Issue 40 - December 10, 2015 by Knoxville Mercury

LOCAL MEDIA’S WEEKLY ENTREPRENEUR

DEC. 10, 2015 KNOXMERCURY.COM

1 / N.40

They’ve got big

NEWS

TDOT Finally Set to Work on Alcoa Highway—But What About Chapman?

, unique products,

JACK NEELY

Christmas vs. the Holidays: A Little Perspective on Our Favorite Schism

and the opportunity

THEATER

Santaland Diaries Reveals the All-Too-Real Spirit of the Season

to make national waves

FOOD

Jackie’s Dream Lives Up to Its Name With Delightful Dishes

KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

Dec. 10, 2015 Volume 01 / Issue 40 knoxmercury.com

CONTENTS

“ Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” —Mark Twain

NEWS

10 Crash Protection

12 K noxville’s New Entrepreneurs

COVER STORY

Okay, we know about the gas stations and the cable TV shows. What else has Knoxville got to offer the business world? We surveyed the area’s entrepreneurial scene to pluck out four case studies: people with interesting concepts for new products that might just hit it big nationally. Each one is on a tipping point—raising the investment needed to realize their dreams or actually putting their ideas on the market to see how they do. Will they be the next big thing? Well, stay tuned.

Join Our League of Supporters! It’s a non-stop party! Find out how you can help at knoxmercury.com/join.

For most folks living and working in South Knoxville, the sights and sounds of automobiles whizzing, screeching, and sometimes colliding on the south side’s busiest thoroughfares is all too familiar. Local residents and transportation officials have long been eyeing some major improvements aimed at increasing capacity and improving safety on Alcoa and Chapman highways. One of those highways is now set to begin the construction process for improvements—but it’s not the one that’s seen the highest number of automobile accidents or fatalities. Clay Duda reports.

DEPARTMENTS

OPINION

A&E

4 Letters 6 Howdy

8 The Scruffy Citizen

19 Program Notes: The Rhythm N’

25 Spotlights: Blackfoot Gypsies

20 Shelf Life: Chris Barrett shares

FOOD & DRINK

Start Here: Roadside Sketches by Andrew Gresham, Believe It or Knox!, Public Affairs, Quote Factory PLUS: Words With … Lisa Kurtz

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 traces the usage of holiday terminology over the decades.

CALENDAR Blooms Festival and Public Cinema reveal their schedules.

some less obvious holiday movies from the public library’s collection.

21 Music: Matthew Everett interviews a demonic alien from the local metal band Summoner’s Circle.

36 Home Palate

Dennis Perkins visits Jackie’s Dream and finds it to be a very good one.

22 Movies: April Snellings gets into the holiday mood, sort of, with the monsters of Krampus.

24 Theater: Alan Sherrod enjoys the Christmastime revelations of the Santaland Diaries.

December 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 3

LETTERS Delivering Fine Journalism Since 2015

GO GREENWAYS!

Thank you for the recent article on (hopefully) expanding greenways! [“Greenways Frontier,” cover story by S. Heather Duncan, Oct. 22, 2015] It was amazing to see the map with predicted greenway paths, which would truly connect most of the now scattered paths. It would be fantastic (and much safer!) to ride across the whole city, all on greenways. Maybe even a greenway to the Knoxville Zoo, or the Knoxville Botanical Garden and Arboretum? I currently travel on Third Creek Greenway every day to get to work. I chose where I live carefully so I could live just off of Third Creek and have about a 4-mile commute. I hope Knoxville realizes how important the greenways are to property values, people’s health, relieving traffic congestions, and wildlife (it’s great seeing herons and turtles, and hearing spring peeping frogs). The greenway system is a unique aspect of Knoxville that makes the city very attractive. Let’s see its development speed up! Sean Hoban Knoxville

THE KINDNESS OF AUTHORS

Thanks to Jack Neely for his recent article on Robert Norrell’s just released book along with some of his own observations on the life of Alex Haley. [“The Redemption of Alex Haley,” cover story, Nov. 26, 2015] My only encounter with Haley was at McGhee Tyson Airport in the early 1980s. My wife and I were preparing to see our two young daughters (11 and 12 years old) off on their first “solo” flight to visit their grandparents in St. Louis. We knew they would need to switch planes in Memphis so we made the necessary arrangements to see to it that they would be safely ushered from one plane to the next. We were seated near the gate waiting for our flight to be announced when I noticed Haley sitting a few seats away. The periodic smiles on his face suggested that he was finding our animated parent-child 4

KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

interactions quite amusing. When the boarding call came, Haley joined us in line and quietly said to me, “I’ll be changing planes in Memphis and would be happy to usher your daughters to their connecting flight.” I thanked him for his offer and told him I appreciated his assistance. Needless to say, I was impressed that a person of Haley’s stature would take the time to ease one dad’s anxiety in this way. When our children returned to Knoxville they could not stop talking about how wonderful Alex Haley had treated them. So I’ll leave it to others, including Norrell, to debate the rigor of Haley’s scholarship and his contributions to our understanding of the experience of African-Americans in this country. As for me and my family, we will always think of Alex Haley as a decent, kind, and caring person. Craig Wrisberg Knoxville

GYPSY JAZZ FOREBEARS

I enjoyed Chris Barrett’s article about Kukuly and the Gypsy Fuego. [“Somos Uno,” Nov. 26, 2015] I enjoy Kukuly’s music, and I have always been a fan of Reinhardt and Grappelli’s music. However, any time I read something that suggests that these two were the first to combine hot violin and jazz guitar, it saddens me to know that music and musicians from nearly a decade earlier have been overlooked and possibly forgotten. Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti were playing extremely hot jazz starting in the mid-’20s and continuing until Lang’s death in the mid-’30s—ending about the same time that Reinhardt and Grappelli started playing together. They were playing this music on violin and acoustic guitar, and in a style that bears resemblance to that of the mid-’30s music of the Quintet of the Hot Club of France. If you haven’t listened to these guys, you should. And by all means don’t forget them. Dave Ball Knoxville

CORRECTION

In last week’s feature story about retired architect Michael Kaplan’s self-designed house made through the city’s Homemakers Program, we incorrectly referenced Knoxville’s Community Development Corporation instead of the city of Knoxville’s Community Development Department. We also asked if similar houses could be financed through the Homemakers Program but should have written facilitated—the program does not directly finance houses.

WE’VE GOT A STOREFRONT!

Check out our brand new online store! It’s your one-stop shop for all of our Knoxville Mercury goods and services. We’ve got merchandise (just in time for the holidays), League of Supporter memberships, and amazingly enough, classified ads! And remember, all proceeds go to a worthy cause: keeping your favorite weekly paper in business. Go to: store.knoxmercury.com.

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 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 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

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

Literature’s Influence on Knoxville’s Christmas Charles Dickens never visited Knoxville, but may have had a bigger influence on our culture than any mayor. Until Dec. 20, Clarence Brown Theatre presents the holiday favorite, A Christmas Carol, a play based on the novel by English author Charles Dickens (1812-1870). The professional theater troupe has been performing the holiday classic most Decembers since 1979, but always tries to add something fresh. It’s one of the most influential stories in English. It’s possible that much of America, including Knoxville, wouldn’t be celebrating Christmas as we do if not for Dickens’ famous tale.

(and in fact one of the co-founders of Knoxville’s First Baptist Church), it’s likely he had become familiar with Christmas celebrations in New England, where the holiday had already been catching on. However, his use of the term “Merry Christmas” may bear Dickens’ fingerprint. That greeting, previously rare, appears multiple times in Dickens’ story. Other influences helped Christmas catch on in Knoxville in the 1840s and ’50s. Hundreds of European Catholics, especially from Ireland and Germany, brought their own strong Christmas traditions.

In Knoxville’s early decades, there is very little evidence that Knoxvillians celebrated Christmas, and much evidence that they didn’t. The word “Christmas” is rarely mentioned in local newspapers before 1844. Dec. 25 was usually a regular business day. Christmas was not an American tradition, and some Tennesseans may have disapproved of it. Many Protestants, if they heard of it at all, regarded it to be an Old World Catholic holiday. A few American writers, like Washington Irving, of New York, became interested in English Christmases and by 1819, was describing them in essays.

Even though it was published in another country 4,000 miles away, A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, had an almost immediate effect even in Knoxville.

One stray recollection of a Christmas “frolic” at the White House in 1834, during the administration of President Andrew Jackson, who had Knoxville connections, is questioned by some historians.

Still, the holiday was especially slow to catch on in the South. As late as 1900, some rural East Tennessee families said they didn’t celebrate Christmas because they’d never heard of it. A Christmas Carol was published early in Dickens’ career. By 1843, it was a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic. The short novel’s popularity coincided with the beginning of a consistent Christmas celebration in Knoxville. On Dec. 24, 1844, the year after A Christmas Carol was published, the Knoxville Register ran an unfamiliar greeting: “A Merry Christmas.” It continued, “In order to give our workers an opportunity of enjoying the Christmas holidays, we have hurried our paper out earlier than usual this week…. We respectfully offer to all our patrons, friends, and well-wishers the compliments of the season…” The editor of the Register was James C. Moses (1818-1870), who had moved to Knoxville five years earlier from Boston. Although he was Baptist

Soon the put-down “Scrooge” was familiar in local editorials. If it seems unbelievable that a young English author could have an effect 4,000 miles away in Tennessee, consider that the 1858 historic home known as Bleak House was named for a then-recent Dickens novel. The house’s first owner, Robert Houston Armstrong, was a Dickens fan. The name of Pickwick Lake, and Pickwick Landing Dam, on the Tennessee River in Hardin County, dates to the mid-1800s and is said to be named for the local postmaster’s favorite book, Dickens’ first novel, The Pickwick Papers. (However, Ebenezer Road, in West Knoxville, is not named for Ebenezer Scrooge! It was named for a community that existed there in the 1790s, before Dickens’ birth.)

Charles Dickens toured America, first in 1842, shortly before the American publication of A Christmas Carol, and later in 1867-8, but he never came as far south as Tennessee. He died in 1870. On a late winter night in early 1888, Knoxvillians might have been startled to see handbills advertising a reading by Charles Dickens at the Library Hall on Gay Street. The visitor was in fact Charles Dickens, Jr. Of the novelist’s large and troubled family, Charley, as he was known, was probably the most like his father, and worked as a writer and editor and promoter of his father’s work. A “small but appreciative audience” heard Dickens read for an hour and a half, “the story of little Emily” from David Copperfield, and “Bob Sawyer’s Party” from The Pickwick Papers. “Mr. Dickens made happy selections and showed excellent reading capacity. He proved that he had a thorough understanding of the works and gave a splendid conception of their import…. Mr. Dickens changed at will from grave to gay, and kept his observers interested to the end.”

Source: The Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection.

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 December 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 5

Illustration by Ben Adams

HOWDY

Believe It or Knox! BY Z. HERACLITUS KNOX Southern Railway, part of what’s now Norfolk Southern, was formed by New York financier J.P. Morgan in 1894. One of its larger components was the large East Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia Railroad, which had been headquartered in downtown Knoxville for 25 years! For almost a century, Knoxville remained a nationally important industrial center for the Southern system. The Coster Shops, on the north side of town, were where Southern trains were repaired. Roadside Sketches by Andrew Gresham (agreshamphoto.com)

QUOTE FACTORY “ The people on the far left who claim to be tolerant seem to be tolerant of everything except traditional Christianity. They don’t object to Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or any other religion’s traditions. But they go unhinged on anything that hints of traditional Christianity. It is extremism.”

All of Knoxville’s addresses were reordered in the 1890s to reflect the axes of Jackson Avenue and Central Street, with three, four, and eventually five-digit addresses. There was only one exception, which didn’t conform to the new system. Today, the only place in Knox County with its original one and two-digit mid-1800s addresses intact is Market Square! A community in West Knoxville, just west of Cedar Bluff, was known in the 1890s as BERMUDA!

— U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan Jr., writing on his Facebook page about the University of Tennessee’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion’s suggestion to make holiday office parties more inclusive by not emphasizing a particular religion. The day before, on Dec. 2, 14 people were killed and 21 injured in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS

12/10 BOOK READING: ‘DISENCHANTED CITY’ 12/13 SCREENING: ‘IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE’ 12/15 RIBBON-CUTTING: KNOX/BLOUNT 12/17 CITY COUNCIL MEETING GREENWAY THURSDAY

6 p.m., Union Ave Books (517 Union Ave.). Free. Let us think of Paris, its sights and sounds, with readings from French author Chantal Bizzini’s Disenchanted City, a volume of poems translated by Knoxville’s own Marilyn Kallet and J. Bradford Anderson.

KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

SUNDAY

1 & 5 p.m., Tennessee Theatre. Free. Oh, c’mon—you know you want to see it one more time, especially in the palatial environs of the Tennessee. Sponsored by Home Federal Bank, it’s a free screening—the doors open one hour before each showtime, so come early to get a good seat.

TUESDAY

11 a.m., Cherokee Farm Innovation Campus (1709 Alcoa Highway). Free. The massive trans-county greenway project bridging Knox and Blount unveils the city of Knoxville’s section, aka “first phase.” The 2-mile section spans from the south side of the J.E. “Buck” Karnes Bridge and ends at Knox County’s Marine Park, following the shore of the Tennessee River. Begin your walk to the Smokies!

THURSDAY

7 p.m., Main Assembly Room, City County Building. Free. As Christmas looms, City Council will forgo its regularly scheduled Dec. 22 meeting for this early date. Help ring in the final City Council meeting of the year!

HOWDY WORDS WITH ...

Lisa Kurtz BY ROSE KENNEDY Clay artist Lisa Kurtz is the lead organizer and one of eight displaying artists for the 2015 Whittington Creek Art Show and sale Saturday, Dec. 12, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 13, 11 a.m.- 4 p.m. The show is themed “Handmade Holiday” and will include kids activities and a silent Art Auction for Alzheimer’s.

What was the purpose of starting the Whittington Creek Art Show?

My original intent 10 years ago was to have a holiday sale and show in my house. I had a lot of artist friends in the neighborhood, many of whom had never sold their art. We invited neighbors and people that were on my Highland Pottery mailing list. It was a hit right off the bat. I added new artists every year and six years ago I moved it to the clubhouse because it got too big for my house. I started involving the neighborhood by adding a Kids of Whittington Creek art contest and kids’ art activities. Last year, I added a silent art auction to benefit Alzheimer’s Tennessee.

Is there a personal reason for choosing to benefit an Alzheimer’s cause?

The connection to Alzheimer’s is my mom’s having this disease. She is in the final stage. My grandmother—Dad’s mom—also had it, so it is a cause near and dear to my heart.

How do you determine which artists will be included?

Right now I select the artists by a jury process. I send out applications and get emails from new artists all the time, wanting to apply. We also have a website and Facebook page where artists can get more information. This year’s show is in December, not October like it usually is, but since the weather forecast is projected to be nice this weekend some of my artists want to go outside and we may be adding a few more last-minute artists.

What’s been your favorite year of the show?

I think that was a few years ago after I had surgery to remove a brain tumor. I had everybody pitching in and helping me. I thought I was going to have to cancel but I didn’t because everyone helped.

THE

Does it seem like handmade art is more popular these days?

I think there is more of a market for handmade art because of the increase in digital everything. People relate to handmade art because it has the human connection we all need. I also think it is important to help our small local businesses that produce handmade art. It benefits the local economy.

Who does the kid-art activities?

I come up with the kids’ art activities and have neighborhood high school kids help me with that so they can get service hours.

THE

S E I R A I D S E I R DIA

Do the artists spend money at the show? I think a lot of the artists do buy from each other and some also trade, which is fun.

You’ve been an artist for decades—anything new on that front?

I have been teaching pottery for the past two years at Cleveland State Community College and I love it. I am working on new glazes and some more sculptural work as a result of teaching hand-building again, and I also teach throwing. I will start teaching drawing at Pellissippi State in January and am very excited about that, also. Other news is that I just got funded from Tennessee Craft and the Tennessee Arts Commission to have an official apprentice through the Master Apprentice arts program. I am looking forward to working with and mentoring Rose Spurrier, a young clay artist from Knoxville who has her bachelor’s in clay from University of Tennessee. We start this weekend. She will be helping me at the show, and in September we will have a show together in Nashville. For more information: whittingtoncreekartshow.com

S E I R DIA T

DECEMBER

Note: This production as staggered start times. Please check the time for your performance so you don’t miss any of the show!

20 ■ 2:30pm ■ 7:00pm ■ 8:00pm ■ 10:00pm Talkback after matinee

es only

Open Captioned matinee

re elv or matu

#CBTSantaland

David Brian Alley as “Crumpet the Elf” • Photo by Elizabeth Aaron December 10, 2015

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SCRUFFY CITIZEN

Christmas vs. the Holidays A little perspective on our favorite schism BY JACK NEELY

merica’s resourcefulness about sources of outrage is inexhaustible. Is “Happy Holidays” a modern heresy of this secular-humanist century? Many Americans, when they hear that greeting, begin humming a merry song. “Happy Holiday” (the title’s singular, but the plural comes in the verse) was written in 1941 by Irving Berlin, a Jewish immigrant whose family fled religious persecution in Russia. Berlin wrote it for the musical romantic comedy, Holiday Inn. Predating the motel chain, the movie’s about a rustic resort in Connecticut. “Happy Holiday” is really just half a song, alternating with the “Come to Holiday Inn” theme. Bing Crosby sings it on New Year’s Eve: “May the calendar keep bringin’ happy holidays to you.” Google’s fascinating feature, Ngram, tracks the proportional frequency of words and phrases, sensitive to capitalizations, in print across the centuries. “Happy Holidays,” as a capitalized phrase, first emerges long before the song, in the 1850s, just as Knoxville and much of America was beginning to celebrate the old Catholic tradition of Christmas consistently. (When the University of Tennessee settled into its current campus in 1828, it was a non-issue. There were no “Christmas” parties, and no “holiday” parties. It just got dark and cold.) According to Ngram, “Happy Holidays” reaches a peak around

KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

1880, before lapsing. Looking for a reason, I found a book published in London in 1864, called The Happy Holidays; or Brothers and Sisters at Home, by Mrs. Emma Anne Georgina Davenport. It was a children’s book that remained popular for years. After that, the phrase suffers a long spell of neglect. On Ngram it re-emerges around World War I, for a second career. Not surprisingly, it soars to new heights in the 1940s and ’50s, as Berlin’s movie song is recorded, broadcast, and re-recorded. Then “Happy Holidays” falls off again. Without the context of the song and the movie, it’s a bland phrase. By ’60s standards, it sounded corny. It has to be said that it’s a bit of an irony that “Happy Holidays,” favored as the politically correct greeting this time of year, comes from a source that’s criticized as being politically incorrect. Holiday Inn is a hilarious movie, a rare pairing of Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, both singing and dancing, with a lot of great songs. It also introduced “White Christmas” and is

generally a much better movie than the later one named for that song. But Holiday Inn isn’t as well known, I strongly suspect, because it includes one blackface scene. On Ngram “Happy Holidays” begins rising again, for a third time, in the late 1970s. Maybe that one’s fueled by what some see as sensitivity and others as political correctness.

Surely the even more abominable term, “Xmas,” is further evidence of a war on Christmas. But on our kitchen calendar this month is a print of a painting by American artist William Glackens, “Christmas Shopping, Madison Square” from 1912. In the picture is an advertisement for an “X Mass Dinner.” That dreaded, excoriated, and now rare abbreviation was very familiar in Knoxville newspaper advertisements in the 1880s and ’90s. It was used so often without objection in a religious city that it was pretty obviously not considered sacrilege. Maybe it was just the opposite. I suspect many Christians were uncomfortable with using the word “Christ” in a commercial context. The same newspaper issue would include descriptions of a “Christmas service” or an “Xmas sale.” They used the letter X, the first letter in the Greek spelling of Christ, and also a typographical symbol used over the centuries to indicate the cross. The intent may not have been to “take the Christ out of Christmas” as much as to avoid offending fundamentalists—and saving valuable ad space in the bargain. We can track Xmas on Ngram, too, though there were a few different spellings, X-mas being the most common. According to Ngram, Xmas emerges in the late 1700s and slowly grows in usage, taking off in the

In the 1890s, Knoxvillians acknowledged its pagan roots, often calling it “the Saturnalia.”

1880s and ’90s. Its all-time peak in usage appears to be around 1923, when my grandmother was young. Usage has trailed off since then. It’s now used less than half as often. As far as I can tell, the Xmas abbreviation was used liberally in America for almost a century before the rumor spread that it was a symbolic removal of Jesus from His own birthday. It gets to the basic contradiction of Christmas. Is it a religious celebration of a leader who was known to be ascetic, who warned his followers to avoid possessions and not to worry about what they wear—or a secular extravaganza of bright color and clamor during the darkest weeks of the year? The fact is, that as long as it’s been celebrated in Knoxville, it has been both, at the same time. It’s a challenge to consider a time when Christmas wasn’t commercialized. In Knoxville at least, that time may never have existed. America ignored and sometimes banned Christmas. Protestant fundamentalists didn’t like Christmas because it was a mass—it was Catholic and foreign. It’s not scriptural, and seemed to fold in pagan elements of scaring away the darkness of winter. (Don’t like “Holidays”? In the 1890s, Knoxvillians acknowledged its pagan roots, often calling it “the Saturnalia.”) But with Catholic immigration coinciding with the massive popularity of a book by Charles Dickens, America finally embraced Christmas, and did so in large part by making it secular. America likes to think of itself as religious, but most American “Christmas carols” that have made it into the holiday canon—since “Jingle Bells” in the 1850s—don’t allude to a baby in a manger. If you look at a list of 50 beloved Christmas songs, you’ll see a combination of European religious songs and American secular songs. Many, perhaps most of America’s carols, are love songs, several of them written for Broadway shows and Hollywood movies. Few if any of the old European Christmas carols are romantic. I don’t know what that means. If “Happy Holidays” is on the upswing, Ngram also proves the greeting “Merry Christmas” appears in print now more than ever before in human history. Everybody should be happy. Count this as my holiday wish that you are. ◆

LMU Professor Selected for International Workshop On September 10, 2015, the discovery of a new species of human ancestor, Homo naledi, hit every major news outlet worldwide. Zach Throckmorton, PhD, assistant professor of anatomy at LMUDCOM, first heard about the expedition through social media, and applied to participate in the international workshop with the University of the Witwatersrand in conjunction with National Geographic. One of 25 junior scientists that was selected from around the world, Throckmorton had no idea the discovery would be this big. During the six-week workshop in South Africa, Throckmorton was assigned to work on the feet and ankles due to his background as a physical anthropologist specializing in paleoanthropology. “It became clear after a few days that we had an entire new species of the genus ‘Homo’,” said Throckmorton. “You don’t find this every day. These are amongst our closest relatives.” More than 1,550 numbered fossil elements makes this discovery the single largest fossil hominin find made on the continent of Africa. Throckmorton’s group was able to reconstruct the whole foot and he expects the amount of material collected will provide decades of continuing work. The discovery was the cover story of the October issue of National Geographic (www. natgeo.org/naledi) and was featured in a NOVA/National Geographic Special titled “Dawn of Humanity” that premiered on PBS and is available to watch online at www.pbs.org/ wgbh/nova/evolution/dawn-ofhumanity.html. Photo by Robert

www.LMUnet.edu

graphic

Clark/National Geo

Throckmorton summed up the experience and said, “It was wonderful to be part of such a collaborative scientific endeavor and be surrounded by people from all over the world.” Photo by Mark Thiessen/National Geographic

December 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 9

Photo by Clay Duda

Crash Protection Work to expand Alcoa Highway is set to start despite even more collisions on Chapman BY CLAY DUDA

or most folks living and working in South Knoxville, the sights and sounds of automobiles whizzing, screeching, and sometimes colliding on the south side’s busiest thoroughfares is all too familiar. Local residents and transportation officials have long been eyeing some major improvements aimed at increasing capacity and improving safety on Alcoa and Chapman highways. These two expansive boulevards are main funnels for the throngs of commuters who motor to and from Alcoa, Maryville, and Seymour each weekday, and also

KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

help deliver drivers to any number of businesses lining those same strips. One of those highways is now set to begin the construction process for improvements—but it’s not the one that’s seen the highest number of automobile accidents or fatalities Over the past 20 years, Allan Miller has had a front-row seat to the growing traffic and issues along both of these roadways. His house is just east of Alcoa Highway, off Maloney Road, and his business, the Disc Exchange, is situated along a bustling stretch of Chapman just south of

downtown. He’s seen enough to know that some works needs to be done to both highways, but the biggest challenge to getting these and other transportation projects off the ground is and always has been one thing: funding. This year alone, budget questions forced the postponement of more than 150 infrastructure projects across the state, including some planned improvements to Alcoa Highway. That’s why Miller was happy to hear that the state had cobbled together enough money to forge ahead with some planned improvements along one segment of Alcoa Highway, the stretch between Woodson Drive and Maloney Road—that is, until he ran some numbers of his own. “There are an amazing amount of accidents on Chapman Highway, especially compared with the same length of Alcoa. You have intersections on Chapman that had 50 to 60 accidents in the past three years, compared with intersections on Alcoa with just one to four accidents during that same time,” he says. “I don’t really understand why TDOT’s limited resources are going into [revamping Alcoa Highway] instead of something else.”

Morning commuters pass the intersection of Chapman Highway and Green Road, one of the most crash-prone areas along the high-traffic roadway. It’s true. Chapman Highway has seen a far higher number of crashes in recent years. From the beginning of 2012 through the end of 2014, the roughly 8-mile length on Chapman Highway stretching from downtown to the county line had nearly triple the number of accidents as the comparable route of Alcoa Highway, according the crash records from the Tennessee Highway Patrol. The most hazardous point may be on Chapman Highway directly in front of Chapman Plaza, near the entrance to Home Depot and Walmart at Green Road, where more than 70 accidents have occurred in a three-year span. The turn-off for Stone Road saw about 57 collisions, and there were nearly 50 accidents near Young High Pike during that same time period. Alcoa Highway has some problem areas, too. (Miller says he’s also opposed to a planned roundabout on-ramp to connect Maloney Road to Alcoa Highway for more personal reasons—it may force him out of his

A rendering illustrates planned changes for a stretch of Alcoa Highway near Maloney Road. TDOT contractors will add a concrete media, two more travel lanes, exit ramps, and other features to a segment of the highway between Woodson Drive and Maloney Road.

Photo by TDOT/Rendering

home.) Alcoa Highway’s intersection with Ginn Drive saw about 46 accidents from 2012 to 2014, by far the largest cluster along that strip, followed by intersections at Woodson Drive with 37 crashes and 31 at Mount Vernon Drive, data shows. But overall it’s far less accident-prone than neighboring Chapman Highway, according to the numbers. In total, there were 968 crashes on Chapman Highway versus 372 on Alcoa Highway from 2012-2014 (check out an interactive map and download the data at knoxmercury.com). But Tennessee Department of Transportation officials say they’re doing what they can with what they have, and other things besides crash figures factor in and often influence which transportation projects are completed when. The availability of both federal and state funds is a big one, along with acquiring the necessary right-of-way to properties for some projects and clearing federal environmental regulations. TDOT has two safety projects planned for this stretch of Chapman Highway (pending funding) to add center turn lanes from Simpson Road to Hendron Chapel Road and from Evans Road to Burnett Lane. Bidding for those projects is expected in mid-to-late 2017, TDOT spokesman Mark Nagi said in an email. “The availability of funding plays a large factor in the number and the order of how projects are delivered statewide,” Nagi notes. “This project moved forward in the development process once the Department received approval of the environmental document by the Federal Highway Adminis-

tration (FHWA) on March 7, 2014.” Planners and many local residents, including Miller, support needed safety improvements along both Alcoa and Chapman highways. Miller’s concerns center on making the best use of the scant funding available, arguing it could have more of an impact and potentially save more lives put to use on Chapman Highway. From 2012-2014, seven people died in crashes on Chapman and 452 were injured. Two people died in collisions along Alcoa Highway and 138 were injured in the same time frame. “There’s no question in my mind that these improvements are needed, and unlike some other highways there’s no alternative to making Alcoa a safe regional artery,” says Gene Burr, a Lakemoor Hills resident who has helped the neighborhood’s homeowners’ association advocate for safety improvements to Alcoa Highway. “Alcoa Highway is the highest volume non-interstate highway in the entire state, and a lot of us have had personal losses—my next-door neighbor was killed at Ginn Drive and Alcoa just a couple of years ago.” TDOT’s vision is to eventually rework all 12 miles of Alcoa Highway from Interstate 40 in Knoxville south into Blount County. It’s an ambitious project with a hefty price tag—estimated at more than $233 million— that’s been broken down into smaller segments that can be built as funding becomes available. Contractors will likely start work on the $68 million first leg between Woodson Drive and Maloney Road sometime next year. Contract bidding is scheduled for February.

As each segment is completed, Alcoa Highway will, piece-by-piece, start to function more like a real highway and less like a surface street with turnoffs and red lights. Plans call for a concrete median, adding an additional lane of travel in each direction, exit ramps to connect with some surface streets, and a few bridges to route nearby neighborhood roads over the highway, among other improvements. Exact designs for the entire stretch are still developing and have been refined many times over the years. When asked for documents detailing the scope of the work to be complete, TDOT officials said it would take 21 days to research and compile that paperwork, much of which no longer exists in digital format, according to TDOT attorney Sarah McBride. But promised funding from the FHWA to back many of these projects isn’t as certain. That’s a big reason why work on Alcoa Highway has been parsed out into smaller pieces, although TDOT is continuing to move forward with survey and design work on the other segments so when the money’s there, it’ll be ready. As top state officials noted earlier this year, Congress has not passed a long-term transportation-funding bill in about a decade, raising questions each year about whether money set aside for road projects will still be available when it’s needed. Many major roadway projects takes years of planning and construction before completion. Federal dollars are slated to cover 80 percent of the Alcoa Highway work, with the state chipping in the remaining 20 percent. TDOT Commissioner John Schroer has noted before that FHWA’s Federal Highway Trust Fund accounts for about half of his department’s annual budget and more than 90 percent of funding for expansion projects. On a state tour last month, Gov. Bill Haslam noted that the Tennessee General Assembly has okayed a list of 181 roadway projects, but they lack funding. On that list was Alcoa Highway, which according to the governor likely will not be fully revamped until at least 2034. ◆

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December 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 11

They’ve got big

, unique products,

and the opportunity

to make national waves

P OM A DE

pioneer

Anchors Hair Company revamps an old favorite to create a new style

Photo by Tricia Bateman

KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

rom a tidy workshop tucked inside his North Knoxville rancher, Ben Miller is fomenting a pomade revolution. Yes, pomade is a thing again. Although a few generations of men once opted instead for the “dry look”—and then later used mousses, gels, and maybe even sprays—proper, old-fashioned pomade is back with a vengeance. It’s a trend that exists beyond the waning charge of the “metrosexual” male, or even the receding reach of Mad Men. Instead, it is a full-on revival spurred by a youthful preoccupation with manly pursuits that never quite went out of style but are experiencing a new-urbanist popularity: café racers, tattoos, hot rods, rockabilly, and, um, facial hair. Lots of facial hair. But also pompadours.

The suddenly crowded pomade marketplace yields products with names like Suavecito, Imperial Barbershop, and Uppercut Deluxe. The packaging often looks vaguely retro-futuristic, as if products from an alternate timeline, with logos and lettering that could hearken to any era between the late 19th century to the 1970s. There is a pomade.com and a pomades.com, each promising artisan-made pomade delivered to your door. Meanwhile, on YouTube, hair-conscious young men are creating channels devoted entirely to pomade reviews, parsing the nuances of hold, volume, and sheen. Into this hip hair-product arena comes Anchors Hair Company, straight out of Knoxville. The 31-yearold Miller’s flagship product is Teddy Boy Original, named after the

Photo by Coury Turczyn

Photo by Tricia Bateman

from a consumer’s point of view, looks every bit as professional and polished as a name-brand manufacturer. He wields an array of online entities, all branded with the distinctive anchor logo designed by his wife Erin: a website, YouTube channel, Facebook page, Twitter feed, Instagram, and storefronts on Etsy and Amazon. Back at the house, though, Anchors’ products are developed from a small, Spartan work room that consists of a couple of shop tables, boilers to melt down the wax, mixers to combine all the ingredients, and a large pneumatic filling station to pump the product into jars. Once filled, the jars take about 12 hours to cool, after which he slaps on labels and boxes them up for shipping. Miller makes about 1,200 jars at a time; last month, he shipped 4,000 units. He spends a lot of time at the post office. With his male-model looks and vibrant sleeves of tattoos that stretch from his fingers up to his neck and onto his head, Miller is not your usual cosmetics scientist. How did he become one? It’s a story as colorful as the ink imprinted on his arms. To start with, his family was not well off. Growing up, his parents worked mostly fast-food jobs and moved him and his late brother Gabe around the country—a lot. “My dad never really got his crap together, so we would move about every six months,” he says. That includes Florida, Ohio, South Carolina, and Wisconsin—it was there the family went from living in trailers to living in a tent. “I remember being the stinky kid at school,” he says, “not having the nicest shoes, and seeing everyone else have this and that, and you’re wearing your brother’s old ratty clothes.” The Millers ended up in Tennessee, first Powell, and then to Kodak, and then to Sevierville. When his father finally left the family, his mother, Katie, took a job at a hotel; since she didn’t own a car, she would ride a bicycle to work 13 miles each day, he says. Finally, when he was 15, his mother got remarried to an electrical engineer, John Helms, and the family moved to Knoxville, where Miller attended West High School. “That’s when structure really came about and I realized that, ‘You know, I kind of like structure,’” he says. “He [his stepfather] was a really hard worker. He would always make sure that he got hard work out of me, too, and my

Photo by Coury Turczyn

post-war dandies of British youth culture. Its small, brown plastic jar promises a semi-gloss pomade “more majestic than a winged snow leopard flying over the Pacific sunset.” And, so far, it’s been delivering. Since 2014, about 40,000 jars have been shipped out of Miller’s DIY factory to boutiques all over the world: Indonesia, Singapore, Ireland, Mexico, Australia, and more. It’s exclusively sold in about 50 salons and shops in the U.S.; in Knoxville, it can be found at Whole Foods as well as Lox Salon in the Old City. Meanwhile, it’s gotten write-ups in traditional media ranging from British GQ to Alternative Press, and lots of attention from those YouTube pomade reviewers. “It made a huge uproar and completely changed the pomade game, like completely,” declares one Roger Gillespie in his 13-minute YouTube rave of Teddy Boy Original. “It made everyone else in the pomade game have to really step up to compete.” The reason why is because Miller has created a water-based pomade utilizing essential oils and natural extracts that actually works as well as a traditional oil-based pomade. “It’s two totally different formulas, two totally different worlds,” Miller says. Most of the industry makes petroleum-oil based pomade, which provides a stronger hold, but also clogs pores and leaves your head, well, greasy. Water-based products are easier to use and are better for your hair, but may not last as long. Miller has concocted a product that bridges the two factions. “Oil-based is a lot easier to make, you don’t need as much equipment and you can find DIYs to do it,” he says. “Some companies use straightup petroleum and they put their own scent in it. I don’t think there’s a lot of integrity in that.” Instead, Miller went about it the hard way—figuring everything out for himself. His favorite pomades cost about $30, but he wanted something more affordable. So, through a lot of trial and error, he developed his own water-based formula that used natural ingredients to achieve the same hair-holding effects, creating a hand-made pomade that sells for $13.95 per 2.5-ounce bottle. While he may be self-taught, Miller is also hyper-attentive to detail, creating a one-man operation that,

brother. I think that growing up and seeing how hard my parents worked lit a fire under me to work that hard and make those sacrifices. It helps me feel better about my day.” One of the duties his stepfather expected of him was to help other people, especially those in worse financial straits. “My stepdad would make me drive this big food truck underneath the bridge at Broadway every Saturday morning. You can imagine a high schooler every Saturday morning—I was pretty mad about it. But I would do it—get up and drive the food truck under Broadway and feed the homeless.” Meanwhile, he and his brother had started a series of Christian punk bands that attained some success, including Minute 61 and the Invocation. Their mother would drive the band to shows at local churches as well as venues in Nashville, St. Louis, and Daytona. They were carried by a few indie labels, too, such as Reborn Records and Rugged Records, but Miller got burned out on the music biz

Anchors Hair Company’s product line currently consists of three different Teddy Boy pomades (top) made with natural ingredients—plus branded combs and T-shirts. Coming soon: Teddy Boy Rise (shampoo) and Shine (conditioner). Owner Ben Miller makes it all himself in his North Knoxville workshop (above). at a relatively young age. “I kinda just got sick of it,” he says. “By the time I was 18, I wanted to do something bigger, so that’s why I joined the Army.” More specifically, after graduating from West High in 2003, he eventually got into the 82nd Airborne Division. He served for over three years, jumping out of airplanes—but also managed to dislocate both of his shoulders in the process and received a medical discharge. He landed in Dallas, doing graphic design while also searching for a career that didn’t necessitate sitting at a desk eight hours a day. He was interested in psychological counseling, which of course drew him to hair. “I figured hair would be a great way to get into that and have a fun December 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 13

KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

Photos by Clay Duda

lifestyle—I could have tattoos,” he says. “It’s amazing the stuff people tell their hair stylist, compared to their psychiatrist. So it was mainly being with people, being active.” He attended the Toni & Guy Hairdressing Academy in Dallas and learned the trade. But when he met his future wife, Erin, he decided to move back to Knoxville to be closer to his mother. On his return, Miller picked up a job at a fast-paced salon in West Knoxville, but soon began experiencing panic attacks. “I’ve dealt with anxiety before but these were just really bad in the salon. I was thinking maybe this was God’s way of telling me that I shouldn’t be here. I’ve learned how to work through them. I still have them. I think everyone does. But you just tell yourself you’re going to be all right and move on.” He found the right work environment at Lox, owned by Brynn Gonzalez, as well as encouragement to pursue his ideas for hair products— he’ll be ending his career there at the end of December to focus on Anchors. “I had always been messing with stuff—different formulas—and I would take it there and try it out on my clients. And the clients really started to like it and they would ask me, ‘Where can I buy that stuff?’ Brynn and the crew down there really inspired me to just start making it. So that’s what I did.” A highly visible tattoo aficionado, Miller loves traditional sailor skin art—hence the Anchors moniker. But the name also represents the idea of anchoring his life, which he hopes this company will help him achieve; three years ago, he and Erin had a son, Oliver, which spurred him into getting serious about Anchors. “I put away all of my childish things and just focused on this one business and my family,” he says. So far, so good. Expansion plans are in the works: Miller has started creating custom products for salons, and he’s preparing to launch Teddy Boy shampoo (Rise) and conditioner (Shine) in 2016. Meanwhile, he’s trademarked Teddy Boy Clothing. “I don’t want to be too big,” he says. “It sounds great to have billions of dollars, but I want to keep it in the family, maybe one day have my son help me work on it. And if he wants to do something totally different, then I’ll sell it and help him with whatever he wants to do.” —Coury Turczyn

K A R AOK E

empire

DigiTrax vaults the art of karaoke into the digital era— while also teaching children how to spell

or the folks at DigiTrax Entertainment in South Knoxville, karaoke isn’t just a passion, it’s an obsession. That’s what it takes to bootstrap and build to the country’s largest online karaoke service, according to founder and CEO Joe Vangieri. “It really was true grit and determination,” Vangieri recalls. “We started out of a house, and just this past April we were about to move in here (a storefront in South Knoxville off Chapman Highway). We built this place out ourselves.” DigiTrax rose from the dust of Chartbuster Karaoke, a long-running Knoxville company that went defunct in 2011. Vangieri pulled together about a dozen of its former employees and started up DigiTrax, moving from Clearwater, Fla. with his wife, Cathy, to work for $7 hourly that first year getting things off the ground. But the hard work seems to have paid off. Today the company employees nearly 20 people here in Knoxville and has ambitions to add as many as 20 more in a Nashville expansion as part of one of its new ventures. At the core of its business is karaokecloud. com, a website that offers both free and paid karaoke tunes, up to 8,000 tracks, that can be streamed straight to a computer, smartphone, or sound system connected to the web for

casual karaokers or professional DJs. It also runs SoKnox Studios, a full-service recording studio, out of its offices in South Knoxville. From that base the company has recently branched out with other ventures in song, dance, and technology, relying on its in-house expertise and karaoke catalog to fuel growth. Children Media Studio, a company under the DigiTrax umbrella helmed by Cathy Vangieri, Joe’s wife, launched earlier this year with a series of Sing and Spell Learning Letters apps for children. Already the apps come preinstalled on about 300,000 kid-oriented tablets available in places like Toys R’ Us, Walmart, and Target, a sort of testing ground Cathy says will allow them to continue to finetune their offerings.

Left: Cathy Vangieri demos a children’s learning app with all original content and music developed and recently launched by Children’s Media Studio, a division of Digitrax Entertainment. Above: A familiar sight, DigiTrax Entertainment founder and CEO Joe Vangieri in front of a white board. This time, he’s mapping how his startup grew from a fledgling online karaoke company to include multiple ventures and business—all under one roof in its South Knoxville office space. “I love using music as a learning tool because for kids, and even for adults, it’s very easy to engage with,” says Cathy, a retired school teacher. “We grew up with things like Schoolhouse Rock, and this is kind of going back to schoolhouse basics. When I was a teacher I could talk with kids and they would say words and sing songs, but they had a hard time making letter sounds, and that was a missing component.” Sing and Spell aims to help with that. It took more than two years to develop the animated activity apps complete with colorful characters like Eddie Spaghetti, Luke Warmwater, and Al Phabet (the French grasshopper) and an original song composed by Mark Radice (a Knoxvillian and veteran musician of children’s TV shows The Muppet Show and Sesame Street) for each letter of the alphabet. In-app purchases allow for expanded

“It really was true grit and determination.” —JOE VANGIERI, CEO of DigiTrax Entertainment

Photos by Clay Duda

lesson plans, and an online subscription service can beam the playful curriculum to pretty much any device. “We became very involved with the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center, and that’s really been the best thing we’ve done to bring our product to the market,” Cathy says. “Now we’re tied in with the Launch Tennessee TENN program, a master accelerator program for new companies, out of Nashville.” Only eight startups in the state were selected for this TENN program, geared as an intensive crash-course for budding entrepreneurs with solid ideas. Sing and Spell was among them, along with fellow Knoxville new-start Innovasan, a company focused on on-site fluid waste disposals for hospitals. It was through that program that Joe Vangieri linked up with Michael Amburgey, founder of KaraoQ, a company focused on developing technologies to help patrons interact with DJs and venues. Think a smartphone app that lets you select a karaoke tune and join the queue to sing without ever having to leave the bar stool, or download karaoke tunes and lyrics ahead of time, and potentially deliver nightly specials on drinks or food. Don’t want to wait in line? Pay to jump to the front, or digitally transfer the DJ a couple bucks as a tip. KaraoQ pulls in revenue by taking a cut of line-jumping fees, tips, and through sponsorships, Amburgey says. Couple those features with DigiTrax’ extensive catalog of already licensed karaoke tracks and, well, the partnership was a natural fit. “Surprisingly enough there has been almost zero innovation for the patron or the performer (when it comes to live karaoke experiences),” Amburgey says. “There has never been something that created a 360-degree solution—until now.” With DigiTrax on its feet and a team of like-minded entrepreneurs pushing these new ventures, Joe Vangieri says he’s got a pulse on the future. Early reception of both Sing and Spell and KaraoQ has been strong, he says, but next comes a round of funding to help kick things up hard and fast. “I’m making a run for it right now—I’m going after $5 million,” he says. “By the end of 2016 we plan to be in 1,000 bars, and that’s a big network driving significant revenue.” —Clay Duda

Fadi Saleh, founder of SpareTime Entertainment, answers questions from a panel of judges during a pitch at Startup Day about his company and software it has developed to help create video mashups. It specializes in making President Barack Obama sing popular songs, but he has plans to expand.

M A SH U P

revolution

SpareTime Entertainment aims to transform a YouTube hit into a remix network

adi Saleh quite literally knows what it takes to make Barack Obama sing. Over the past three years, the 22-year-old University of Tennessee student has put the president on the mic for songs ranging from Michael Jackson’s “Thriller to “Popped a Molly” by Trinidad Jame$, and a lot of tracks in between. No, Saleh doesn’t have connections with the White House. He makes the president sing by seeking out snippets of Obama’s public speeches, which he then slices, dices, and reconfigures to the tune of popular songs. These unique remix videos, published sporadically on Saleh’s BaracksDubs YouTube channel, have racked up more than 140 million views and nearly 1 million subscribers looking forward to future releases. It’s also attracted attention from top music industry professionals and national television producers, leading him to produce custom videos for MTV, Ellen DeGeneres, and the TODAY Show, among others. “I put out my first video and it got about 100,000 views. Then I came out with Obama singing “Born This Way” (by Lady Gaga) the next week, and within two hours it was already going viral,” Saleh recalls. “After that I thought that whatever video I posted

no one would care, but it just kept building. It kept getting crazier and crazier, but I was a college student above everything else, so I just kept doing this whenever I had time.” Now, on the cusp of graduation, Saleh is taking steps to turn his college hobby into a full-time career by pioneering a startup he hopes will be a catalyst to a larger remix movement, ultimately putting tools in people’s hands to remix content online without them having to spend countless hours thumbing through video segments, compiling clips, and editing like he’s done in the past. That’s the big picture for SpareTime Entertainment at least, but first he’s working to raise enough money to hire some help and increase production for BaracksDubs, ramping up output to at least one video every other week in the run-up to the 2016 presidential elections. With Obama’s tenure as “leader of the free world” coming to a close, Saleh says he’s going to make more than just the seated president sing, starting with the candidates hoping to fill his seat. Some of his most popular remix videos were produced during the last presidential election cycle in 2012, piggybacking off national trends

as Obama faced Mitt Romney in a bid for reelection. (He even has Obama and Romney sing a duet of Katy Perry’s “Hot and Cold.”) He’s hoping to capitalize on the same fervor this round, using it as a springboard to jump-start a larger remix revolution with his company at the forefront. He may change the name of the YouTube channel to better fit future content. “Over the summer it hit me that BaracksDubs is indicative of a bigger trend, and that’s the fact that people love creating and consuming remix content,” Saleh says. “Our tagline is ‘remix everything,’ and the vision for SpareTime is to create the premiere remix network by creating remixes of our own, but also by enabling our audience base, our community, to remix everything on their own.” To do that, Saleh says he and his partner, Jared Smith, currently a UT junior, will continue to build on software they’ve already developed that helps identify keywords and search terms within Obama’s speeches, eventually expanding its capabilities to scrape other types of video content online. Known as Optimus, the computer program has already cut BaracksDubs’ video editing time by about 80 percent, he says. In the past it took about 100 hours to complete a single one-minute remix video—the majority of that time going to seeking out video clips online—but with Optimus, that process is down to about 20 hours and continues to accelerate as the software is fine-tuned. “Optimus is helping us massively grow BaracksDubs, and then, potentially, it fits into an application to allow December 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 15

people to remix other types of videos,” Saleh says. “There still needs to be a lot of features added on for it to become a true remix engine, but at the same time we think Optimus has potential as a solution for production companies, which is something we’re exploring, because a lot of what they do matches this meticulous need to search through (video content) for words.” SpareTime is currently seeking investors to help underwrite operations as it gets off the ground as a fully-functioning company. Its target is $400,000, which would keep a small staff employed for about 14 months, pay for further development of Optimus, and allow the crew to ramp up production for BaracksDubs, though Saleh says it needs a mini-

mum of $50,000 to get basic operations up and running. Financial projections peg year-one profits at more than $250,000 after expenses, mainly stemming from YouTube advertisement revenue and sponsored content, according to the company’s own figures. Saleh expects that to quadruple in 2017 as the company continues to grow and branch out to other revenue streams. “BaracksDubs is not a moonshot. This is something that’s been proven over the last three years,” he says. “There are a lot of remix types, and that’s where a YouTube channel becomes repeatable beyond just video-to-video. I want to grow SpareTime into a remix network.” —Clay Duda

Zmix takes that whole tiny-squirt-bottle sports-drink trend and introduces it to alcohol

s president of Zmix, a Knoxville-based company that sells low-calorie cocktail mixer concentrates, Augustine Gattuso is succeeding with a just-for-fun product for those who like to party. And yet he views himself as more of a business guy, a grinder, a serious salesman—an outlook he developed as an econ major at University of Tennessee graduating in 2005, followed by years as a financial advisor with Hilliard Lyons and 16

KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

Capital Financial Group. “Starting Zmix was a sheer business decision,” he says. “We looked at the popularity of water enhancers and asked, ‘Why isn’t anyone doing this for alcohol?’” When he and three friends began a business, originally named Seismix, to fill the gap about two years ago, Gattuso didn’t have any grocery store or alcohol experience. “But other members of the team did,” he says. “And we’ve been able to work with

Photo courtesy of Zmix

party

some amazing consultants who help us with all of the flavor designs.” The zero-calorie mix, sweetened with sucralose and acesulfame potassium, comes in three flavors: Cosmo is cranberry, orange, and lime-flavored; Purple Hooter black raspberry and lime; and Lemon Drop has lemon and citron. Each is designed to flavor 1 or 2 ounces of alcohol. “This is where we’re different,” says Gattuso. “Most water enhancers are formulated to be mixed with 8 ounces of water, and aren’t recommended for use with alcohol.” Gattuso grew up in a small family in East Tennessee, his mom working in Oak Ridge. “My dad owned restaurants,” he says. “So I got to be around small business a little coming up.” If his father hadn’t died when Gattuso was 10, he says, he would doubtlessly be in the restaurant business himself. “There wouldn’t have been a choice,” he says with a laugh. But he’s perfectly happy with this choice. “It is very, very fun, partly because I am working with friends for the first time,” he says. “I do think that is the only reason anyone would do this—the hours, the selling, the details you never imagine you would need to work out. I can’t imagine anyone doing this if they weren’t having a good time.” With his typical light tone and mild manner, Gattuso admits he’s had the entrepreneurial bug a long time. “I always knew I’d grab that opportunity at some point,” he says. His first foray was a company that received funding for an Internet application in 2011. Now, Zmix. He says the years of commission-based work have really helped him in his current role. “In both cases, the only money coming in is what you sell, so for me it wasn’t as much of a shock.” As an entrepreneur, selling “feels like it’s kind of all the time,” he says with a laugh. “This is different from working at someone else’s company, because you feel like you are always ‘on.’ You don’t really get to turn off at 5 o’clock.” The first solid indicator that Zmix was going to succeed came when a marketing company ended up taking an equity stake in the company. “We all thought, ‘I guess this idea does have legs! This is pretty cool,’” Gattuso says. Their progress has been steady. They sold to their first liquor distributor right here in Knoxville, B and T, and are now up to four distributors and

around 130 liquor and convenience stores, along with online sales. They recently earned status as a Prime product, meaning Amazon Prime members can order Zmix online without paying for additional shipping. They appeared in Cheers! magazine in June and were voted Readers’ Choice New Product of the Year for 2014 by readers of Beverage Industry, garnering 40 percent of votes. All of the recognition and strides have been wonderful, says Gattuso, but he would never want to leave anyone with the idea that an entrepreneur succeeds with one fell stroke of genius—or luck. “It’s a lot of ride-alongs,” he says. “We get out in the stores and sell right alongside the distributors. There was never a magic bullet, no ‘yesterday we had five stores and now we have 100.’ It’s a grind.” Gattuso laughs at the idea of inadvertently releasing proprietary information to competitors. “I don’t really worry about our ideas being stolen, because I know how difficult it is to bring this idea to reality. It someone else wants to try, I’m fine with that!” As for plans to go public? Gattuso answers that in his trademark low-key style. “Oh gosh, that’s so premature. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.” Five year plan? “I can’t begin to think in terms of a five-year plan. But our five-day plan is business as usual. The five-month plan is to be in a better place then we are today, to continue growing the company. If we could add Knoxville employees some day, that would be amazing.” His plan for tomorrow? “We will wake up and we’ll be making our phone calls and sending our emails—the same thing we do day in and day out.” He’s just as self-deprecating about paying forward the mentoring Zmix partners have received from the Knoxville Entrepreneurial Center and other supporters and coaches. “I wouldn’t say I’m qualified yet,” he says. “But I’ve certainly had meetings with others who have questions about starting a business, and I’m always available to anyone who wants to sit down or any local cause that could use our support. “Just shoot me an e-mail,” he says. “I’m here.” —Rose Kennedy

Project BrandAid Winner:

in 2006 they moved to St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands where Brandon became a pastry chef at a resort. But Knoxville beckoned for their return— Courtney was a few credits short of completing her degree at the University of Tennessee, and they were soon to get married and start a family. But by then the economy had crashed and executive chef jobs were hard to find. So Brandon dropped out of restaurants altogether to start a landscaping business—but he hadn’t forgotten about Frussies, which Dicks had shuttered as his health declined. They had kept in touch over the years, and Brandon had even convinced Dicks to share (or rather, sell) his potato salad recipe. One day, Brandon brought over a batch, seeking his approval. “Sitting in his house, we just got to talking about how it was a shame the restaurant had closed and how I wished it was still around and he was healthy,” Brandon says. “He was like, ‘Everything is still down there in the building and you could go lease it.’ I was like, ‘I’ll do it—but you can’t charge me $200 per recipe like you did with the potato salad.’” Dicks agreed and Brandon would pick him up every day at 5 a.m. for almost two months; they’d go to the restaurant and make one or two things, running through all of his secret recipes. Finally, in November 2011, Brandon was ready to reopen Frussies and bring back the sandwiches that so many customers missed—customers he was banking on to return to the fold. “The immediate challenge was getting people coming back to the store and believe it was as good as it had been. James emailed all his customers saying, ‘Hey, this guy is

Frussies Deli and Bakery Jay Brandon owns one of the best sandwich shops in town. So why haven’t more people heard of it?

JAY BRANDON

PROJECT BRANDAID Project BrandAid was devised by Asen Marketing as a way to help one local small business get the branding and advertising materials it needs to succeed. Sponsored by the Knoxville Mercury, WVLT Channel 8, Star 102.1 FM, Printedge, Firstview Online, SRW & Associates, and the Knoxville Chamber, the contest drew online submissions from business owners as well as supporters. A judging panel selected three contestants: Visual Communication Interpreting, Hush Puppy’s Pet Services, and Frussies Deli & Bakery. Online voters selected Frussies for the win—and $40,000 worth of marketing assistance: website, video, brochures, photography, social media, online search optimization, ads for print and digital, plus public relations.

Photo by Coury Turczyn

and Genoa salami) fused together under melted Provolone, and a tart Italian dressing. Brandon was an early customer to the South Knoxville location, lured in by word of mouth, and soon became a regular. A few years later, he decided to switch careers from hospital work to restaurants, gaining employment at the Regas family’s restaurants where he was encouraged to further his cooking skills. So, in 2001, he moved to New York and graduated from ICE, finding work at the Michelin Guide three-star restaurant, Eleven Madison Park. But whenever he was back in Knoxville, he would be sure to include a trip to Frussies. “I really and truly believe in my heart of hearts—after living in New York—that James put out the finest sandwich around,” he says. “I would always tell him that when I came in, even when I was going to school in New York and would come down at Christmas break to see family and go to the deli. He’d be like, ‘Have you had any good sandwiches up there?’ I’d say, ‘I had some good sandwiches, but nothing like this.’” In 2003, Brandon’s career took him back to Knoxville full-time, where he worked for Peerless Steak & Seafood and Copper Cellar, and helped open the short-lived but well remembered Little Star in Bearden. He met his future wife, Courtney, and

Photo by Coury Turczyn

s winner of the first Project BrandAid contest, Frussies Deli and Bakery will soon undergo a $40,000 marketing makeover. It comes at just the right time for owner Jay Brandon. Four years ago he took on the tricky task of continuing the legacy of fabled South Knoxville sandwich artisan James Dicks, who had closed the longstanding Frussies due to his battle with cancer. Although trained by Dicks himself, Brandon—a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City—faced the challenge of wooing back previous customers while also winning over new ones. This year, he moved the restaurant downtown with a new look and a tweaked menu, devoting a large chunk of his resources to refurbishing the building at the corner of Gay Street and Cumberland Avenue, as well as hiring a larger staff. Now he needs to get the word out. “I’ve gone out to dinner or just around town and people go, ‘What do you do?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, I own Frussies Deli.’ The most common response I get is, ‘Frussies—I’ve never heard of that,’” he says. “So marketing has got to be my biggest challenge. As much as I can do on my own with a Facebook page and Instagram, if you don’t have the capital to plunk down a bunch of cash on newspaper ad or radio ad, it’s really hard to get exposure.” Frussies was originally located in Gatlinburg before Dicks moved his sandwich shop to an old strip plaza on Moody Avenue in 1996. Dicks became known as a true Knoxville character— demanding of both his sandwiches and his customers, but with a sly, impish sense of humor that revealed itself over repeat visits. His dedication to sandwich making was obsessive. He baked his own breads and roasted his own meats each day at the crack of dawn, and devised his own particular recipes for everything from the turkey Reuben to a crisp cabbage cole slaw. The warm Italian sandwich is perhaps his crowning achievement—a perfectly balanced assemblage crisped French bread, meats (ham, turkey,

doing it right,’ and I figured people would come right back—and it wasn’t the case,” he says. “Some people, including myself, went for the sandwich but also to see James’ antics of the day, and without James, Frussies kind of lost that part of it.” Nevertheless, the sandwiches are just as delicious they were under Dicks, made to the same exacting standards. Dicks died soon after the reopening. Like the menu, Brandon wants to continue Dicks’ preference to keeping the deli itself simple. The brand is unique enough to inspire thoughts of franchising, but he doesn’t believe Frussies unique qualities can be maintained at more than one location. “It’s just the amount of time and labor to bake the bread every morning, I don’t see it being easily replicated in multiple locations,” he says. “I just want to keep the one store and mom-and-pop it, have my little corner on Gay Street and hopefully people will come and enjoy a sandwich.” —Coury Turczyn

December 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 17

A&E

P rogram Notes

Photo by Alysse Gafkjen

Art Cinema for the People

AMERICAN AQUARIUM

ROBERT RANDOLPH

G. LOVE

Blooming Rhythm Rhythm N’ Blooms Festival organizers slowly unveil an impressive lineup for 2016

he organizers of the Rhythm N’ Blooms Festival—which is, by just about any measure, the biggest music fest in town, set for April 8-10—have been having some fun with the first rounds of lineup announcements in recent weeks, with a string of social media puzzles, clues, and other hints. The results: With at least one more big round of announcements to come, the festival is already shaping up impressively, with a roster of big-name country and roots bands, at least one notable local headliner, and an interesting mix of up-and-coming and established acts from across the roots spectrum. The official lineup so far includes recent Grammy nominees the

Mavericks; New Jersey funk/soul/ gospel superstars Robert Randolph and the Family Band; Knoxville/ Nashville big shots the Black Cadillacs; Brooklyn folk-rock duo the Lone Bellow; Philadelphia hip-hop/ jam-band mad scientist G. Love and his backing band, Special Sauce; North Carolina heartland rockers American Aquarium; Australian roots experimentalists Jakubi; former everybodyfields frontman and current Black Lillie Sam Quinn; Midwestern folk- and world-music combo the Ragbirds; Florida singer/ songwriter Liz Longley; “no-hit wonder” Cory Branan; Arkansas neo-soul singer Knox Hamilton; Massachusetts folk quartet Darling-

side; singer/songwriter David Ramirez; Americana trio Quiet Life; Southern rockers the Banditos; rock cellist/composer Dave Eggar; blue-eyed soul singer Mutlu; Nashville band Koa; New York singer/ songwriter Caleb Hawley; and psychedelic folk band Twin Limb. Rhythm N’ Blooms, part of the Dogwood Arts Festival, takes place every spring in various venues around downtown and the Old City. The next lineup announcement is set for January. Tickets for the festival are on sale now at rhythmnbloomsfest.com: $75 for general-admission weekend passes and $150 for VIP passes.

Shelf Life: Holiday movies

KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

Music: Summoner’s Circle

Movie: Krampus

The Public Cinema’s recently announced third season of free film screenings confirms the group’s commitment to bringing notable and important movies to Knoxville that most of us wouldn’t have much chance of seeing otherwise, either on a big screen, DVD, or streaming. The 2016 schedule of Public Cinema offerings includes buzzed-about indie dramas (Todd Rohal’s Uncle Kent 2), groundbreaking world cinema (Jia Zhang-ke’s Mountains May Depart, Apitchatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendor), acclaimed documentaries (Alfred Hitchcock is a special focus, with Jenni Olson’s The Royal Road and Kent Jones’ Hitchcock/Truffaut on the list), and almost a dozen other unexpected picks lined up. The biggest news, though, might be Public Cinema’s new partnership with Big Ears for 2016. During the March 31-April 2 festival of new and experimental music, the group will be screening Laurie Anderson’s new documentary Heart of a Dog, which New York Times critic Manohla Dargis describes as “narratively straightforward and playfully experimental, light and heavy (it’s a fast 75 minutes), accessible and opaque, concrete and abstract.” More details on the Public Cinema/Big Ears collaboration are expected. The Public Cinema’s spring 2016 season runs from Jan. 13-May 3 at the Knoxville Museum of Art, Scruffy City Hall, and Pilot Light. Visit publiccinema. org for the full schedule. All screenings are free. —Matthew Everett

UNCLE KENT 2

Theater: Santaland Diaries

Shelf Life

A&E

Remember the Night Four classic Hollywood holiday movies from the Knox County Public Library BY CHRIS BARRETT

ince Christmas and Hollywood seem to rely so much on nostalgia, why not double your money and revel in some exceptional classic fi lms that present those two institutions in their most flattering light? Granted, each of these was made while World War II put considerable pressure on studios to elevate morale.

REMEMBER THE NIGHT

Fred McMurray is as tweedy as ever, young Barbara Stanwyck is as tempting as ever, and Beulah Bondi perseveres as the matron forever minding the home fi res. McMurray plays a no-nonsense prosecutor who can’t bear to leave shoplifter Stanwyck in the clink over Christmas, so he bails her out and takes her to his family’s home. What follows won’t surprise you, but the details are cleverly managed and your intelligence is never offended.

THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER

Knox County Public Library has many linear feet of shelf space dedicated to readers who might suffer from low self-esteem. In this fi lm, nearly every character suffers from the high self-esteem of arrogant radio commentator Sheridan Whiteside, played with exquisite bombast and universal disregard for others by Monty Woolley. After slipping on the ice during a winter speaking tour through Ohio, Whiteside imposes himself upon an innocent family where he commandeers the kitchen, manipulates numerous budding romances, and generally imports his own chaotic life and lifestyle into a disarmingly quaint and cozy community. It’s based on the play of the same name (in which Woolley also stole the show as Whiteside), which was inspired by the pugnacious personality of real-life

critic Alexander Woollcott. It’s a terrific fi lm and a great story. How nice to be reminded that madness and sweetness are not mutually exclusive in a person.

IT HAPPENED ON 5TH AVENUE AND CHRISTMAS IN JULY

Both of these movies subscribe to the unwritten rules of any good Christmas fl ick: Relationships are strained but strengthened; hard hearts are softened; commitments are made to be better and do better. But the shared subject of these two fi lms is, in fact, the redistribution of wealth. It’s likely that they could not have been released even a decade later, with Hollywood spooked as it was by the Red Menace. Christmas in July is consummate Preston Sturges, and he nails the advertising business. A prank leads clerk Jimmy MacDonald (Dick Powell) to believe that a pun he submitted to a slogan contest won the $25,000 prize—even though nobody gets it. That misunderstanding proves contagious, and Jimmy and his gal Betty (Ellen Drew) blow the wad on gifts for their working-class neighbors. William Demerest plays the type he perfected for Sturges. Perhaps like someone you know, he seems to think that saying the same thing but louder every time is an effective tool of persuasion. Prescient of the recent Occupy movement, It Happened on 5th Avenue employs squatters, disenfranchised veterans, millionaires incognito, and the simple notion that it is wrong to have insulated shelter go unused “off-season” while people freeze on the streets. Brilliant. ◆

A Christmas Carol Adapted for the stage by Dennis Elkins Directed by

Micah-Shane Brewer

clarencebrowntheatre.com

865.974.5161

#CBTChristmas Carol

December 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 19

A&E

Music

on First Summoning. Each of the Six has studied many varied and distinct artists, and each has brought those together into what is now the core, or essence, of our being.

You guys obviously have a flair for the theatrical. Where does that come from, how does it influence what you do, and what are your ultimate plans? I get the feeling there’s a bigger picture.

Magic Circle The unlikely epic saga of Summoner’s Circle BY MATTHEW EVERETT

ummoner’s Circle is not like other Knoxville bands, and not just because they play spaced-out heavy rock laced with occult and astrological symbolism borrowed from H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and other pulp writers of the early 20th century. The band’s six members claim to be refugees from a cosmic war on the planet Mercury, intent on completing a series of arcane eldritch rituals— which, when performed, just happen to resemble heavy-metal concerts. Is it a publicity stunt or a postmodern prank? Or have mystical metal aliens really landed in our midst? Guitarist Gog answered some of our questions in a recent email interview.

Tell me about the band—who you are, how you came together, previous experience, what you’re trying to do with this new band? It is a long and ongoing story. Allow me to summarize to the best of my ability. The Circle was formed by Magog and myself early in the Earth year of 2015 during the calendar term you refer to as February. The war on our home world of Mercury led to the death of our Creator, and we were tasked by our order to gather together all of the old Creator’s spilled blood in order to 20

KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

perform the Rite of Making, which would summon him back into being. Magog and I had grown weary of serving this now deceased god and his order, and decided at this juncture to, yes, collect his blood but, instead, perform the Summoning ourselves and assume the power of the old creator unto ourselves. Mercury is currently in chaos, and it seemed like the most opportune moment to strike out on our own in a quest for ultimate power and vengeance. We are now an alliance of Six. We have assumed earthly avatars and adopted your instruments to assist in creating the incantations necessary to perform the Summoning. The Six are Gog (lead guitar); Magog (rhythm guitar); the Fallen One (bass); Blind (throat and screams); Sol (keyboards and vocals); and B.G. Scios (drums).

Any particular bands you find inspiration from? You seem to draw from classic doom, modern metal, some black metal. Your observations are quite astute. We have researched doom pioneers on your world such as Black Sabbath, Pentagram, Candlemass, and Draconian, in addition to others such as Opeth and Emperor. Their works, and many others, have greatly contributed to the incantations you can now hear

That is just part of being when you are a Summoner by trade. One cannot work blood magick and conjure and bind interdimensional beings and not have a flair for the theatric. What is it the kids around here say? This is how we roll? The larger the scale, the more powerful the Summoning. Our Acolytes and Nones (followers and fans) deserve to be treated to more than watching several beings standing there performing incantations. We feed off of the energy, and that energy gives us more power. In turn, it gives them more pleasure and a spectacle to behold. It is a perpetual cycle. When you come witness us performing a Summoning, be prepared to view a spectacle and something that could be deemed over the top.

Who’s the singer, and where did you find him? I imagine it’s pretty hard to find anybody around Knoxville who can (or will) do extreme metal vocals, but you seem to have found a really good one. That would be Blind. Magog, Fallen, and I were about to be devoured by the Parasite at the base of the White Pyramid when, and I might add in no hurry, he finally decided our lives were worth saving. We knew he had the ancient wisdom we needed to complete the Circle and perform the Summoning, so we were seeking him out, traversing across the blasted deserts on the sun-facing side of Mercury, where no sane being should live. He is, indeed, a very unique and powerful summoner, and we are fortunate that he joined our ranks.

In your live clips, there’s some tongue-incheek humor in the presentation, but it’s not apparent in the music. Do you find that’s a tough line to navigate—acknowledging that what you’re doing is over the

top but remaining committed to it?

Ah, yes. Blind is quite snarky in his old age. Seeing that which is not supposed to be seen has a way of doing that to a being. He doesn’t get out much, and spends most of his time locked up in the Fortress of Chukar. I surmise he jests for the attention it gets him.

First Summoning sounds top-notch—tell me about writing and recording it. And are there plans for a full-length?

First Summoning was chronicled over a span of several months by Dalton Skinner at Anchor Sound Studios. Each Summoner contributed to the writing of each incantation. The Six are currently in the process of writing material for a full-length tome, which we hope to chronicle during the spring cycle of 2016.

Knoxville’s metal scene seems to be gathering momentum—you guys, stoner bands like Mass Driver and O’Possum, the prog-rock bands, and plenty more. Is anything in particular spurring that?

Most likely the cosmic energies being released by the war on Mercury are fueling this resurgence. Doom, death, and destruction travel swiftly and quietly. ◆

WHO

Deicide with Season of Suffering, Summoner’s Circle, and Cemetery Filth

WHERE

The Concourse (940 Blackstock Ave.)

WHEN

Wednesday, Dec. 16, at 8 p.m.

HOW MUCH

$17/$20 at the door

INFO

internationalknox.com

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Downtown Dive 410 W. Jackson Avenue Knoxville (865) 281-1738 December 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 21

A&E

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

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A hate letter to the holidays from the director of Trick ’r Treat

Featuring

“Holiday Dance Party” with The Streamliners Swing Orchestra

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

Movie

n his fantastic 2007 anthology film, Trick ’r Treat, writer/director Michael Dougherty created a pint-sized demon who doled out grisly punishment to those who didn’t show proper respect for Halloween. Dougherty takes a similar tack with Krampus, swapping Trick ’r Treat’s diminutive Sam for the monstrous Alpine anti-Claus who, in the movie’s retooled mythology, protects the Christmas spirit by murdering those who don’t have it. The result doesn’t come to close to matching Trick ’r Treat’s gory, witty pleasures, but it’s a decent entry in the modest canon of kid-friendly holiday horror. Not that Krampus is much of a horror movie, or even tries to be. Despite Universal’s decision to downplay the film’s comedic elements—apparently a wise choice, since it defied expectations and pulled in a cool $16 million at the box office during its opening weekend—Dougherty’s latest is, first and foremost, a comedy, and it’s often a pretty funny one. Krampus begins promisingly, with a slow-motion sequence of violent Christmas-shopping mayhem that plays out to the tune of Bing Crosby’s “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.” We meet young Max (Emjay Anthony) as he’s pummeling the snot out of another boy during a Christmas

pageant. The kid’s offense, we soon learn, was dissing Christmas to 12-year-old Max, who clings to comforting memories of Christmas past—before his older sister, Beth (Stefania LaVie Owen), became an uninterested teenager, before his parents (Adam Scott and Toni Collette) drifted apart, and before he began to suspect the truth about Santa Claus. But there’s a darker truth about St. Nick that Max is about to learn: The jolly old elf has a “shadow” called Krampus, whose job is to take rather than give. When a dejected Max rips up his yearly letter to the North Pole and throws the pieces into a frigid night breeze, he unwittingly sends an open invitation to Krampus and his army of ghastly minions, who arrive under cover of a blizzard to rain some Christmas hell down on Max and his family. But the family’s grueling (and unearned) comeuppance is a long time coming. Krampus spends more time riffing on Christmas Vacation than the oft-invoked Gremlins, with Dougherty and cowriters Zach Shields and Todd Casey seemingly more interested in dissecting real-life Christmas horrors than cooking up fantastic ones. Besides watching his parents’ marriage slowly implode, Max is constantly taunted by the awful cousins who are spending the

holiday in his family’s home, along with their gun-toting parents (David Koechner and Allison Tolman) and belligerent, boozed-up aunt (Conchata Ferrell). By the time the film gets down to wicked business, there’s not much room for Krampus and his gang. That’s a shame, because what a gang it is. Krampus’ creature design, which includes demonic stuffed animals, carnivorous jack-in-the-boxes, and murderous porcelain angels, is stellar, and its largely practical effects are top-notch. Some of the creatures are genuinely unsettling: one unhinges its jaw to swallow children whole, while Krampus himself wears Santa’s face literally stretched over his own, frozen in a warped, gaping rictus. (Okay, maybe it’s not entirely kid-friendly, if you like your kids.) Unfortunately, those elements are buried, both in the script and by the third act’s chaotic direction, shaky camera work, and choppy editing— choices that were likely mandated by the movie’s PG-13 rating but muddy the waters nonetheless. Krampus holds onto its secrets far too long to build any real suspense or tension, and its hastily explained mythology is needlessly fuzzy. Since most of the movie plays out before there’s any clear sense of what’s happening or why, it’s a little hard to care. (Interestingly, these are problems that are largely corrected in the film’s tie-in comics anthology, Krampus: Shadow of Saint Nicholas. You really should pick that up.) Maybe Krampus’ biggest problem is born of intent, though. Dougherty’s love for Halloween and the horror genre shone through in every frame of Trick ’r Treat, but Krampus is necessarily a chillier, more cynical affair. It’s more of a hate letter than a valentine, and it’s not likely to inspire the cult devotion that was earned by its predecessor. Krampus is fun, but it’s also pretty forgettable. So Joe Dante can rest easy for now. Despite the comparisons being tossed around like a gremlin in a blender, Dougherty isn’t about to take his place as the king of yuletide monster mayhem. Krampus is a decent holiday creature feature and one that I’ll probably revisit someday, but I’ll definitely need more eggnog for future viewings. ◆

December 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 23

A&E

Theater

Santa’s Little Helper

Don’t Miss These Books!

Clarence Brown’s Santaland Diaries reveals the all-too-real spirit of the season BY ALAN SHERROD

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

t is said that no two snowflakes are alike. It can also be said that no two people can ever agree on what the December holiday season really is. All can probably agree, though, that it is a bizarre conglomeration of secular, religious, pagan, commercial, and celebratory traditions, sounds, and images. As example, on the University of Tennessee campus, two vastly different expressions of Christmastime currently exist within feet of each other—a stage adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol at the Clarence Brown Theatre and David Sedaris’ The Santaland Diaries at the Carousel Theatre. While we may warm ourselves around the satisfying fi re of Ebenezer Scrooge’s transformation at CBT, Sedaris’ satirical comic account of a job as a Macy’s SantaLand elf is more like a sharp icicle ready to fall, cutting open the reality of the season most of us know all too well. The Santaland Diaries began life as a semi-autobiographical essay that Sedaris read on NPR’s Morning Edition in 1992 and became something of an instant classic. In 1996, it was adapted as a one-act play by Joe Mantello; it has been a popular seasonal item for theater companies ever since. The one-actor piece is the story of Sedaris’ own unemployment crisis, which drove him to apply for a job as an elf at the SantaLand in Macy’s flagship store in New York City. This hugely entertaining production, directed by Jeff Stanley, features well-known CBT artist-in-residence David Brian Alley as “Crumpet” the elf. Physical comedy and an energetic delivery seem to flow in Alley’s bloodstream—he is a master at delivering a punch line with a visible punctuation mark. Believe it or not, Stanley and Alley have avoided way-over-the-top

bawdy excess, which is surely an option. Instead, they have given the work the necessary arc and energetic pace that clearly conveys how such a job begins neatly, even calmly, then becomes more and more tattered, more and more hectic, more and more satirically revealing as the anxiety builds toward Christmas Eve. There is a subtlety to be had in this acting dynamic, and one must certainly work hard to avoid rushing the sardonic storytelling to get to the punch line. Sedaris skillfully lays out the job descriptions and philosophy of SantaLand workers, including the multiple Santas and the various elfi n jobs, via anecdotes and observations: wrangling bratty children for photos, controlling the entrances and exits, and feeding Santa the necessary information on bewildered children. Alley’s brilliance as a comic artist was fully employed in the portrayal of the various workers and SantaLand visitors, among them the parents intent on crafting their vision of a perfect Christmas for their less-thanwilling kids. Admittedly, a bit painful was the description of those parents who obliquely request a certain kind of Santa. Alley’s vivid picture of the various weary Santas, perhaps a little unbalanced by the end, struck home, as did the descriptions of the elves whose real extracurricular motivations begin to show a little too clearly. With sets and costumes by Stephen Brown, the Carousel Theatre itself has been transformed from a theater-in-the-round to a modified thrust arrangement, which permits the staging to be presentational and allows a very cool and simple transition from a New York apartment set to the colorful and cloying sweetness of SantaLand. Alley’s own costume switch—to his elfi n attire of can-

dy-cane tights, pumpkin-shaped skirt, and ice-cream-cone-like hat—is accomplished as part of the humorous action. Infusing that action throughout was a marvelous sonic environment of seasonally suggestive and appropriately subtle music and effects created by designer Mike Ponder. Sedaris has held the mirror of satire and comedy up for us to see what we have done to our Christmas season in the name of unrelenting commerce. And we laugh, deservedly—yet deep down, we know we are truly laughing at ourselves. ◆

WHAT

Clarence Brown Theatre: The Santaland Diaries

WHERE

Carousel Theatre (1714 Andy Holt Ave.)

WHEN

Through Dec. 20

HOW MUCH

$26-$32, with senior, student, military, and staff and faculty discounts

INFO

clarencebrowntheatre.com

Thursday, Dec. 10 – Sunday, Dec. 20

MUSIC

Thursday, Dec. 10 DUSTAN LOUQUE • 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. F REE THE BLACKFOOT GYPSIES • Scruffy City Hall • 8PM FREEQUENCY • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM • Acoustic Americana. THE THIRST QUENCHERS • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine Lounge • 8PM • The Ps and Qs house band. CRANFORD HOLLOW • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. THE NIGHTOWLS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM KNOXVILLE JAZZ ORCHESTRA: A SWINGIN’ CHRISTMAS • Tennessee Theatre • 8PM • might not be the most familiar name on the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra’s list of collaborators in the next few months—Vance Thompson’s combo is playing with Christian McBride, Regina Carter, and the firebrand René Marie in early 2016. The 26-year-old Cécile McLorin Salvant is just at the beginning of her career and she’s already a Grammy nominee and a multiple Downbeat award winner—both for her 2013 debut album, WomanChild—and Nate Chinen of The New York Times recently called her “the finest jazz singer to emerge in the last decade.” (The awards for her second album, For One to Love, released in September, will start rolling in early next year.) Salvant has all the tools for a sturdy, reliable traditional jazz vocalist—big, dynamic range, buckets of personality, an actor’s flair for drama, and a scholar’s command of the classic songbook. But on WomanChild and especially For One to Love, she’s shown gifts that go beyond jazz classicism, like an idiosyncratic taste for the blues and show tunes and considerable talent as a songwriter. Tickets may be purchased online at www.knoxjazz.org or by calling 656-4444. • $36.50 Friday, Dec. 11 THE BLUEGRASS MOUNTAINEERS WITH GARY BAKER • 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 STREAMLINERS SWING ORCHESTRA • Knoxville Museum of Art • 6PM • The fall season of KMA’s Alive After Five series concludes with Knoxville’s fabulous 17-member Streamliners Swing Orchestra. You can dance off those extra holiday pounds as they play the classic big band music of Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald, and Peggy Lee, with a little Louis Jordan and Louis Prima mixed in for extra fun. • $10-$15 DAVE SLACK TRIO • Pero’s on the Hill • 7PM • Instrumental and vocal jazz standards. DAILEY AND VINCENT WITH THE GREENVILLE HIGH SCHOOL ADVANCED CHORUS • Niswonger Performing Arts Center (Greeneville) • 7:30PM • Seasoned veterans of bluegrass, Dailey & Vincent, will perform their favorite original songs and later in the show will be joined by our very own Greeneville High School Advanced Chorus. • $25-$35 CLAY CAGES WITH BOGUES, ADRENALINE KID, AND SHANKS AKIMBO • Longbranch Saloon • 8PM • $5 FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. F REE JASON ELLIS • Bearden Field House • 9PM FREE TOM JOHNSON • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. FREE

FLUFFER • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM CAUTION • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Caution gives audiences the ultimate jam music experience, covering legendary jam bands like the Grateful Dead, Phish and Widespread Panic. Since 1996, Caution has been turning crowds on to jam music with a mass appealing, in-your-face approach to the jam band style. THE JOHN STICKLEY TRIO • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM F REE OTIS WITH PERSONA LA AVE AND VELVET KING • Pilot Light • 10PM • 18 and up. • $5 PEA PICKIN’ HEARTS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM MIDNIGHT VOYAGE LIVE: BUKU WITH STYLUST BEATS, FAST NASTY, AND PSYCHONAUT • The Concourse • 10PM • Presented by Midnight Voyage Productions and WUTK. 18 and up. • $10 WHITECHAPEL WITH REALM, THE GUILD, FIRE AT THE MARQUEE, AND YAK STRANGLER • The International • 7PM • Local metal superstars Whitechapel headline a holiday toy drive—get $5 off admission with the donation of a new, unopened toy. All ages. • $20 LA BASURA DEL DIABLO WITH THE PARAGON PROJECT, THE PAT BEASLEY BAND, AND VILLAGE GREEN PEOPLE • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • All ages. • $5 THE JAYSTORM PROJECT • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM Saturday, Dec. 12 CHELSEA STEPP WITH ANDREW ATKINS • 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. F REE THE RERUNS • Pero’s on the Hill • 7PM • Knoxville’s premier TV band plays your favorite television themes. ANGEL TREE JAM FEST • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 7PM • All proceeds go to benefit the Salvation Army Angel Tree Fund. The official show starts at 7pm, featuring live blues & bluegrass music from Chris West of Blue Moon Rising, Avery Trace, and Jonny Monster. • $5 DAILEY AND VINCENT • Niswonger Performing Arts Center (Greeneville) • 7:30PM • Dubbed by CMT as the “Rockstars of Bluegrass,” the Dailey & Vincent duo has been hailed throughout the music industry as one of the most exciting, reputable and elite Bluegrass bands in America. • $25-$35 DAVID BOWIE BLOWOUT AND SUPERJAM • Scruffy City Hall • 7:30PM • A tribute to David Bowie’s musical career featuring performances by Maps Need Reading, Stryplepop, and Chalaxy, followed by a Bowie Superjam featuring members of Maps Need Reading, Crumbsnatchers, Tree Tops, Appalachian Fury, the Royal Buzz, and more. THE JAUNTEE • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up. KNOXVILLE GAY MEN’S CHORUS: CHRISTMAS COMES ANEW • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • The Knoxville Gay Men’s Chorus will present their celebration of the holidays with the “Christmas Comes Anew” concert, featuring both traditional carols and secular holiday themes. Tickets can be purchased at knoxgmc.org or knoxbijou.com. • $18 ED GERHARD AND BILL MIZE • Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts ( Gatlinburg) • 8PM • Join us for this special evening with two of the country’s finest acoustic guitarists. Ed and Bill will perform Christmas classics, concert favorites and selected solo pieces. • $22 HAROLD NAGGE AND ALAN WYATT • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. FREE BEN SHUSTER • Bearden Field House • 9PM FREE THE LOST FIDDLE STRING BAND • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM FREE KELSEY’S WOODS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM THE BROADCAST • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM •

CALENDAR

A soulful rock band bursting at the seams- The Broadcast is fronted by explosive vocalist Caitlin Krisko taking cue from early 70s classic rock. • $5 XAMBUCA WITH PALATHEDA • Pilot Light • 10PM • 18 and up. • $5 EXIT 60 • Two Doors Down • 10PM GROOVE JUNCTION • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM THE NATTI LOVE JOYS • Bar Marley • 10PM • East Tennessee roots reggae. Sunday, Dec. 13 SHIFFLETT AND HANNAH • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. FREE SUNDAY JAZZ BRUNCH • Downtown Grill and Brewery • 12:45PM • Knoxville’s coolest jazz artists perform every Sunday. FREE DAVE SLACK TRIO • Pero’s on the Hill • 1PM • Live jazz. KNOXVILLE GAY MEN’S CHORUS: CHRISTMAS COMES ANEW • Bijou Theatre • 2PM • The Knoxville Gay Men’s Chorus will present their celebration of the holidays with the “Christmas Comes Anew” concert, featuring both traditional carols and secular holiday themes.The Christmas concert this year will be the first performance under the direction of the new artistic director, Dr. Alan

Stevens. The chorus will also feature two smaller ensembles, Choral Fixation and Latest Edition. Highlights for the performance include arrangements of “O Come, All Ye Faithful”, “The First Noel” and “Still, Still, Still”. The second act includes “Mele Kalikimaka”, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “Jingle Bells”. Tickets can be purchased at knoxgmc.org or knoxbijou.com. • $18 KNOCKED LOOSE WITH VARIALS AND ADALIAH • Longbranch Saloon • 6PM NEWSBOYS WITH HAWK NELSON AND RYAN STEVENSON • Knoxville Civic Auditorium • 7PM • On the heels of the “We Be Believe…God’s Not Dead” 2015 Spring Tour, which saw over 30 sellouts across the country, best-selling mega group Newsboys will hit the road again this fall to continue the popular tour. Featuring Dove Award-nominated pop/rock band Hawk Nelson, along with special guest singer/songwriter Ryan Stevenson, Newsboys’ “We Believe…God’s Not Dead” 2015 Fall Tour is slated to visit more than 40 cities. Renowned for their high-energy live performances, Newsboys will once again showcase a string of iconic hits during the tour, including their longest running #1 single to date, “We Believe.” • $28-$59.50 EMI SUNSHINE WITH WES LUNSFORD AND LAUREL WRIGHT

THE BLACKFOOT GYPSIES Scruffy City Hall (32 Market Square) • Thursday, Dec. 10 • 8 p.m. • scruffycity.com

The Blackfoot Gypsies’ new album, Handle It, isn’t perfect, or close to it. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. For starters, the Gypsies—a Nashville four-piece inspired by Exile on Main St., the first three Led Zeppelin albums, Canned Heat, and ZZ Top, among others—don’t play the kind of music that gets described as “perfect.” This is exuberant, rough-hewn, ragged folk-rock and trippy-dippy, foot-stomping country blues, boozy and belligerent and backwoods-bred, closer in spirit to the Flat Duo Jets and Hasil Adkins than Imagine Dragons. Handle It is the band’s first real album, following the low-budget Strokes/Black Keys pastiche On the Loose, from 2012. The basic style hasn’t changed, but the Gypsies—who have since expanded from a duo to a quartet—have dug deeper into their record collection for the new disc, and they’ve translated the energy of their reliably boisterous live shows into the studio. Handle It is a big step forward, but what it promises from these Music City up-and-comers is even more exciting. (Matthew Everett)

December 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 25

CALENDAR • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 7PM • $10 SYDNEY ELOISE AND THE PALMS • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. Monday, Dec. 14 MAT BURKE WITH PAUL BREWSTER • 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 OPEN CHORD BATTLE OF THE BANDS • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Each band will be playing full original sets, with one cover song, with a new artist chosen to cover each week. Come out to support your favorite local band and hear some great live music. Winner will advance to the finale night on Dec. 14. Judging is based on songwriting, performance, originality, entertainment value, and audience vote. Come out for some drinks with family and friends and support local music. • $5 Tuesday, Dec. 15 ROD PICOTT WITH THE LOST FIDDLE STRING BAND • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-aweek lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. FREE THE FRENCH • Scruffy City Hall • 6PM NIGHTMARES BEFORE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY PARTY • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Featuring local music by Deconbrio and Reign Like Rain, artwork, stand-up comedy, and a costume contest. All ages. • $8 ROD PICOTT • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • It’s

Thursday, Dec. 10 – Sunday, Dec. 20

been 15 years since Rod Picott laid down his work belt, picked up an acoustic guitar and put a permanent end to his gig as a sheet rock hanger. He’d been writing music in private for years, but it was 2001’s Tiger Tom Dixon’s Blues — a debut album that bridged the gap between folk and Americana — that officially introduced him as a singer/songwriter, kick starting one of the more acclaimed careers in modern-day roots music. Since then, he’s focused on a different kind of construction: building a catalog of songs that spin stories of hard work, heartache and the human condition. Wednesday, Dec. 16 MOJOFLOW WITH MIKE MCGILL • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. FREE FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 6:30PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. FREE JAY CLARK AND THE TENNESSEE CHRISTMAS TREE BEAVERS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7PM • East Tennessee’s own singer-songwriter Jay Clark and the Tennessee Tree Beavers put a holiday spin on their show which is guaranteed to be chock full of thoughtful and funny songs. • $10 THE HUNTER SMITH TRIO • The Bistro at the Bijou • 7PM • Live jazz. FREE DEICIDE WITH SEASON OF SUFFERING, SUMMONER’S CIRCLE, AND CEMETERY FILTH • The International • 7PM • Twenty years ago, an underground cult movement

surfaced in Tampa, Fla., that revolutionized the metal world. The pioneers of this burgeoning scene, Deicide, are still striking fear into hearts of the masses to this day. With a relentlessly brutal sound and uncompromisingly blasphemous lyrics, Deicide helped set the standards for extreme metal and have maintained those standards ever since. 18 and up. • $17-$20 THE KEITH HARKIN BAND • The Square Room • 8PM • Keith Harkin is on a 50 city tour of the states, coast to coast. Keith Is accompanied by his all star lineup band who have come from all over the world to play these shows. He will play some of his old classics and give you alot of his new album “On Mercy Street.” • $35-$57.50 Thursday, Dec. 17 RYAN ROTH WITH CHUCK JOHNSON AND CHARLEYHORSE • 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 SLAY BELLS FIRE 2015 DIGITOUR • The International • 6:30PM • Featuring Sam Pottorff, Kenny Holland, Grant Landis, Diegosaurs, Andrew Fontenot, Maddie Welborn, and many more. All ages. • $25-$30 NEWSONG: VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS TOUR • Niswonger Performing Arts Center (Greeneville) • 7PM • Grammy-nominated NewSong is set to bring their popular “Very Merry Christmas Tour” to the Niswonger Performing Arts Center this holiday season. The tour will also feature fan favorites Building 429, whose project, We Won’t Be Shaken, debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Christian Albums

chart. Plumb, who had runaway success with her hit single, “Need You Now,” and introducing, Reno. • $25-$35 3 MILE SMILE • 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. • SECRET CITY CYPHERS • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • This is Knoxville’s premier open mic-style event that allows M.C.s, poets, singers, musicians, dancers, comedians, visual artists, and others to not only have a place to showcase their talent, but a place to network with other artists. Signups start at 7:30, and are first come, first serve. Admission is $5 or $3 for performers. All ages. • $3-$5 THE ROAMIN’ JASMINE • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Formed on the streets of New Orleans, the Roamin’ Jasmine bring a fresh sound to traditional jazz with tight 3 part horn harmonies and bluesy vocals. Friday, Dec. 18 JACOB JOHNSON WITH JAMES HATEM AND THE TRANSFERS • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. FREE DAVE SLACK TRIO • Pero’s on the Hill • 7PM • Instrumental and vocal jazz standards. • JOSHUA POWELL AND THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • Everyone knows that people go to Florida to die, but fewer people know that there are people who get born there too.

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

CALENDAR Caught between the dualistic disenchanting scenes of Buffet cover bands and high school hardcore, a young Joshua Powell transplanted to the Midwest in pursuit of education and new art. Now a loudening voice in the Indiana independent music community, Powell has carved out a niche in his new home by setting his hyper-literate lyrics to broad swaths of psych-folk and shedding the vocal affectations of a varied past. FREE PUNCH BROTHERS • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • Punch Brothers are the acoustic quintet of mandolinist Chris Thile, guitarist Chris Eldridge, bassist Paul Kowert, banjoist Noam Pikelny and violinist Gabe Witcher. Says the Washington Post, “With enthusiasm and experimentation, Punch Brothers take bluegrass to its next evolutionary stage, drawing equal inspiration from the brain and the heart.” Their latest album, the T Bone Burnett-produced, The Phosphorescent Blues, was released in January 2015 on Nonesuch Records. • $34.50 FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. FREE A SCRUFFY CITY JAZZ CHRISTMAS • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Christmas music from the Scruffy City Jazz Band. All ages. FREE STATE STREET RHYTHM SECTION • Brackins Blues Club • 9PM NORWEGIAN WOOD • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. FREE JENNIFER NICELEY WITH THE ALTERED STATESMAN AND MASPETH • Pilot Light • 9PM • 18 and up. • $10 THE JOHN FRAZIER BAND • SCRUFFY CITY HALL • 10PM • John Frazier, an A-Session musician’s musician, known for his brilliant mastery of the mandolin, guitar and the fiddle, and his Frazier Band, is kicking off their tour showcasing their soon to be released CD Some People Change. 21 and up. GAMENIGHT WITH RALES • Pilot Light • 10PM • Full of chiming, cleverly orchestrated guitars, elaborate song structures, and warm, open-hearted vocals that somehow never sound treacly, Gamenight’s 2013 album, Pets Pets, is redolent of ’90s indie-rock influences. 18 and up. • $5 DEVAN JONES AND THE UPTOWN STOMP • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM FREE GRADY MILLIGAN • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM Saturday, Dec. 19 TRAVIS HARRIS AND THE WEST COAST TURNAROUNDS WITH BRIAN “SHIMMY” PADDOCK • 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 RERUNS • Pero’s on the Hill • 7PM • Knoxville’s premier TV band plays your favorite television themes. TRAVIS HARRIS AND THE WEST COAST TURNAROUNDS • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • Travis Harris comes from a bluegrass roots background and started his lust for music as an early age of 7. Pickin with locals and learning the ropes of how to get that special sound from the guitar and banjo. He writes from the heart of true life experiences that will draw the attention to the story first and the music second. Putting all his heart and soul into the music has been a destiny for him and it continues to consume his life daily. Travis writes all the groups songs and continues to turn the heads on music row. FREE PUNCH BROTHERS • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • Punch Brothers are the acoustic quintet of mandolinist Chris Thile, guitarist Chris Eldridge, bassist Paul Kowert, banjoist

Noam Pikelny and violinist Gabe Witcher. Says the Washington Post, “With enthusiasm and experimentation, Punch Brothers take bluegrass to its next evolutionary stage, drawing equal inspiration from the brain and the heart.” Their latest album, the T Bone Burnett-produced, The Phosphorescent Blues, was released in January 2015 on Nonesuch Records. • $34.50 COLD COLD SWEATS • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up. THE HOTSHOT FREIGHT TRAIN WITH HANDSOME AND THE HUMBLES AND JACOB JOHNSON • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Knoxville natives The Hotshot Freight Train and Handsome & the Humbles are a breath of fresh air in the local Americana music scene. As for Greeneville, SC folk musician Jacob Johnson, it’s not just his guitar virtuosity that’ll stop you in your tracks. It’s his infectious joy for playing and performing that captures you, locks you in, and sends you back into your life two steps happier. All ages. • $5 BUDDY HONEYCUTT • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. FREE DEJA VU • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM BEN SHUSTER • Bearden Field House • 9PM FREE THE NAUGHTY KNOTS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM FREE THE BURNIN’ HERMANS • Scruffy City Hall • 10PM MAGNOLIA SONS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM AARON KIRBY AND THE TENNESSEE JAM BAND • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 10PM Sunday, Dec. 20 SHIFFLETT AND HANNAH • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. FREE SUNDAY JAZZ BRUNCH • Downtown Grill and Brewery • 12:45PM • Knoxville’s coolest jazz artists perform every Sunday. FREE DAVE SLACK TRIO • Pero’s on the Hill • 1PM • Live jazz. MIKE MCGILL’S CHRISTMAS SPECIAL SPECTACULAR • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM • Good ol’ Mike McGill and a plethora of local musicians play tunes that may or may not be related to the upcoming holiday. A JOHNNYSWIM CHRISTMAS • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • It’s easy to understand why A Prairie Home Companion declared that Abner Ramirez and Amanda Sudano Ramirez are “21st century troubadours.” As Johnnyswim, they embody the tradition of the well-traveled singer-songwriter while cultivating a modern style that’s uniquely their own. Heart Beats, the duo’s debut for Big Picnic Records, is the culmination of years spent shaping what Vogue calls an “infectious sound.” EVAN STONE’S FAMILY CHRISTMAS • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

OPEN MIC AND SONGWRITER NIGHTS

Friday, Dec. 11 TIME WARP TEA ROOM OPEN SONGWRITER NIGHT • Time Warp Tea Room • 7PM • Songwriter Night at Time Warp Tea Room runs on the second and fourth Friday of every month. Show up around 7 p.m. with your instrument in tow and sign up to share a couple of original songs with a community of friends down in Happy Holler. FREE Saturday, Dec. 12 MUMBILLY OLD TIME SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 4PM • Bring an instrument, but definitely watch out in case there’s some Mumbillies there. FREE Sunday, Dec. 13 December 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 27

CALENDAR

Thursday, Dec. 10 – Sunday, Dec. 20

EPWORTH OLD HARP SINGERS • Laurel Theater • 6:30PM • Call 673-5822. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to participate in this East Tennessee singing tradition. FREE SING OUT KNOXVILLE • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 7PM • A folk singing circle open to everyone. FREE

DANCE NIGHTS

Tuesday, Dec. 15 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

Saturday, Dec. 12 RETRO DANCE NIGHT • Hanna’s Old City • 9PM • 80s and Top 40 hits with DJ Ray Funk. MONTHLY TANGO MILONGA • Cocoa Moon Fusion Grill • 7PM • Come eat, drink, lounge, socialize and dance Every second Saturday of the month.

Wednesday, Dec. 16 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

THURSDAY, DEC. 17

IRISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Held on the first and third Thursdays of each month. FREE Saturday, Dec. 19 Old-Time Slow Jam • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 4PM • A monthly old-time music session, held on the third Saturday of each month. FREE

DJ AND

Friday, Dec. 11 RETRO DANCE NIGHT • Hanna’s Old City • 9PM • 80s and Top 40 hits with DJ Ray Funk.

Friday, Dec. 18 RETRO DANCE NIGHT • Hanna’s Old City • 9PM • 80s and Top 40 hits with DJ Ray Funk. HEADROOM 5: CHRISTMAS PARTY • The Concourse • 10PM • Featuring Brad T, J Mo, Kevin Nowell, and Rick Styles. 18 and up. • $5 Saturday, Dec. 19 RETRO DANCE NIGHT • Hanna’s Old City • 9PM • 80s and Top 40 hits with DJ Ray Funk. TEMPLE DANCE NIGHT • The Concourse • 10PM • Knoxville’s long-running alternative dance night. 18 and up. • $5

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Sunday, Dec. 13 OAK RIDGE COMMUNITY BAND/WIND ENSEMBLE

CHRISTMAS SING-ALONG CONCERT • First Baptist Church Oak Ridge • 3:30PM • This free holiday event will be held in the church sanctuary, dress is casual, and there will be refreshments at the conclusion of the program. Come celebrate the holiday season with us, hear familiar holiday music, and sing your favorite Christmas carols accompanied by the band. Don’t miss this opportunity to simply relax and enjoy the true spirit of the holiday season! For more information, visit www.orcb.org or call 865-482-3568. FREE Friday, Dec. 18 KSO CLAYTON HOLIDAY CONCERT: AN APPALACHIAN CHRISTMAS • Knoxville Civic Auditorium • 7:30PM • The KSO and special guests, including the Knoxville Choral Society, GO! Contemporary Dance Works and local folk musicians celebrate the spirit of the season with “An Appalachian Christmas.” This concert features your favorite holiday songs and carols, beloved music of the Appalachian region, and even an appearance by Santa himself! Sponsored by Clayton Bank, Clayton Homes and Clayton Volvo. • $13-$44 Saturday, Dec. 19 KSO CLAYTON HOLIDAY CONCERT: AN APPALACHIAN CHRISTMAS • Knoxville Civic Auditorium • 3PM and 7:30PM • The KSO and special guests, including the Knoxville Choral Society, GO! Contemporary Dance Works and local folk musicians celebrate the spirit of the season with “An Appalachian Christmas.” This concert features your favorite holiday songs and carols, beloved music of the Appalachian region, and even an

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

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appearance by Santa himself! Sponsored by Clayton Bank, Clayton Homes and Clayton Volvo. • $13-$44 Sunday, Dec. 20 KSO CLAYTON HOLIDAY CONCERT: AN APPALACHIAN CHRISTMAS • Knoxville Civic Auditorium • 3PM • The KSO and special guests, including the Knoxville Choral Society, GO! Contemporary Dance Works and local folk musicians celebrate the spirit of the season with “An Appalachian Christmas.” This concert features your favorite holiday songs and carols, beloved music of the Appalachian region, and even an appearance by Santa himself! Sponsored by Clayton Bank, Clayton Homes and Clayton Volvo. • $13-$44

THEATER AND DANCE

Thursday, Dec. 10 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: CINDERELLA AND EBENEZER • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 7PM • Knoxville Children’s Theatre will present Cinderella And Ebenezer, a new holiday play, based on the timeless tales of “Cinderella” and “A Christmas Carol.” Dec. 4-20. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 THE SILVER STAGE PLAYERS: “CHRISTMAS 1945” • John T. O’Connor Senior Center • 2PM • Knoxville’s Silver Stage Players present a dramatization of an old-fashioned holiday radio broadcast. FREE CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: A CHRISTMAS CAROL • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • Whether you are continuing your annual family tradition or beginning a

CALENDAR new one…join us as we tell the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, the miserly businessman who needs the intervention of a few spectral guides to show him the true meaning of Christmas. Featuring beautiful live music, wonderful costumes, and exciting stage effects, Dickens’ tale of hope and redemption reminds us all what’s really worth celebrating. Nov. 25-Dec. 20. CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘THE SANTALAND DIARIES’ • Carousel Theatre • 7:30PM • An unemployed, chemically dependent writer takes a job as a “helper elf” at Macy’s Santaland. Hear his tale of drunken Santas, screaming kids, and the un-wonderful insanity of the holidays. Sedaris’ cutting, sardonic wit is on full display in this one man show that is crazy funny! For mature elves only. Dec. 3-20. • See review on page 24. THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: A TUNA CHRISTMAS • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • In this hilarious sequel to Greater Tuna, it’s Christmas in the third smallest town in Texas. Radio station OKKK news personalities Thurston Wheelis and Arles Struvie report on various Yuletide activities, including hot competition in the annual lawn display contest. In other news, voracious Joe Bob Lipsey’s production of “A Christmas Carol” is jeopardized by unpaid electric bills. Nov. 27-Dec. 13. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $15 Friday, Dec. 11 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: CINDERELLA AND EBENEZER • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 7PM • Dec. 4-20. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 APPALACHIAN BALLET: THE NUTCRACKER • Clayton Center for the Arts (Maryville) • 7:30PM • The Nutcracker Ballet is based on the book called “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” written by E.T.A. Hoffman. In 1891, the legendary choreographer Marius Petipa commissioned Tchaikovsky to write the music for the Nutcracker Ballet. Join in the tradition as Appalachian Ballet once again brings “The Nutcracker” to the Clayton Center. • $25-$40 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: A CHRISTMAS CAROL • Clarence Brown Theatre • 2PM • Nov. 25-Dec. 20. CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘THE SANTALAND DIARIES’ • Carousel Theatre • 2PM • For mature elves only. Dec. 3-20 THE WORDPLAYERS: “THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER” • Pellissippi State Community College • 7:30PM • In this hilarious Christmas classic, a couple struggling to put on a church Christmas pageant is faced with casting the Herdman kids--probably the most inventively awful kids in history. Dec. 11-13. Visit www.wordplayers.org • $12 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: A TUNA CHRISTMAS • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • Nov. 27-Dec. 13. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $15 TIGER LILY THEATRE COMPANY: “A DOLL’S HOUSE” • Broadway Academy of Performing Arts • 8PM • Reimagined against a post-depression American backdrop, this production of Ibsen’s most famous play highlights the timelessness of Nora’s struggle against the confines of societal norms and a marriage that is not what it seems. • $15 Saturday, Dec. 12 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: “CINDERELLA AND EBENEZER” • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 1PM and 5PM • Dec. 4-20. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 2015 NATIVITY PAGEANT • Knoxville Civic Coliseum • 3PM • The Nativity Pageant, a professionally directed pantomime drama, combines a cast of over 90, moving narration, realistic sets, authentic costumes, and live animals to create a beautiful and powerful presentation of the Christmas story. Music is provided by a 200 voice choir, accompanied by a 20-member orchestra. The one-hour

performance starts in darkness. Please be sure to arrive early to avoid having to find seats in the dark. Children are welcome at the family-friendly performance. FREE CONTEMPORARY DANCE ENSEMBLE HOLIDAY SPECTACULAR • Knoxville Civic Auditorium • 7PM • The Contemporary Dance Ensemble ‘Holiday Spectacular’ is a holiday performance dance filled with excitement, laughter, and emotion. Enjoy the passion of the season with dance numbers ranging from the graceful lyrical to the ever-popular upbeat HipHop. The antics of Santa, Rudolph, Frosty and the Grinch combined with the athleticism of the dancers are sure to please even the most humbug of audience members!! Come and join us for an evening of joy and delight. A must for your Holiday Season! • $17 APPALACHIAN BALLET: THE NUTCRACKER • Clayton Center for the Arts (Maryville) • 2PM • The Nutcracker Ballet is based on the book called “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” written by E.T.A. Hoffman. In 1891, the legendary choreographer Marius Petipa commissioned Tchaikovsky to write the music for the Nutcracker Ballet. Join in the tradition as Appalachian Ballet once again brings “The Nutcracker” to the Clayton Center. • $25-$40 THE WORDPLAYERS: “THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER” • Pellissippi State Community College • 2:30PM • Dec. 11-13. Visit www.wordplayers.org • $12 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: A CHRISTMAS CAROL • Clarence Brown Theatre • 2PM • Nov. 25-Dec. 20. CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘THE SANTALAND DIARIES’ • Carousel Theatre • 2PM • For mature elves only. Dec. 3-20 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: A TUNA CHRISTMAS • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • Nov. 27-Dec. 13. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $15 TIGER LILY THEATRE COMPANY: “A DOLL’S HOUSE” • Broadway Academy of Performing Arts • 8PM • $15 Sunday, Dec. 13 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: “CINDERELLA AND EBENEZER” • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 3PM • Dec. 4-20. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 2015 NATIVITY PAGEANT • Knoxville Civic Coliseum • 3PM • The Nativity Pageant, a professionally directed pantomime drama, combines a cast of over 90, moving narration, realistic sets, authentic costumes, and live animals to create a beautiful and powerful presentation of the Christmas story. Music is provided by a 200 voice choir, accompanied by a 20-member orchestra. The one-hour performance starts in darkness. Please be sure to arrive early to avoid having to find seats in the dark. Children are welcome at the family-friendly performance. FREE CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘A CHRISTMAS CAROL’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 2PM • Nov. 25-Dec. 20. CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘THE SANTALAND DIARIES’ • Carousel Theatre • 2PM • For mature elves only. Dec. 3-20. THE WORDPLAYERS: “THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER” • Pellissippi State Community College • 2:30PM • Dec. 11-13. Visit www.wordplayers.org • $12 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: “A TUNA CHRISTMAS” • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 3PM • Nov. 27-Dec. 13. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $13 TIGER LILY THEATRE COMPANY: “A DOLL’S HOUSE” • Broadway Academy of Performing Arts • 2PM • $15 Monday, Dec. 14 2015 NATIVITY PAGEANT • Knoxville Civic Coliseum • 7PM • The Nativity Pageant, a professionally directed pantomime drama, combines a cast of over 90, moving narration, realistic sets, authentic costumes, and live animals to create a beautiful and powerful presentation of the Christmas story. Music is provided by a 200 voice

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December 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 29

CALENDAR choir, accompanied by a 20-member orchestra. The one-hour performance starts in darkness. Please be sure to arrive early to avoid having to find seats in the dark. Children are welcome at the family-friendly performance. FREE Tuesday, Dec. 15 BROADWAY AT THE TENNESSEE: THE SOUND OF MUSIC • Tennessee Theatre • 7PM •THE SOUND OF MUSIC features music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, suggested by The Trapp Family Singers by Maria Augusta Trapp. • $37-$77 Wednesday, Dec. 16 BROADWAY AT THE TENNESSEE: THE SOUND OF MUSIC • Tennessee Theatre • 7PM • $37-$77 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: A CHRISTMAS CAROL • Clarence Brown Theatre • 2PM • Nov. 25-Dec. 20. CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘THE SANTALAND DIARIES’ • Carousel Theatre • 2PM • For mature elves only. Dec. 3-20 Thursday, Dec. 17 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: CINDERELLA AND EBENEZER • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 7PM • Dec. 4-20. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 BROADWAY AT THE TENNESSEE: THE SOUND OF MUSIC • Tennessee Theatre • 7PM • $37-$77 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: A CHRISTMAS CAROL • Clarence Brown Theatre • 2PM • Nov. 25-Dec. 20. CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘THE SANTALAND DIARIES’ • Carousel Theatre • 2PM • For mature elves only. Dec. 3-20

Thursday, Dec. 10 – Sunday, Dec. 20

CIRCLE MODERN DANCE: MODERN DANCE PRIMITIVE LIGHT • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Circle Modern Dance is proud to present its 24th annual production of Modern Dance Primitive Light, an anticipated solstice celebration of movement and creativity in Knoxville. This unique performance brings together local choreographers, dancers, and musicians for an unforgettable community arts experience. • $10-$15 Friday, Dec. 18 Knoxville Children’s Theatre: Cinderella and Ebenezer • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 7PM • Dec. 4-20. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 Circle Modern Dance: Modern Dance Primitive Light • Laurel Theater • 7PM and 9PM • Circle Modern Dance is proud to present its 24th annual production of Modern Dance Primitive Light, an anticipated solstice celebration of movement and creativity in Knoxville. This unique performance brings together local choreographers, dancers, and musicians for an unforgettable community arts experience. • $10-$15 Clarence Brown Theatre: A Christmas Carol • Clarence Brown Theatre • 2PM • Nov. 25-Dec. 20. Clarence Brown Theatre: ‘The Santaland Diaries’ • Carousel Theatre • 2PM • For mature elves only. Dec. 3-20 Broadway at the Tennessee: The Sound of Music • Tennessee Theatre • 8PM • $37-$77

AND

COMEDY

For a more spirited holiday season!

SPOKEN WORD

Friday, Dec. 11 HENRY CHO • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • Henry’s TV and film credits include appearances on NBC’s The Tonight Show, CBS’s The Late, Late, Show, and NBC’s Young Comedians Special. He served two years as host of NBC’s Friday Night Videos and had many guest roles on various network sitcoms.Henry’s one hour Comedy Central Special, “What’s That Clickin Noise?” is currently running and he can also be heard on Sirrus, XM and Blue Collar Radio. He’s also a regular performer at the Grand Ole Opry.In 2012, Henry sold a special/pilot to GAC (Great American Country) in which he served as host, co-writer, and co-producer. “The Henry Cho Show” aired in Fall 2012 and Henry awaits the chance to do more shows for GAC for the network. • $27.50-$30.50 THE GREAT TRICKY NICK • Bar Marley • 10PM • The mystical arts of a powerful magician. FREE Sunday, Dec. 13 UPSTAIRS UNDERGROUND COMEDY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A weekly comedy open mic. Monday, Dec. 14 QED COMEDY LABORATORY • Pilot Light • 7:30PM • QED ComedyLaboratory is a weekly show with different theme every week that combines stand-up, improv, sketch, music and other types of performance and features some of the funniest people in Knoxville and parts unknown. It’s weird and experimental. There is no comedy experience in town that is anything like this and it’s also a ton of fun. Pay what

you want. Free, but donations are accepted. FREE Tuesday, Dec. 15 OPEN MIC STAND-UP COMEDY • Longbranch Saloon • 8PM • Come laugh until you cry at the Longbranch every Tuesday night. Doors open at 8:30, first comic at 9. 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 Thursday, Dec. 17 THIRD THURSDAY COMEDY OPEN MIC • Big Fatty’s Catering Kitchen • 7:30PM • We will showcase local and touring talent in a curated open mic of 6 to 8 comics. The event starts at 7:30, and there is no charge for admission. The kitchen will be open as well as their full bar. FREE Friday, Dec. 18 The Fifth Woman Poetry Slam • The Birdhouse • 6:30PM • The 5th Woman Poetry slam is place where all poets can come and share their words of love, respect, passion, and expression. It is not dedicated solely women but is a place where women poets are celebrated and honored. Check out our facebook pages for the challenge of the

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

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Thursday, Dec. 10 – Sunday, Dec. 20

month and focus for our poetry every month. Sunday, Dec. 20

CALENDAR

THE BIRDHOUSE WALK-IN THEATER • The Birdhouse • 8:15PM • A weekly free movie screening. FREE

SPORTS AND FESTIVALS RECREATION

Upstairs Underground Comedy • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A weekly comedy open mic.

Thursday, Dec. 10 CHRISTMAS IN OLD APPALACHIA • Museum of Appalachia • 8:30AM • The simple joys of an old-fashioned Christmas await Museum of Appalachia visitors during December. For more information, contact the museum at 865-494-7680 or visit www.museumofappalachia.org. CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE FAMILY FEAST • University of Tennessee Art and Architecture Building • 6PM • In an effort to promote the practice of family dinners and to reach out to our community members, the Clarence Brown Theatre, with support from the Junior League of Knoxville, will hold the first-ever CBT Family Feast to accompany the “A Christmas Carol” production on Thursday, December 10th. For only $10 per person, families are invited to the event which will include a buffet-style dinner followed by a performance of “A Christmas Carol” at 7:30 pm. The only stipulation is that patrons must attend as a family unit of at least two, however that may be defined. A member of the creative team also will be on hand to talk about the production. Tickets may be purchased by calling the Box Office at 865-974-5161. • $10 Friday, Dec. 11 CHRISTMAS IN OLD APPALACHIA • Museum of Appalachia • 8:30AM • The simple joys of an old-fashioned Christmas await Museum of Appalachia visitors during December. For more information, contact the museum at 865-494-7680 or visit www.museumofappalachia.org.

Saturday, Dec. 12 CHRISTMAS IN OLD APPALACHIA • Museum of Appalachia • 8:30AM • The simple joys of an old-fashioned Christmas await Museum of Appalachia visitors during December. For more information, contact the museum at 865-494-7680 or visit www.museumofappalachia.org. MARBLE SPRINGS CHRISTMAS CANDLELIGHT TOURS • Marble Springs State Historic Site • 4PM • Marble Springs State Historic Site is proud to present Christmas Candlelight Tours on Saturday, December 12 from 4-8pm. Experience the historic site through the soft glow of candle light. The historic buildings will be decorated with fresh greenery. Music, open hearth cooking, baked goods and warm drinks will set your heart aglow with holiday spirit. Details are subject to change. Entrance is a suggested $2 donation. For more information please call (865)573-5508, email info@marblesprings.net, or visit our website at www.marblesprings.net. • $2

FILM SCREENINGS

Sunday, Dec. 13 IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE • Tennessee Theatre • 1PM and 5PM • Enjoy Home Federal Bank’s Christmas gift to our community with screenings of classic film “It’s a Wonderful Life” in the beautiful Tennessee Theatre. Admission is free; no ticket is required. Doors open one hour prior to each screening; seating is limited to the theater’s capacity. Free parking is available in city-owned garages. FREE Monday, Dec. 14

Thursday, Dec. 10 WHOLE FOODS GAME NIGHT • Whole Foods • 6PM • Join us for everything from Candy Land to chess, and feel free to add a pint and a pizza. • FREE Saturday, Dec. 12 KTC LOYSTON POINT SCRAMBLE • Loyston Point Recreation Area • 2PM • This 8 mile course winds circuitously through the Loyston Point recreation area, a TVA Norris Reservoir facility also known as Point 19, using marvelous trails including the Hemlock Bluff National Recreation Trail. Lake views are majestic and on the outer loop almost continuous with leaves having already fallen.A one mile Kids Trail Race will precede the adult race. The course will traverse some of the same trails and offer the youngsters a taste of the fun the grownups will be having thirty minutes later. Only five bucks for so much fun! Sunday, Dec. 13 SMOKY MOUNTAIN HIKING CLUB: HOUSE MOUNTAIN • Smoky Mountain Hiking Club • 8AM • We will climb to the West Overlook first where we hope to be rewarded with nice views of downtown Knoxville, East Knoxville farmland, and several significant peaks in the Cumberland. From the 2100’ crest (the highest point in Knox County) we’ll cruise to the East Overlook via a gently rolling ridge, stopping at some outcropping along the way. Then it’s back down the East Overlook Trail to the parking area for hot cider. Hike 4.5 miles, rated moderate due to 950’ initial climb. Meet at Comcast on Asheville Hwy at 8:00 AM. Leader: Mary Brewer, emiebrewer@gmail.com. FREE

5113 Kingston Pike DEC. 5-30: From Knoxville to the Mediterranean, paintings by Joe Parrott. Downtown Gallery 106 S. Gay St. DEC. 4-JAN. 16: You Call That Art?, an exhibition of editorial cartoons by Charlie Daniel. Emporium Center for Arts and Culture 100 S. Gay St. DEC. 4-JAN. 29: Arts and Culture Alliance Members Show. An opening reception will be held on Friday, Dec. 4, from 5-9 p.m. Envision Art Gallery 4050 Sutherland Ave. NOV. 20-DEC. 19: Art for the Holidays, featuring work by Derrick Freeman, Inna Nasonova, and Kay List. Ewing Gallery 1715 Volunteer Blvd. NOV. 11-DEC. 13: Distilled: The Narrative Transformed, a 30-year survey of the art of Pinkney Herbert. Knoxville Museum of Art 1050 World’s Fair Park Drive NOV. 27-JAN. 10: East Tennessee Regional Student Art Exhibition. ONGOING: Higher Ground: A Century of the Visual Arts in Tennessee; Currents: Recent Art From East Tennessee and Beyond; and Facets of Modern and Contemporary Glass. Liz-Beth and Co. 7240 Kingston Pike NOV. 28-DEC. 31: New exhibits from recognized local and regional artists, featuring pottery, jewelry and wearable art, art glass, sculpture, and wall art. A holiday reception will be held on Friday, Dec. 11, from 5-8 p.m.

Tuesday, Dec. 15 WHOLE FOODS GAME NIGHT • Whole Foods • 6PM • Join us for everything from Candy Land to chess, and feel free to add a pint and a pizza. • FREE

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

Thursday, Dec. 17 WHOLE FOODS GAME NIGHT • Whole Foods • 6PM • Join us for everything from Candy Land to chess, and feel free to add a pint and a pizza. • FREE

Pioneer House 413 S. Gay St. THROUGH DECEMBER: Knox County Warriors, portraits of UT football legends by Will Johnson.

ART

University of Tennessee John C. Hodges Library 1015 Volunteer Blvd. THROUGH DEC. 11: Marginalia in Rare Books, a display of centuries-old books with notes, ownership marks, and inscriptions.

Bennett Galleries 5308 Kingston Pike DEC. 4-31: Artwork by Richard Jolley and Tommie Rush.

LECTURES, READINGS, AND BOOK SIGNINGS

Art Market Gallery 422 S. Gay St. DEC. 4-31: Artwork by Fran Thie and Robert Conliffe.

Bliss Home 24 Market Square DEC. 4-31: Aurora, paintings by Jane Nickels. Broadway Studios and Gallery 1127 N. Broadway DEC. 4-31: Feast Your Eyes on This, an exhibit all about food. The District Gallery

Thursday, Dec. 10 A TASTE OF PARIS: READINGS FROM CHANTAL BIZZINI’S “DISENCHANTED CITY” • Union Ave Books • 6PM • Book signing & readings from Chantal Bizzini’s Disenchanted City, edited by Marilyn Kallet & J. Bradford Anderson. FREE

FAMILY AND December 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 31

CALENDAR KIDS’ EVENTS

Thursday, Dec. 10 BABY BOOKWORMS • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • For infants to age 2, must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. FREE CHESS AT THE LIBRARY • Blount County Public Library • 1PM • Middle and high school students (or any age) are invited to play chess. Tom Jobe coaches most Saturdays in the Teen Central area of the library. On one Saturday of every month, there will be a rated tournament at the Blount County Public Library. FREE Friday, Dec. 11 SMART TOYS AND BOOKS ART CLASS • Smart Toys and Books • 10AM • Mommy, Daddy & Me Art Classes are every Friday at 10:00am & 11:00am. Reservations and payment are required in advance. Class fees are non-refundable. Ages 2+. • $10 Saturday, Dec. 12 CHESS AT THE LIBRARY • Blount County Public Library • 10AM • Middle and high school students (or any age) are invited to play chess. Tom Jobe coaches most Saturdays in the Teen Central area of the library. On one Saturday of every month, there will be a rated tournament at the Blount County Public Library. FREE SATURDAY STORIES AND SONGS • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • A weekly music and storytelling session for kids. FREE FAMILY FUN DAY: INTERNATIONAL WINTER ACTIVITIES • McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture • 1PM •

Thursday, Dec. 10 – Sunday, Dec. 20

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 Sunday, Dec. 13 KMA ART ACTIVITY DAY • Knoxville Museum of Art • 1PM • Every second Sunday of each month, the KMA will host free drop-in art activities for families. A local artist will be on-site to lead hands-on art activities between 1pm and 4pm on the second Sunday of each month. FREE Monday, Dec. 14 MUSICAL MORNINGS • Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge • 10AM • This activity is designed for toddlers and their caregivers. Children can explore tone, melody, and rhythm in an age-appropriate environment. Singing and dancing are encouraged. Musical Mornings also are free with paid admission or museum membership. http:// childrensmuseumofoakridge.org/musical-mornings/ SMART TOYS AND BOOKS STORYTIME • Smart Toys and Books • 11AM • Storytime with Miss Helen is every Monday at 11:00am. No charge. No reservations required. FREE MCCLUNG MUSEUM STROLLER TOUR: INTERNATIONAL WINTER FESTIVITIES • McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture • 10AM • Join us for a morning out as our museum educator leads engaging gallery tours for parents and caregivers and their young ones. Crying and wiggly babies welcome! This month we explore the special exhibit, Embodying Enlightenment: Buddhist Art of the Himalayas. The event is free, but limited, and all

attendees must register to attend online. Registration opens a month in advance and closes the day before the tour. FREE Tuesday, Dec. 15 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. Little ones have an opportunity to play with blocks, toy trains, and puppets; they can “cook” in the pretend kitchen, dig for dinosaurs, and look at books. The adults can socialize while the children play. 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. While the format of the program will still feel like a traditional storytime with books, music, and other educational activities, each weekly session will focus on a different standard from the Tennessee Department of Education’s Early Childhood/Early Learning Developmental Standards. 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 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD AUDITIONS • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 4:30PM • Knoxville Children’s Theatre will hold auditions for the upcoming stage production of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer

Prize-winning novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, to be performed Feb. 26 through March 15. Auditions are by appointment only. To make an audition appointment: Send an email to Dennis Perkins at dennis@childrenstheatreknoxville.com. No calls for appointments, please. Include your name, your age, your gender, and which appointment time you prefer. Due to time restrictions, auditioners without an appointment will not be seen. E-mail submissions only for audition info. FREE Wednesday, Dec. 16 BABY BOOKWORMS • Lawson McGee Public Library • 10:20AM • For infants to age 2, must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. FREE PRESCHOOL STORYTIME • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • For ages 3 to 5, must be accompanied by an adult. FREE

CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS

Thursday, Dec. 10 PLANET MOTION WORLD DANCE FITNESS • Champion Ballroom Center • 10AM • All levels fun dance workout incorporating dance and music styles from around the world. GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted.

The 6th annual

Whittington Creek Holiday Art Sale Saturday December 12 | 9am - 4pm Sunday December 13 | 11am - 4pm Pottery, paintings, photographs, jewelry, quilted items, wind chimes, metal art, garden art, wood art and more by local artists. Kids art activities, refreshments and a silent art auction for Alzheimer's Tennessee.

Wrap up the holidays in

Whittington Creek Clubhouse (1800 Whittington Creek Boulevard) in West Knoxville. For more information visit: www.WhittingtonCreekArtShow.com

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

style! LUNCH & DINNER Mon-Fri 11am-9pm CATERING AVAILABLE 865-387-8275

706 Walnut St, Knoxville, TN yassin’s falafel house

Fun, funky, fabulous gifts – clothing, jewelry, & accessories – for all the girls on your list.

8203 Chapman Hwy. (7.2 Miles South of the Henley St. Bridge)

865.609.0480 Mon-Fri 10:30-6 • Sat 10:30-5 Facebook: Sally Greene | Instagram: SALLYS_ALLEY

KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

Thursday, Dec. 10 – Sunday, Dec. 20

AARP DRIVER SAFETY CLASS • Cheyenne Ambulatory Center • 1PM • Call (865) 382-5822. BELLY DANCE LEVELS 1 AND 2 • Knox Dance Worx • 8PM • Call (865) 898-2126 or email alexia@alexia-dance. com. • $12 Saturday, Dec. 12 IMPROV COMEDY CLASS • The Birdhouse • 10AM • A weekly improv comedy class. FREE FOUNTAIN CITY ART CENTER HOLIDAY ART BLITZ! • Fountain City Art Center • 10AM • All-day small gift-making workshops, only $25 to make 5 gifts. All proceeds benefit Fountain City Art Center, a 501(c) 3 nonprofit org. Call or email Director Sylvia Williams at (865)357-2787; fcartcenter@knology.net; www.fountaincityartctr.com; visit us on Facebook. • $25 Sunday, Dec. 13 SUNDAY SAVASANA WITH DOWNTOWN YOGA • Central Collective • 2:30PM • Take some time for yourself during the ever busy holiday season. Between shopping, parties, and family get together’s, it can be hard to find time to breathe and relax. In Sunday Savasana join Leslie for a class that blends gentle yoga, restorative yoga, and meditation in an extra long savasana to balance out the busyness of the season. Leslie will provide the props, and will also have extra mats in case you forget yours or need one. • 12 DIY SCREENPRINTED GRAPHIC PRINTS WITH TRICIA BATEMAN • Central Collective • 5PM • Turn your simple t-shirt into a statement piece. You bring a t-shirt, tote, pillow, scarf or any tight knit fabric item to print on. Designer Tricia Bateman will supply prepared screens, inks and instruction so you can make your own prints. Prepared patterns will include a range of hand drawn geometric shapes that can be mixed and matched with a free-form printing style to create a design as abstract or representative as you can imagine. You’ll have a one of a kind holiday gift ... assuming you don’t want to keep it for yourself.Tricia Bateman is a local professional designer and amateur printmaker. You may know her work as the art director at the Knoxville Mercury. • 12 Monday, Dec. 14 CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY QUICK AND TASTY COOKING CLASS • Cancer Support Community • 12PM • Call 865-546-4661. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer. AARP DRIVER SAFETY CLASS • American Red Cross • 12PM • Call (865) 382-5822. • GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 5:30PM • Call 865-5772021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. Tuesday, Dec. 15 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. • AARP DRIVER SAFETY CLASS • American Red Cross • 12PM • Call (865) 382-5822. • YOGA WITH SUBAGHJI • The Birdhouse • 5:15PM Wednesday, Dec. 16 FLOW AND GO YOGA • Illuminations Alternative and Holistic Health • #N/A • Call 985-788-5496 or email sandylarson@yahoo.com. • $10 BELLY DANCING CLASS • Illuminations Alternative and Holistic Health • 7PM • Call 985-788-5496 or email sandylarson@yahoo.com. • $15

CALENDAR

MEETINGS

Thursday, Dec. 10 OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS • Recovery at Cokesbury • 5:30PM • This is an OA Literature Meeting. After a short reading from a book, members may share their experience, strength and hope. Listening will help you find others who have what you want, whether it be weight loss, clarity, joy in achieving and maintaining a healthy body weight, or freedom from the obsession of self-destructive eating behaviors. FREE ATHEISTS SOCIETY OF KNOXVILLE • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 5:30PM • Weekly atheists meetup and happy hour. Come join us for food, drink and great conversation. Everyone welcome. FREE CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY LEUKEMIA, LYMPHOMA, AND MYELOMA NETWORKER • Cancer Support Community • 6PM • This drop-in group is open for those with leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma and myeloproliferative disorders and their support persons. Participants will be able to exchange information, discuss concerns and share experiences. Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer. Saturday, Dec. 12 CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY PROSTATE CANCER NETWORKER • Cancer Support Community • 10AM • This drop-in group is an opportunity for men to network with other men about their experiences with prostate cancer. Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer. AL-ANON • Faith Lutheran Church • 11AM • Al-Anon’s purpose is to help families and friends of alcoholics recover from the effects of living with the problem drinking of a relative or friend. Visit our local website at farragutalanon.org or email us at FindHope@ Farragutalanon.org. FREE Sunday, Dec. 13 SILENT MEDITATION SUNDAYS • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 11AM • Narrow Ridge invites you to join us for our Silent Meditation Gathering on Sundays at Narrow Ridge. The gatherings are intended to be inclusive of people of all faiths as well as those who do not align themselves with a particular religious denomination. For more information contact Mitzi Wood-Von Mizener at 865-497-3603 or community@narrowridge.org. FREE LARK IN THE MORN ENGLISH COUNTRY DANCERS • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Call 546-8442. 17th-18th Century Social Dancing with live music. Beginners welcome, no partner is required. Also Rapper Sword dance group meets most Sundays at 7:00. Free. K-Town Vegans Holiday Potluck • Church of the Savior United Church of Christ • 6PM • Holiday vegan potluck supper hosted by the K-Town Vegans Meet-Up Group. Please bring a vegan dish to serve at least eight. Drinks will be provided. Bring your own place setting (plate, bowl, and silverware). SONS OF CONFEDERATE VETERANS • East Tennessee History Center • 2PM • Maryville Collage Professor Aron Astor will present a program on Gen. Felix Zollicoffer. The presentation is free & open to the public. FREE Monday, Dec. 14 KNOXVILLE CONTRA DANCERS • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Call 599-9621. Contra dancing to live acoustic music. No experience or partner required. • $7 ASPERGER’S SUPPORT GROUP • Remedy Coffee • 6PM • Are you an adult with asperger’s and looking for others who

have the same strengths and challenges in life? Come join us for a casual meetup every other Monday. Contact Saskia at (865) 247-0065 ext. 23. FREE GAY MEN’S DISCUSSION GROUP • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 7:30PM • We hold facilitated discussions on topics and issues relevant to local gay men in a safe and open environment. Visit gaygroupknoxville.org. Tuesday, Dec. 15 KNOXVILLE COCOAHEADS • Knoxville Entrepreneur Center • 7PM • CocoaHeads is a group devoted to discussion of Apple’s Cocoa and Cocoa Touch Frameworks for programming on OS X (Mac) and iOS (iPhone, iPad). During monthly meetings, members offer tutorials, present their projects, share app ideas, and provide advice to other programmers. Whether you are an experienced developer or just getting started, Knoxville CocoaHeads is a great way to stay current with the latest technologies and improve your programming skills. Wednesday, Dec. 16 KNOXVILLE SWING DANCE ASSOCIATION • Laurel Theater • 7PM • Call 224-6830. Dedicated to the purpose of promoting swing dance. Lessons at 7 p.m., open dance at 8 p.m. COMITE POPULAR DE KNOXVILLE • The Birdhouse • 7PM • A weekly meeting of the local immigrant advocacy organization. KNOXVILLE WRITERS’ GROUP • Naples Italian Restaurant • 11AM • Judy DiGregoria, humor writer will speak on her book “Tidbits”. Luncheon cost $12. For information and reservation call Mary McKinnon at 865-983-3740 by Monday, Dec. 7. CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY WOMEN WITH ADVANCED CANCER NETWORKER • Cancer Support Community • 1:30PM • Join other women who are living with cancer as a chronic illness to discuss feelings and experiences that are unique to women with advanced cancer. Please call before your first visit. Call 865-546- 4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer. CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY HOLIDAY PARTY • Cancer Support Community • 6PM • You are invited to join CSC friends and family for the annual Holiday Party! This will include the infamous “small gift exchange game.” Bring your own idea of a small gift, gag gift or re-gift a hidden treasure for this game. Light refreshments will be provided. RSVP. Call 865-546-4661 for more info. 2230 Sutherland Avenue. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer. FREE ORION ASTRONOMY CLUB • The Grove Theater • 7PM • ORION is an amateur science and astronomy club centered in Oak Ridge that was founded in April 1974 by a group of scientists at the United States Department of Energy facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. We serve Oak Ridge, Knoxville, and the counties of Anderson, Knox, and Roane.We meet on the third Wednesday of each month for coffee and conversation, and our program begins 15 minutes thereafter. FREE

ETC.

Thursday, Dec. 10 KNOX HERITAGE SALVAGE SHOP HOLIDAY MARKET • Knox Heritage Salvage Shop • 12PM • Come shop in warmth at The Knox Heritage Salvage Shop this December and enjoy handmade gifts, artwork, antiques and more from local December 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 33

CALENDAR vendors during our regular retail hours. Proceeds benefit the vendors and Knox Heritage which advocates for historic preservation in East Tennessee. Visit knoxheritage.org/salvage for more information. Dec. 2-19. FREE THE HIVE HOLIDAY SHOPPE • The Hive • 12PM • Featuring local makers and their goods. Dec. 9-13. FREE KNOXVILLE SQUARE DANCE • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Jubilee Community Arts presents Knoxville Square Dance with live old-time music by The Helgramites and calling by Stan Sharp, Ruth Simmons and Leo Collins. No experience or partner is necessary and the atmosphere is casual. (No taps, please.) • $7 Friday, Dec. 11 THE HIVE HOLIDAY SHOPPE • The Hive • 10AM • Featuring local makers and their goods. Dec. 9-13. FREE KNOX HERITAGE SALVAGE SHOP HOLIDAY MARKET • Knox Heritage Salvage Shop • 12PM • Visit knoxheritage.org/ salvage for more information. Dec. 2-19. FREE Saturday, Dec. 12 WHITTINGTON CREEK HOLIDAY ART SALE AND SHOW • Whittington Creek Clubhouse • 9AM • The Whittington Creek Clubhouse in West Knoxville will be overflowing with art on December 12 and 13, during the 6th annual Whittington Creek Holiday Art Show and Sale. You will find everything on your list from photographs, quilted art, pottery, paintings, jewelry, floral art and hand-turned wood to metal art, sculpture, garden art, mixed media, wind chimes and more. The sale is free and open to the public. There will also be a silent art auction with

Thursday, Dec. 10 – Sunday, Dec. 20

proceeds going to Alzheimer’s Tn. The show opens on Saturday morning, December 12, at 9 am until 4pm and continues on Sunday, December 13 from 11am-4pm. More Information: www.WhittingtonCreekArtShow.com. FREE KNOX HERITAGE SALVAGE SHOP HOLIDAY MARKET • Knox Heritage Salvage Shop • 10AM • Visit knoxheritage.org/ salvage for more information. Dec. 2-19. FREE THE HIVE HOLIDAY SHOPPE • The Hive • 10AM • Featuring local makers and their goods. Dec. 9-13. FREE MARKET SQUARE HOLIDAY MARKET • Market Square • 12PM • For more information, visit MarketSquareFarmersMarket. org or NourishKnoxville.org. FREE MABRY-HAZEN HOUSE CHRISTMAS TOURS AND BOOK-SIGNING • Mabry-Hazen House • 5PM • Mabry-Hazen House invites you to join us for our Annual Christmas Tours. Rooms will be decorated by museum staff and volunteers. Jane Van Ryan, author of The Seduction of Miss Evelyn Hazen, will be available to sign copies of a newly released second edition of her book. The new edition, artfully produced by Robin Easter Design, features a history of the Mabry-Hazen family, photographs, and a family tree. Christmas Tours are scheduled for Saturday, December 12th from 5-8pm and Sunday, December 13th from 2-5pm. The event is free of charge and light refreshments will be served. Donations are encouraged.Your attendance and donations will help support the museum’s mission to preserve and educate the public about an important part of East Tennessee history. Please call 865-522-8661 or visit www.mabryhazen.com for more information. FREE EAST TENNESSEE HISTORICAL SOCIETY HOLIDAY OPEN

HOUSE • East Tennessee History Center • 11AM • Cookies and apple cider will warm the day at the East Tennessee Historical Society’s Holiday Open House on Saturday, December 12. Entertainment will be provided by the Smokyland Sound Chorus of the Greater Knoxville Chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society. Activities include craft demonstrations and the sale of handmade items, free ornament and craft making for the kids, and holiday refreshments. Maryville College professor and children’s book author Lisa Soland will be on hand with her two children’s books, The Christmas Angel and The Unmade Moose. Local crafter Karen Micheletta will be selling a selection of her handmade items made from antique quilts. For more information, visit www. eastTNhistory.org or call 865-215-8824. FREE KNOXVILLE’S 2ND ANNUAL BURLESQUE SHOW AND TOY DRIVE • Kristtopher’s • 9PM • Catalina Mystique is ecstatic to bring you the 2nd Annual Knoxville Burlesque Show & Toy Drive to benefit Knoxville families in need of a helping hand. • $15 Sunday, Dec. 13 WHITTINGTON CREEK HOLIDAY ART SALE AND SHOW • Whittington Creek Clubhouse • 11AM • More Information: www.WhittingtonCreekArtShow.com. FREE THE HIVE HOLIDAY SHOPPE • The Hive • 12PM • Featuring local makers and their goods. Dec. 9-13. FREE MABRY-HAZEN HOUSE CHRISTMAS TOURS AND BOOK-SIGNING • Mabry-Hazen House • 2PM • Please call 865-522-8661 or visit www.mabryhazen.com for more information. FREE

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

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CRESCENT BEND DOWNTON ABBEY HIGH TEA • Crescent Bend House and Gardens • 3PM • You are cordially invited to a Downton Abby High Tea at Crescent Bend House and Gardens for a celebration of Downton Abbey Season 6 on Masterpiece. Downton Abbey attire suggested. To purchase tickets online, visit donate.etptv.org or to purchase by phone, contact Gary Ellis at 865-595-0239. All attendees will have reserved seating at the free advanced screening of Season 6, Episode 1, Hour 1 of Downton Abbey, at 5:00pm following the High Tea event. Tuesday, Dec. 15 DIY UGLY CHRISTMAS SWEATERS • Ijams Nature Center • 6PM • Join Goodwill at Ijams Nature Center for some seasonal cheer! Impress everyone with your handcrafted sweater, made with repurposed Goodwill donations and a bit of creativity. This event is fun for all ages, and the Bearden Beer Market will be on-site selling brews, egg nog and other holiday beverages. Get all the details and reserve your spot (and your sweater) at www. goodwillknoxville.org/sweater. • $15 Wednesday, Dec. 16 KNOX HERITAGE SALVAGE SHOP HOLIDAY MARKET • Knox Heritage Salvage Shop • 12PM • Visit knoxheritage.org/ salvage for more information. Dec. 2-19. FREE

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY 35

FOOD

Home Palate

years of experience working in other kitchens from Red Lobster to the Crown & Goose. But there are no oceanic platters or sticky puddings here; the food that Jackie serves up comes straight from home and made from recipes that she learned while cooking with her grandmothers in Oliver Springs. And it’s a cuisine, Jackie says, that assumes that most of the food will be local, preferably from the garden of one family member or another. “I come from a family that cooks. It’s what my mother, grandmother, and uncles taught me,” she says. “We made our own jelly, chow-chow, pickles. My grandfather had chickens so we had fresh eggs. We hardly ever went to the store. We made everything from scratch, and I continue to do it that way. Everything is peeled, cut, chopped here. We eliminate cans whenever we can—I had fresh green beans and corn all summer long.” Although the winter brings some concessions to a garden-fresh agenda, Jackie insists on serving the best quality product available to her. It doesn’t take very long to note that Jackie has a strong mothering instinct and that’s how she feeds her guests: just like family. “We strive very hard to keep it home style, family style. We don’t serve any alcohol. Everybody who comes here, comes back,” Jackie says. “And everybody leaves here with hugs,

Soul Station Jackie’s Dream lives up to its name with delightful country cooking BY DENNIS PERKINS

espite election-cycle verbiage, I believe that it’s still a part of conventional wisdom that some topics are too delicate, personal, and/ or incendiary to discuss in polite society; among these are politics, religion, and soul food. Just you dare to take a public stand on the proper way to fry a chicken, barbecue a pig part, or whether corn bread should be sweet or not, and you’ll find yourself in the hot sauce in a heartbeat. It’s a subject about which personal recollections and regional allegiances are worth fighting for. That said, I’m not about to tell you that Jackie’s Dream is the paragon of all or any of these disputed foods. But I’m confidant it’s a fine place to do some research on the subject. Located on McCalla Avenue near its intersection with Martin Luther King Boulevard in East Knoxville, Jackie’s Dream resides a low building with small windows that looks more like a shady, old-school beer joint than

a good place to stop for lunch or an early dinner. The fence that encloses the parking lot can be a little intimidating. But, as we all know by now, appearances are deceiving. Once inside, the smell of good country cooking dispels any other associations the building might bring and makes you feel at home pretty quickly. It’s a small place, now cheerfully decorated for Christmas with red and green trappings and bright little lights that make the space feel cozy. As you enter, you’re likely to be greeted by a warm, basso hello that emanates from the kitchen, which is visible through the pass, just to your right. Further along that wall there’s a small counter with a few seats that’s a nice place to sit if you’re dining alone and might like conversation. That’s where I met owner Jackie Booker Griffin on a quiet afternoon before Thanksgiving, when I ought to have been saving my indulgences for the family feast. This is, in fact, Jackie’s dream—the restaurant is the culmination of over 20

Jackie’s Dream draws a diverse crowd, at midweek lunch to a regular slate of preachers and their flocks on Sunday.

KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

Photos by Tricia Bateman

including everyone from well-known local lawyers

kisses, just like family. That makes me really happy—that’s what I strive for.” One of the consequences of restaurants where the food is made fresh daily is that there are inconsistencies, and sometimes availability of a popular item can be an issue. Consider Jackie’s much-loved Honey Bun Cake: It’s a vanilla and cinnamon-laced sheet cake soaked in a glaze that’s apparently addictive—so much so that the cake virtually evaporates as soon as it’s available. I tried three times and missed my deadline in a failed attempt to taste it. The sweet potato pie was an enjoyably dense and spicy substitute, but it too sells out quickly as do Jackie’s fruit cobblers—perhaps you’ll detect a theme. Likewise there are some little hiccups that come from food cooked with personal feeling instead of corporate guidelines. The meatloaf gets high marks from regulars, and while I enjoyed my serving, there was a good bit of the overcooked end on the plate. Personally I like that part of the loaf, but I’m not sure about everybody else. Even so, the recipe, complete with a line of ketchup baked on top, summoned memories of my own grandmother’s cooking. That’s pretty good seasoning. There’s a lot to love, including hearing the words, “George, drop a thigh and a leg,” just after you order fried chicken. There’s no case with a heat lamp to hold the chicken—so

Home Palate

FOOD

JACKIE’S DREAM 2223 McCalla Ave., 865-219-5789 Facebook: JackiesDream2223McCallaAve Tuesday-Thursday: 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Friday-Saturday: 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Sunday: 12 p.m.-6 p.m.

sometimes it takes a minute, but it’s time well spent for delicious, freshly hot and crunchy bird. Even hours later after a rest in my refrigerator, the chicken retained its fi ne texture and, as is often the mark of good fried chicken, tasted even better cold. The aforementioned George is George Pelcher, chef and the face behind the friendly hello when you enter the restaurant. Like Jackie, he’s been cooking professionally for years. He’s responsible for some of the restaurant’s most popular dishes including the Sunday special, Oxtail Stew. He’s also the author of Jackie’s version of Hot Chicken. Served with white bread, pickles, and two sides, the chicken initially has a sweet and savory flavor with a solid punch of heat that comes at the back of the palate. For me, that heat translated into an immediate head sweat that’s always a good sign—an indicator that the capsicum is well integrated and

isn’t likely to burn me for hours on end. Unfortunately, I’m not well acquainted with the warm poultry that is much celebrated in Nashville, so I’m unable to make a comparison; I did fi nd it surprisingly enjoyable despite my own aversion to overly spicy food. Likewise, I was quite captivated with Pelcher’s take on ribs—they were big, meaty country style cuts, more like chops than ribs. Though Pelcher was reluctant to discuss his method, I did gather that he uses a combination of the grill and the oven to produce these tender monsters. They’re just dabbed with sauce, so, happily, the flavor of the meat and fat take the spotlight. Jackie’s Dream draws a diverse crowd, including everyone from well-known local lawyers at midweek lunch to a regular slate of preachers and their flocks on Sunday. The food is good, but the incomparable seasoning of friendly faces and a warm welcome make it all the better. Perhaps you’ll see me there—I’ll be the guy at the counter waiting to jump on the next available piece of Honey Bun Cake. ◆ December 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 37

’BYE

R estless Nat ive

By Any Other Name A short history of the nicknames of Burlington BY CHRIS WOHLWEND

pparently if you grew up in the east-side neighborhood of Burlington in the 1930s, a nickname was a requirement. Almost all of my parents’ male friends were known by a moniker beyond their birth-certificate name. There was Corky. And his brother, Wheeler. They owned Moulton Brothers Amoco station. There was a guy called Babe and another who went by Cooner. One of my uncles answered to Buster. My dad was known as Fats. Until my mother put a stop to it, I was called Little Fats. There was Smut, and his son, Slim. The operator of the movie theater was called Bunny. There was a man who went by Son, and a bootlegger called Cotton. The husband of one longtime Sunday-school teacher—and a permanent subject of church-wide prayers—was known as Sparky. The woman who

played the organ at church was married to a man called Bugs. Ottie was the older brother of one of my mother’s best friends. The gunsmith who lived in a garage down the alley from my grandparents, a Cherokee, was known to everyone as Indian. Even Knoxville politician and grocer Cas Walker had a nickname, though it probably was exclusive to Burlington. Everyone called him Boomer. If we were on our way home and needed milk, Dad would say, “I’ll stop at Boomer’s.” And there was the legendary Dodie, who had left home while a teenager to wander around the country, riding the rails. Periodically, when a freight car brought him back to the area, he would show up at one of the gas stations to bring his old friends up to date on his adventures. Then he would hit the road again.

BY MATTHEW FOLTZ-GRAY

KNOXVILLE MERCURY December 10, 2015

www.thespiritofthestaircase.com

Once, when my dad was telling a story of his youth, he mentioned a man who attended our church whose last name was Hockenjosh. What was his nickname? I asked. “Didn’t need one,” my dad said, implying that a surname like that was differentiation enough. There was certainly no problem with his being confused with another church regular, a fixture of the gospel quartet featured at Sunday-night services. His name was Ailshie—pronounced ale-shy. There were others who were nicknameless. Burlington’s Esso station was owned by Mayford Mitchell, his given name distinctive enough so that no other name was necessary. Something wrong with your car? “See if Mayford can help” was all that was needed. Everyone knew whom you were talking about. My grandfather on my mother’s side didn’t need a nickname either, since his given name was Boss. But no one called him that—he went by his initials, B.L. The nicknaming didn’t seem to carry over to females. In most cases, the given names were enough. My grandmother, Boss’s wife, was Etta. My mother’s circle included Ola Mae, Rosalee, Venita, and Lela. Nicknames were not the only idiosyncratic uses in Burlington nomenclature. The last name of the woman who lived next door to Boss and Etta was Stover. And, as far as we knew, that was the only name she had. My grandmother would send me next

door to “see if Stover can loan me a cup of sugar.” While he was still single, my dad ran the Texaco station a block or two away from where Corky and Wheeler operated. It was at the intersection of Rutledge Pike and Holston Drive, the last stop heading northeast out of town. And, like Mayford’s and Moulton Brothers’ and other service stations of the era, it was a neighborhood gathering place. As such, it figured into many of my dad’s laconic tales. One story provided my introduction to Cooner. Early one warm evening, dad said, he and Cooner were sitting out front, swapping stories, when a bootlegger of their acquaintance pulled in. “He had a sack full of quarters and half-dollars that he wanted to change into bills,” dad said. “I couldn’t help him and steered him to the five & dime up the street. “I guess he was in a hurry because he left the motor running in his Ford. When he was out of sight, Cooner jumped into the Ford and drove off.” What did the bootlegger do when he saw what happened, I wanted to know. “He wasn’t too happy. He cussed and kicked and yelled for a while. Finally, he called somebody to come get him. They drove off, headed out Rutledge Pike.” What happened to Cooner, I asked. “I don’t know,” dad said. “I never saw him again.” ◆

’BYE BY IAN BLACKBURN AND JACK NEELY

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200+COMICS FOR $200 Includes: Eightball, Neat Stuff, Verotika, Marvel, DC, and EROS. Call 865-206-1843 BLUE VINTAGE NORTHFACE HIKING BACKPACK, aluminum external frame. Early 1980's or so, about 90 liters. Great condition for its age, but some wear. $100 OBO. 678-313-7077

FUN AND FESTIVE JEWELRY , local and handmade, unique felted or modern faceted beads, hand-painted geometric necklaces, and more. etsy.com/shop/triciabee PLACE YOUR AD AT STORE.KNOXMERCURY.COM

PRICILLA IS A LARGE BLACK AND WHITE 1-YEAR-OLD FEMALE DOMESTIC LONGHAIR MIX. When adopted, she will be spayed, up-to-date on vaccines and microchipped. For more information, call 865-215-6599 or visit www.young-williams.org MARYVILLE’S FAIR TRADE SHOP. Unique gifts from around the globe. Hours: Wednesdays 2-8 pm and Sundays 8:30-9:15 am and 11:30 am-12:15 pm. Monte Vista Baptist Church 1735 Old Niles Ferry Road. For more information call 865/982-6070.

LOST DOG IN SOUTH KNOXVILLE ON 12/2/15. Wheaton Terrier, Golden with gray markings. Limited hearing and vision. May answer to Ellie May or Rufus. Cash reward. Call or text 865-680-8126 or 865-776-5346.

1BR APARTMENT IN PARKRIDGE - $425. 2BR $465. Take half off rent for first month, for December or January leasing. 865-438-4870 DOWNTOWN PRIME 1st fl 4500 sq. ft. office space w/ parking. Easy I-40 access. 637-8400

SERVICES J. DAVID REECE, Master Electrician. State of Tn. and City of Knoxville licensed. Insurance and references. Over 25 years experience. Commercial and residential service and repair, remodeling, and new construction. CCTV, home theater, generators. Residential and commercial electrical design, inspections and consulting. 865-228-8966.

NORTH KNOXVILLE’S PREMIER RENTAL HOMES pittmanproperties.com COMING SOON! One-level living in Farragut School Zone Numerous updates 3BD/1.5BA Stonecrest Subdivision Call Jim today @865-924-2941 for more details! Keller Williams Reaty 865-966-5005 PLACE YOUR AD AT STORE.KNOXMERCURY.COM

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December 10, 2015

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 39