Vol. 2, Issue 12 - March 24, 2016

MARCH 24, 2016 KNOXMERCURY.COM

YOUR JOURNALISTIC FIXER-UPPER V.

2 / N.12

FLIP POLF The city is spending millions in tax dollars to buy up and resell problem properties.

How’s it working out? By Clay Duda

NEWS

Video of BLM Activist Arrest Doesn’t Clear Up Differing Accounts

JACK NEELY

Our Coliseum Dilemma Stirs Memories of Otis Redding and the Eagles

MUSIC

Abdu Ali Brings a New Perspective to Baltimore Club Music

GEORGE DODDS

A New Cathedral Is On the Cutting Edge of the 16th Century

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 24, 2016

March 24, 2016 Volume 02 / Issue 12 knoxmercury.com

CONTENTS

“ A community is like a ship: everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.” —Henrik Ibsen

14 F lip or Flop

COVER STORY

Over the past decade, the city of Knoxville has spent millions to purchase dilapidated properties in hopes of seeing them put back to productive use. But it’s not holding on to the properties it buys. City officials are looking to flip them to investors—private developers with a vision, whether real estate tycoons or would-be homeowners, in an attempt to turn urban blight into something attractive, vibrant, and useful to residents and visitors. It’s a tactic used by a growing number of municipalities in this post-recession economy, aimed at jump-starting development. Clay Duda looks at some of the properties that you (the taxpayer) own and what’s happening with them.

NEWS

12 Differing Accounts Join Our League of Supporters!

You must have picked up a copy for a reason, right? Find out how you can help at knoxmercury.com/join.

A local Black Lives Matter activist found himself behind bars on charges related to causing a disturbance and standing in a roadway after an encounter with a Knoxville Police officer who declined to give his badge number. Both the officer and the activist have different accounts of what happened. Clay Duda reviews the dashcam footage, but finds it doesn’t not provide conclusive verification either way.

DEPARTMENTS

OPINION

A&E

4 Letters to the Editor 6 Howdy

8 Scruffy Citizen

20 Program Notes: One last weekend at

26 Spotlights: Dry Branch Fire

21 Inside the Vault: Eric Dawson

OUTDOORS

Start Here: Believe It or Knox!, Public Affairs, Quote Factory PLUS: “Ghosts in the Machine”

by L. M. Horstman

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 sifts through some more music memories at the Knoxville Coliseum, this time featuring the Eagles and Otis Redding.

10 Architecture Matters

George Dodds takes a second look Past-Forward, only to find a cathedral in West Knoxville on the cutting edge of 16th century architecture.

CALENDAR DIY venue the 1400.

concludes the story of Knoxville folk singer Joy King.

22 Music: Matthew Everett believes

Abdu Ali brings a new perspective to Baltimore club music.

23 Classical Music: Alan Sherrod

Squad, Stonecutters

36 Voice in the Wilderness

Kim Trevathan finds a natural harmony in the words of outdoors writer Rikki Hall and his posthumously published collection of columns.

reviews the KSO’s latest director applicant.

24 Movies: April Snellings stops by 10 Cloverfield Lane.

March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 3

LETTERS Delivering Fine Journalism Since 2015

GOOD NEWS: HATE IS (NEARLY) NONEXISTENT IN KNOXVILLE

Isn’t it funny how a smarmy little piece of trash like your little free rag thinks it can call their potential readers and the city and state where both are located, so damn hateful, up to #3 with a bullet on Clay’s charts, and beg for money in the same worthless issue! [“Hateful TN,” news feature by Clay Duda, March 3, 2016] This truly astounds by any measure! I’ll state right now that I attended Knoxtacular, but certainly not to support your self-absorbed important independent voice view you seem to have of yourselves.

You dragged this Duda-dude all the way across the country to insult the intelligence and character of the citizens who you know live and work with every day, including your own families!? Aren’t you proud of this?

Bullshit. Hate-mongering may be all the rage with that little whore in the White House, but to try to sell Tennessee as the near top of the heap Hate Capital of the nation won’t pass muster.

Has Clay “Dudda” talked to anybody here since he got off the boat from nuts-ville way out west? From the sound of his non-in-depth report, he’s never talked to a soul! What a piece of garbage he is!

And your trash paper bothered to print this as a real news story.

Are you that hard up for reporters downtown?

Or, is this how the Mercury views its people? Where are all these hateful groups that pervade the community and spread hate far and wide causing angst all thru the land?

I know Claybaby doesn’t know as he never says he actually came into contact with one or anyone who claimed to be a member! Your Clay never investigated shit! He let others do his work!

Yes, others, like that hate-racebaiting terrorist Org.—Southern Poverty Law [Center]. And stellar geo-profs [geography professors] like Joshua Inwood, whoever he is!

Dear ole’ Josh, never states during all of his research that he’s actually met any of the groups he professes to know so much about. How can this be true? Is it that pervasive?

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 24, 2016

The last paragraph states: Ultimately the number of hate groups may or may not be indicative of the underlying feeling of the pop. in a given area?

Which is it Clay darling? Does your research into all the good people of Tennessee show that we’re a real hateful bunch? Your story is entitled “Hateful TN.” Isn’t that the whole premise of your story? That we have hate groups so we are a hateful state of people? But, in your last paragraph, it’s impossible to tell how many members there are? You can’t have it both ways! Does this mean that your hateful premise may not be true?

What a piece of trash, and you really put this garbage heap on some kind of salary? The big writer slash photog! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. You can really be proud of this.

Let me just state that after living all of my life in Tn.—60 plus years— I’ve never met anyone or know anyone who has anything to do with a so-called hate group of any kind. I’ve never known anyone who professed so much hatred that they needed to join a group with like-minded others.

How is this possible when “Dudda” reports others think it’s rampant.

Your little hateful story is a lie.

And don’t you just Hate it when smarmy little rags like yours tell made-up stories thinking it will improve readership?

May I say, I wish Mercury the worst but, then it is the worst.

J.O. Knoxville

AND NOW, LET’S REFRESH OURSELVES WITH SOME POETRY At the Sunsphere Futuristic lighting, futuristic chairs, The future came and went, no joke, And we were freaking there!

Our clothing still be cotton, We like old collars frayed, A future, once begotten; Emboldened once but grayed.

Al Ream Knoxville

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

THE ALL-CONQUERING MATTHEW FOLTZ-GRAY

We’re excited to report that our Spirit of the Staircase artist Matthew Foltz-Gray has been awarded a Silver Medal in the Comic Strip category by the Society of Illustrators’ Comic and Cartoon Annual competition. He’ll be off to New York City for the award gala in July, and his winning piece, “The Game of Snooze,” will be on display at the MoCCA Gallery at the Society of Illustrators from June 14 to Aug. 20, 2016. (You saw it here first.)

Congratulations to Matt!

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

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

INTERNS

Hannah Hunnicutt Kevin Ridder

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. © 2016 The Knoxville Mercury

Run! The Marathon, and how Knoxville became known for footraces Next Sunday, April 3, is the annual Covenant Health Knoxville Marathon. Held every spring since 2005, the event reflects Knoxville’s relatively short but impressive history in the world of running.

not a UT alumnus, donated a substantial amount toward establishing a modern regulation 440yard running track. The Tom Black Track was completed in 1966.

During Rohe’s leadership, track meets became popular in Knoxville for the first time, sometimes drawing thousands who came to see both local and national stars compete. In 1969, Tom Black Track hosted a national intercollegiate track meet.

Rarely mentioned in Knoxville’s earliest years, the footrace became more common in the late 1800s, often as an event to celebrate a holiday, like the Fourth of July or Labor Day, at Fountain City Park or Chilhowee Park, where thousands assembled for holiday picnics. Most races were very short distances of 100 yards or so.

Knoxvillian Ebenezer Alexander (1851-1910), a classics scholar who became U.S. ambassador to Greece, enthusiastically promoted the revival of the Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, and helped organize and host the successful American team. Those games included 100, 400, 800, and 1500 meter races, as well as the world’s first international Marathon. Alexander eventually moved back to Knoxville, but is not known to have organized races here.

Knoxville witnessed several celebrity runners at Tom Black, including future Olympic gold medalists. In 1974, Ivory Crockett of Missouri broke the world record for the 100-yard dash at Tom Black Track. His 9-second time earned him the title “World’s Fastest Human.”

Meanwhile, the KTC organized public long-distance races, often using available routes like Cherokee Boulevard’s walking trail, along the river in Sequoyah Hills. In 1966, Alabama runner Earl Eblen broke the U.S. record for the 20-kilometer run on the boulevard. In 1972, future Boston Marathon winner Neal Cusack ran a 15-mile event on the same hilly, winding street.

For most of our history, Knoxvilians rarely ran unless being chased. But in the last 50 years, the city has become famous for its array of running events, including the upcoming Covenant Health Knoxville Marathon.

Little changed for public competitive running until 1962, when a few running enthusiasts, hosted by Fulton High School coach B.E. Sharp, started the Knoxville Track Club.

The KTC was only a year old when it welcomed a new member, Chicago native Chuck Rohe (b. 1931), who moved to Knoxville to accept a job at the University of Tennessee’s developing track and field program.

During his time in Knoxville, Rohe pushed UT’s track program to regional and even national prominence, both for athletic excellence and popular appeal.

He has been called “the Father of Track & Field in the South.”

In the early 1960s, UT didn’t even have its own track. Rohe had to take his team to other tracks in the city, like Evans-Collins Field, a community football field in the Caswell Park area of East Knoxville.

That changed thanks to a local philanthropist. Snack-food tycoon Tom Q. Black (1904-1970) had grown up in Monroe County, running two and a half miles to school. He was good at running, and competed in the early 1920s for Madisonville High, and soon afterward organized a successful track team at Hiwassee College.

By the 1960s, Black was no longer an athlete, and was in fact a middle-aged businessman with a serious heart condition. But he loved the sport of running, and wanted to do something to help promote it. He befriended Rohe, just as UT was expanding its campus and its athletic program. Black, who was

A 1974 Knoxville Marathon, organized by KTC and sometimes described as Tennessee’s first, involved a loop from downtown to Fountain City, along Broadway. Because it attracted only a few participants (18 runners in the first one), runners were obliged to compete alongside traffic, and after a few tries it was deemed too dangerous. Renamed the Smoky Mountain Marathon, the race moved to Oak Ridge and later to Townsend.

Knoxville’s first durable, popular long-distance footrace was KTC’s Expo 10,000, inspired by the upcoming World’s Fair. Launched in 1978, it made a big loop around downtown Knoxville, crossing both the Gay Street and Henley Street bridges, and ending at Market Square. Its first champion was an Irish Olympian named Eddie Leddy.

Co-hosted by KTC, the first permanent Knoxville Marathon, on Mar. 20, 2005, drew 2,500 participants. The winner was Charles Kibiwot, of Kenya, with a time of two hours, 22 minutes, 54 seconds. The first female winner was Irina Bogachova, an Olympic competitor from Kyrgystan, who finished the Knoxville race in two hours, 41 minutes, 40 seconds.

It has become a major local event, but many of its thousands of participants are international. It’s a certified qualifying race for America’s most famous long-distance event, the Boston Marathon.

Source: The Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection, Knoxville Track Club website, ktc.org

The Knoxville History Project, a new nonprofit organization devoted to the promotion of and education about the history of Knoxville, presents this page each week to raise awareness of the themes, personalities, and stories of our unique city.

Learn more on www.facebook.com/knoxvillehistoryproject • email jack@knoxhistoryproject.org March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 5

HOWDY QUOTE FACTORY

GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE

The remedy for objectionable, disagreeable non-violent speech is not silence or suppression of speech—it is more speech.

From August 27-31, 1929 and March 29-April 7, 1930, two of the last great location recording sessions of the era took place in Knoxville at the St. James Hotel, producing some of the finest old-time music on record. Introducing…

—State Rep. Martin Daniel, R-Knoxville, sort of making sense in a press release he issued last week to explain his seeming support of ISIS to send recruiters to Tennessee college campuses. In reality, his Tennessee Student Free Speech Protection Act intends to protect “conservative students who feel uncomfortable” by “liberal college administrators [who] impose their views of what is right and proper speech.”

PUBLIC AFFAIRS

3/24 THE ONLY TENN-I-SEE READING SERIES

3/27 MYSTERY EVENT: GOOD SPORT NIGHT

THURSDAY

SUNDAY

5-8 p.m., The Central Collective (923 N. Central St.). $20.

Feeling adventurous? Then the Central Collective has the event for you: Good Sport Night. What is it? You won’t know until you show up. “You might walk into a baby goat petting zoo, or a punk rock concert, or a blind chocolate tasting, or a lecture about the Big Bang.”

Intriguing, yes? No more info: thecentralcollective.com.

8 p.m., Toot’s Honky Tonk (114 E. Anderson Ave.). Free.

Author readings at Toot’s? Let’s do it. This month’s writers include Lindsey D. Alexander, Richard Hermes, and Daniel Wallace. Remember: It’s a cash bar, and karaoke will follow. See the Tenn-I-See Facebook page for more info.

3/26 FUNDRAISER: BIJOU JUBILEE! SATURDAY

3/30 WORKSHOP: ENERGY EFFICIENCY STRATEGIES WEDNESDAY

8 p.m., Bijou Theatre (803 S. Gay St.). $30-$115.

About 40 years ago, the Bijou Theatre almost became yet another undistinguished parking lot for downtown.

Its existence today as a world-renowned performance hall was due to Knoxvillians with a lot of foresight and determination. Join this smart group of people by attending the annual Bijou Jubilee! fundraiser, featuring singer-songwriter Drew Holcomb. Info: knoxbijou.com.

3 p.m., Knoxville-Knox County CAC (2247 Western Ave.).

Free.

The city’s Office of Sustainability is presenting a training workshop on how to spread the word on low-cost and no-cost energy efficiency strategies for households.

Learn how to deliver an effective presentation, answer common questions, and distribute information on community resources. Info/register: bblackmon@knoxvilletn.gov or 215-2065.

Believe It or Knox!

BY Z. HERACLITUS KNOX

and Indian War who was especially unpopular in America. Although a British fort on the Tennessee River was named for him, the earl himself probably never visited this part of the country.

Illustration by Ben Adams

Loudon, Loudon County, Ft. Loudoun Dam, Ft. Loudoun Lake, are all named indirectly for the same guy, the Fourth Earl of Loudoun, an ineffective British commander during the French 6

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 24, 2016

The Pigburger, a beef and pork delicacy on the menu at now-defunct barbecue stalwarts Brother Jack’s and Dixson’s, but now difficult to find, was associated almost entirely with Knoxville and may not have existed elsewhere.

Founded in 1921 as WNAV, WNOX once claimed to be the SIXTH OLDEST RADIO STATION IN AMERICA! The claim is hard to prove, but thanks to Stuart Adcock, who was a teenager when he started broadcasting, Knoxville was an early adapter to radio.

H

er growl reaches through the speakers and grabs you by the lapels. She orders her accompanist, Gace Haynes, to “Play it!” and you better believe he does, mac, and on the double. This is a voice to be obeyed.

Leola Ramey Manning was 25 when she set foot in the lobby of the St. James Hotel to record her own songs, first in August 1929 and again in April 1930. She didn’t consider her songs, heavily rooted in the gospel sound, to be the blues. To her, the blues were something racy and improper.

Wouldn’t even joke about it.

In the years after the recording sessions, she evangelized in city streets and in local towns, sharing her incredible voice with those who perhaps needed it most: the homeless, the sick, and the down-and-out.

She never saw a penny from her recordings.

To be continued…

Leola Manning St. James Sessions Recordings: He Cares For Me (1929) He Fans Me (1929) The Arcade Building Moan (1930) Satan Is Busy In Knoxville (1930) Laying In The Graveyard (1930) The Blues Is All Wrong (1930) The music of these artists will be performed live at Knoxville Stomp May 5-8, brought to you by the Knoxville Public Library’s Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound.

Miranda v. Arizona 384 U.S. 436 (1966)

LMU-DUNCAN SCHOOL OF LAW PRESENTS

Celebrating 50 Years of Miranda v. Arizona: Past, Present, and Future Frida y, April 1, 2016

Knoxville, TN • DSOL Cour troom • 10am-2pm Speakers include: exonerated for mer defendant Damon Thibodea ux; Tulane University Law School Pro fessor Herbert Larson; President of John E. Reid Associ ates and co-author of Essentials of the Reid Technique : Criminal Interrogation and Confessions Joseph Buckley.

MIR AND A WAR NING

Other speakers include: Detective Roger Wehr; 8th District Attorney General Jared Effler; local defense attorneys, Wade Davies and Joshua Hedrick ; and Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Kelly Tho mas.

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT. ANYTHING YOU SAY CAN AND WILL BE USED AGAINST YOU IN A COURT OF LAW. YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO AN ATTORNEY. IF YOU CANNOT AFFORD AN ATTORNEY, ONE WILL BE PROVIDED FOR

$25 for CLE credit (lunch included), YOU CAN DECIDE AT ANY TIME TO EXERCISE THESE RIGHTS AND NOT $10 for lunch only, ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS OR MAKE ANY STATEMENTS. and admission is free to the public.

601 West Summit Hill Drive | Knoxville, Tennessee 37902

For more information or to RSVP, contact Kathy Baughman at 865-545-5301 or email Kathy.Baughman@lmunet.edu

March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 7

SCRUFFY CITIZEN

Unforgotten Shows The Coliseum dilemma stirs memories of Otis Redding and the Eagles. Not on the same bill.

BY JACK NEELY

T

his column would be more popular if I just gave in and renamed it Concerts We Have Known. After I wrote about the Civic Coliseum dilemma several weeks ago, I heard from a whole lot of people about a whole lot of great shows over the last 55 years, but two acts rarely mentioned in the same sentence demanded further study: the Eagles and Otis Redding.

In the column, I mentioned that the Eagles had played in the big room at the height of their fame, in 1977. I did not know that that particular concert was a dramatic moment in the evolution of the band.

As an Eagles fan, I was strictly an amateur. I’d sing along with “Tequila Sunrise” when it came on the radio in my Karmann Ghia. No, that’s a lie. My Karmann Ghia didn’t have a radio. It had a radio-shaped hole in the dash through which wind blew. In the winter, I kept it clogged with a towel. In the summer, when I was driving at top speed, 54 mph, the breeze was better than air conditioning. I liked it that way. Or maybe I just liked being 17.

But I know I sang along with “Tequila Sunrise” somewhere, some years before my first disappointment with the actual beverage. And I liked the Eagles better before I saw them on TV, when they looked like too many guys with guitars. Worse, I never understood the concept of long hair carefully combed. If long hair is rebellion, doesn’t combing and blow-drying confuse the message?

There was much about the ’70s I didn’t understand.

Anyway, I’m just explaining my

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ignorance of this bit of Knoxville history that truer fans already knew as part of the legend.

At the time they played in Knoxville that July, 1977, Randy Meisner, one of the original Eagles, was still elemental to the show. He was the lead singer and co-author of “Take It To the Limit.” It was a monster hit in 1976, and naturally one that the audiences expected.

By the time they got to Knoxville, Meisner was sick with stomach ulcers and a virus, and didn’t want to sing the damn song. Its sustained high notes require exertion. Even if I weren’t sick, I’d dread singing that song every night. Especially while the other fellows get to sing easy stuff like “Tequila Sunrise.” The story is that Meisner had a fight with Glenn Frey backstage at the Coliseum, and they didn’t make up. Meisner left the group later that year, and it became a different band.

Perhaps the Eagles’ Knoxville experience was a lesser manifestation of the Knoxville Curse, which has been implicated in multiple performers’ unexpected deaths. Sometimes the Knoxville Curse just splits bands up.

of an outdoor Knoxville show, sponsored by a radio station, and held out in a field somewhere for the benefit of those who knew how to find it. For years I assumed that was Redding’s only visit. Then, researching the Civic Coliseum, I ran across a mention of him playing a formal concert there.

Wow, twice, I thought. Then I heard from Jim Harb, who remembers another Redding show at the National Guard Armory on Sutherland Avenue, near West High. Harb thinks it was in early 1965, when Redding was well known to soul fans but yet not a major star.

“The Armory was not a huge venue,” Harb recalls. “But even though there was a pretty full crowd, it was easy to get right up close to the stage, as I remember us doing; most of the folks were more interested in dancing. He had a full band behind him as I remember, including a horn section. He played the hits that we wanted to hear—accurate covers of the radio versions—and my memory is that he was relaxed, easy-going, and really enjoying performing. It was a really good concert.”

(People used to dance at rock shows. It was before we learned that it was our responsibility to stand dutifully, never taking our eyes off the band.)

Three times? Maybe four. Still another memory places Otis Redding at Bill Meyer Stadium, the old minor-league ball field at Caswell Park.

Freddie Alexander says he saw Otis Redding play there sometime in the mid-1960s. “They had the stage

set up on the pitcher’s mound,” he recalls, “with everybody in the stands.

The sound and energy coming from Otis and his band was just incredible!”

So maybe Redding performed here four times. Certainly not impossible.

Maybe even more. He was a regional guy. He was from Georgia and recorded in Memphis and Muscle Shoals.

“The last time I saw Otis was the first week in June, 1967,” Alexander writes. “I had just graduated from high school. The show was at the Coliseum, of course. It was an amazing show as usual.” He recalls, correctly, that it was the week before the now-legendary Monterey Pop Festival, which introduced Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Ravi Shankar— and Otis Redding—to a mainstream predominantly white audience.

He says he was “devastated” at the news of Redding’s death late that same year. “Of all the singers at that time, Otis was the best.”

During his era, Alexander mentions seeing James Brown, the Rolling Stones, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett.

“I feel so fortunate to have been at the right place at the right time in Knoxville history to experience such musical greatness,” he says. “But had the Civic Coliseum not been built, I doubt that many of these acts would have ever made it to town. It was truly the Mecca of Music in 1960s Knoxville.”

In several other respects, 1960s Knoxville offers little to recommend it. Maybe it’s important to remember the shows. ◆

“I feel so fortunate to have been at the right place at the right time in Knoxville history to experience such musical greatness.

Had the Civic Coliseum not been built, I doubt that many of these acts would have

Even more surprising were multiple accounts of Otis Redding performances here. The soul legend’s career as a touring singer lasted only about five years. He was killed in a plane crash in 1967. I would assume many cities never saw him perform at all. Years ago, I ran across an account

ever made it to town. It was truly the Mecca of Music in 1960s Knoxville.”

— FREDDIE ALEXANDER

45th Annual Goodwill Awards Banquet Wednesday, April 6 Hilton Downtown Knoxville Celebrating those who believe in the power of work.

Tickets at gwiktn.org or 865.588.8567.

Donate. Shop. Create Jobs.

THE SALVATION ARMY cordially invites you to join us for the SECOND ANNUAL

CITY OF HOPE

Gala

Presented by:

TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2016 AT 6 P.M. Knoxville Marriott Guests will enjoy dinner, testimonials of those who have received hope from The Salvation Army and an inspirational message from special guest speaker Former Vietnam POW, Retired Capt.

William (Bill) Robinson. Bill is the longest-held enlisted prisoner of war in American history. He was one of the first enlisted members to receive the Air Force Cross in addition to being awarded the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, POW Medal and two Purple Hearts.

For tickets or more information, visit: SalvationArmyKnoxville.org Funds raised through the City of Hope Gala help sustain the local programs and services of The Salvation Army.

March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 9

ARCHITECTURE MATTERS

Past-Forward (Part 2) In West Knoxville rises a cathedral on the cutting edge of 16th century architecture

BY GEORGE DODDS

I

ation Center (2005) or Peter Eisenman’s impossible-to-navigate Aronoff Center for Design and Art (1988-96), both on the University of Cincinnati’s forward-looking campus.

The commercial, institutional, and civic buildings in Knoxville do not now, and for the most part never have operated, at the extreme architectural margins any more than do most of the organizations that occupy them operate at the political margins; they tend to be “left-of-center” or “right-of-center.” But there are always exceptions.

Bottom left and right: Sacred Heart Cathedral Project, Diocese of Knoxville, Tenn., McCrery Architects/ Barber McMurry Architects, Fall 2017.

TRADITION’S TRAPS

The new Sacred Heart Cathedral, the most recent exception to this rule, has been under construction along

Top, right: Jubilee Church, Vatican City, Richard Meier and Partners Architects, 2003.

Renderings courtesy of McCrery Architects

f history is an arc, as the American 19th-century transcendentalist Theodore Parker conceived the moral universe, in the world of architectural production that curvature is a pendulum’s path. At one of its amplitudes are works that replicate a faithful image of the past. At the other extreme are works, the goal of which tends to be shock and awe.

There is nothing in Knoxville that demonstrates the latter. One must look elsewhere, but not far: the formal audacity of Randall Stout’s addition to the Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga (2005); the color-laden chutzpah of Daniel Libeskind’s Ascent at Roebling’s Bridge (2008), Covington, Ky.; Thom Mayne’s (Morphosis) impossibly complex Campus Recre-

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except, as with any other, when it is mistaken for a categorical imperative that leads to Truth. This potential trap of tradition notwithstanding, whether or not one favors Modern architecture, it’s difficult to put a positive spin on the diocese’s existing cathedral, to which the new cathedral’s design is an extreme response. Were it not for the cathedral’s crucifix-adorned campanile, one could easily mistake it for the school’s gymnasium. Nicholas Pevsner had a point when he argued in the middle of the last century that bicycle sheds were mere buildings while cathedrals were architecture.

Surely the existing cathedral seems better suited to house 10-speeds than worshipers. And while one can worship anywhere that God is, and persons of faith tend to agree that is everywhere, being wrapped in an architecture that reinforces solemnity, sacrality, and the utter joy of communion certainly doesn’t hurt the enterprise. That the new cathedral will do just that is difficult to dispute.

That its design is in any way innovative is a matter much easier to dispute.

The new cathedral, once completed, will seat almost as many as can fit in the Tennessee Theater. Its design will be a memorial of sorts to the art and architecture of the Italian late Renaissance, when mass was spoken in Latin to a church filled with largely Photo by Liu Zheng, Iowa State University

Northshore Drive since April 2015.

Slated for completion in fall 2017, its design is the work of McCrery Architects (in partnership with Barber McMurry who are the architects-of-record overseeing local on-site logistics).

McCrery Architects, a Washington, D.C. firm, proudly practices something they call “Traditional Architecture.”

Their website explains: “The proper practice of Traditional Architecture embraces the best of all ages and styles in a timeless, unbroken chain of lasting beauty and utility. Tradition is necessarily modern and innovative.

Only when grounded in historic precedent can architecture intelligently propose and project the future.”

Culture has always been rooted in the constancy of tradition. Yet, history teaches us that only dying cultures invest in those that never change. That there is nothing of necessity, “modern and innovative,” about tradition goes without saying.

Physicians do not bleed their patients nor administer purgatives to balance their humors; the city of Charleston, S.C., is no longer a principle port of entry for the sale of human beings; women have the same right to control their bodies as men. And while knowledge of antecedents to one’s work is fundamental to any critical practice, one need not ground all design in “historic precedent” in order to “intelligently propose…[a] future.”

Traditional Architecture is relatively harmless as a belief system

Photo by Messer Construction Company

Rendering courtesy of BMA Architects

Top left: Natalie L. Haslam Music Center, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Barber McMurry Architects, 2013.

Photo by BMA Architects

Top right: John D. Tickle Engineering Building, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2013.

Below right: The Joint Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Tennessee, Cherokee Farms Campus, Knoxville, Barber McMurry Architects. illiterate suppliants who probably stood throughout the service in unheated, pew-less naves, listening to a language they did not speak, staring at images they did not fully understand. When churches of this ilk were being built for the first time in Rome, few knew the name Martin Luther outside of Wittenburg, all of the churches in England were Catholic, and the Medicis were enjoying two decades of popedom in Rome.

In contrast to Knoxville’s new cathedral, in 1995, the Bishop of Rome (also known as the Pope) decided to build a new church for the Vatican after concluding, ironically, that Vatican City had no convenient place for its population of 900 and its many visitors to worship. Pope John Paul II invited six internationally famous architects to compete for the commission, and chose Richard Meier, who designed a markedly modern building, completed in 2003.

One of the church’s most conservative popes of the last half-century chose a Jewish architect from New York to design a decidedly “non-traditional” church to celebrate the 2,000th anniversary of Christendom, built in the shadow of Michelangelo’s dome.

Meanwhile, rising from its foundations in West Knoxville is a building, the design of which is on the cutting

edge of the 16th century. Why would the seat of Roman Catholicism in Knoxville choose this as the model for its 21st-century cathedral?

All of which brings us to another of tradition’s trap: If one chooses the past as a model for the future, which past do you pick? How far back do you go? How, when, and where do you know to stop? These are questions architects have been asking since the early 19th century; for some, the matter remains unresolved. Rome during the High Renaissance may seem an obvious choice, but that’s hardly so for all. Indeed, 150 years ago the clearer choice for Catholics, particularly in England, would have been the 13th century and Gothic architecture; it continues to stoke the fires on the Knoxville campus of the University of Tennessee, albeit unrecognizably.

LEFT-OF-CENTER / RIGHT-OF-CENTER

There are several examples of left-of-center architecture at its best in the metropolitan area, including the new pavilion at the Knoxville Botanical Gardens (De Leon & Primmer, Louisville, Ky.), the challenging instauration of the Southeastern Glass Building at the edge of the West Jackson Historic District (SandersPace Architects, Knoxville), the East

Tennessee Children’s Hospital Surgery & NICU Addition still under construction in Fort Sanders (Shepley Bulfinch, Boston/ Barber McMurry Architects, Knoxville).

Uninspired examples of right-ofcenter architecture dominate recent and contemporary construction throughout Knoxville, from its downtown core to its westward sprawl. It includes a wide range of building types: South College edging Interstate 40; Hampton Inn and Suites at the corner of Cumberland and Main; the Colony Plaza in the 5000 block of Kingston Pike; any number of recently completed or current projects on the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus.

Still, one can find excellent recent architecture on the UTK campus, if you know where to look. As one navigates Neyland Drive, it is easy to look past the John D. Tickle Engineering Building (Grieve Associates Architects, 2013) that buttresses the campus as it slouches toward the Tennessee River. Unlike the much larger and higher-profile Min Kao Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Building, the Tickle Building actually looks as if the work of engineers happens within its bulky and humorless masses. Although smaller than Min Kao, the Tickle

Building seems more massive, and its massing better balanced, its masonry facades more thoughtfully articulated—less sizzle, more meat.

The Natalie L. Haslam Music Center (Barber McMurry Architects, 2013) is one of the finest buildings completed on the UTK campus in a generation. As a work of architecture it is more prominently placed and more complexly situated than the Tickle Building, its forms more lyrically dispersed, its material palette more varied. Moreover, beyond its use as a school for music, it is also a “pass-through building”—similar to its much-maligned neighbor, the Art & Architecture Building (McCarty Bullock Holsaple, 1981). Although its atrium space was much contracted during the project’s design development phase owing to key site and budgetary constrictions, it nonetheless enables one to move across campus north/south through the building from Volunteer toward Joe Johnston Drive. The Music Center’s south façade (and the pass-through lobby) is designed in anticipation of the quadrangle planned to replace the existing parking lot behind it.

Anything akin to the Music Center, however, is not to be repeated anytime soon on the UTK campus.

Indeed, the hostility among many campus administrators toward the character of the Music Center is almost as great as what has been heaped upon the Art & Architecture Building. The Joint Institute for Advanced Materials on the university’s Cherokee Farms Campus was designed at the same time and by the same firm, as was the Music Center, yet it is only now being occupied two years after the center’s completion, and only partially.

The next installment of “Past-Forward” will focus on why forward-looking buildings such as the Joint Institute (or the Music Center) can and will be built on the Cherokee Farms Campus, and why in the foreseeable future, they are all but impossible to realize on the campus of UTK—and what this architectural conundrum says about the institution it represents. ◆ George Dodds is the Alvin and Sally Beaman Professor of Architecture at the University of Tennessee.

Architecture Matters explores issues concerning the human-made environment in Knoxville and its environs.

March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 11

Photo: KPD dashcam video/screenshot/public record

Differing Accounts In the KPD arrest of a Black Lives Matter activist, dashcam video doesn’t conclusively reveal what happened

BY CLAY DUDA

A

local Black Lives Matter activist found himself behind bars on charges related to causing a disturbance and standing in a roadway after an encounter with a Knoxville Police officer who declined to give his badge number.

David Hayes was arrested in the early morning hours of Friday, March 11, on Wall Avenue near Market Square on allegations of disorderly conduct and blocking a roadway, police records show. He was booked into Knox County Jail on a $500 bond.

Arresting officers reported that Hayes refused police commands to get out of the road and caused a scene, making “unreasonable noise” leading to his arrest. But dashcam video of the encounter calls into question some parts of that official narrative. Most notably, neither of the officers involved can be heard telling Hayes to get out of the road or that he shouldn’t be in the road, even though they arrested him for that infraction.

Hayes began yelling expletives after officers started handcuffing him, though there were a few tense

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 24, 2016

exchanges before the arrest.

Hayes maintains he did nothing illegal, saying he approached the officers that night to ask about “a fellow community member,” an inebriated man being placed in the back of a squad car, exercising his right to hold police accountable by asking where they were taking the man, how he could get in touch with him, and for the police officer’s name and badge number before things went downhill.

Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch has backed his officers’ actions, saying Hayes interfered as officers Christopher Starr and Jeff Allgood attempted to provide medical assistance and transport the drunk man to Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center.

Hayes denies he ever got in the way.

“There was never any moment when I impeded them in any way. At any point they could have just said ‘whatever’ and gotten in the car and left,” Hayes says. “The big thing is not just about me, it’s about how police abuse their power around the use of things like ‘obstructing a sidewalk’

and ‘disorderly conduct’ to go after a lot of folks,” alleging those charges are overly broad and can be used to cite a person for just about anything.

Rausch asked to meet personally to discuss the incident last week after the Mercury filed a Public Records Act request seeking documents and video. He said he wanted to clear up any misconceptions that the arrest was related in any way to the Black Lives Matter movement or protests. In the video, Hayes identifies himself as a BLM member shortly before being handcuffed by police, but later said he does not think officers immediately knew who he was or of his past activism.

“Clearly these officers were trying to care for somebody that needed medical attention,” Rausch says. “He [Hayes] interjects into it and actually delays the opportunity for us to provide medical attention to this individual, because now we have to deal with him because of his attitude and what he’s done.”

Rausch says the matter was brought to his attention after it rose through KPD’s chain of command. A few hours after the arrest, Officer Starr wrote an email to his supervisor titled “Incident with BLM member” detailing the encounter.

According to that email, after Hayes asked officers how he could get in contact with the man they were transporting, “Hayes then asked for my badge number and when I asked why he stated that he did not trust us at which time I began to get into my cruiser to leave,” Starr wrote. “Hayes then stated ‘if anything happens to this brother, I will find you and fuck you up.’

Hayes then identified himself as being with Black Lives Matter and asked if we knew what they were doing across the country, at which time I told him he was standing in the street and needed

to get on the side walk [sic]. Haynes [sic] began to raise his voice and refused a lawful order to get out of the street at which time Officer [Jeff] Allgood and myself placed him [in] custody for obstructing the roadway and disorderly conduct.”

Dashcam video of the incident backs up most of that narrative, though according to what can be heard on audio recordings it appears Hayes was never ordered out of the roadway. A transcription of the exchange provided by KPD does not include a reference to any such command. Hayes appears to start yelling expletives after officers begin handcuffing him. The arrest affidavit specifically cites “unreasonable noise” as the disorderly conduct offense.

It’s also hard to discern exactly what is said at different points in the video, in part because the radio was still playing in Starr’s police car, and the quality of the audio recording varies. It appears Hayes may say, “If anything happens to this brother I will find you and I will fuck you all. You’re going to pay for it.”

Rausch has characterized that as a threat towards the officers, though he noted that Hayes later said he meant he would come after them legally in response to a similar statement he made while handcuffed in the back of a patrol car. When asked specifically about the incident, Hayes said he never said “I will fuck you up” or made any other physical threats directed towards any of the officers. Again, the audio is unclear.

Those comments were note cited as a reason for his arrest.

“In our opinion he clearly violated the law. I think the officers made a good call,” Rausch says. “He was arrested for obstructing a roadway and disorderly conduct. The obstructing a roadway [offense] is interesting

“[Hayes] interjects into it and actually delays the opportunity for us to provide medical attention to this individual…”

—KNOXVILLE POLICE CHIEF DAVID RAUSCH

“There was never any moment when I impeded them in any way.”

—DAVID HAYES

because it is very wide,” meaning it could be used for obstructing any number of thoroughfares, including sidewalks, waterways, halls, or elevators, he later clarifies, “but the real charge they had was disorderly conduct.”

Asked if the officer was required to give his name and badge number, Rausch says: “The officer should have given it. There’s no law against it, but our policy says if someone asks for it, give it to them, give them your name and badge number. I think what it was is, it was just a shock to the officer that here we’re trying to help somebody and this guy comes up and starts raising cane with you.”

KPD spokesman Darrell DeBusk later said in an email that neither officer would be subject to disciplinary action or further investigation since no policy violations had occurred.

Some local activist groups–including BLM Knoxville, Knoxvillians Against Injustice, and Showing Up For Justice-865–have organized a letter writing campaign to Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero and Knox County District Attorney General Charme Allen in an effort to have the charges against Hayes dismissed.

Hayes was arraigned in Knox County Sessions Court on Friday. A preliminary hearing is set for April 8.

Hayes has another pending charge for allegedly disrupting a public event in October when he and another activist spoke out during a speech by Gov. Bill Haslam at a press conference announcing a $12.5 million incentives deal for Regal Entertainment Group. Go to knoxmercury.com to view dashcam video of the arrest and related documents.◆

or

When you want to reach the local market, advertise in Knoxville’s best local and independent newspaper.

THE GREAT For more information, call 865-313-2048 or email sales@knoxmercury.com

Sponsored by The Episcopal School of Knoxville, St. James Episcopal Church, St. John’s Episcopal Church, St. John’s Lutheran Church, The UTK Tyson House Student Foundation, and the Wesley Foundation at UTK March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 13

FLIP POLF The city is spending millions in tax dollars to buy up and resell problem properties.

How’s it working out? • BY CLAY DUDA

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 24, 2016

Photos by Clay Duda

T

he shell of a building at 953 E. Moody Ave. in South Knoxville has seen better days. It is a remnant of its former self, windows busted and boarded up, portions of its caved roof funneling in rain, sitting empty and idle. But it hasn’t always been like this, and if the city’s plans for it pan out, it may someday see a return to its former prestige.

This is the Old South High School building, designed by acclaimed architect Charles Barber and opened in 1936 to host inquisitive minds and knowledgeable instructors.

But for more than two decades, since 1991, it’s sat mostly vacant and abandoned. Knox County finally put it up for auction in 2008, and as the story goes a man named Bahman Kasraei was passing by that day and decided to get in on the action. He bid up the price to $117,700 and took ownership (outbidding Knoxville developer David Dewhirst, who also had an eye on the property).

Back then, Kasraei said on the fly that he thought the 42,000-squarefoot building was well suited for condominiums, but those plans never materialized and its cavernous halls continued to sit unused, further decaying over the years. Kasreai was on the cusp of taking a wrecking ball to the place in 2014 when the city slapped a historic easement on the lot to protect it and started steps towards taking ownership. The following April it struck a deal with Kasraei to purchase it for $189,000, about $71,000 more than he paid for it several years earlier, when it was in better condition. City officials think it has a future as something useful, even if it will cost some tax dollars to see it turned around.

Over the past decade the city of Knoxville has spent millions to purchase dilapidated properties, like the Old South High School and a number of others properties around town, many of them single-family houses, in hopes of seeing them put back to productive use.

Some other lots it has acquired by default through tax sales or other means, like the former Sanitary Laundry building on North Broadway, a brownfield site that has also sat vacant since the 1990s. But it’s not holding on to the properties it buys. City officials are looking to flip them to investors—private developers with a vision, whether real estate tycoons or would-be homeowners, in an attempt to turn urban blight into

The Old South High School, purchased by the city in 2014, has sat vacant since 1991. Officials hope to see it redeveloped into something that will benefit the surrounding community. something attractive, vibrant, and useful to residents and visitors. It’s a tactic used by a growing number of municipalities in this post-recession economy, both here in Tennessee and elsewhere around the country, aimed at jump-starting development. But that vision of urban revitalization doesn’t stop at buying and selling properties, and many purchases in low-income areas work in tandem with public housing provided through the Knox County Development Corporation to add to a community’s livability and make homes affordable. That’s the idea, at least.

In the past few years city officials have ramped up their purchasing efforts, acquiring more and varied properties, some with million-dollar price tags, though the exact number of acquisitions still varies widely year to year. In some cases, those properties have floundered on the open market or stalled in a queue for redevelopment, and that’s typically a reason the city decided to purchase them. Some of these properties have seen false starts, attracted weak bids or proposals from the private sphere, or—in a few cases—gone to private hands only to return to the city’s rolls for one reason or another. Others, mostly single-family homes, have gained a second wind through the city’s Homemakers program, and dozens more may someday host families. The number of Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) agreements the city has

entered has also increased dramatically in recent years.

City officials say they expect to take a loss on some of these real estate investments—at least in terms of dollar-for-dollar returns on property sales. But they also say the intrinsic value is real, and it’s working as a tool to spur development and infill among the plywood-covered windows and crumbling brick facades that have long hallmarked some neglected stretches of the city. As a Knoxville taxpayer, you now own a bunch of property. Here’s a look at what’s in your portfolio, and what’s happening with the buildings.

DOLLARS AND SENSE?

“ The goal is not to make money. The goal is to stabilize neighborhoods, help a particular street, or whatever the scenario is that will enable that neighborhood to improve.”

—BECKY WADE, director of Knoxville’s Department of Community Development

Since 2004, the city of Knoxville has spent $11.8 million to purchase at least 185 properties it’s intent on March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 15

Photos by Clay Duda

The city of Knoxville has invested heavily in two Knoxville neighborhoods: Lonsdale and Five Points. At top, a home in Lonsdale sits on a mostly vacant block where the city owns all but three properties. At bottom, a dilapidated duplex in Five Points currently for sale under the city’s Homemaker program.

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 24, 2016

flipping to private owners, an analysis of city records shows. The glut of those properties are residential lots or houses, though the vast majority of money went towards buying up six former commercial, industrial, or governmental buildings that had stalled on the open market or otherwise sat unused.

A total of $8.8 million was used to acquire six properties: the Jackson Avenue Lots and the old McClung Warehouses (a total of seven parcels) all on Jackson Street; the old State Supreme Court building on Henley Street; what is know the Walnut Street Garage on Walnut Street; Old South High School; and Sanitary

Laundry (which was technically free).

Each property is unique with different factors weighing on its viability and where it may be at in the queue to redevelopment. Plans for some of these lots haven’t exactly panned out, and others are inching along somewhere in the bureaucratic process. Mayor Madeline Rogero says the city has already seen success in some neighborhoods were it’s active in the real estate market, and she’s confident these larger gambles will pay off, too. But it will take more time.

The old Supreme Court Building, a recent purchase, is undergoing a feasibility study to analyze its potential uses—it could be a few years away from seeing any changes. The old McClung warehouses on Jackson street caught fire shortly after the city purchased them in 2014 and were demolished over safety concerns shortly after. That location and the other properties the city owns on the north side of Jackson Street between Henley and Gay streets will likely not see any movement for a few years.

The city applied for a $120,000 EPA

grant for environmental cleanup at the former McClung property and expects to hear the outcome this spring. The Tennessee Department of Transportation will likely use that same gravelly expanse as a staging area as it starts revamping the Broadway viaduct (the bridge that goes over the railyard).

The city hopes to open bidding on Old South High in June and could name a new owner before year’s end.

The property that is now the Walnut Street Garage was a vacant building that was purchased by the city about a decade ago. It was given to a private developer, Walnut Street Garage, LLC, as part of a deal between TVA, that developer, and the city to get more parking downtown. In exchange, the owners provide free parking on nights and weekends. The city spent about $3.1 million to buy the lot and demolish the old building before handing it off.

Rogero says there are some examples that support this blight-flipping approach here in town, citing two previous school house buildings being converted to senior apartments (though the city didn’t take a lead on those). The old Oakwood Elementary School on E. Churchwell Avenue has already been renovated and reopened as senior apartments, and the Historic Knoxville High School on E. Fifth Avenue is planned for similar renovations. Both buildings were owned by the county. And both of those projects were both undertaken by companies owned by developer Rick Dover, who has also expressed an interest in the Old South High building.

The city has also spent $3.1 million for the purchase of 181 properties by the city’s Department of Community Development, most all residential lots located largely in struggling neighborhoods, many of which have been folded into the city’s Homemakers program administered by that same department. Others have been sold via request for proposals.

Both are processes where potential buyers detail plans for a property and show they have the financial backing to see them through. If they don’t make good on their proposals, the properties can revert back to city ownership, and some have.

“Our objective in acquiring properties is to eliminate blight and improve neighborhoods,” says Becky Wade, director of Community Development for the city. “The goal is not to make money. The goal is to stabilize

Photo courtesy of The Knox County Public Library Calvin M. McClung Digital Collection cmdc.knoxlib.org

neighborhoods, help a particular street, or whatever the scenario is that will enable that neighborhood to improve.”

Of the approximately 181 properties bought by Community Development since 2004, a total of 72 have sold, representing a total loss of about $440,712, according to city data.

Some properties purchased with federal funds or taken through court proceedings cannot legally be sold for a loss, Wade says.

The city has invested most heavily in the neighborhoods of Five Points in East Knoxville and Lonsdale to the northwest. Since 2004 it has picked up at least 38 properties in Five Points and 68 in Lonsdale, records show.

Longtime Lonsdale resident Phyllis Patrick says she’s happy to see the city take an interest in the well-being of a neighborhood that she feels has long been neglected and overlooked.

She’s lived in Lonsdale off and on for more than 30 years, since the 1960s.

“I think the city and KCDC have had an impact, and of course anytime you can get out of public housing and into your own home it’s a good thing,” Patrick says, adding that she knowns a handful of people that have used the Homemakers program and others to get into a home. The city’s programs don’t work in a silo. KCDC also offers some public housing in the neighborhood, and the East Tennessee Housing Development Corporation has built there as well. “KCDC will even help you with your down payment, but you have to go to classes that teach you how to budget your money so you can continue to keep your property,” Patrick explains—and she would know. For the past three years she’s served as a resident commissioner (basically a liaison) between the people in Lonsdale Homes, where she lives, and KCDC, which owns the complex.

“I see some good things that are coming down the road, like on Minnesota Avenue [where the city has bought up nearly a whole block of now mostly vacant lots]. I’ve heard they’re going to put some houses there under the Homemakers program, and for those that don’t want to leave the neighborhood it’ll be another opportunity to step up and own their own home,” she says.

Wade says the city was considering partnering with some nonprofits

to build houses there it would sell to low-income residents, but given the uncertainty of the real estate market it’s backed off those plans and instead will go through a “public input process” to figure out what will be the best fit for the area.

“That idea isn’t completely off the table, but we feel like we need to do a little more planning,” she says.

This fiscal year, ending in June, Knoxville’s Department of Community Development has a budget of about $500,000 to purchase blighted or chronic problem properties. That represents a mix of local and federal dollars. Most properties it buys are certified blighted or located in a city-designated redevelopment area.

As of March 9 there were 35 properties listed for sale under the Homemakers program, with prices ranging from $525 for a small, odd-shaped lot in Five Points to $35,000 for a rundown duplex in the same neighborhood. The Homemakers program traces roots back to 1987 when a program called Project Proud was launched by the city to transfer “substandard” lots and houses in Mechanicsville to low-income buyers.

The City Council voted to expand that program in 1995 to open up the sale of those properties to a wider range of

buyers, not solely based income.

Mayor Rogero says the city tries to be strategic about where it invests its limited resources, targeting neighborhoods where it thinks it can have an impact.

“We have X amount of money to put into this and we want to have an impact in those neighborhoods,” she says. “Five Points is a neighborhood we’ve been focused on for a while, and we know there’s public housing KCDC has there, there’s privately-owned and rental properties. We want the public investment from KCDC to have a greater impact. To do that we help

A 1931 photo shows a fleet of workers in front of the Sanitary Laundry building in North Knoxville. The city acquired the building through a tax default in 2014. It has sat vacant since the 1990s and is contaminated with chemicals, posing a barrier to its redevelopment.

Property Purchases and PILOT Agreements, 2004-2015

Properties

PILOTs

26

25

23 20

21

19

18

20

15 13

12

10

7

6

5 0

11

9

0 2004

2 1 2005

0 2006

1 2007

0 2008

1 2009

0 2010

1 2011

2 2012

6

1 2013

2014

2015

Source: City of Knoxville; Industrial Development Board of the City of Knoxville March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 17

Photos by Eleanor Scott

Retired architect and former University of Tennessee professor Michael Kaplan stands in front of his South Knoxville home in November 2015. He purchased the property and built the custom house through the city’s Homemakers program.

@KNOXMERCURY.COM Locations of properties purchased by the city of Knoxville, 2004-2015.

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 24, 2016

those who own the properties, we help with a lot of owner-occupied (renovations) in that neighborhood, but when they’re vacant, blighted, and abandoned we go in and purchase them.

Sometimes we use eminent domain.”

Wade says properties that have houses already on them tend to sell quickly, while vacant lots can linger in the city’s repository until someone decides to invest and build. Many of the larger, mostly commercial properties owned by the city can take longer to turn around. They’re more complex developments, and officials say it’s important to get back the right kind of development for each area so they don’t languish even longer, or encounter problems down the road.

City officials typically view buying or foreclosing on a property as a last resort, and they have more than a few other tools in their bureaucratic toolbelt. Ideally, current property owners would step up and make improvements, or at least sell to someone who would, officials say. If they don’t, the city has been known to use other methods, such as historic overlays, however rare, to pressure private property owners to take action, or at the least save old buildings from further destruction, as is the recent case with the Cal Johnson Building downtown.

The city is also in the midst of a huge push to revamp streetscapes and refine some building codes as part of its aims to bolster development in some neglected areas and commercial strips, to continue to remake Knoxville from its downtown outward, though it also has a focus on some downtrodden neighborhoods regardless of their proximity to downtown. Once finalized, the updated building codes covering some commercial corridors, starting with the Bearden Village area, should help clear the way for more mixed-use developments in areas previously zoned only for commercial uses (under the new code, think shops at street level and apartments overhead). It’s most visible street redo so far is Cumberland Avenue, near the University of Tennessee, a nearly $17 million project expected to be completed next year. The city is banking that it will usher in substantial private development, building up and not out, and the area is already witnessing more than $140 million in construction, records show. It also has plans to remake Central Avenue from the Old City to Happy Holler, and a portion of Magnolia Avenue between Jessamine and N. Bertrand streets (a plan that has sparked some concerns over gentrification).

The Rogero administration is also keen on providing tax breaks for some developments, having entered PILOT agreements for dozens of properties over the past decade, and also agreed to a number of Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) plans.

Both are a means of encouraging development. PILOTs defer any increase in property taxes for a set number of years, while TIFs are a more complex financing mechanism where a developer reaches a loan agreement with a bank and that loan is then repaid through property tax payments. The City Council must sign off on both types of agreements since they defer city property tax revenue. It may also offer facade grants to fix up building exteriors in some designated redevelopment districts.

BUSTLING TO ABANDONED

Finding the right buyer for the old Sanitary Laundry building has been tough. The city last summer issued a request for proposals and received only one response (from Dewhirst Properties), which city officials say was outside their scope and vision for

the property, so that was a no-go.

When the state added the site to its brownfields list, it tried and failed to get the owner at the time to clean up the property, says Dan Hawkins, manager of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s Division of Remediation for East Tennessee.

“That’s what you find a lot of times at Superfund sites: The owner is either dead, bankrupt, or in the Bahamas,” he says. “You just have no viable entity you can go to that has the resources to clean things up.”

The city acquired it through a tax default, which under the law does not come with cleanup liability, he says, but the city is moving ahead well with the cleanup process because it wants the property back on the tax rolls.

The building itself is in bad shape, and it’s status as a brownfield site (basically the state equivalent to a federal Superfund site) complicates things. Dry cleaning solvent leaked from a large tank and has seeped beyond its property lines, causing problems for others looking to open shop in the mostly boarded-up strip of historic commercial buildings near the intersection of N. Broadway and N. Central streets, as Metro Pulse once reported. The chemicals can still migrate into ground water and air.

Breathing the chemical vapors can harm people’s health, but that can be dealt with through a venting system, which is what Bar Marley did, Hawkins says. However, there are signs of life nearby, and the city is hopeful it can still attract a buyer with a plan for the building—eventually. Restaurant Bar Marley opened next door earlier this year after considerable delays due to contamination issues from the Sanitary Laundry building (that property owner used to own both buildings). Dewhirst Properties is revamping an old warehouse across Broadway into artist lofts, and Remedy Coffee recently relocated its coffee shop from the Old City to Tyson Street, opening Makers Donuts next door shortly after. There is also a hodgepodge of legacy businesses there, including a handful of antique stores and a pizza place.

The city is applying for a $200,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (and it will pitch in another $40,000) to help cover cleanup and remediation costs at Sanitary Laundry, which have been a

major barrier to its redevelopment.

Dewhirst Properties’ proposal for the building envisioned it as a mixed-use, mostly residential hub, calling it a “catalyst for redevelopment” of the area. It promised to also renovate the nearby Dixie Kitchen building at the same time, offering $10,000 to purchase the Sanitary Laundry building and seeking an additional reimbursement of $675,000 from the city to cover remediation costs and exterior improvements. It calculated total costs for the project at about $2.8 million, an example of the extensive work that needs to go into some of these old structures.

Hawkins says the stigma of brownfields has been eroded by the drive to make blighted properties productive. Cities have become more active in owning contaminated land and cleaning it up since the Great Recession started in 2008, leaving many businesses bankrupt or closed and a big hole in local tax collections.

Tennessee cities began to embark on more partnerships with private developers to clean up the land and get it back on the tax rolls, he says.

For example, Chattanooga has a similar number of publicly-owned contaminated properties being redeveloped, says Erin Sutton, manager at TDEC’s East Tennessee regional office.

The Sanitary Laundry building used to be one of the anchors to a bustling stretch of service-oriented businesses and nearby residents, but in the 1970s the area started witnessing a steady decline following the completion of Interstate 40, which basically cleaved off downtown from the more residential areas to the north, UT graduate student Micah Daniel Antanaitis wrote in his 2011 thesis detailing the history of the area.

“After 2000, more and more parking lots were formed and vacancies doubled. Today, most of the block is vacant, with literally 0 remaining residences,” Antanaitis wrote. “In a block that in 1930 had 19 businesses, 28 residences and only 2 vacancies, there no exist only 6 businesses, 0 residences and 9 vacancies, including multiple surface lots.”

Over the years, cities across the country have grappled with similar issues, taking various approaches in efforts to address blight and revitalize city’s urban cores after many longtime residence started an exodus to

the suburbs in the 1950s and 1960s.

“There was of course the national phenomenon of suburbanization. As people had cars they wanted to go to the countryside and live like barons and earls, and a lot of them did,” explains Jack Neely, executive director of the Knoxville History Project (full disclosure: KHP is the nonprofit that owns the Mercury, though Neely does not have a direct hand in our editorial content. He just happens to be an expert on this topic.) “That residential exodus was the beginning of the problem, and in Knoxville it was kind of supercharged in some ways by the rapid development of our exurb areas far outside of downtown: the Smoky Mountains and many, many miles of lakefront properties that had previously been flood prone, and also Oak Ridge. All of a sudden there was this cluster of major employers 25 miles from town. A lot of people wanted to live somewhere in between there and Knoxville, and that sort of spilled Knoxville far to the west in ways that would have probably been unlikely.”

According to census data, the Knoxville metropolitan area—which includes more than just the city of Knoxville—had a gross vacancy rate of about 11 percent in 2015, the 31st highest out of the country’s 75 largest metro areas. Other cities dealing with even larger gluts of vacant buildings and boarded-up residences have taken more drastic measures than we’ve seen locally. There’s a number of approaches that weave into the complex economic fabric of each city and community.

It’s not unheard of for city governments to buy or foreclose on problem properties, and some are essentially bequeathed to the city due to unpaid property taxes. Knoxville in some ways has employed tactics used by other cities, though Rogero says it has not had to use some more extreme approaches such as “land banking,” where municipalities buy up usually large, abandoned properties with the intent of holding them for long periods of time, a more common practice in “Rust Belt” cities with buildings left from a past as a manufacturing hub.

There are case studies out there that support these and other approaches to government involvement, but none directly looking at the return on investment for cities buying and selling properties.

Rogero says she’s not too worried about the upfront investment, because it pays off in the long run.

“It’s not that we’re expecting not to get our money back out of it. We’re actually expecting to get a lot more out of it then what we’ve put in, but it’s more in terms of reknitting the community fabric, strengthening a neighborhood, creating more livability, walkability, increasing safety, and really creating a sense of community,” she says. “That’s hard to put a number to, but you know when it’s there because it’s a great neighborhood.” ◆

Contaminated City-Owned Properties Various city officials and attorneys said they were unaware of any contaminated city-owned properties besides the McClung Warehouse site and Sanitary Laundry, but officials with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation listed more. They indicated the city has been making satisfactory progress toward the cleanups:

1.

FORMER MCCLUNG WAREHOUSES SITE IN JACKSON AVENUE, likely contaminated due to its historical uses over the course of a century: an automobile garage, woodworking shop, blacksmith shed, freight shipping businesses, and railroad freight storage. The warehouses themselves burned in 2007 and 2014 or had to be demolished following the last fire. After the fire, Knoxville applied for and received EPA funding for a Targeted Brownfields Assessment to determine the extent of contamination and determine the best path towards redevelopment. According to a Knoxville application for $120,000 in EPA cleanup funds, “it poses a health and safety risk, not only because of its condition and potential for site contaminants, but also because it is easily accessible which makes it an attractive nuisance to curious children who have been seen playing in the rubble.” The city proposes to remove asbestos-containing materials and a large amount of contaminated soil, as well as monitor the air and possibly install vents if the site becomes residential housing.

2.

SANITARY LAUNDRY AT 625 N. BROADWAY, soil contaminated with dry cleaning solvent, which can vaporize and be inhaled.

(See story for more details.)

3.

THE PUBLIC WORKS COMPLEX ON LORRAINE STREET OFF MIDDLEBROOK PIKE, which has soil contaminated by lead and arsenic from the former manganes ore processing facility operated there by Foote Mineral. The city, which has owned the property for at least a quarter-century, has a contractor investigat-

ing and determining what remedial action steps are needed.

4.

CITYVIEW ON THE SOUTH WATERFRONT, a small strip of land between the road and waterfront.

5.

SUTTREE PARK AND SOUTH WATERFRONT, where there are constituents of volatile organic compounds in the ground water from former underground storage tanks and “a little” cancer-causing arsenic and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) along the railroad bed. As the new park and road are constructed along the waterfront, the city is removing some contaminated soil and capping what remains with several feet of clean soil.

TDEC is not requiring the city to do any groundwater cleanup because the contamination there has been “shown to be acceptable.”

6.

BAPTIST HOSPITAL TOWER… eventually… sort of. It is owned by Southeastern Development Associates but is about to change hands as part of a redevelopment deal that would bring Regal Entertainment Group’s headquarters to the site. The plan is for it to eventually be owned by the Industrial Development Board on behalf of the city, The property has underground diesel storage tanks which remain in use but have leaked “very minor” volatile organic compounds into ground water. The city, which has a management plan in place, needs to decide whether to remove them, according to TDEC Manager Dan Hawkins.

—S. Heather Duncan March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 19

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P rogram Notes

Last Days of the 1400 North Knox DIY music and art space shuts its doors

T

his week’s Abdu Ali show at the 1400 (see our music story on page 22) will be one of the last events at the gallery/performance space at 1400 N. Sixth Ave., near Fourth and Gill.

During the day, the building is an office-share with 20 for-lease office spaces; a few nights a month since January, Patty Greer turns the corridors and communal space into a DIY venue for art shows and local and touring underground punk, hip-hop, and electronic music. Greer, a student at Middle Tennessee State University, is an intern at Attack Monkey Productions, the organizer of next month’s Rhythm N’ Blooms Music Festival, part of the Dogwood Arts Festival.

During its brief two-month run, the 1400 hosted shows by local bands Yung Life, Persona La Ave, and the New Romantics, as well as Chicago’s No Men, Third Man Records’ Sun Seeker, and more than a dozen visual artists. Greer says she intended to keep the space open until the end of

the semester but won’t be able to. “hi friends! I have some unfortunate news to share,” she wrote in a Facebook post on March 10. “The 1400 was a brainchild for me during my semester in Knoxville while completing an internship, I never thought so many of you would come out in such massive numbers to support local art, music and film.

“The 1400 was going to close its doors at the beginning of the summer when I finished my internship and returned home to Nashville to for school. Due to some miscommunications and calculations, the 1400 will be closing at the end of the month.

“I’d like to take some time to thank all the artists, acts, family, small businesses and friends that helped me make this DIY venue a reality and supported me in the endeavor. I hope I made a small impact on Knoxville during my last 6 months in my favorite town!

“I am so fortunate to know so

many of the artists that got to display their work and I hope you all come out and join me for the last three events at the 1400.”

The 1400’s last two shows will feature Ali with Elon, Dylijens, and Cole (Thursday, March 24) and locals Shanks Akimbo and Assange with Nashville indie-pop band Will Wander (Friday, March 25). That show will also include artwork by Ryan McCown, Sarah Baker Basiri, Joseph Grant Barbour, Elliott White, Ross Landenberger, Conner Bradshaw, and Casey Perfetto and a poetry reading

by Daniel Daws.

—Matthew Everett

21

22

23

20

Inside the Vault: Joy King

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 24, 2016

Music: Abdu Ali

Classical Music: Music Director Search

24

Movies: 10 Cloverfield Lane

Inside the Vault

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DISCOVER DISCOVER

T HTEH A E RAT RS T S

2015-16 SEASON FIND FIND US • FOLLOW US • LIKE US • FOLLOW US • US LIKE US

FACEBOOK FACEBOOK

TWITTERTWITTER

FIND US • LIKE US ClaytonArtsCenter.com ClaytonArtsCenter.com FOLLOW US

Laughing Girl The rest of the Joy King story

BY ERIC DAWSON

Continued from our last Inside the Vault:

F

ARTS

APRIL / 8 / 2016

TOMÁŠ KUBÍNEK: CERTIFIED LUNATIC AND MASTER OF THE IMPOSSIBLE

A collision of theatre and music hall, his work leaves audiences clutching their sides with laughter, breathless, and madly in love.

2015-16 SPONSORS

CLAYTON CENTER FOR THE ARTS on the campus of Maryville College 502 E. Lamar Alexander Pkwy.

Maryville, TN 37804

BOX OFFICE: 865-981-8590 ClaytonArtsCenter.com

You are invited to a book signing with

Matthew Griffin reading from his new novel

Hide on Wed., March 30th at 6 pm.

Photo by Raymie Wolfe

olk singer Joy King started out performing in Knoxville in the 1950s on the Mid-Day Merry-GoRound. Following her graduation with a degree in music from the University of Tennessee, she traveled extensively, working at far-flung places like the Big D Jamboree in Dallas and Ghost Town in the Sky in Maggie Valley, N.C., eventually landing in Miami, where she was popular in local coffeehouses.

In between the Ghost Town gig and her Miami adventure, King was offered the chance to cut a record in Nashville for RIC Records. Recording Industries Corp., run by Luther Vanadore, released an odd assortment of records in various genres: country songs by Mel Tillis; recordings by faux-British Invasion band Lynn and the Mersey Maids; a live Billie Holiday record that has been released by at least six other labels; covers of Johnny Ace songs by the Puerto Rican band the Four Amigos, perhaps best known for performing with Elvis Presley in Viva Las Vegas and Girls, Girls, Girls; and a soul album by football player Roosevelt “Rosey” Grier that was produced by Bobby Darin and includes arrangements by Rolling Stones collaborator Jack Nitzsche.

Though promoted as a country single, King’s record is more along the lines of Patsy Cline’s torch songs, even more polished than most countrypolitan records. The A-side, “Taking Chances,” written by Vanadore, is a great showcase for King’s voice, but the B-side is the real gem.

“Laughing Girl” is a take on the

“Tracks of My Tears”/”Tears of a Clown” conceit, narrated by a broken-hearted woman who acts like the life of the party to hide her sorrow.

King’s exquisite vocal is backed by members of Nashville’s A-team, including Floyd Cramer on piano, Grady Martin on guitar, Buddy Harmon on drums, the Anita Kerr Singers, and the Nashville Symphony. The song was written by Virginia Kennedy, who King remembers as “so pretty, when she walked into a restaurant people would stop eating and look at her.” Kennedy taught her the song in a laundromat near King’s home.

Two other songs, “Your Kind of Love” and “Destiny,” were recorded at the same session. It’s not clear why they weren’t released, as the master tapes sound every bit as good as the single. Perhaps RIC, which only existed a few years, went under before another King single could be released, or maybe the songs’ similarity to the released ones made Vanadore cautious.

Shortly after recording the single, King headed to Florida to work in and eventually co-own a folk coffeehouse with the soon to be famous Fred Neil.

In 1965 she returned to Knoxville to open a coffeehouse called the Raven with her family.

Located on Chapman Highway, in a former restaurant/bakery near Young High School, the Raven was a happening place at the time, a boho hangout where folk, country, and blues singers performed. A 1966 News Sentinel article on the Raven describes King as the star of the show, strumming a guitar made especially for her by famed Knoxville luthier George McNish and playing

folk songs such as “House of the Rising Sun,” “Seven Daffodils,” and “The Water’s Wide” during the course of a 90-minute set. The Sentinel’s prediction that another Burl Ives might be discovered there didn’t come to pass, and the Raven wasn’t around very long. But it remains a fond memory for those who did visit it.

After the Raven closed, King joined Archie Campbell’s revue in Gatlinburg for a time, and then returned to Ghost Town to play with her old mentor, Panhandle Pete, whom she calls “the greatest entertainer you’ll ever see.” Pete, whose real name was James Howard Nash, called himself “The Poor Man’s Philharmonic,” and must have been a sight to see with his one-man-band contraption holding 14 instruments, including a banjo, a kazoo, a garden hose, a car horn, and a bass drum. When Pete died of cancer, his son Eddie took over and King stayed on, performing with him. All told, King says, she spent 18 years at Ghost Town.

After leaving Maggie Valley, she continued to gig around Knoxville, frequently at the Museum of Appalachia with John Rice Irwin. Her yodeling was featured in a 1987 Today show segment on the museum. In the 1990s, an illness affected her voice, and she performed only sporadically after that.

Now retired, she spends her days in her old farmhouse in South Knoxville, the walls adorned with tapestries, prints, and paintings depicting musicians through the ages.

She listens to music on her computer and will often click on a bookmarked YouTube clip to watch a 1960 television performance of her old friend Mary Costa singing Bizet’s “Ouvre ton couer.” A photograph of King with Costa the last time they met, a year or so ago, is also affi xed to the wall.

She is in good spirits, happy to relive memories of her musical career and especially the many people she met and befriended over the years, many of whom seem larger than life.

“I like crazy people,” she says.

“The crazier you are, the more I like you. I’ve always been about half-crazy myself.” ◆

PM

DISCOVER T H E 7:30

Union Ave Books 517 Union Ave Knoxville, TN 37902 865.951.2180 www.unionavebooks.com March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 21

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Music

Photo by Shane Smith

Renegade Rapper/producer Abdu Ali builds an alternative music scene in Baltimore

BY MATTHEW EVERETT

M

ost musicians love SXSW. Or they feel like they have to say they do. But Baltimore rapper/ producer Abdu Ali isn’t like most musicians.

“I’m kind of anti-festivals a little bit,” he says the day after the first of four performances at the Austin, Texas, mega-music showcase. “The crowds and shit, I get anxious. It’s intense, and I’m a little hermit. I really only go out when I really want to see somebody.”

Ali, 25, is technically three weeks into a five-week tour, but the way he sees it, he’s really been on the road for one big tour that stretches back for most of the last year and a half. After graduating from the University of Baltimore in the spring of 2014, he took his music—a futuristic, experimental mix of old-school and alternative hip-hop and Baltimore’s distinctive club music—on a short tour that ended in Brooklyn, which he thought was going to be his new home and the

22

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 24, 2016

headquarters from which he would launch a full-time career. At the end of that summer, though, he was back in Baltimore, with a new perspective on his hometown.

“I was just over it,” he says of New York. “It’s straight-up biz. I feel like in Baltimore, it can mean something to be from there, and I can build a career there. In New York I’d be just another artist trying to make it. The landscape, the environment, the neighborhoods didn’t mean much to me, like they do in Baltimore.”

Returning home wasn’t an easy choice. Since he started releasing music in 2012, Ali has criticized Baltimore’s music scene, which supports traditional commercial hip-hop and indie bands but, he says, has stifled artists of color who try to do anything outside those accepted formats.

“The music scene in Baltimore is weird,” he says. “It’s still kind of segregated, not just racially but

genre-wise, too. … The street rappers have their fans, and they can pop off in the city. And you have the indie bands, who are predominantly white, like Dan Deacon or Lower Dens or Future Islands, that pop off and get support, not just locally but outside the city, whether it’s a booking agent or a label that comes to them. But kids like me, we’re trying to figure our own way.”

Things seem to be changing, though. Since he came back from New York, Ali and a group of young like-minded colleagues—politically progressive, mostly black and queer or LGBTQ-friendly—have built an alternative network of underground venues and DIY dance parties.

They’re making music that’s provocative and challenging but is also conscious of Baltimore’s artistic heritage, especially the hip-hop-heavy club music established in the 1980s.

Last week, Ali and his compatriots Greydolf and JPEGMAFIA were the subjects of a cover story in the City Paper, Baltimore’s alternative weekly, which has been a target of Ali’s criticism in the past. In the story, City Paper arts editor Brandon Soderberg called the new scene “Baltimore’s most high-profile DIY music moment since Wham City’s hey-day.”

“The past year or so, it’s been a little more colorful, especially from the black underground kids,” Ali says.

“We just said, fuck it, we’re going to create our own platform and do our own shows and bring it into these institutions or places that are usually governed by white people and do our own thing.”

The success that Ali and his contemporaries have had over the last several months has changed their priorities and perspectives. Ali has streamlined his music—his latest song, “I’m Alive,” released in February, pushes the experimental flourishes into the background and political consciousness to the forefront; with its forthright lyrics and jazz grooves, it bears some resemblance to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. It’s impossible to separate the refrain, “I’m alive, I’m alive/Don’t be surprised” from the #BlackLivesMatter

movement and the protests in Baltimore last summer in response to the death of Freddie Gray. “I’m Alive” is more direct and straightforward yet more powerful than anything else Ali has recorded.

“I want to move in a direction where my music is a little more open and soulful,” he says. “A lot of my older stuff is harder and more experimental, which is cool, but I’m trying to keep my edge and at the same time make it more universal. I like the idea of having a lot of different people enjoy my music.”

The long-term goal, Ali says, is to make Baltimore a friendly and supportive place for artists like him.

“I want there to be more kids like me popping off music in the city and not feeling like they have to go to New York and give up their souls to survive,” he says. “They can thrive locally. Not only is that good for the artist, it’s good for the community—it inspires the next generations to be creative, too. I want more booking agencies, more record labels, more publications to focus not only on Lower Dens or Future Islands or street rappers but the kids who are black and brown who are doing crazy, progressive shit.” ◆

WHO

Abdu Ali with Elon and Dylijens

WHERE

The 1400 (1400 N. Sixth Ave.)

WHEN

Thursday, March 24, at 10 p.m.

HOW MUCH $8

INFO

the1400.wordpress.com

Classical

Degree of Difficulty KSO’s music director search isn’t getting any easier

BY ALAN SHERROD

I

n my review of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra’s February concert and its guest conductor, I remarked on the fact that the candidates’ uniformly high capabilities might be making KSO’s current music director selection process a thorny one, at least from a concert-goer’s standpoint. After last weekend’s appearance by the fi fth of six guest conductor candidates, Jacomo Rafael Bairos, I am forced to double down on that emotion.

Bairos led the orchestra in a program high up on the difficulty scale, but one of delicious variety—20th-century works by John Adams and Samuel Barber capped off by Maurice Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Delicious, too, was Bairos’ splendid sense of musicality and the orchestra’s solid professional craftsmanship.

One advantage of attending both performances of the concert pair is that one can see growth and familiarization develop between conductor and orchestra, as well as the resolution of any issues due to the limitations of the rehearsal week. There were a few such issues in Bairos’ opening selection, Adams’ The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra). Composed while Adams was working on his opera Nixon in China, the work combines propelling minimalist iterations with unusual jazz-flavored harmonies, spiced even further with an unrelenting rhythmic complexity and a feast of percussion punctuations.

Although I admit to being thoroughly charmed by the work in both performances, by Friday evening, the work had been more successfully balanced and finessed by all concerned.

Samuel Barber often gets the label of “neo-Romantic,” a reputation supported by his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra from 1940, a work that

seems to get more and more popular as the years go by. Like its Romantic predecessors, the Barber has both sweetness and heat, in the form of achingly beautiful lyricism in the fi rst two movements and blazing tempo and density in the fi nale.

Perfectly poised to take on these qualities was violinist Elena Urioste, whose poetic mastery of the concerto’s personality switch was a joy to behold. Her vocal-like legato phrasing of the Allegro movement’s theme and the equally expressive but more sedate Andante second movement pulled the listener closer and closer.

Part of that intimate embrace in the Andante flows from an enchanting melody given fi rst to the oboe, in this case rapturously played by KSO principal Claire Chenette.

If one had not been won over by Urioste in the fi rst two movements, the fi nal up-tempo Presto in moto perpetuo did the trick. Urioste turned corners of tonality practically on two wheels, all the while vividly conscious of tone colors and textures, punctuating them with staccato angles, and driving with an unrelenting urgency.

However, this was no blur of musical images whizzing by under Bairos’ control, but one of clarity and focus,

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albeit with vibrant energy.

For many, Maurice Ravel’s orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky’s piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition has become one of those familiar works in the repertoire that one either loves to hate or hates to love, despite its status as a masterpiece of orchestral color and a showcase for musicians. Because of its ubiquity, I admit that I questioned this particular programming decision, particularly for a guest conductor audition concert.

I also now admit I was completely wrong. Bairos gave the work a fresh, painterly balance that revealed moments of color and texture that were nothing if not revelatory. Yes, all the details were still there—the quirky instrumental combinations, the bombast, the drama—but with carefully sculpted dynamics, clean edges, and a marvelous overall arc of storytelling.

Principal trumpet Phillip Chase Hawkins gave a crystalline majesty to the opening “Promenade” as well as a perfect ride through “Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle.” Also among those basking in Ravel’s more exposed textures was saxophonist Allison Adams and Samuel Chen on the euphonium solo in “Bydlo.”

As a side note, I chanced upon a recent press release from Bairos’ current employer, the Amarillo Symphony, stating that Bairos had signed a contract extension as music director through the 2018-19 season.

What this will mean for KSO’s own music director selection process remains to be seen. ◆

Bairos gave Pictures at an Exhibition a fresh, painterly balance that revealed moments of color and texture that were nothing if not revelatory. Yes, all the details were there but with carefully sculpted dynamics, clean edges, and a marvelous overall arc of storytelling.

March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 23

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Movies

Apocalypse When?

10 Cloverfield Lane gets its hooks in quick and won’t let go

BY APRIL SNELLINGS

I

t’s tempting to think of 10 Cloverfield Lane as a stripped-down successor to Matt Reeves’ 2008 found-footage kaiju flick Cloverfield, and in the most obvious ways, it is.

First-time feature director Dan Trachtenberg’s sort-of sequel is a tightly controlled, precisely calibrated chamber piece that spends most of its time with three characters in an underground bunker, eschewing the city-stomping chaos of its predecessor. When you put the films side-byside, though, it’s the original that feels smaller and thinner by comparison.

Cloverfield was a lot of dopey fun, and it re-energized the giant-monster subgenre, but 10 Cloverfield Lane is a smart, sophisticated, and immersive thriller that eclipses it at nearly every

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 24, 2016

turn.

A huge factor of the new film’s appeal stems from the pair of engaging performances at its center. First we meet Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead—why isn’t she a huge star yet?), a young Louisiana woman who’s making a hasty exit from a life that will be only vaguely sketched out over the course of the movie. It’s best to go into this film knowing as little as possible about its plot and characters, so let’s just say that Michelle’s flight is interrupted by an event jarring enough to elicit gasps and jumps before the title card even comes up.

It’s that sort of movie.

When Michelle awakens, she’s confined in a room she doesn’t recognize, her leg chained to a pipe

and an IV drip stuck in her arm. And here’s where 10 Cloverfield Lane really starts to get its hooks in us: Rather than wasting so much as a moment cowering or breaking down, Michelle immediately turns her attention to solving her problem.

That problem turns out to be Howard (John Goodman, by turns terrifying and charming), a doomsday prepper who tells Michelle that he’s saved her from a catastrophic event that has killed everyone she knows.

He’s sketchy on the details, but he’s adamant that even the air above ground is toxic and that Michelle’s only hope is to ride out the apocalypse with Howard and another survivor, Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), who is also enjoying Howard’s dubious protection.

Is Howard a paranoid but well-meaning prepper, or does he have something more sinister in mind for Michelle and Emmett? And then there’s the movie’s most unsettling question of all: Which of those realities holds the most disturbing implications for Michelle?

Definitive answers don’t come quickly, and most of 10 Cloverfield Lane unfolds at a pace that’s more in line with a locked-room mystery than a sci-fi blockbuster. “Hitchcockian” is a word that gets thrown around far too often in discussions of cinematic suspense, so let’s just say that Trachtenberg has apparently been watching some classic screw-turners and taking plenty of notes.

Part of the movie’s impressive

sense of mystery and tension comes from the marketing choices made by producer J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions—these days, it’s a rare treat to go into a movie knowing almost nothing about it—but the lion’s share of credit goes to Trachtenberg and his creative team, which includes screenwriters Josh Campbell, Matthew Stuecken, and Whiplash writer/ director Damien Chazelle. The script is lean and taut, with lines that seem like throwaways often turning into tripwires. That careful calibration extends to the film’s visuals; gone (thankfully) is the frantic handheld aesthetic of Cloverfield, replaced by cinematographer Jeff Cutter’s deliberate, precise camera work.

By the time 10 Cloverfield Lane gets around to the business of tapping into the franchise’s creature-feature through line, you won’t care whether it’s monsters or sock puppets lurking outside the bunker. It was originally conceived as a stand-alone thriller called The Cellar and then retooled to fit the Cloverfield brand, but at least to me, the third act surprises don’t feel tacked-on or disposable. I might be in the minority here, as audiences are sharply divided on how well the franchise tie-in works. But that’s a discussion for a different place, where it can be walled off by monster-sized spoiler warnings. Either way, 10 Cloverfield Lane teases some exciting possibilities for franchises whose stewards are willing to bet on great storytelling. ◆

By the time 10 Cloverfield Lane gets around to the business of tapping into the franchise’s creature-feature through line, you won’t care whether it’s monsters or sock puppets lurking outside the bunker.

March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 25

CALENDAR MUSIC

Thursday, March 24 TREVOR FINLAY WITH BELLE OF THE FALL • 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 HAYLEY MCGINNIS AND STAN GIBERT • Bourbon Street Whiskey Bar • 6PM THE JOHN MYERS BAND • Scruffy City Hall • 6PM KARIKATURA • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • With bright horns, socially conscious lyrics and booty-bouncing beats, Karikatura delivers real songs that transcend style and genre. An organic synthesis of all the music heard blasting out of car windows and shops onto the streets of NYC, Karikatura lives where cumbia meets hip-hop, reggae meets klezmer and indie-rock meets afrobeat. • FREE KIP AND JERRY’S ROCKY ROAD SHOW • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM EMMA HERN • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up.

ABDU ALI WITH ELON AND DYLIJENS • The 1400 • 9PM • Erected from the ghettos of Baltimore, Abdu Ali raps, sings, and chats over unorthodox and future sounds, creating music that’s visceral, spiritual, and very real.

Unapologetically black and queer, Abdu Ali is bold, raw, and most importantly life-affirming. • $8 • See story on page 22.

THE TREE TOPS WITH ORANGE CONSTANT AND BELLE OF THE FALL • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM THE APPLEBUTTER EXPRESS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM TRAE PIERCE • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

WARREN PINEDA AND JON MASON • Red Piano Lounge • 6PM THE ROYAL HOUNDS • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 8PM Friday, March 25 HONEY AND HOUSTON WITH THE JON STICKLEY TRIO • 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 ALIVE AFTER FIVE: MAC ARNOLD AND PLATE FULL O’ BLUES • Knoxville Museum of Art • 6PM • In late 1966, at age 24, Mac Arnold joined the Muddy Waters Band and helped shape the electric blues sound that inspired the rock and roll movement of the late 60’s and early 70’s. Mac now resides in Pelzer, SC, where at the age of ten he got his first taste of the blues when he learned to play his brother Leroy’s home-made guitar.

THE ROYAL HOUNDS • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • Las Vegas headliners, The Royal Hounds, are a high energy roots rock n’ roll trio. • FREE DELTA RAE • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • It’s been a good few years for the relentlessly hard working six piece rock band from Durham, NC, whose sophomore album After It All will be coming out on April 7, 2015. Since the release of their debut album Carry The Fire in the summer of 2012 and 2013’s follow-up EP Chasing Twisters, Delta Rae has been profiled everywhere from NPR and Time to Forbes.

Live is where Delta Rae truly flourish, having spent the last year and a half playing to sold out venues from coast to coast. They’ve played pretty much every festival under the sun, including Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits and Voodoo, and are excited to be hitting the road again this spring. • $18 26

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 24, 2016

Thursday, March 24 - Sunday, April 3

FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE FREEQUENCY • Cru Bistro and Wine Bar • 8PM • Acoustic Americana.

BILL AND THE BELLES • Laurel Theater • 8PM • With striking three-part harmonies and masterful instrumentation, Bill and the Belles skillfully present the sounds of early country music. • $13 VALLIE NOLES • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Local singer/songwriter. All ages. • $5-$8 PAMELA KLICKA • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz.

• FREE THE VIBRASLAPS WITH 40 OZ. BURRITO • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM THE JON STRICKLY TRIO • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE MOJO: FLOW • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM MAYHEM WITH DJ SCREAM, LIQUID FISHERMEN, AND LIQUID METAL • The International • 10PM • Chart topping, dance floor rocking, and taste making come naturally to Atlanta based DJ and Producer Mayhem. With over 15 years in the studio and the decks, he has garnished the attention of the heavyweights in every genre of his focus. Rooted heavily in Drum & Bass music, and with a discerning ear, Mayhem found himself making big moves from an early age. 18 and up. • $10 AFTAH PARTY • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Funk, soul, hip-hop, jazz, rock and poetry combine when Aftah Party hits the stage with an eclectic sound that can’t be matched. This 10-piece band, with three-piece horn section, has set out on a mission to combine their wide range of musical experiences and influences into a single dynamic and soulful experience for audiences. • $5 THE CHARLES WALKER BAND • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

WENDEL WERNER • Red Piano Lounge • 6PM KITTY WAMPUS • AC Band • 8:30PM SOULFINGER • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM DIRTY POOL • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 9PM THE WILL YAGER TRIO • Red Piano Lounge • 9PM • $5 BEAUMONT ROCKS • Relix Variety Theatre • 6PM • A fundraiser for Beaumont Magnet Academy, featuring Soulfinger, the Western Heights Baptist Children’s Choir, and the Bad Hatt’rs. Free, but a $5 donation is suggested.

Saturday, March 26 BIJOU JUBILEE! 2016 FEATURING DREW HOLCOMB • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • Some artists are able to articulate a vision at the very beginning of their career, while others hone their craft over time, growing into their vision as they mature. “I am definitely in the latter category,” explains Drew Holcomb, a Tennessee-born, duck hunting, bourbon drinking, 1st edition book collecting, golf playing Eagle Scout with a Masters degree in Divinity from Scotland’s University of St Andrews who has spent the better part of the past decade as a professional musician – recording, writing, and touring with his band Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors. • $30-$115 BRIT LA PALM AND THE BARREL FEVER WITH ASHLEY MARTIN • 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 HONEY AND HOUSTON • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • An original Americana quartet that blends country and blues influences with sweet “sister” harmonies and a little taste of gypsy on the side. • FREE DRY BRANCH FIRE SQUAD • Laurel Theater • 8PM •

Celebrating their 40th year in music in 2016, Dry Branch Fire Squad plays aggressively traditional bluegrass music like no other band in the realm today. • $13 • See Spotlight.

EMI SUNSHINE WITH PALE ROOT • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • With a family musical lineage that goes back three generations, its no surprise that EmiSunshine is a natural performer. All ages. • $12-$15 SIRSY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up.

THE MARK BOLING TRIO • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE STONECUTTERS WITH BASK, REALM, AND MOUNTAIN KING • The Concourse • 9PM • Stonecutters is led by Vocalist/ Guitarist Brian Omer a veteran in the Louisville Metal & Hardcore scene. Playing with Louisville natives My Own Victim who issued four albums out on Century Media and did several tours across Europe and United States. From

the ashes of MOV Brian Omer put together Stonecutters with 3 other like minded musicians, which illustrates punishing, brutal, beautiful, soothing, and primal music for these uncertain and turbulent times. With influences ranging from Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Death, Neurosis, Motorhead, Sick Of It All & early Metallica; Stonecutters illustrates a mixture of these influences all rolled up into a very unique format. 18 and up. • $10-$12 • See Spotlight on page 30.

CUMBERLAND STATION WITH LAUREL WRIGHT • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM SMOOTH SAILOR • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Smooth Sailor charts a course for pure listening pleasure… Presenting timeless 70s and 80s “yacht rock” at its finest. All aboard! • $5 THE NAUGHTY KNOTS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE STEF CHURA • Pilot Light • 10PM • Hailing from Alpena (MI)

DRY BRANCH FIRE SQUAD Laurel Theater (1516 Laurel Ave.) • Saturday, March 26 • 8 p.m. • $13 • jubileearts.org

The mid-1970s was peak newgrass—that blend of jazz, prog rock, Gram Parsons-style cosmic country, and, yes, bluegrass that launched the careers of Béla Fleck and Sam Bush and inspired the long-winded ’grass-rooted instrumental excursions of String Cheese Incident, Yonder Mountain String Band, and Chris Thile (who’s succeeding Garrison Keillor as host of A Prairie Home Companion later this year). But the newgrass revolution wasn’t complete—in 1976, between New Grass Revival’s second and third albums, Ron Thomason, a former member of Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys, founded the Dry Branch Fire Squad, a resolutely traditional bluegrass band that has become a Virginia institution over the last 40 years. Thomason and his rotating cast of band members—Adam McIntosh, Tom Boyd, and Jeff Byrd, in the latest incarnation—play the music the old-fashioned way, with soul-rending high tenor lead vocals, acrobatic harmonies, and ripping banjo and mandolin. Their repertoire includes songs from the bluegrass canon, Scotch-Irish ballads, Southern gospel, and originals that come straight out of the same mountains that gave rise to bluegrass 70 years ago. (Matthew Everett)

30

Spotlight: Stonecutters

CALENDAR but eventually wandering downstate, Stef Chura began writing songs in high school before diving into the world of basement shows, dive bars and DIY touring. Though she’s been involved in various bands, when presenting her own songs (solo or backed by friends) Stef’s music is by turns foggy and obtuse or emotionally blunt, heavy lines delivered in a sweet mumble or a softly sinister howl. (Fred Thomas) THE NEW SCHEMATICS WITH SHINY PENNY AND GRADY MILLIGAN • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT AND THE NIGHT SHIFT • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

KATY FREE • Red Piano Lounge • 6PM THE TOMMIE JOHN BAND • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM SOUTHBOUND • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 9PM JAMEL MITCHELL • Red Piano Lounge • 9PM • $5 Sunday, March 27 SHIFFLETT’S JAZZ BENEDICT • 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 THE BROCKEFELLERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM UNIVERSAL SIGH WITH KRISTEN FORD • Preservation Pub • 10PM TAMARA BROWN • Red Piano Lounge • 7PM Monday, March 28 T. BATTON WITH THE HIGHBEAMS • 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 ALEX CULBRETH • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • FREE THE BLUEPRINT • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Local pianist Keith Brown’s cool jazz combo.

HIGHBEAMS • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

Tuesday, March 29 ALEX CULBRETH • 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 MARBLE CITY 5 • Red Piano Lounge • 8PM THE SWEET LILLIES • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • High energy, progressive, original Americana music Colorado style.

THE MISTY MOUNTAIN STRING BAND • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

Wednesday, March 30 DAVID BUCKNER • 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 TENNESSEE SHINES: THE TENNESSEE SHEIKS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7PM • Although it has only been in action for just over a decade, acoustic swing band Tennessee Sheiks is a shoe-in for the Knoxville music history books.

Eleven years ago mandolin maestro Don Cassell and singer Nancy Brennan Strange, who have performed together in an assortment of bands for 20-plus years, joined forces with gypsy jazz-style guitarist Don Wood to play upbeat, uplifting and timeless songs that inspire

swaying and swooning. Filling out the band’s membership are bassist Grant Parker, guitarist Barry “Po” Hannah, and percussionist Ken Wood. • $10 PENNY AND SPARROW • The Square Room • 8PM • Join us for Penny & Sparrow, a compelling Austin band with a stripped down return-to-basics that yields extraordinary sonic results. Made up of Kyle Jahnke and Andy Baxter, they understand you don’t need gimmicks to make beautiful music that cuts you to the core and woos you to keep their tunes on repeat for days on end.

The Matt Nelson Trio • Red Piano Lounge • 8PM WET BRAIN WITH RUKUT, GROUNDHOG, AND GODS BUFFET • Pilot Light • 9:30PM • 18 and up. • $5 THE JOE MOORHEAD BAND • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

Thursday, March 31 BIG EARS 2016 • Downtown Knoxville • The latest edition of Big Ears, the polyglot festival of contemporary classical and other outside-the-mainstream music staged in downtown Knoxville by AC Entertainment every spring, promises to be just as impressive as previous versions. The lineup includes one of the most accomplished American composers of the 21st century and a couple of dozen of the most acclaimed artists from around the world, many of them already living legends.

John Luther Adams, who has won both a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy for his large-scale orchestral works inspired by the grandeur of the Arctic, has been announced as composer-in-residence for the festival. His major new piece, Become Ocean, will be performed by Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and conductor Steven Schick, and other works will be performed during the weekend. Besides Adams, it’s a typically loaded lineup, headed by a handful of genuinely legendary performers: “dream music” pioneer Tony Conrad and krautrock band Faust, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Yo La Tengo, Joe Henry, Anthony Braxton, Marc Ribot, Kamasi Washington, Mary Halvorsen, Vijay Iyer, Andrew Bird, Shabazz Palaces, the Necks, Sunn O))), and more. • $49.50-$450 JOE LASHER JR. WITH THE HIGHLAND REUNION • 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 CINDI ALPERT • Bourbon Street Whiskey Bar • 6PM HUDSON K • Scruffy City Hall • 6PM WARREN PINEDA AND JON MASON • Red Piano Lounge • 6PM ONE-EYED DOLL WITH EYES SET TO KILL AND OPEN YOUR EYES • The Concourse • 7PM • Austin, Texas rock duo One-Eyed Doll have gained an exceptionally loyal and rapidly growing fan base since 2006 with consistent touring, a solid memorable live performance, and a DIY connection with the fans. Their darkly humored, intense, sometimes quirky and theatrical rock and roll captures the hearts of metal, rock, goth and punk all-ages audiences night after night. All ages. • $10 THE BEARDED • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM THE PARAGON PROJECT WITH YOUNG LUNGS, INDIEGHOST, AND LUNCHBREAK • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • All ages. • $5 SOJA WITH NEW KINGSTON • The International • 9PM • The Grammy Nominated D.C. area band blends reggae, go-go, D.C. hardcore, Latin, rock and hip-hop. 18 and up. • $20-$22 THE AQUADUCKS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • The Aquaducks stand out as a high octane funk and soul band among the twangy accents one is apt to find in the

Downtown Knoxville, Tenne ssee’s

March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 27

CALENDAR city where country music is king.

BILL AND THE BELLES WITH FRAZIERBAND • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

Friday, April 1 BIG EARS 2016 • Downtown Knoxville • The latest edition of Big Ears, the polyglot festival of contemporary classical and other outside-the-mainstream music staged in downtown Knoxville by AC Entertainment every spring, promises to be just as impressive as previous versions. The lineup includes one of the most accomplished American composers of the 21st century and a couple of dozen of the most acclaimed artists from around the world, many of them already living legends. • $49.50-$450 JAY AYMAR WITH LA TERZA CLASSE • 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 WENDEL WERNER • Red Piano Lounge • 6PM PARADISO AND RASAMAYI • Shanti Yoga Haven • 7PM • Join internationally renowned sound healers and back-to-back Best New Age Album of the Year Award winners Paradiso and Rasamayi in an utterly unique, powerful and transformative meditative concert.

Carnegie Hall didjeridoo artist Paradiso and Singing Bowl Alchemy Master-Teacher Rasamayi‘s live events create spiritual soundscapes in which attendees have reported experiences of unprecedented and profound meditation. • $22

Thursday, March 24 - Sunday, April 3

JANGLING SPARROWS • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • FREE FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE MONTANA SKIES • Preservation Pub • 8PM • Combining elements of classical, jazz and the face melting power of rock n’ roll; Jonathan’s guitar wizardry and Jenn’s blazing electric cello combine to create a sound that is truly remarkable. Called everything from chamber rock to psychedelic strings- rest assured, this ain’t your granny’s chamber music. 21 and up. • $5 PSYCHOSYSTEM WITH VANKALE, ABSENT FROM THE BODY, AND BELFAST 6 PACK • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Local hard rock and metal. All ages. • $10 JACK’D UP • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 9PM JAMEL MITCHELL • Red Piano Lounge • 9PM • $5 BLOCKHEAD WITH ELIOT LIPP, FAST NASTY, AND PSYCHONAUT • The Concourse • 10PM • Blockhead grew up in downtown New York City. The son of an artist, early on he found his passion was for music. A fan of a whole range of sounds, especially hip-hop, Blockhead steadily built a tremendous collection of tapes and later CDs from innumerable artists. After a brief stint as a rapper, he realized his calling was behind the boards and not on the mic, and from there he began to produce beats. 18 and up.—last.fm • $10-$15 JOSIAH AND THE GREATER GOOD • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM Saturday, April 2

www.hangoutmusicfest.com

May 20, 21, 22 - ON THE BEACHES OF GULF SHORES, ALABAMA

Tune in to WUTK 90.3 The Rock for chances to qualify for the “Hang Out WIth the Rock” contest.

The grand prize winner will receive TWO 3-day passes to the amazing HangOut 2016 Music Festival May 20-22 in Gulf Shores, Alabama!

You can register to win a pair of passes at The Craft House, The Pint House, and T-Ho Fresh Vietnamese Kitchen at 815 Merchants Drive through April 21. Grand prize drawing live at The Craft House April 22.

From YOUR festival hook-up in Knoxville, 90.3 The Rock!

Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

On the Air and Streaming 24.7.365 @ WUTKRADIO.COM or listen on your 28

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 24, 2016

smart phone and iPad app.

BIG EARS 2016 • Downtown Knoxville • The latest edition of Big Ears, the polyglot festival of contemporary classical and other outside-the-mainstream music staged in downtown Knoxville by AC Entertainment every spring, promises to be just as impressive as previous versions. The lineup includes one of the most accomplished American composers of the 21st century and a couple of dozen of the most acclaimed artists from around the world, many of them already living legends. • $49.50-$450 MIKE RODGERS WITH MONTANA SKIES • 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 BIG GUN • The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson (Maryville) • 6PM • A tribute to AC/DC. • $15 KATY FREE • Red Piano Lounge • 6PM FREEQUENCY • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine Lounge • 8PM • Acoustic Americana.

MALCOLM HOLCOMBE • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Born and raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Malcolm Holcombe is recognized as a performer of national stature, a guitarist/vocalist about whom Rolling Stone magazine says: “Haunted country, acoustic blues and rugged folk all meet [here]...” His newest album is Another Black Hole. • $13 LUMINOTH WITH INDIE LAGONE, NAVAEH, AND THE BY GODS • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • All ages. • $10 WARCLOWN WITH KINGSLAYER, THEORIES OF THE APOCALYPSE, AND ZEPHANIAH • The Concourse • 8PM • 18

and up. • $8 K-TOWN MUSIC • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 9PM WILL BOYD • Red Piano Lounge • 9PM • $5 THE YAWPERS WITH THE BLACKFOOT GYPSIES • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Inspired by Walt Whitman’s promise to “Sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world,” Denver Colorado’s The Yawpers have set about bringing together disparate pieces of the American music lexicon and making it their own.

Nashville’s Blackfoot Gypsies are a rock ’n’ roll band— straight up, no modifiers necessary. With four years, four releases, and countless miles under their belt as a two-piece guitar & drums powerhouse, Zack Murphy and Matthew Paige have recently added fellow brethren Dylan Whitlow (bass) and Ollie Dogg (harmonica), bolstering their passionate, careening, undeniably American sound. • $5 Sunday, April 3 BIG EARS 2016 • Downtown Knoxville • The latest edition of Big Ears, the polyglot festival of contemporary classical and other outside-the-mainstream music staged in downtown Knoxville by AC Entertainment every spring, promises to be just as impressive as previous versions. The lineup includes one of the most accomplished American composers of the 21st century and a couple of dozen of the most acclaimed artists from around the world, many of them already living legends. • $49.50-$450 SHIFFLETT’S JAZZ BENEDICT • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. • FREE

Thursday, March 24 - Sunday, April 3

SUNDAY JAZZ BRUNCH • Downtown Grill and Brewery • 12:45PM • Knoxville’s coolest jazz artists perform every Sunday. • FREE ISSUES WITH CROWN THE EMPIRE, ONE OK ROCK, AND NIGHT VERSES • The International • 7PM • All ages. • $22 WISEWATER • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM • Wisewater is an Americana duo composed of Kate Lee and Forrest O’Connor.

OPEN MIC AND SONGWRITER NIGHTS

Thursday, March 24 SCOTTISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Held on the second and fourth Thursdays of each month.

• FREE SECRET CITY CYPHERS • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Who’s ready to get their art out to the world? This is Knoxville’s premier Open Mic-style event that allows mcs, 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, and build their fan base. • $5 Friday, March 25 TIME WARP TEA ROOM OPEN SONGWRITER NIGHT • Time Warp Tea Room • 7PM • Songwriter Night at Time Warp Tea Room runs on the second and fourth Friday of every month. • FREE Tuesday, March 29 OLD-TIME JAM SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Hosted by Sarah Pickle. • FREE PRESERVATION PUB SINGER/SONGWRITER NIGHT • Preservation Pub • 7 p.m. • 21 and up. • FREE Wednesday, March 30 TIME WARP TEA ROOM OLD-TIME JAM • Time Warp Tea Room • 7PM • Regular speed old-time/fiddle jam every Wednesday from 7-9 p.m. at the Time Warp Tea Room. All instruments and skill levels welcome.

BRACKINS BLUES JAM • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM • A weekly open session hosted by Tommie John. • FREE OPEN CHORD OPEN-MIC NIGHT • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Join us on the last Wednesday of each month for Open Mic Night at Open Chord/All Things Music.

Come show off your skills or come practice with your band. We supply the backline, you supply the talent. Sign up when you arrive and claim your slot—three songs or 10 minutes.

DJ AND DANCE NIGHTS

Friday, March 25 FIESTA FRIDAY • El PUlpo Loco • 10PM • Featuring Dj $LU, Lugey & 420, Screw Loose, D-Brew, Black. 18 and up. • $10

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Thursday, March 31 MARYVILLE COLLEGE CONCERT CHOIR: JOURNEY TO THE HEARTLAND • Clayton Center for the Arts (Maryville) • 7PM • $5

CALENDAR

Friday, April 1 MARYVILLE COLLEGE CONCERT CHOIR: JOURNEY TO THE HEARTLAND • Clayton Center for the Arts (Maryville) • 7PM • $5 Sunday, April 3 READY FOR THE WORLD MUSIC SERIES: SCANDINAVIA • University of Tennessee Natalie L. Haslam Music Center • 2PM • The University of Tennessee’s Ready for the World Music Series brings renowned artists to perform and talk about musical styles and literature from diverse regions around the world. Faculty artists, guest artists, and music historians will discuss the classical music traditions from each of those regions; followed by a performance providing representative samples. Ready for the World: Scandinavia, featuring Espen Lilleslatten (violin), Elias Goldstein (viola), and Kevin Class (piano), will explore some of the most beloved works for chamber ensemble from that region. Audience members should delight in the elegant and charming works from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. • FREE OAK RIDGE COMMUNITY BAND/WIND ENSEMBLE: MUSIC OF AMERICA • Oak Ridge High School • 3:30PM • Make plans to hear the Community Band celebrate music written by American composers and music celebrating Americana.

Featured guests will be soprano vocalist Lettie Andrade de la Torre and narrator Lucas Potter. Admission is $5 for all adults over age 18. For more information visit www. orcb.org or call 865-482-3568. • $5

THEATER AND DANCE

Saturday, March 26 NATANA MANOHARI SCHOOL OF PERFORMING ARTS PROGRAM OF INDIAN CLASSICAL DANCES • Knoxville Museum of Art • 3PM • Program of Indian classical dances called Bharatha Natyam and Kuchipudi by Ranjani Murthy and sponsored by Natana Manohari School of Performing Arts. • $8-$15 Wednesday, March 30 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘AN OPEN HAND’ • Clarence Brown Lab Theatre • 7PM • Suppose someone is overly generous to you…offering something you couldn’t possibly repay. Do you reject their generosity and risk offending them? Or do you accept the gift and then stew over what might be demanded in return? We’ve all heard the phrase, “It’s better to give than to receive.” But what dark secrets may be camouflaged by our human need to share with others? This CBT-commissioned satire ventures into this territory with wit and bite, observing the contemporary anxieties between those with means and those with hopes, dreams and disappointment. March 30-April 17.

Thursday, March 31 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘AN OPEN HAND’ • Clarence Brown Lab Theatre • 7PM • March 30-April 17. Visit clarencebrowntheatre.com.

Friday, April 1 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: ‘ANNIE JR.’ • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 7PM • The irrepressible comic strip heroine takes center stage in one of the world’s best-loved, award-winning musicals. Based on the popular comic strip and adapted from the Tony Award-winning Best Musical, Annie JR. features everyone’s favorite little redhead in her very first adventure. April 1-17. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com.

• $12

CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘AN OPEN HAND’ • Clarence Brown Lab Theatre • 7PM • March 30-April 17. Visit clarencebrowntheatre.com.

Saturday, April 2 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: ‘ANNIE JR.’ • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 1PM and 5PM • April 1-17. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘AN OPEN HAND’ • Clarence Brown Lab Theatre • 7PM • March 30-April 17. Visit clarencebrowntheatre.com.

TENNESSEE STAGE COMPANY: SHAKESPEARE ON THE SQUARE AUDITIONS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 1PM • The Tennessee Stage Company will hold auditions for the 2016 Shakespeare On The Square season on Saturday, April 2, from 1:00 – 3:00 pm and Sunday.

April 3, from 1:00 – 5:00 pm at the Emporium Building, 100 S. Gay Street. Auditionees are requested to prepare two contrasting monologues, at least one classical, of no more than one minute each. Please bring two copies of a resume and standard theatrical headshot. All auditions are by appointment only. For appointments please call the Tennessee Stage Company at 546-4280 or by e-mail at tennesseestage@comcast.net.The two shows to be performed this summer are The Merry Wives of Windsor and King Lear. They will run from July 14 – August 14.

Rehearsals will begin the end of May. For more information contact Tennessee Stage Company at 546-4280 or look at our web site at www.tennesseestage.com. • FREE Sunday, April 3 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: ‘ANNIE JR.’ • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 3PM • April 1-17. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘AN OPEN HAND’ • Clarence Brown Lab Theatre • 2PM • March 30-April 17. Visit clarencebrowntheatre.com.

TENNESSEE STAGE COMPANY: SHAKESPEARE ON THE SQUARE AUDITIONS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 1PM • The Tennessee Stage Company will hold auditions for the 2016 Shakespeare On The Square season on Saturday, April 2, from 1:00 – 3:00 pm and Sunday.

April 3, from 1:00 – 5:00 pm at the Emporium Building, 100 S. Gay Street. Auditionees are requested to prepare two contrasting monologues, at least one classical, of no more than one minute each. Please bring two copies of a resume and standard theatrical headshot. All auditions are by appointment only. For appointments please call the Tennessee Stage Company at 546-4280 or by e-mail at tennesseestage@comcast.net.The two shows to be performed this summer are The Merry Wives of Windsor and King Lear. They will run from July 14 – August 14.

Rehearsals will begin the end of May. For more information contact Tennessee Stage Company at 546-4280 or look at our web site at www.tennesseestage.com. • FREE

COMEDY AND SPOKEN WORD

Sunday, March 27 UPSTAIRS UNDERGROUND COMEDY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A weekly comedy open mic.

Monday, March 28 QED COMEDY LABORATORY • Pilot Light • 7:30PM • QED ComedyLaboratory is a weekly show with different theme March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 29

CALENDAR 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, March 29 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 SPIKE COLLAR COMEDY: JOHN GIBSON, JAKE DANIELS, AND JUSTIN RIVERA • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • As seen from America’s Got Talent, comedian/magician Justin Rivera will be at our next Spike Collar Comedy with national touring comedian Jake Daniels. • FREE Friday, April 1 FIRST FRIDAY COMEDY PRESENTS IAN ABER • Saw Works Brewing Company • 7PM • First Friday Comedy at Saw

Thursday, March 24 - Sunday, April 3

Works returns for April Fools’ Day with a headline performance from Atlanta’s Ian Aber. Ian was recently a finalist for NBC’s Stand Up for Diversity talent infusion program and will be a part of NBC’s NACA Tour in 2016.

Also performing will be Atlanta’s Hayley Ellman. Knoxville comic Matt Chadourne is the host. • FREE THE OOH OOH REVUE SHOW • Cocoa Moon • 10PM • We’re looking to bring a little more OOH! to your First Friday evenings here in Knoxville. First Fridays are a magical night of celebrating our artistic and creative community, we encourage you to take in all the amazing artist exhibits at Knoxville’s unique downtown galleries and then come celebrate and round out your evening with a fabulous show filled with guys and dames, fun and games. This show features some of Knoxville’s best and emerging talent: singers, dancers, comedians, spoken word poets, burlesque and four chances each show to win some swanky prizes. It’s a variety show where each cast member brings a different sizzling act each month to entertain, delight, surprise and more. 18 and up. • $10 Sunday, April 3 UPSTAIRS UNDERGROUND COMEDY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A weekly comedy open mic.

FESTIVALS

Saturday, March 26

STONECUTTERS The Concourse (940 Blackstock Ave.) • Saturday, March 26 • 9 p.m. • $10/$12 at the door • internationalknox.com

Punk and metal don’t necessarily make an easy alliance—long hair vs. shaved heads, political engagement vs. beer-chugging hedonism. And yet American punk metal can be a real kick to the head when it works, as in Stonecutters’ thudding, bruising, brawling brand of it, which pairs brute hardcore riffing with fist-pumping guitar solos for something that’s equal parts Corrosion of Conformity and Thin Lizzy. The Louisville, Ky., band has released four albums in 10 years, each one refining the ’Cutters’ sound to merciless efficiency. (Tours with Mastodon, Clutch, Machine Head, and Down have helped, too.) With Bask, Realm, and Mountain King. (Matthew Everett)

30

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 24, 2016

TENNESSEE VALLEY CAT FANCIERS ASSOCIATION CAT SHOW • Chilhowee Park • 9AM • Knoxville will be the cat’s meow once again this spring. This event is a springtime celebration of pedigree and non-pedigree cats and aims to provide the cat lovers the chance to see over 40 feline breeds at the Jacob Building at Chilhowee Park. Tickets can be purchased at the door for $4 (seniors and students) or $6 (adults). • $6 BIJOU JUBILEE! 2016 FEATURING DREW HOLCOMB • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • The Bijou’s annual fundraising concert features Americana singer/songwriter Drew Holcomb, whose songs have been used in countless television shows and commercials, most notably in TNT’s Emmy Award winning 2011 Christmas Day NBA Forever spot, which paired the song Live Forever with a mesmerizing montage of past and present NBA video footage. • $30-$115 Thursday, March 31 BIG EARS 2016 • Downtown Knoxville • The latest edition of Big Ears, the polyglot festival of contemporary classical and other outside-the-mainstream music staged in downtown Knoxville by AC Entertainment every spring, promises to be just as impressive as previous versions. The lineup includes one of the most accomplished American composers of the 21st century and a couple of dozen of the most acclaimed artists from around the world, many of them already living legends.

John Luther Adams, who has won both a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy for his large-scale orchestral works inspired by the grandeur of the Arctic, has been announced as composer-in-residence for the festival. His major new piece, Become Ocean, will be performed by Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and conductor Steven Schick, and other works will be performed during the weekend. Besides Adams, it’s a typically loaded lineup, headed by a handful of genuinely legendary performers: “dream music” pioneer Tony Conrad and krautrock band Faust, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Yo La Tengo, Joe Henry, Anthony Braxton, Marc Ribot, Kamasi Washington, Mary Halvorsen, Vijay Iyer, Andrew Bird, Shabazz Palaces, the Necks, Sunn O))), and more. • $49.50-$450 Friday, April 1 BIG EARS 2016 • Downtown Knoxville • The latest edition of Big Ears, the polyglot festival of contemporary classical and other outside-the-mainstream music staged in downtown Knoxville by AC Entertainment every spring, promises to be just as impressive as previous versions. The lineup includes one of the most accomplished American composers of the 21st century and a couple of dozen of the most acclaimed artists from around the world, many of them already living legends. • $49.50-$450 Saturday, April 2 BIG EARS 2016 • Downtown Knoxville • The latest edition of Big Ears, the polyglot festival of contemporary classical and other outside-the-mainstream music staged in downtown Knoxville by AC Entertainment every spring, promises to be just as impressive as previous versions. The lineup includes one of the most accomplished American composers of the 21st century and a couple of dozen of the most acclaimed artists from around the world, many of them already living legends. • $49.50-$450 Sunday, April 3 BIG EARS 2016 • Downtown Knoxville • The latest edition of Big Ears, the polyglot festival of contemporary classical and other outside-the-mainstream music

staged in downtown Knoxville by AC Entertainment every spring, promises to be just as impressive as previous versions. The lineup includes one of the most accomplished American composers of the 21st century and a couple of dozen of the most acclaimed artists from around the world, many of them already living legends. • $49.50-$450

FILM SCREENINGS

Monday, March 28 THE BIRDHOUSE WALK-IN THEATER • The Birdhouse • 8:15PM • A weekly free movie screening. • FREE Thursday, March 29 TWIN PEAKS VIEWING PARTY • The Birdhouse • 7PM • Bi-weekly viewing parties for every single episode of the cult TV series. Attendees encouraged to dress as their favorite characters. Trivia, Twin Peaks-themed giveaways, donuts and coffee, plus some surprises. Trivia begins at 7:00pm with viewing to follow at 8:00pm. • FREE Wednesday, March 30 SCRUFFY CITY CINEPUB • Scruffy City Hall • 10PM • A weekly program of movie screenings from the Scruffy City Film and Music Festival, Knoxville Horror Film Festival, and more.

SPORTS AND RECREATION

Thursday, March 24 CYCOLOGY BICYCLES THURSDAY MORNING RIDE • Cycology Bicycles • 10AM • Join Cycology Bicycles every Thursday morning for a road ride with two group options. A Group does a 2 to 3 hour ride at 20+ pace; B group does an intermediate ride at 15/18 mph average. Weather permitting. cycologybicycles.com. • FREE FLEET FEET GROUP RUN/WALK • Fleet Feet Sports Knoxville • 6PM • Join us every Thursday night at our store for a fun group run/walk. We have all levels come out, so no matter what your speed you’ll have someone to keep you company.

Our 30 - 60 minute route varies week by week in the various neighborhoods and greenways around the store, so be sure to show up on time so you can join up with the group. All levels welcome. fleetfeetknoxville.com. • FREE NORTH KNOXVILLE BEER RUNNERS • Central Flats and Taps • 6PM • Meet us at Central Flats and Taps every Thursday night for a fun and easy run leading us right through Saw Works for a midway beer. • FREE RIVER SPORTS THURSDAY EVENING GREENWAY BIKE RIDE • River Sports Outfitters • 6PM • Every Thursday night from 6 to 7:30 join River Sports Outfitters on an easy paced, beginner friendly Greenway Ride. Bring your own bike or rent one for $15. Lights are mandatory on your bikes from September through March. After ride join us at the store for $2 pints. riversportsoutfitters.com/events. • FREE KNOXVILLE BICYCLE COMPANY THURSDAY GRAVEL GRINDER • North Boundary Trails • 6:30PM • Join Knoxville Bicycle Company every Thursday evening for their gravel grinder.

Meets at 6:30 pm at North Boundary in Oak Ridge, park at the guard shack. Cross bikes and hardtails are perfect.

Bring lights. Regroups as necessary. Call shop for more details. Weather permitting - call the store if weather is questionable. knoxvillebicycleco.com. • CEDAR BLUFF CYCLES THURSDAY GREENWAY RIDE • Cedar Bluff Cycles • 6:30PM • Join us every Thursday evening for a

CALENDAR greenway ride at an intermediate pace of 14-15 mph. Must have lights. Weather permitting. cedarbluffcycles.net. • FREE Friday, March 25 RIVER SPORTS FRIDAY NIGHT GREENWAY RUN • River Sports Outfitters • 6PM • Greenway run from the store every Friday evening from 6-7:30 pm. Work up a thirst then join us for $2 pints in the store afterwards. riversportsoutfitters.com. • FREE Sunday, March 27 KNOXVILLE HARDCOURT BIKE POLO • Sam Duff Memorial Park • 1PM • Don’t know how to play? Just bring your bike — we have mallets to share and will teach you the game.

• FREE Monday, March 28 KTC GROUP RUN • Mellow Mushroom • 6PM • Visit ktc.org.

• FREE BEARDEN BEER MARKET FUN RUN • Bearden Beer Market • 6:30PM • Visit beardenbeermarket.com. • FREE Tuesday, March 29 CYTOLOGY BICYCLES TUESDAY MORNING RIDE • Cycology Bicycles • 10:30AM • cycologybicycles.com. • FREE HARD KNOX TUESDAY FUN RUN • Hard Knox Pizzeria • 6:30PM • Join Hard Knox Pizzeria every Tuesday evening (rain or shine) for a 2-3 mile fun run. Burn calories. Devour pizza.

Quench thirst. Follow us on Facebook. • FREE CEDAR BLUFF CYCLES TUESDAY GREENWAY RIDE • Cedar Bluff Cycles • 6:30PM • cedarbluffcycles.net. • FREE Wednesday, March 30 KTC GROUP RUN • Runner’s Market • 5:30PM • Visit ktc.org.

• FREE FOUNTAIN CITY PEDALERS SHARPS RIDGE MOUNTAIN BIKE RIDE • Fountain City Pedaler • 6PM • Visit fcpedaler.com. • FREE Thursday, March 31 CYCOLOGY BICYCLES THURSDAY MORNING RIDE • Cycology Bicycles • 10AM • FREE FLEET FEET GROUP RUN/WALK • Fleet Feet Sports Knoxville • 6PM • All levels welcome. • FREE NORTH KNOXVILLE BEER RUNNERS • Central Flats and Taps • 6PM • Meet us at Central Flats and Taps every Thursday night for a fun and easy run leading us right through Saw Works for a midway beer! • FREE RIVER SPORTS THURSDAY EVENING GREENWAY BIKE RIDE • River Sports Outfitters • 6PM • FREE KNOXVILLE BICYCLE COMPANY THURSDAY GRAVEL GRINDER • North Boundary Trails • 6:30PM CEDAR BLUFF CYCLES THURSDAY GREENWAY RIDE • Cedar Bluff Cycles • 6:30PM • FREE Friday, April 1 RIVER SPORTS FRIDAY NIGHT GREENWAY RUN • River Sports Outfitters • 6PM • Greenway run from the store every Friday evening from 6-7:30 pm. Work up a thirst then join us for $2 Pints in the store afterwards. http:// www.riversportsoutfitters.com/events/ • FREE Saturday, April 2 UT UNIVERSITY HOUSING FAINTING GOAT 5K AND FUN RUN • University of Tennessee • 9AM • The University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s University Housing will host its second annual Fainting Goat 5K and Fun Run on Saturday, April 2. Check-in is at 7:30 a.m. at Fred D. Brown Jr. Residence Hall, 1817 Andy Holt Ave., and the race begins at 9 a.m. Proceeds from the race will benefit Heifer International, an organization whose mission is to work with communities to end world hunger and poverty and

to care for the earth. Registration and additional race details are available at http://bit.do/faintinggoat5k.

KTC COVENANT KIDS’ RUN AND 5K • World’s Fair Park • 5:30PM • Knoxville Marathon weekend starts Saturday night with the kids’ one-mile run and the 5K race. Visit knoxvillemarathon.com.

UT ARBORETUM SOCIETY SPRING WILDFLOWER WALK • University of Tennessee Arboretum • 12:30PM • The UT Arboretum Society will hold a spring wildflower walk at Haw Ridge Park on Edgemoor Road in Oak Ridge. The parking lot is at the west end of the park. The walk is free and open to the public. Kris Light, an expert naturalist, educator and photographer will lead this fun, educational and easy walk. To learn more about this event or the UT Arboretum Society, go to www. utarboretumsociety.org. For more information on the walk, call 483-3571. • FREE Sunday, April 3 I BIKE KNX OPEN HOUSE BIKE CLASSES • Earth Fare (Bearden) • 2PM • Whether you haven’t been on a bike in years, only ride on greenways, or never learned to bike, we have a class for you! Our Open House–style instruction allows you to choose from any of these classes. Bring your kids and your friends —all to the same class. At our Open House sessions, you can choose from: Biking for Beginners, Getting Back on a Bicycle, Learning to Ride: Adults, and Freedom from Training Wheels: Children. Classes will be held on March 6, April 3, May 1, May 15, and June 5.Meet us at Third Creek Greenway trailhead near Earth Fare in Bearden. Adults are $20; kids are $10. (Your kids are welcome to come ride around while you are in class, even if they aren’t taking a class. There is a parking lot behind the shopping center with no traffic.) • $20 KNOXVILLE HARDCOURT BIKE POLO • Sam Duff Memorial Park • 1PM • Don’t know how to play? Just bring your bike — we have mallets to share and will teach you the game.

• FREE KNOXVILLE MARATHON AND HALF-MARATHON • World’s Fair Park • 7:30AM • The crown jewel of Knoxville’s running season highlights a weekend full of races for kids and adults as well as an annual health and fitness expo. Visit knoxvillemarathon.com.

ART

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts 556 Parkway (Gatlinburg) MARCH 19-MAY 14: Not to Scale, artwork by Arrowmont artists in residence Charlie Ryland, Drew Davis Johnson, Julia Gartrell, Sarah Rachel Brown, and Skye Livingston.

Art Market Gallery 422 S. Gay St. MARCH 1-27: Artwork by Lynda Best and Ron Smith.

Bliss Home 24 Market Square MARCH 4-31: Artwork by Lindsey Teague.

Broadway Studios and Gallery 1127 Broadway MARCH 4-27: Peep Show!, featuring figure work by local artists.

Central Collective 923 N. Central St. MARCH 4-29: Just Blousing, new paintings by Beth March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 31

CALENDAR Meadows.

Clayton Center for the Arts 502 E. Lamar Alexander Parkway MARCH 1-25: Peace Is Patriotic: A Soldier’s (mis) Remembrances, new works by Mark Runge (a reception will be held on Friday, March 25, from 6-8 p.m.) and A Phrenology Study of a Mad Man by Mark Hall (a reception will be held on Monday, March 21, from 4-6 p.m.).

Downtown Gallery 106 S. Gay St. MARCH 4-26: Artwork by Allison Berkoy and Jonathan Lukens.

Emporium Center for Arts and Culture 100 S. Gay St. MARCH 4-25: Artwork by Melanie Reid; Three Views of Reality, new paintings by Brandon Douglas, Catherine Haverkamp, and Seth Haverkamp; artwork by the Knoxville Watercolor Society; and new paintings by Bobbie Crews and Judie Gaston. APRIL 1-29: Dogwood Arts Regional Fine Art Exhibition, a juried show featuring artwork by more than 40 artists from the Southeast and beyond. An opening reception will be held on Friday, April 1, from 5-9 p.m.

Knoxville Museum of Art 1050 World’s Fair Park Drive JAN. 29-APRIL 17: Knoxville Seven, an exhibit of artwork

Thursday, March 24 - Sunday, April 3

by an influential group of Knoxville artists from the 1950s and ’60s, including Buck Ewing, Carl Sublett, and more. 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 MARCH 18-APRIL 16: Spring Blooms, featuring work by Jeanne Leemon, Ursula Brenner, Jose Luis Nunez, Bill Cook Jr., Dan Miller, and Louise Ragle.

McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture 1327 Circle Park Drive JAN. 23-MAY 22: Maya: Lords of Time. ONGOING: The Flora and Fauna of Catesby, Mason, and Audubon and Life on the Roman Frontier.

Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church 2931 Kingston Pike FEB. 12-MARCH 30: Artwork by Heather Hartman and Jessica Payne.

LECTURES, READINGS, AND BOOK SIGNINGS Thursday, March 24

DARNELL ARNOULT AND SUE DUNLAP: ‘GALAXIE WAGON’ AND ‘KNEAD’ • Union Ave Books • 6PM • Book signing with poets Darnell Arnoult and Sue Dunlap reading from their new collections of poems. • FREE Monday, March 28 HELMUT REIMITZ: “ROMANITAS AFTER ROME: ON THE USE AND ABUSE OF ROMAN HISTORY IN THE EARLY MEDIEVAL WEST” • University of Tennessee • 3:30PM • A Princeton University professor will discuss the impact a confederation of Germanic tribes during the early Middle Ages had—and continues to have—on Western Europe during a lecture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, at 3:30 p.m. Monday, March 28 in the Lindsay Young Auditorium of John C. Hodges Library. • FREE UT COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN 2016 LECTURE SERIES • UT Art and Architecture Building • 5:30PM • The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, College of Architecture and Design will host internationally renowned architects and designers as guest lecturers during the 2016 spring semester. on March 28, the Governor’s Chair Lecture features Kristopher Takacs, architect and associate director of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill’s Washington, D.C., office. • FREE Tuesday, March 29 VIRGINIA HUGHES: “IN DEFENSE OF CLICKBAIT” • University of Tennessee • 8PM • Virginia Hughes, acclaimed science editor for BuzzFeed News, will give the annual Alfred and Julia Hill Lecture in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, College of Nursing Auditorium. For the 25th lecture in the series, Hughes will present “In Defense of Clickbait.”

Hughes will discuss what it is like to do hard-hitting science journalism for BuzzFeed and the importance of bringing science to new audiences. • FREE Wednesday, March 30 MATTHEW GRIFFIN: ‘HIDE’ • Union Ave Books • 6PM • Book signing with Matthew Griffin author of his new novel Hide • FREE

FAMILY AND KIDS’ EVENTS

Saturday, April 2 BABYWEARING INTERNATIONAL OPEN HOUSE • New Harvest Park • 10AM • The event will feature family-friendly games, food, giveaways and prizes. $5 wristbands will be available for purchase to play unlimited games, and individual $1 tickets will be available for food and games as well. All proceeds from the event will benefit Babywearing International of Knoxville, a non-profit organization. Everyone is invited to attend to this public event. Volunteer educators will be on hand, along with a large carrier library, to help the public learn more about babywearing. Babywearing International, Inc. is a nonprofit organization which was founded in 2007 in order promote babywearing and support volunteer-run, non-profit babywearing groups.

For more information about Babywearing International, please visit www.babywearinginternational.org. • FREE

Lectures, Film, A Staged Reading of Moby-Dick, and more!

Go to:

english.utk.edu/melville for complete festival details!

Supported by: -The Mildred Haines and William Elijah Morris Lecture Endowment -Hodges Better English Fund -Departments of Theatre and Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures -American Studies Program -UT Humanities Center 32

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 24, 2016

Thursday, March 24 - Sunday, April 3

BIG ORANGE STEM SATURDAY • University of Tennessee • 9AM • Students (and their parents) can learn about careers in science, engineering, and math at a free STEM event on Saturday, April 2, on the UT campus. Big Orange STEM Saturday is aimed at high school and first-year college students. Participants will meet current STEM undergraduates and learn about unique UT programs that can advance their success in STEM fields. Pre-register at http://tiny.utk.edu/boss. • FREE KTC COVENANT KIDS’ RUN AND 5K • World’s Fair Park • 5:30PM • Knoxville Marathon weekend starts Saturday night with the kids’ one-mile run and the 5K race. Visit knoxvillemarathon.com.

CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS

Thursday, March 24 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted.

BELLY DANCE LEVELS 1 AND 2 • Knox Dance Worx • 8PM • Call (865) 898-2126 or email alexia@alexia-dance.com. • $12 UT COLLEGE OF LAW FREE INCOME TAX PREPARATION ASSISTANCE • University of Tennessee • 5PM • For more information about the VITA program at UT Law, contact Morgan at 865-974-2492 or rmorgan2@utk.edu. • FREE MARCH YOGA MADNESS • The Central Collective • 5:30PM

• All levels welcome, limited props and mats provided. • $80 AARP DRIVER SAFETY SMART DRIVER COURSE • John T. O’Connor Senior Center • 12PM • Call 382-5822.

KNOX COUNTY MASTER GARDENERS: BUILD ‘EM AND FILL ‘EM • Humana Guidance Center • 3:15PM • Wood is not the only choice to build raised beds. Master Gardener Michael Powell will discuss various materials and shapes for raised beds. Learn what constitutes good fill and where to get it. Call 865-329-8892. • FREE HANDS-ON BIKE MAINTENANCE • REI • 6PM • The wheel is a crucial part of the bike that requires specific care and maintenance. Over time, the rim, spokes, and component parts can become worn and/or damaged and the wheel can become fatigued; requiring repair or replacement.

Visit www.rei.com/stores/knoxville. • $45-$65 MARCH YOGA MADNESS • The Central Collective • 5:30PM • Join Leslie every Thursday in March for March Yoga Madness. Leslie of Yogini is a Dancer will lead a fun flow class inspired by basketball and the teams that are in the madness. Brackets will also be filled out with prizes to be won. So wear your team colors and have fun with your yoga practice. All levels welcome, limited props and mats provided. • $80 Friday, March 25 LETTERPRESS BASICS: PERSONAL CALLING CARDS • Striped Light • 6:15PM • This class will teach the primary skills of letterpress printing using vintage handset typography.

You will learn how properly compose, lock-up and print a form on our table-top platen presses. A run of 100 cards

CALENDAR

will be made of each participants work. Better sign up quick, this workshop fills up fast.The cost of this workshop is $65. All necessary materials will be provided! Visit our classes page to see a complete listing of workshops: http://www.stripedlight.com/classes/ • $65 Saturday, March 26 IMPROV COMEDY CLASS • The Birdhouse • 10:30AM • A weekly improv comedy class. • FREE INDIGENOUS VIBES STUDIOS AFRICAN DRUM AND DANCE CLASS • Indigenous Vibes Studios • 1:30PM • $10 INDIGENOUS VIBES STUDIOS AFRICAN DRUM AND DANCE CLASS • Indigenous Vibes Studios • 2:30PM • $10 SAFTA OUTSPOKEN WRITING WORKSHOPS • Sundress Academy for the Arts • 1PM • Our goal is to create a platform for the LGBTQ community of Knoxville, Tennessee, and its surrounding areas to record and perform the experiences of sex- and gender-diverse individuals in the South. OUTspoken begins with a series of writing workshops taking place on January 23rd, February 20th, and March 26th. During these workshops, on-site participants will create, edit, and produce a piece of art to be performed during the summer OUTspoken events. Prices of workshops are as follows: $25 for one workshop, $45 for two, or $60 for all three workshops offered. Registration is open and available at: http://www. sundresspublications.com/outspoken. • $25-$60 Sunday, March 27 YOGA AT NARROW RIDGE • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 9:30AM • Narrow Ridge invites you to join us every Sunday morning for yoga instruction from Angela

Gibson. This class can be tailored to each individual’s ability level. For information call 865-497-2753 or email community@narrowridge.org. • FREE Monday, March 28 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 5:30PM • Call 865-5772021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted.

INDIGENOUS VIBES STUDIOS AFRICAN DRUM AND DANCE CLASS • Indigenous Vibes Studios • 5:45PM and 6:45PM • $10 NIA CARDIO-DANCE WORKOUT TECHNIQUE CLASS • Broadway Academy of Performing Arts • 10AM • Email emilybryant24@yahoo.com. Blending dance arts, martial arts, yoga and healing arts in a 55-minute mindful fitness fusion.

DIVORCE RECOVERY WORKSHOP • Cokesbury Center • 6:30PM • Divorce can be a life-shattering experience.

Whether it was sudden or was years in the making, we all need to heal our hearts, rebuild trust and get on with the rest of our lives. You have a choice: you can either go through divorce or you can grow through divorce. The format includes both a large and small group presentations by trained leaders. Attend Divorce Recovery to begin reframing and moving on with your life. Cost for the 14-week course is $75, which includes a book and workbook. • $75 WITH HOPE IN MIND CLASS • First Farragut United Methodist Church • 9AM • With Hope in Mind provides families the basic education and training needed to cope with caring

APR C e n t e n n i a l

FLORENCE THE MACHINE

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MY MORNING JACKET

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JANE’S ADDICTION (PERFORMING RITUAL DE LO HABITUAL)

AT THE DRIVE-IN · THE 1975 · DEFTONES · WALK THE MOON

THE DECEMBERISTS · YOUNG THE GIANT · THE HEAD AND THE HEART HUEY LEWIS NEWS ( ) · FOALS · SILVERSUN PICKUPS BLOC PARTY · THE KILLS · EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY S T. PA U L & T H E B R O K E N B O N E S · C O L D WA R K I D S · G H O S T SLOWDIVE · PHOSPHORESCENT · SHAKEY GRAVES · HOUNDMOUTH T H E B L A C K A N G E L S · S AVA G E S · AT L A S G E N I U S · D E E R T I C K AGAINST ME! · THE SWORD · EAGLES OF DEATH METAL · BARONESS CRYSTAL FIGHTERS · JJ GREY & MOFRO · FRIGHTENED RABBIT WOLF ALICE · PARQUET COURTS · BRIAN FALLON · THE STRUTS WILD NOTHING · THE FRONT BOTTOMS · UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA DREW HOLCOMB NEIGHBORS · THE DEAR HUNTER · THE VACCINES MURDER BY DEATH · THE ORWELLS · NOAH GUNDERSEN · STRAND OF OAKS HOP ALONG · LANY · KALEO · FOXING · SAINTSENECA · SON LITTLE JULIEN BAKER · COIN · OUGHT · DAY WAVE · ALL THEM WITCHES CAVEMAN · BEACH SLANG · DAVID RAMIREZ · JULY TALK · NOTHING CRAIG FINN · DIET CIG · MATT VASQUEZ · ALEX G · BARNS COURTNEY THE HIP ABDUCTION · POLYENSO · TWIN LIMB · ADIA VICTORIA THE SHELTERS · THE JAPANESE HOUSE · BASKERY

THIS SPRING’S PREVIEW DAY FOR PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS AND THEIR FAMILIES

You’re invited to be our guest at

{

Meet Maryville

TOUR THE CAMPUS, meet faculty and students, and learn about academic programs and financial aid.

Register today to secure your spot!

}

Register online at maryvillecollege.edu/meet-maryville or call 800.597.2687 502 E. LAMAR ALEXANDER PKWY | MARYVILLE, TN 37804

maryvillecollege.edu March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 33

CALENDAR for loved ones who are diagnosed with a mental illness.

The course includes coverage of medications, resources, and how to better communicate with someone who has bipolar disorder, major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, or other mental illnesses.

To register, contact Cookie Spillers, 865-671-0703, or Joyce Judge, 865-966-4731. • FREE Tuesday, March 29 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted.

UT COLLEGE OF LAW FREE INCOME TAX PREPARATION ASSISTANCE • University of Tennessee • 5PM • As part of the IRS Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, students will offer free tax preparation help to members of the community. The program runs through Thursday, April 14, on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Suite 157 of the College of Law. For more information about the VITA program at UT Law, contact Morgan at 865-974-2492 or rmorgan2@utk.edu. • FREE Wednesday, March 30 INDIGENOUS VIBES STUDIOS AFRICAN DRUM AND DANCE CLASS • Indigenous Vibes Studios • 5:45PM and 6:45PM • Our drum and dance classes are specifically designed toward making the drum and dance experience as easy and fun as possible to those with little to no background in drumming and dancing. • $10 UT VOL COURT PITCH COMPETITION • University of

Thursday, March 24 - Sunday, April 3

Tennessee • 5:15PM • Vol Court is a six-week entrepreneurial speaker series hosted by UT’s Anderson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation that culminates in a pitch competition. Vol Court will meet from 5:15 to 6:15 p.m. every Wednesday beginning Feb. 17 in Room 104 of the Haslam Business Building. Anyone who participates in the March 30 pitch competition must have attended four of the five series meetings.

NIA CARDIO-DANCE WORKOUT TECHNIQUE CLASS • Broadway Academy of Performing Arts • 6PM • Email emilybryant24@yahoo.com. Blending dance arts, martial arts, yoga and healing arts in a 55-minute mindful fitness fusion.

MAP AND COMPASS NAVIGATION BASICS • REI • 6PM • Come learn basic navigation skills using map and compass to find your way. In this in-store class you’ll learn the parts of a compass, how to read a topographic map and how to use them in tandem. Visit rei.com/ stores/knoxville. • $30-$50 Thursday, March 31 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted.

BELLY DANCE LEVELS 1 AND 2 • Knox Dance Worx • 8PM • Call (865) 898-2126 or email alexia@alexia-dance.com. • $12 UT COLLEGE OF LAW FREE INCOME TAX PREPARATION ASSISTANCE • University of Tennessee • 5PM • As part of the IRS Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program, students will offer free tax preparation help to members

of the community. The program runs through Thursday, April 14, on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Suite 157 of the College of Law. For more information about the VITA program at UT Law, contact Morgan at 865-974-2492 or rmorgan2@utk.edu. • FREE MARCH YOGA MADNESS • The Central Collective • 5:30PM • Join Leslie every Thursday in March for March Yoga Madness. Leslie of Yogini is a Dancer will lead a fun flow class inspired by basketball and the teams that are in the madness. Brackets will also be filled out with prizes to be won. So wear your team colors and have fun with your yoga practice. All levels welcome, limited props and mats provided. • $80 ROCK CLIMBING BASICS • REI • 7PM • Join REI for an introductory class in rock climbing. Participants will leave with an understanding of the different types of climbing, what gear is necessary and the basics on how to get started. Note: this is an informational class - not an on-the-wall climbing session. Visit rei.com/stores/ knoxville. • FREE Saturday, April 2 IMPROV COMEDY CLASS • The Birdhouse • 10:30AM • A weekly improv comedy class. • FREE AARP DRIVER SAFETY SMART DRIVER CLASS • Westminster Presbyterian Church • 9AM • Call 865-675-0694.

KNOX COUNTY MASTER GARDENERS: DRIP IRRIGATION • All Saints Catholic Church • 10:30AM • Join the Extension Master Gardener team to get hands-on experience of putting together the pieces and parts for drip irrigation in raised beds and containers at the Charity Garden at All Saints. Please bring your garden gloves (and knee pads if you wish). This is an out of doors event, so check www. knoxcountymastergardener.org in the event of stormy weather. Call UT Extension at 865-215-2340. • FREE SHIFTING FREQUENCIES WORKSHOP • Shanti Yoga Haven • 1PM • Many are experiencing shifts in consciousness, “attunements” from ethereal sources which they believe will create evolutionary changes in human consciousness; others are preparing for global catastrophe. Learn how universal spiritual laws can help you create shifts in your own life and frequency, activating the awakening frequency to fill your life with wisdom, love, joy and inner peace regardless of what occurs on the material plane.

Rasamayi is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning sound healer, who has taught frequency shifting principles in metaphysical venues nationwide. • $44 Sunday, April 3 YOGA AT NARROW RIDGE • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 9:30AM • Narrow Ridge invites you to join us every Sunday morning for yoga instruction from Angela Gibson. This class can be tailored to each individual’s ability level. For information call 865-497-2753 or email community@narrowridge.org. • FREE I BIKE KNX OPEN HOUSE BIKE CLASSES • Earth Fare (Bearden) • 2PM • Whether you haven’t been on a bike in years, only ride on greenways, or never learned to bike, we have a class for you! Our Open House–style instruction allows you to choose from any of these classes. Bring your kids and your friends —all to the same class. At our Open House sessions, you can choose from: Biking for Beginners, Getting Back on a Bicycle, Learning to Ride: Adults, and Freedom from Training Wheels: Children. Classes will be held on March 6, April 3, May 1, May 15, and June 5.Meet us at Third Creek Greenway trailhead near Earth Fare in Bearden. Adults are $20; kids are $10. (Your kids are welcome to come ride around while you are in class, even if they aren’t taking a

34

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 24, 2016

class. There is a parking lot behind the shopping center with no traffic.) • $20

MEETINGS

Thursday, March 24 SCRUFFY CITY ORCHESTRA • First Baptist Church • 7PM • A new venue for musicians from the greater Knoxville metropolitan area, Scruffy City Orchestra, kicks off with regular rehearsals on Thursdays. Conductors are Matt Wilkinson and Ace Edewards. Prospective members, especially string players, are encouraged to contact Alicia Meryweather at ScruffyCityOrchestra@gmail.com for more information. • FREE Saturday, March 26 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, March 27 SUNDAY ASSEMBLY • The Concourse • 10:30AM • Sunday Assembly is a secular congregation without deity, dogma, or doctrine. Our motto: Live Better, Help Often, Wonder More. Our monthly celebrations feature a different theme every month, with inspiring speakers and lively sing-alongs. Our community is also involved in rewarding service projects, with various discussion groups and events planned throughout the month. Sunday Assembly Knoxville is part of the international movement of people who want to celebrate the one life we know we have. We meet the fourth Sunday of every month. Visit our web page (http://knoxville-tn.sundayassembly.com) or email saknoxville.info@gmail.com. • FREE NARROW RIDGE SILENT MEDITATION GATHERING • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 11AM • Narrow Ridge invites you to join us for our Silent Meditation Gathering on Sundays. 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 information call 865-497-2753 or email community@ narrowridge.org. • FREE THREE RIVERS! EARTH FIRST! • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 7PM • Three Rivers! Earth First! is the local dirt worshipping, tree hugging, anarchist collective that meets every Sunday night on the second floor of Barley’s in the back room (when its available) to organize against strip mining, counter protest the KKK and Nazis, to clean up Third Creek and to fight evil corporations in general.

Open meeting, rotating facilitation, collective model. Y’all come. Call (865) 257-4029 for more information. • FREE Monday, March 28 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.

APPALACHIAN MOUNTAIN BIKE CLUB • Central Flats and Taps • 7PM • Interested in getting involved with the mountain biking community here in Knoxville? The Appalachian Mountain Bike Club meets the fourth Monday of each month. • FREE Tuesday, March 29 ATHEISTS SOCIETY OF KNOXVILLE • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 5:30PM • Weekly atheists meetup and happy

CALENDAR hour. Come join us for food, drink and great conversation.

Everyone welcome. • FREE Wednesday, March 30 THE BOOKAHOLICS BOOK GROUP • Union Ave Books • 12PM • Union Ave Books’ monthly book discussion group. Visit unionavebooks.com. • FREE Thursday, March 31 SCRUFFY CITY ORCHESTRA • First Baptist Church • 7PM • A new venue for musicians from the greater Knoxville metropolitan area, Scruffy City Orchestra, kicks off with regular rehearsals on Thursdays. Conductors are Matt Wilkinson and Ace Edewards. Prospective members, especially string players, are encouraged to contact Alicia Meryweather at ScruffyCityOrchestra@gmail.com for more information. • FREE Saturday, April 2 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 SEEKERS OF SILENCE • Church of the Savior United Church of Christ • 9AM • Judith Rothermel, a memoir class instructor, legacy letter writer and legacy consultant and former Knox County Schools teacher, will present a writing session on “Legacy Letters: Sharing the Wealth of the Heart.” All are welcome. Seekers of Silence is an ecumenical and interfaith group seeking closer communion with God through silence. sosknoxville.org. • FREE Sunday, April 3 NARROW RIDGE SILENT MEDITATION GATHERING • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 11AM • Narrow Ridge invites you to join us for our Silent Meditation Gathering on Sundays. 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 information call 865-497-2753 or email community@ narrowridge.org. • FREE THREE RIVERS! EARTH FIRST! • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 7PM • Three Rivers! Earth First! is the local dirt worshipping, tree hugging, anarchist collective that meets every Sunday night on the second floor of Barley’s in the back room (when its available) to organize against strip mining, counter protest the KKK and Nazis, to clean up Third Creek and to fight evil corporations in general.

Open meeting, rotating facilitation, collective model. Y’all come. Call (865) 257-4029 for more information. • FREE

ETC.

Thursday, March 24 COMMUNITY PARTNERS PINTS FOR A PURPOSE • Little River Trading Co. (Maryville) • 5PM • A beer-drinking benefit for New Hope Children’s Advocacy Center. The Blount County Children’s Advocacy Center is dedicated to serving children who are victims of sexual and physical abuse or trauma through prevention, education, and intervention. Brought to you by Little River Trading Co., Blount Partnership, Kuhl Clothing. Thanks to our sponsors 100% of the nights beer sales proceeds goes to the advocate. • FREE KNOX HERITAGE BEHIND THE SCENES MEMBERS TOUR • Downtown Knoxville • 5PM • Knox Heritage members will be treated to a one-of-a-kind tour as David Dewhirst

leads the “Underground to New Sounds” tour of Underground Gay Street and the entertainment district that is developing along Depot and Fifth Avenues.

Members should gather at Dewhirst Properties located in the 100 block of S. Gay Street to begin the tour.

Refreshments will be served. Save your spot by sending an email to RSVP@knoxheritage.org or calling (865) 523-8008. New members can join today online at knoxheritage.org or call the Knox Heritage office at (865) 523-8008.

Saturday, March 26 THE WRITINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS OF RIKKI HALL: A BENEFIT FOR THE LITTLE RIVER WATERSHED ASSOCIATION • Scruffy City Hall • 5PM • See story on page 36.

Then

Now

Sunday, March 27 GOOD SPORT NIGHT • The Central Collective • 5PM • Introducing Good Sport Night, a new series presented and programmed by The Central Collective. Here’s the deal.

You purchase a ticket to a mystery event. Show up to The Central Collective at the specified date and time, and be ready for anything. You might walk into a baby goat petting zoo, or a punk rock concert, or a blind chocolate tasting, or a lecture about the Big Bang. These are events for folks who are curious, adventurous, and like trying new things & meeting new people. • $20 Saturday, April 2 NOURISH KNOXVILLE WINTER FARMERS’ MARKET • Central United Methodist Church • 10AM-2PM • The Winter Farmers’ Market, held in the Historic 4th and Gill neighborhood, will host farm & food vendors selling pasture-raised meats, eggs, winter produce, honey, baked goods, artisan foods, and more. Outside, food trucks will be serving up lunch from locally sourced ingredients.

Visit nourishknoxville.org. • FREE MABRY-HAZEN HOUSE PARK DAY • Mabry-Hazen House • 9AM • History buffs, community leaders and preservationists will team up with the Civil War Trust at more than 125 sites in 29 states to answer the call to service on Park Day. Celebrating its twentieth year, Park Day has attracted volunteers of all ages and abilities bound by their dedication to serving their communities at historic sites nationwide. Activities will include leaf and brush removal, mulching, and general spring-cleaning.

Additional information about the event can be obtained by visiting www.mabryhazen.com or by calling 865-522-8661. Please RSVP by March 30. • FREE

OUR STORY

“Our journey began in 1996 when our two families were brought together by our love of the outdoors, our mission to inspire others to be outside, and our desire to make “play time” as important as “work time”. We started as a 2,400 sq. ft. hike shop in the old co-op building in Downtown Maryville, and have now grown to over 12,500 sq. ft. between three stores, offering goods for hiking, packing, disc golf, car camping, traveling, climbing, paddling, cycling, and even a craft beer tavern. Look for us as: Little River Trading Company, Cycology, and Little River Lifestyle. Join us this year for a wide range of outdoor activities as we celebrate our 20th year.”

Get ready for your next outdoor adventure here!

2408 E Lamar Alexander Pkwy Maryville Store Hours: M-Fri 9-7pm Sat 9-6pm • Sun 12-6pm 865.681.4141

725 Watkins Road Maryville Store Hours: M-Sat 10-7pm Sun 12-6pm 865.983.8095

www.littlerivertradingco.com

March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 35

OUTDOORS

Voice in the Wilder ness

Photo by Kim Pilarski-Hall

Knoxville’s Hellbender The words (and life) of Rikki Hall to be celebrated with the publication of Six Legs and a Buzz

BY KIM TREVATHAN

“Y

ou write all the time. You need to write a book,” Kim Pilarski-Hall once said to her husband, Rikki Hall.

Hall, who died of cancer in the spring of 2014, left behind boxes and boxes of writing: fiction, poetry, songs, and nonfiction on everything from local politics to love to college football. He also wrote about nature in loving, humorous, incredibly detailed columns that he published in Hellbender Press, a weekly environmental magazine. But he never got around to putting together a book.

Six Legs and a Buzz: A Collection of Articles from the Hellbender Press (Tellico Books) is the culmination of Hall’s life work, the book his wife urged him to create. A book launch, free and open to the public, will take place on March 26 from 5 to 7 p.m. in Scruffy City Hall. All proceeds from

36

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 24, 2016

the book sales and the event will benefit the Little River Watershed Association.

Family and friends will read short excerpts from the book, and then the music will start. Todd Steed, who has written a song about Hall; David Phillips; Tim and Susan Lee; and Smiley and the Lovedawg will perform. Finally, there will be a slide show celebrating Hall’s life.

I had the privilege of previewing Six Legs and a Buzz. I can’t remember learning so much from a book that made me laugh out loud or pause in contemplation every few paragraphs.

Though I did not know Rikki Hall, the book gave me a strong sense of his personality, a voice as distinct and audible as the chirping of a cardinal.

His father, Dick Hall, who took the lead in putting the book together, says that his son’s childhood nickname was

“the bird,” because of his fondness for nature and his skinny legs.

“Rikki was kind of a pied piper— kind and funny, smart and easy going,” Pilarski-Hall says. “His goal was educating people about the natural world, the interconnectedness of things, all the little things that go on.”

Hall wanted to pass on his love of nature to readers so that they would get outside and experience it with new eyes, Pilarski-Hall says. That way, they’d be more likely to protect it.

Hall’s powers of observation and his quirky perspective—from pieces speculating on how insect flight evolved to how and when a boulder made its way into the Big South Fork—are just part of what makes the book so fascinating. The power of his gaze is also evident in his photography. Never, for example, have I seen a more exquisite photo of a stink bug.

Or a house fly. The book is full of detailed illustrations and stunning color photography—from dragonflies and frogs to mountain meadows, flame azaleas and alligators—a collection that Hall’s father selected from the 26,000 photos he found on his son’s hard drive.

For Dick Hall the essence of his son’s writing legacy was his ability “to help people overcome the ‘ugh’ factor about bugs and understand their value. He was also able to communicate to the layman the intricacies of science.”

In his book, Hall articulates questions we all may have thought at one time or another: “Why were

mosquitoes put on Earth?” “What might it be like to occupy the mind of a bug?” and “Is it really fair to blame bugs for the panic they cause?” And then he formulates in-depth answers.

Here’s a small sample of the kinds of things you’ll learn: You may know that warblers, as Hall points out, “sing beautiful songs,” but did you know that they “scrape the wings off [of moths] by rubbing them on tree limbs before swallowing”? Did you know that wasps kill more people than snakes and spiders, but often these folks die of the consequences of panic or overexertion rather than the wasp’s venom?

It makes perfect sense that one of Hall’s final acts would be a gift to the Little River Watershed Association, a non-profit whose mission is to educate people about the river and to protect and nurture it. Many of the photos in the book were taken in Rockford, and that’s because Hall lived a crow’s hop away from the river on Martin Mill Pike. He took photos of it that the LRWA used and he wrote about threats to it for both Metro Pulse and Hellbender Press.

Kim Raia, former president of LRWA, says she thought Hall’s affection for the organization may also have its root in the hellbender itself, a salamander that can grow to a couple of feet long and live up to 30 years, an animal whose survival depends on clear, clean water—which is something that still exists on much of the Little River, known for its biodiversity and as a baseline stream against

Rikki Hall’s powers of observation and his quirky perspective—from pieces speculating on how insect flight evolved to how and when a boulder made its way into the Big South Fork—are just part of what makes his book so fascinating.

OUTDOORS which scientists in the area measure river health.

Hall has already been responsible for raising money that LRWA has put to good use. In March 2014, a few weeks before his death, “Enjoy Every Sandwich: An Evening of Warren Zevon for Rikki Hall” was held at Scruff y City Hall. Raia estimates that $10,000 to $15,000 have been raised in honor of Hall since then.

Raia says these contributions helped fund the Little River Blueway Map, staffi ng needs, and educational programs such as the Stream School.

At the book launch, LRWA will provide information about its activities and mission.

Tellico Books of Oak Ridge published Six Legs and a Buzz at cost.

Beto Cumming, whose idea it was to have the book launch, donated his time to design the cover. At the event, the book will be half price ($10).

Six Legs and a Buzz is a prime example of the value that a physical copy of a book offers, something you might take on a hike or read in a hammock beside a stream. It’s also particularly valuable because not much Hellbender Press content is available online.

Pilarski-Hall sees the book as “a concrete legacy, something you could hold and see, something you can pass on and include in libraries.”

She remembers a story from Hall’s graduate school days passed on from her TVA colleague, James T. (Bo) Baxter, who was a teaching assistant in the class that Hall was taking from David Etnier, the esteemed University of Tennessee ichthyologist and aquatic entomologist.

Hall had collected larval caddisfly over the weekend and put them in a box for Baxter in the lab to identify.

The other students had their boxes of dead insects. But when Baxter opened Hall’s box, he said, “There’s nothing in here, Rikki.”

Hall’s larvae had escaped because he had brought them in alive in order to release them later.

In the preface to Six Legs and a Buzz Pilarski-Hall writes, “He was the kind of person you wanted to live forever, or at least a long and happy

life, writing until the end.”

The more I fi nd out about Rikki Hall—his open-hearted and courageous response to brain cancer and impending mortality, his selfless and meaningful generosity, his talent for inspiring others—the more I wish I had known him when he was alive.

Celebrating his life and his work is the next best thing. ◆

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Six Legs and a Buzz Book Release Party to benefit the Little River Watershed Association

WHO

Tim and Susan Lee, Todd Steed, Jack Rentfro, David Phillips, Smiley and the Lovedawg

WHERE

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WHEN

Saturday, March 26, 5-7 p.m.

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY 37

’BYE

R estless Nat ive

Reading Up

When learning disabilities were misunderstood and ignored

BY CHRIS WOHLWEND

T

he kitchen table of our house in Burlington was Gossip Central, with my mother the mistress of ceremonies. The other participants varied, with a half dozen or so regulars. The subjects were the peccadillos—both real and rumored—of most everyone else in the neighborhood.

If I was quiet, seemingly absorbed in a game or a book, I could catch the gist of the conversation.

Obviously, I had developed a penchant for journalism at an early age.

One frequent subject was a family from our church, a family that included 12 children. The patriarch was not popular with the kitchen-table group.

He had, according to my mother, insisted that he was going to father a dozen kids. He was successful, though the ordeals of birthing the youngest three or four “almost killed his wife.”

Usually my mother, a stickler for education, would add a knowing, “Why, he can’t even read or write.” I had no reason to doubt that, as he made his living by odd manual-labor jobs (scuffling), with the family being frequent benefactors of the church’s community-outreach efforts.

It didn’t occur to me until years later that many adults couldn’t read or

write. True, I knew some who had never learned to drive a car—both my grandmothers, for example. (They both were literate—they just never bothered to learn to drive, depending on the men of the household to take care of the transportation for any errands that required it.)

But I never considered that the insurmountable hurdle for many might have been the written driver’s test.

In the grocery line once, when I was impatiently squirming because it was taking so long, my grandmother quieted me down by whispering that the woman in front, an acquaintance, was having a problem with the prices because she could not read.

When I was in high school, my sister told me about a friend’s father who was illiterate. Retired, he was taking an adult-education course, to try to rectify his problem.

Later, after professionals began to understand and diagnose dyslexia, it became obvious that illiteracy often could be traced to that affliction. That, his daughter was convinced, was her dad’s problem. Whatever the reason for his not being able to read and write, she said, “he always provided for us.”

My younger brother had problems

BY MATTHEW FOLTZ-GRAY

38

KNOXVILLE MERCURY March 24, 2016

www.thespiritofthestaircase.com

in school that were later diagnosed as dyslexia-based, though when he was in school in the 1950s, recognition of the problem was rare. Like many others, he was passed along, moved up a grade by teachers and administrators who had no idea what the problem was.

When we were adults and I would ask if he wanted to join me on a research-run to the library, he would always beg off. And he had a perplexing habit, at family gatherings, of immediately bringing up any subject that I had cautioned him not to mention.

Somehow, despite his handicap, he managed to accumulate most of the credits needed for a bachelor of arts degree. He, too, had been passed along by the education system.

Nowadays, of course, dyslexia is addressed in school, with special attention. Other learning disabilities— attention-deficit disorder, for example— are also diagnosed and addressed.

A friend and I were discussing the issue—and how it was basically unknown when we were in elementary school in the 1950s—when he

mentioned one of his theories. Many tradesmen (he specifically mentioned carpenters) probably were so afflicted, and that’s one reason they were attracted to their vocation, where reading was not required.

There is probably some truth in that.

Looking back, I remember an occasional episode that demonstrated the truth of the time. And one that happened fairly recently. I had contracted with a friend of the family who was in his 60s to help move some stuff to the dump.

Years ago, I had began to suspect he couldn’t read, as there had been a couple of episodes involving fuse boxes and printed instructions.

In this case, I was driving, and when I pulled onto one street near our destination, he proudly read the sign naming the street.

It was a two-name drive; he nailed the first word, but mis-read the second. When I corrected him, he just said, “That’s what I meant.”

The episode and his response, I’m sure, had often been repeated. ◆

My younger brother had problems in school that were later diagnosed as dyslexia-based, though when he was in school in the 1950s, recognition of the problem was rare.

’BYE

BY IAN BLACKBURN AND JACK NEELY

CLASSIFIEDS

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FOR SALE

BLUE VINTAGE NORTHFACE HIKING BACKPACK, aluminum external frame.

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HOUSING

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MARY - is a Domestic Shorthair/Mix, Female Cat, who is 9 months old and as sweet as an be!

Visit Young-Williams Animal Center or call 865-215-6599 for more information.

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2012 CHEVROLET SONIC LS HATCHBACK $9,881, 1 Owner! Factory Warranty!

35 MPG, Well Maintained, 15 Service Records. 2 locations! Call 865-977 -1353 or 865-977-1063 or visit hepperlyautosales.com.

2015 CHEVROLET SILVERADO 2500HD LT $48,865. 1 Owner! 4x4, 6.6L Diesel Allison Transmission Factory Warranty! Low Mileage 2 locations! Call 865-977-1353 or 865-977-1063 or visit hepperlyautosales.com.

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MAKE MOTHER’S DAY EASIER This Mother’s Day, give the necessities to mothers in need. Help us give away diapers, wash cloths, socks, & more–in beautifully designed, cupcakeshaped packages–for free to local babies. To donate money for baby items, 100% of which are Made in the USA, please call 615-500-0329. Visit Rock A Bye Baby Cupcakes on FB.

COMMERCIAL OFFICE SPACE FOR SUBLEASE Just North of Downtown on Broadway St. Electric, water, wastewater utilities included. Includes two private offices, a lobby, private outside entry, a business address, bathroom, shower, and shared kitchen. This area is continually adding new businesses & residents.

Great location for a fraction of the price. Month to Month lease term. Call 865-637-9118 Ext. 102 or Ext. 100 or emailus@ tenantschoice.com

TINY - is a Domestic Longhair/Mix, Female Cat, who is 3 years old.

She is spayed, loves to cuddle, play with toys and talk! Visit Young -Williams Animal Center or call 865-215-6599 for more information.

BIG BOY - is a 4 year old American Bulldog! A true gentle giant, and so much fun. Visit Young -Williams Animal Center or call 865-215-6599 for more information.

SAMMY - is a 1 year old female cat who waiting to prance into your life.

She is microchipped, spayed, and up to date on shots Visit Young-Williams Animal Center or call 865-215-6599 for more information.

BEAR BEAR & ROXY - are best friends and must go home together! But came into YWAC with serious medical conditions. We were able to use our Animal Compassion Fund to perform surgery on bear bear, a 1 year old Retriever. Bear Bear had severe entropion. She could not keep her eyes open. Both eyes were corrected and now she can see and is no longer in pain! Roxy is a 1 yearold Boxer/mix. Both are up to date on shots, have been spayed and are ready to go to a loving home today! Visit Young -Williams Animal Center or call 865-215- 6599 for more information.

OLIVER - is a 3 year old male kitty looking for a new family to play and snuggle with! He is microchipped, neutered, and up to date on shots.

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March 24, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 39

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