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge • 10AM • Toddlers’ Playtime is designed for children aged 4 and younger, accompanied by their parents, grandparents, or caregivers. Free with paid admission or museum membership. http://childrensmuseumofoakridge.org/ toddlers-playtime.
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 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 Wednesday, Sept. 30 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
CHARITY AND FUNDRAISING
Thursday, Sept. 24 COMMUNITY PARTNERS PINTS FOR A PURPOSE • Little River Trading Co. • 5PM • The next Community Partners Pints for a Purpose will benefit TN Trout Unlimited Trout Camp Kids Adventure Camp. Sponsored by Kuhl Clothing Co. Sweetwater Brewing CO will be the tap sponsor. Food will be offered by the Retro Taco.
CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS
Thursday, Sept. 24 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. BELLY DANCE LEVELS 1 AND 2 • Knox Dance Worx • 8PM • Call (865) 898-2126 or email alexia@ alexia-dance.com. • $12 AARP DRIVER SAFETY COURSE • Asbury Place • 9AM • For more information, call (865) 382-5822. AARP DRIVER SAFETY COURSE • John T. O’Conner Senior Center • 12PM • For more information, call (865) 382-5822. • USING NATIVE PERENNIALS AND SHRUBS IN YOUR NEW PERENNIAL BORDER • Humana Guidance Center • 3:15PM • Extension Master Gardeners Carolyn Kiser and Janie Bitner are advocates for using native plants in your gardens. With them, you will learn the many advantages of using native plants. They will also help you identify some of the beautiful native plants that will not only help showcase your garden but will thrive in our area. Friday, Sept. 25 AARP DRIVER SAFETY COURSE • Asbury Place • 9AM • For more information, call (865) 382-5822. Saturday, Sept. 26 YOGA AT NARROW RIDGE • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 9AM • For more information contact Mitzi Wood-Von Mizener at 865-497-3603 or community@ narrowridge.org. MINDFULNESS IN EVERYDAY LIFE • Cancer Support Community • 10AM • We often place unrealistic expectations on ourselves, on others and on what the future may bring which can lead to disappointment. Mindfulness practice can help us let go of expectations and connect us to the present moment. Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to September 24, 2015
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CALENDAR individuals affected by cancer. COVER CROPS: GREAT WINTER BLANKETS FOR YOUR GARDEN • All Saints Catholic Church • 10:30AM • Join Knox County Extension Master Gardener Marsha Lehman to learn what cover crops are and why to use them. Learn which combination of seeds to plant to give your garden a great winter blanket as well as a kick-start to next spring’s gardening season. • FREE IMPROV COMEDY CLASS • The Birdhouse • 10AM • A weekly improv comedy class. • FREE URBAN LEGEND AND GHOST STORY WORKSHOP • Sundress Academy for the Arts • 1PM • In this workshop, attendees will return to early literary forms by first discussing the versions of the urban legends and ghost stories they remember. By taking inspiration from these old bits of place and superstition, attendees will then learn to assemble new stories about place, identity, and the things that go bump in the night. Tickets are available for only $25 at: https://squareup.com/market/ sundress-publications/ • $25 Monday, Sept. 28 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 5:30PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. Tuesday, Sept. 29 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. COMMUNITY SCHOOL • Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church • 6:30PM • Community School is a free
Thursday, Sept. 24 - Sunday, Oct. 4
three-evening seminar series to learn about the toxic and radioactive waste from Oak Ridge. • FREE
local gay men in a safe and open environment. Visit gaygroupknoxville.org.
EBENEZER ROAD FARMERS’ MARKET • Ebenezer United Methodist Church • 3PM • FREE
MEETINGS
Wednesday, Sept. 30 COMITE POPULAR DE KNOXVILLE • The Birdhouse • 7PM • A weekly meeting of the local immigrant advocacy organization. THE BOOKAHOLICS BOOK GROUP • Union Ave Books • 12PM • Union Ave Books’ monthly book discussion group. • FREE
Wednesday, Sept. 30 MARKET SQUARE FARMERS’ MARKET • Market Square • 11AM • FREE
Thursday, Sept. 24 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 Saturday, Sept. 26 AL-ANON • Faith Lutheran Church • 11AM • Visit our local website at farragutalanon.org or email us at FindHope@ Farragutalanon.org. • FREE Sunday, Sept. 27 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 Monday, Sept. 28 APPALACHIAN MOUNTAIN BIKE CLUB • Central Flats and Taps • 7PM • Interested in getting involved with the mountain biking community here in Knoxville? The Appalachian Mountain Bike Club, meet the 4th Monday of each month. • FREE GAY MEN’S DISCUSSION GROUP • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 7:30PM • We hold facilitated discussions on topics and issues relevant to
Elect David Williams for City Council At Large Seat C
* Experienced educator * * business owner * * community leader * “I want to be the voice for your neighborhood. Vote for me!” dawill64@yahoo.com
Primary Election: Sept. 29 (Early voting Sept. 9-24)
General Election: Nov. 3 (Early voting Oct. 14-29) Paid for by David Williams for City Council, Harry Boss, treasurer. 34
KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 24, 2015
ETC.
Thursday, Sept. 124 NEW HARVEST PARK FARMERS MARKET • New Harvest Park • 3PM • FREE Friday, Sept. 25 LAKESHORE PARK FARMERS’ MARKET • Lakeshore Park • 3PM • FREE UNION COUNTY FARMERS MARKET • Maynardville • 4PM • More info call Union Co. Extension Office at 865-9928038. • FREE Saturday, Sept. 26 OAK RIDGE FARMERS’ MARKET • Historic Jackson Square • 8AM SEYMOUR FARMERS MARKET • Seymour First Baptist Church • 8AM MARKET SQUARE FARMERS’ MARKET • Market Square • 9AM • FREE Tuesday, Sept. 29
Send your events to calendar@knoxmercury.com
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KNOXVILLE MERCURY 35
FOOD
Home Palate
Photos by Justin Fee
Primo Pasta Knoxville UnCorked’s new menu goes all-in authentic Italian BY DENNIS PERKINS
B
etween the indignities of ravioli in cans and ugly little cardboard trays of microwavable lasagna, there are few plagues that haven’t been visited upon the ancient and noble cuisine of Italy. Even in restaurants that ought to know better, heavy snowfalls of cheese and soft, pasty pasta remain erroneous icons of an Italian cuisine that isn’t very Italian. Aside from a naturally peevish disposition toward culinary bamboozlements, I only mention these things because you should know that if your perception and appreciation of Italian food is based solely on Americanized versions in restaurants or from
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KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 24, 2015
colorful jars of salty pasta sauce, the new menu at Knoxville UnCorked may leave you wondering if That’s Italian. This is not to say that the food is inaccessible, but chef Terri Roberts brings both a sincere stab at authenticity and a chefly sensibility to presentation, flavor, and portions that don’t conform to the traditional standards for “good Italian” that have long reigned in our city. You won’t find chicken Alfredo, not even spaghetti and meatballs; and sorry Garfield, there’s no lasagna or never-ending pasta bowls in sight. What you will find is good food with a mix of mostly recognizable
names all executed with skill. There are still some hiccups in service and an occasional misplay from the kitchen, but, overall, it’s a place to put on the must-eat-soon list. The service issues are no worse than what you’d find in a hundred other Knoxville eateries on any given night. Still, I was disconcerted to have my food served from hands clad in blue latex gloves (though I was glad the lemons were being sliced under such hygienic conditions), and I remain amazed at how freely servers share gossip in such a public forum with so many unknown ears about. I’ve eaten at UnCorked a number of times, and on several occasions the pasta sauces were curiously under-salted. It’s a better mishap than the opposite (and more common) mistake, I suppose, but one does hate to pick up the shaker. At times the bread service has been erratic—including one dinner where I wasn’t offered bread at all because, as I overheard, that perk was over for the night. And that’s a shame because it’s one of the best bread offerings I’ve
had in a long time. It’s an immensely satisfying golden focaccia brushed with oil and salt and served delightfully warm with a little bowl of roasted garlic-infused oil. It’s a beautiful addition to UnCorked’s offerings—but not as beautiful as the new pasta sauces, including a remarkably fresh and invigorating puttanesca served over linguine. The aroma—along with the sight of halved caper berries, little quarters of artichoke hearts, and delicate heads of tiny asparagus—won my allegiance before the first bite. All those elements, along with slivers of olive, contribute to the bowl’s nicely bright personality and mingle seamlessly with the very clean, clear flavors of fresh tomato. The king of the pasta here, though, is the Bolognese; served with a pappardelle instead of the more traditional tagliatelle, it’s a home run. The thick, flat noodles are cooked nicely al dente, and the sauce is clearly the result of slow and low cooking, with layers and layers of flavor from multiple proteins including lamb, pork,
Home Palate
beef, and pancetta. It’s a dish to smell, too—there are hints of spice; could it be mace? Cinnamon? Whatever it is, it adds a warming, even comforting element to the aroma that made me feel at home. Roberts sprinkles the dish with toasted, grated bread crumbs that are really quite amazing—the little bits of crunch and their toasty flavor contribute an entirely unexpected level of enjoyment and a very welcome lift to the bowlful of richness. My favorite dish, however, is the Bistecca. Available at dinner, it’s the hands-down winner in my book, though it does ring in at a hefty tariff for hangar steak ($27). Still, I’d order it till my credit card melted. The dish is artfully composed in a way that enhances the eating of it. This cut from the diaphragm area is best enjoyed when sliced across the grain—Roberts does that for us instead of assigning servers the laborious and often condescending task of telling us how to eat our food. And don’t specify your temperature, please—let them cook it as it ought to be cooked, about medium rare. That’s the sweet spot for this cut’s tenderness. What really elevates the dish is the accompaniment of epiphanous butter-braised radishes and roasted cauliflower—a duet of nearly ethereal harmony. The radishes grabbed my attention first, and they warranted it; succulent and full of earthy, buttery flavor, I could eat a whole bowl. Likewise, the golden roasted florets of cauliflower sitting atop a cauliflower puree—the nutty, roasted flavor of the florets contrasting the earthy, ever so slightly sweet puree—made a magnificent and wholly unexpected complement to the protein. Honestly, that combination made me speak aloud to my maker. There were also some unfortunate Brussels sprouts on the plate—I’m a big fan of those sprouts, but here they were all elbows in an otherwise graceful dance. It’s easy to push them aside, but, given the harmony (and expense) of this dish, I was more than a little disappointed; but not so much that I wouldn’t order it again. And again. If you’re an appetizer lover, it’s hard to go wrong with any number of
FOOD choices, though I’m a particular fan of the truffled cannellini bean dip that’s served with the most attractively grilled, perfectly crunchy pita I’ve ever seen. Roberts doesn’t hit us over the head with truffle oil—so she’s being delicate or, hopefully, using real truffle oil instead of the intense impostor version that’s common on many menus. It’s a very satisfying start that’s easy to overeat. The menu is filled with good things, including a superlative Italian beef sandwich served with a jus for dipping—or slurping in my case. A more sub-like Italian sandwich is meaty and satisfying with a gratifying and tangy kick from house-made giardiniera and Calabrian peppers. Roberts’ revised version of truffled wild mushroom pasta is a vast improvement over what was once served here under that name. Dessert service continues to evolve, so there’s no telling what you’ll get to try. But do try it. In an early visit I enjoyed a peach ricotta cake that was so moist and dense that I put down the fork and used a spoon to catch it all—especially the pools of vanilla crème. That sauce created some recollections of intensely flavored shortcake. There was basil oil on the plate, too; it added a unique, appealing flavor, at once sweet and savory, that was supposed to complement a garnish of tiny basil leaves. On my visit, the kitchen was out of micro-basil and, so, substituted micro-chervil. It was still interesting, and I would order it again but without the chervil. More recently I enjoyed a chocolate budino—it’s like a lava cake, but I prefer to think of it as the ultimate pudding cake. Rich chocolate pudding hides inside a tender chocolate cake shell that’s draped with warm chocolate sauce. That’s really all I have to say about that. I understand that longtime fans of the restaurant have been disappointed by some of the changes. But, for me, the allure of the place had long faded, so the alterations are happy news and, all in all, a tasty success. Heck, properly cooked pasta is a major achievement all on its own. And that is Italian. ◆
RE-ELECT
Finbarr
Sforaunders city council Primary Election September 29, 2015 Early Voting: September 9-24
General Election November 3, 2015 Early Voting: October 14-29
Vote to keep a positive voice on Knoxville’s City Council! Scan this with your smartphone to find out more.
Paid for by ‘Finbarr Saunders for City Council’, Daniel L. Barnett, Treasurer September 24, 2015
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 37
’BYE
Spir it of the Staircase
BY MATTHEW FOLTZ-GRAY
38
KNOXVILLE MERCURY September 24, 2015
’BYE
R estless Column Nat Name ive
Quarterback Sneak Recalling a storied Vols victory— from the vantage point of a VW Beetle BY CHRIS WOHLWEND
I
n the fall of 1964, the year after Georgia Tech had departed the Southeastern Conference and the football rivalry between the Yellow Jackets and Tennessee was still fierce, two friends and I decided to make the trip to Atlanta to attend the game. We did not have tickets, but figured we could get into the game using our smarts, or, as a last resort, buying from a scalper just before kickoff, when the prices were bound to come down. Atlanta, of course, was a great place to visit—especially for three sophisticated college men like ourselves. We would go on Friday so we could soak up the pre-game atmosphere, check out the action both downtown and around the campus, grab something to eat from the famous Varsity drive-in. The game, like most during that time, was scheduled for early Saturday afternoon. So we loaded up Britton’s Volkswagen and headed south. The third member of the party was Mac, who was 6 foot 2 and used his height as excuse to claim shotgun in the Beetle. The trip down was uneventful, dominated by my grousing about being stuck in the cramped back seat. We had no trouble finding a cheap motel room on the northern outskirts. Then it was on to the Five Points area, the heart of downtown, where we mingled with orange-clad revelers at a bar called the Alibi and where Mac got into trouble with the police—for jaywalking. After he talked his way out of that, we found a poolroom that had what to our eyes appeared to be a hundred tables. In the front room beer
and chili dogs were available. The rest of the evening is a blur, but somehow we didn’t put much effort into finding tickets for the next day’s game. Saturday morning, feeling the after-effects of Friday night, we headed toward the Tech campus and Grant Field. Soon we found ourselves in the same kind of game-day mess that we regularly encountered in Knoxville: crowds of people creating impossible traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian. And we saw no one trying to hawk tickets. We managed to get into the Varsity, but found ourselves unable to stomach the idea of substantial food after the poolroom chili dogs of the night before, and settled on milkshakes. As it got closer to game time we started debating whether we really wanted to try to get into the stadium. Couldn’t be much of a game, we reasoned, given that Georgia Tech was undefeated, ranked sixth in the country, and a nine-point favorite. Tennessee, which had just switched from the single-wing offense to the T, boasted a strong defense but had been unable to find a player who could effectively handle quarterback duties. Finally, after some debate, we decided to skip the game and head back to Knoxville. The contest was not on television (few games were back then), but we were sure we could find it on the radio. So, as we reached Marietta, we caught the kickoff and, heading north, listened as Tech built up a 7 to 3 halftime lead, with Tennessee’s defense keeping the Vols in the game.
Then, as we neared the state line, and the fourth quarter began with the Jackets ahead 14 to 3, the third-team quarterback, David Leake, was inserted into the fray. Leake, whose primary contribution to the team heretofore had been as a kicker, promptly threw a TD pass to Al Tanara. He then led the Vols to another score and suddenly the Orange faithful saw their team take the lead. We, of course, saw nothing as we Beetled up U.S. 411 into Tennessee. Radio coverage was spotty, with Mac having to constantly work the dial as we moved north. Sometimes we were listening to the work of Knoxville broadcasters, sometimes to Atlanta stations. But we managed to hear the final minutes as the Vols held on to win 22 to 14, with Doug Archibald returning an interception for the insurance
touchdown. After our excitement died down, we realized we could not tell our friends that we had not been cheering for the Orange from our seats in Grant Field, that we had not been present for such an historic upset. So on Sunday morning we read the newspaper stories, familiarizing ourselves with the pertinent game details, inventing celebratory anecdotes, and then spent the rest of the week gloating in our good fortune at having been at a memorable Tennessee victory over a hated rival. We were obnoxious enough so that our friends quickly tired of hearing about The Game. Besides, campus attention was now focused on the upcoming contest. So we congratulated ourselves for pulling off our own great play—and a trick one at that. And we never revealed the true story. Until now. ◆
BY IAN BLACKBURN AND JACK NEELY
September 24, 2015
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