Vol. 2, Issue 16 - April 21, 2016 by Knoxville Mercury

ALSO INSIDE

Rossini Festival Guide & Map!

APRIL 21, 2016 KNOXMERCURY.COM

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2016 FUND DRIVE

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NEWS

What Is Your License Plate Telling KPD’s Automatic Readers?

JACK NEELY

Behind MPC’s Vote to Deny the Cal Johnson Building Historical Protection

MUSIC

Local Synth-Rock Band Yung Life Graduates With its Second Album

OUTSIDE INSIDER

How To Not Drive Other People Nuts When You’re Enjoying the Wilderness

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

April 21, 2016 Volume 02 / Issue 16 knoxmercury.com

CONTENTS

“ Journalism keeps you planted in the earth.” —Ray Bradbury

16 Press Forward 2016

COVER STORY

Over a year ago, our original Kickstarter campaign raised over $60,000 from 645 backers to start a new weekly paper for Knoxville that’s as unique as the city itself. Through private donations and other fundraisers, we were able to collect about $200,000 for our launch. (By the way: Thanks for that!) Since then, the Knoxville Mercury has become an award-winning journalistic endeavor and a local institution in the making. Now, in our second year, we must build on our achievements by ensuring the Mercury’s sustainability as an ongoing business. We need your help—which is why we’re announcing our Press Forward 2016 fundraising campaign.

2016 FUND DRIVE

NEWS

12 Tracking Tags Over the past several years, the Knoxville Police Department has used a handful of automatic license plate readers, or ALPRs for short, as high-tech crime fighting tools, from identifying stolen cars to searching for vehicles after an Amber Alert to locating potential gang members. The department currently has two ALPR systems mounted on two different patrol cars, and it’s been using them with increased frequency and more methodically in recent months, records show. What has your license plate been telling KPD? Clay Duda finds out.

14 Courtesy Call The city of Knoxville is reviewing potential legal issues related a “long standing practice” where EDITORIAL >> TO toED Knoxville Police Department officials notify University of Tennessee administrators in advance if a student athlete is the subject of a criminal investigation, Clay Duda reports.

Press Forward 2016 Our annual fundraising campaign is on! Donate to the paper: gofundme.com/pressforward2016. Buy an ad: sales@knoxmercury.com. Tax-deductible donations to KHP: knoxmercury.com/KHP. << TO DISTRIBUTION

DEPARTMENTS

OPINION

4 Letters to the Editor 6 Howdy

8 Scruffy Citizen

Start Here: Believe It or Knox!, Public Affairs, Quote Factory << PLUS: TO SALES“Ghosts in the Machine” by L. M. Horstman

54 ’Bye

Finish There: Sacred & Profane by Donna Johnson, Crooked Street Crossword by Ian Blackburn and Jack Neely, Spirit of the Staircase by Matthew Foltz-Gray

A&E

10 Much Ado

Catherine Landis introduces her new column with a look at Knox County Schools’ sex ed presentations.

22 Program Notes: Coury Turczyn

TO DESIGN >>

Jack Neely investigates why MPC decided against granting the Cal Johnson Building H-1 historical protection.

CALENDAR previews the expanded offerings at this weekend’s Scruffy City Film & Music Festival.

23 Shelf Life: Chris Barrett finds gold among the AV shelves at the Knox County Public Library.

24 Music: Matthew Everett interviews the entity known as Yung Life.

33 Classical Music: Alan Sherrod

assesses the performance of final KSO music director candidate Steven Jarvi.

34 Spotlights: Tech N9Ne, Scruffy City Film and Music Festival

47 Q&A: Author Sasha Reynolds on her new book about a Knoxville cold case.

OUTDOORS

52 Outside Insider

Kim Trevathan shares some common rules of etiquette for when you’re out in the wild.

April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 3

LETTERS Delivering Fine Journalism Since 2015

OPEN LETTER TO THE GOVERNOR: VETO HB1840

Dear Gov. Haslam: We write as a group of psychologists and constituents who are united in our concern about the negative implications of HB1840 on mental health care services in the State of Tennessee. Despite some politicians’ arguments to the contrary, HB1840 legislates discrimination against some of our state’s most vulnerable citizens and sets a potentially devastating health care precedent in our communities. If this bill reaches your desk in any form, we implore you to veto it. The essential effect of HB1840 is to allow counselors in Tennessee to discriminate against clients without retribution. Though the bill’s authors have couched it in the language of religious freedom, it has a singular, transparent intent: to enable counselors to deny services to clients—that is to say, to discriminate against people seeking mental health services. Though debate over the bill has surrounded lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) clients, the bill is broad in its scope and could allow the denial of services to any client on the basis of the counselor’s personal convictions. For example, the bill’s language suggests that counselors could deny services based on their principled objections to alcohol use, interracial marriage, or the use of contraception. Even more consequentially, a counselor of any faith could deny services to a client of a different faith solely because of their differences in religious belief. People seek counseling for many issues, such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and trouble in relationships. Psychological research consistently indicates that a client’s initial interaction with a counselor is critical: if a client feels stigmatized or rejected by a counselor, they are not only less likely to return to that counselor but less likely to seek any mental health services in the future. Counselors are consequently trained to engage respectfully and collaboratively with their clients, regardless of their reasons for seeking therapy. Counselors must also maintain the 4

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

highest ethical standards and practices to ensure their clients’ safety, some of whom may be dealing with intense internalized shame and demoralization about an aspect of their identity or behavior. Individuals seeking therapy are often in a most vulnerable state. Rather than refuse to treat a client when they present issues that run contrary to their own values or convictions, counselors are professionally obligated to acknowledge, manage, and control their own contrasting opinions and beliefs in order to help the person suffering before them. Counseling should not be about the counselor, but about the person seeking counsel. Ultimately, the consequences of HB1840 may extend far beyond individual cases of discrimination. If you sign this bill, the Council for Accreditation of Counseling & Related Educational Programs (CACREP) may find cause to suspend the accreditation of all currently accredited counseling programs across the state, putting further strain on our already over-extended mental health care system. Furthermore, regardless of the intent of the bill’s authors, HB1840 will stand as an official state symbol of intolerance and bigotry, discouraging today’s and tomorrow’s mental health professionals from working and training in our state. The American Counseling Association’s 2014 update to its Code of Ethics is designed to prevent exactly the kinds of dangerous, discriminatory practices that HB1840 advances. Counselors and related mental health care providers are obligated professionally and ethically to provide theoretically- and scientifically-informed services to those seeking help. The profession is already guided by rules, regulations, and procedures that facilitate referrals of clients whose needs may be outside the scope of a counselor’s expertise. These referrals do not represent discrimination based on a client’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or other individual differences. For example, a school counselor working with a client with disordered eating is already able to refer that

client to an eating disorder specialist. Similarly, a vocational counselor is already able to refer and collaborate with a psychiatrist if their client is dealing with issues of work performance that would benefit from medication. We see no reason why the State of Tennessee needs to legislate counselors’ activities with Tennesseans who may be seeking therapy because they are struggling with issues that are deeply stigmatized in our culture, including (but not limited to) sexual orientation and gender identity issues. The relevant professional organizations already provide informed and ethically sound oversight. Instead, we believe the more productive role for the state is to empower our citizens to seek mental health care when needed, and to focus on developing and supporting non-discriminatory health care services. Jennifer Bolden Leticia Y. Flores Kristina Gordon Patrick R. Grzanka Erin E. Hardin Jacob Levy Jioni A. Lewis Jenny Macfie Joseph R. Miles Todd Moore Gina P. Owens Dawn Szymanski Gregory L. Stuart Deborah Welsh University of Tennessee faculty, applied psychology programs

MEET US ROSSINI FEST

We’ll be unfurling the Knoxville Mercury banner and setting up shop at the Rossini Festival International Street Fair. Meet us this Saturday, April 23 near Mast General Store on Gay Street. If you are a Partner Level member of our League of Supporters, we owe you a travel mug, so come pick it up! We’ll also be ready and willing to accept donations for our Press Forward 2016 fundraising campaign. See you there!

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 Donna Johnson Ian Blackburn Rose Kennedy Brian Canever Dennis Perkins Patrice Cole Stephanie Piper Eric Dawson Ryan Reed George Dodds Eleanor Scott Lee Gardner Alan Sherrod Mike Gibson April Snellings Carey Hodges Joe Sullivan Nick Huinker 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

Rossini, Base Ball, and the Three Rivers Rambler This weekend offers two historical events rare anywhere but Knoxville. The Rossini Festival International Street Fair ostensibly celebrates the legacy of Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868), the Italian composer who had little to do with Knoxville, except that they came close to sharing a birthdate. Knoxville is about four months older than Rossini. However, the popular festival also echoes Knoxville’s early interest in opera, which dates back at least to the construction of a grand European-style auditorium on Gay Street in 1872 by Swiss immigrant Peter Staub (1827-1904). At the time, European opera, especially the work of Giuseppi Verdi (who had recently premiered Aida), and Wagner (Die Meistersinger, Tristan und Isolde), was more popular with the young than the old, who worried about opera’s moral influences. Staub’s Opera House was a Knoxville landmark for over 80 years. Often a venue for operatic performances in its early decades, Staub’s was central to Knoxville’s first operaoriented festival, the springtime Knoxville Music Festival of the 1880s. More often, it hosted drama, with actors like Lily Langtry and Ethel Barrymore, comedy by W.C. Fields, and lectures by major authors like Frederick Douglass.

below the 400 block of Gay Street. Today, there are big buildings on the old “Base Ball Grounds”— so most home games are played in the large field behind Ramsey House, the unusual stone 1797 home of Francis Alexander Ramsey (1764-1820), an early political leader influential in the earliest years of the state of Tennessee. He never lived to see a team sport, but this Saturday at noon, his back yard will host a match between the Knoxville Holstons and their recent rivals for the state championship, the Highland Rim Distillers, based in Franklin. Vintage Base Ball looks very different from modern baseball. Uniforms are different, and it’s a bare-handed sport, with no gloves, but fielders can put a batter out by catching a ball after one bounce. The Tennessee Association of Vintage Base Ball includes 11 teams statewide, all of them vying for the championship. The Knoxville Holstons, a leading team in the Tennessee Association of Vintage Base Ball, plays the game barehanded, as it was first played in Knoxville in the 1860s. This Saturday, historic Ramsey House will host a double header, the Holstons vs. the Highland Rim Distillers, and another local team, the Emmett Machinists vs. the Nashville Maroons.

Base ball arrived in Knoxville just a few years after another major development, the railroad. Railroads were slow to arrive in Knoxville, mainly due to physical barriers like mountains and rivers, but Knoxville had regular passenger service for 115 years, from Image courtesy of the Knoxville Holstons www.tennesseevintagebaseball.com/knoxville-holstons 1855 to 1970. Often visiting baseball teams arrived in Knoxville by train. This weekend, you can experience both vintage sports and vintage transportation, with a trip to the Base Known as the Lyric Theatre after World War I, the original Staub’s building Ball Grounds by way of the Three Rivers Rambler. That unusual excursion was torn down in 1956 for a department store that was never built. It served train’s Vintage Baseball Express leaves from the new station near University only as a parking lot for about 20 years before it became the location of modern Commons at 10:30, and runs at a leisurely pace about six miles to the Forks of Plaza Tower. Organized by Knoxville Opera, the Rossini Festival International the River area, where you can see the origin of the Tennessee River from a Street Fair is mostly on Gay Street, and part of the site is alongside the location trestle. Adult round-trip tickets are $26.50, with discounts for seniors and of Staub’s, which was just across the street from the Bijou Theatre. children. (Part of the trip involves a five-minute bus ride from the train’s eastern terminal to the Ramsey House.) After the game, the return train will arrive back at the station at about 4:00. The Rambler will offer trips to five Saturday is also the second home-game match for the Knoxville Holstons, more games this year, on June 18, July 9, and August 6, 21, and 27. the local vintage “base ball” team. Observing 1860s rules, the revived game, For more about the train ride, see threeriversrambler.com. substantially different from modern baseball, even uses the original two-word Attending the Base Ball game itself, which is also accessible by automobile, spelling for their sport. “Base ball” was known to be popular in Knoxville by is free. Beverages and snacks, including hot dogs, are available on site. 1867, but may have been played here as early as 1865, with a legendary game (recalled by a participant but unconfirmed from contemporary sources) between former Union and Confederate soldiers. Known for certain is that Gioacchino Rossini knew about riding trains, and though he lived long the Knoxville Holstons were one of the city’s original teams, and they were enough to see the original Knoxville Holstons play, he never had the declared state champions in 1867. opportunity. However, since the Rossini Festival lasts at least four hours longer than the Holstons game, this Saturday you can experience both. In those days, games were often played in a clearing at the foot of a steep hill Source: The Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection, tennesseevintagebaseball.com.

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 April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 5

HOWDY QUOTE FACTORY

GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE BY L. M. HORSTMAN

Those little last moments he had, he was real strong … and I’m going to stay strong for him.”

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…

—Hubert Latham on the death of his 12-year-old son, Jajuan Hubert Latham, in a News Sentinel story by Lydia X. McCoy. Jajuan was caught in the crossfire from two vehicles shooting at a Mechanicsville block party Saturday night. Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch said in a Sunday press conference that evidence points to gang involvement on both sides of the gunfire.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS

4/21 LISTENING PARTY: STEVE INSKEEP 4/24 TOUR DE KNOX BIKE RALLY THURSDAY

SUNDAY

5-7 a.m., Holly’s Gourmet Market (5107 Kingston Pike). Free. NPR super-fan pandemonium is liable to break out as the Morning Edition host broadcasts live from Holly’s. He’ll be exploring the question, “How does where you live define what your need from your government?” Fortunately, Holly will be supplying free coffee (breakfast is $8). Note: Space is limited. Come early.

2-4:15 p.m., UT’s Lot 9 (near the Neyland Stadium Plaza). Free (12 and under)-$15. This fundraiser for the Legacy Parks Foundation is a scavenger hunt on wheels: Bike around the UT campus and Knoxville greenways to collect tickets at checkpoints to win prizes. (There will also be free T-shirts.) Register in advance at tourdeknox.com.

4/27 STATE OF THE CITY ADDRESS WEDNESDAY

4/23 FUNDRAISER: WOZO FM JAZZ DINNER SATURDAY

4 p.m., Birdhouse Knoxville (800 N 4th Ave). $20. Knoxville’s youngest community radio station (103.9 FM) is officially FCC-approved! And it’s hosting a jazzy four-course meal prepared by Susan and Spencer Bradford, followed by a performance by the Matt Nelson Trio. Seating is limited to 20 people. RSVP: knoxmediafarm@gmail.com.

Noon, Zoo Knoxville—yeah, they changed the name around (3500 Knoxville Zoo Dr.). Free. Before an audience of community leaders, City Council members, and the public, Mayor Madeline Rogero will be kicking out the jams: her State of the City Address and her proposed 2016-17 budget. The speech will be held at a new events space near Kids Cove and the carousel.

Believe It or Knox!

Illustration by Ben Adams

What U.S. senator from Idaho is buried in Knoxville? It’s James P. Pope (1884-1966), who was also once mayor of Boise. He was elected to the U.S. Senate the same year his fellow 6

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

BY Z. HERACLITUS KNOX

Democrat Franklin Roosevelt was elected president, and served one six-year term. In 1939, he was appointed a director to the Tennessee Valley Authority, a role he served for 12 years. He and his wife are buried at Lynnhurst Cemetery in Fountain City. Sequoyah Hills was once known as Looney’s Bend! Riverboat crew still use the term for that peninsula in the river. Henry Gibson (1837-1938) was a Republican congressman who in retirement became an epic poet! His single poem, “The Maid of Redenfayn,” was 368 pages long. Gibson’s life was long, too. He was Knoxville’s only congressman to live to the age of 100.

“Y

’all see Uncle Dave’s barnburner last night?” Those lucky enough to witness a live vaudeville-style performance of the legendary Uncle Dave Macon saw one of the master showmen of his generation. Comedian, singer, songwriter, and extremely skilled banjo player, the charismatic man drew crowds when he came to town. “Uncle” David Harrison Macon was already a star of the Grand Ole Opry when he arrived from middle Tennessee for the 1930 Knoxville sessions. He’d recorded for Vocalion Records in New York

as early as 1924, testing their sound equipment to the hilt with his whoops and stomps. But when Uncle Dave, his son Dorris, and fellow musician Sid Harkreader tried to make a few recordings at the St. James, the equipment was not so forgiving. According to Sid Harkreader, the trio recorded for about an hour, or tried to, but constant issues with the audio led to a cancellation of the entire session. Disappointed, especially after forgoing a paying gig to come to the St. James, the legendary Uncle Dave headed home. To be continued…

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.

Presented by:

APRIL 26 - MAY 1 Celebrating the Music of Film

PRESENTING PRINCESS SHAW

A SONG FOR YOU: THE AUSTIN CITY LIMITS STORY

Thursday, April 28, 9 PM Regal Cinemas Downtown West

Sunday, May 1, 7 PM Scruffy City Hall

HEADLINING FILM

HEADLINING BAND

The true story of the incredible Princess Shaw and the enigmatic composer Kutiman, who discovers her from the other side of the world.

The ultimate backstage pass to 40 years of incredible live music with performances from Willie Nelson, Ray Charles, Beck and more.

BORN TO BE BLUE

BEN SOLLEE

STARRING ETHAN HAWKE

A re-imagining of jazz legend Chet Baker’s musical comeback in the late ‘60s.

Born and raised in Kentucky, cellist and songwriter Ben Sollee mixes Appalachian, R&B and classical stylings.

Friday, April 29, 9 PM Regal Cinemas Downtown West

Saturday, April 30, 10 PM Scruffy City Hall

Full schedule and passes at scruffycityfilmfest.com Sponsored by:

April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 7

SCRUFFY CITIZEN

Is the Cal Johnson Building Still Safe? Maybe, if not the way we thought it would be BY JACK NEELY

ast Thursday afternoon, the Metropolitan Planning Commission unexpectedly rejected its own staff’s recommendations and declined to endorse Mayor Rogero’s much-publicized initiative to give the Cal Johnson Building on State Street H-1 historical protection. It takes some imagination to call it a pretty building right now, but with some cleaning and refurbishing of the sort that has brightened most of the other historic downtown buildings in the last 25 years, it could be. And this one deserves the attention more than your garden-variety Victorian commercial building. Few American cities have a building with a comparable history. It was built in 1898 by a man who was raised to be a slave. His name is still on the facade: “CALVIN F. JOHNSON.” I wrote about it in this space a few months ago, but I first expressed concern about the condition of this rare building in a column in Metro Pulse in 1994. It was in better shape then. It’s 2016 now, and the meeting discussing its fate was complicated and peculiar in some respects. For one thing, few were there to witness it. High-profile or controversial issues tend to bring out the crowds. That didn’t happen. Hardly anyone knew it was up for discussion. The Cal Johnson Building, the subject of the hour-long discussion, as it turned out, was inconspicuous on MPC’s agenda. Item 32 was headlined only “City of Knoxville Mayor Madeline

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

Rogero.” If that caught your attention for some reason, you might then read the lines beneath it, and you’d see something about “West side State St., south side W. Summit Hill Dr.” And if you thought about those clues, you might realize that they do indeed roughly correlate with the neighborhood of the Cal Johnson Building. (For the record, it’s closer to Commerce Street than Summit Hill.) Knox Heritage, the usually well-connected preservationist nonprofit that advocates for old buildings, wasn’t there. Even they didn’t know about it. There to speak for the H-1 proposal was Rogero’s chief policy officer, Bill Lyons. Another oddity about the vote was that the Historic Zoning Commission usually reviews such proposals and makes a recommendation to MPC first. That didn’t happen this time. In fact, in an apparent effort to make H-1 more palatable to property owner Jed Dance, the city was proposing an untried new form of H-1 that would offer protection only against demolition but skip over HZC as the reviewing board. Instead, this H-1 would be governed by the Downtown Design Review Board. The anxiety appears to be that protecting a building from demolition by H-1 also entails “burdensome” design guidelines. (The subject of windows always comes up. Historically appropriate windows have been the subject of expensive misunderstandings over the years.) Apparently historic-zoning

commissioners hadn’t been told about the city’s proposal to leave them out of the issue. The H-1 recommendation issue is still on HZC’s agenda for this Thursday’s meeting. Dance himself, a likable fellow, made his case. Members of the Dance family, who are proud that they prevented the demolition of the Cal Johnson Building by city and county projects in the 1990s—though they later proposed tearing it down for better truck access—have for at least a decade alluded to intentions to fix it up, and did finally put on a new roof. At the microphone, Dance declared that he’d never sell the building and repeatedly promised that he wouldn’t tear it down either. He’s moving forward with a plan to develop the building, he says, and had architect Brian Pierce with him. They were shy on details except that they were talking with one tenant about using the whole building, and another set of tenants who would share it, in a different plan—and that they’d considered demolishing the undistinguished rear third of the building to improve parking and access, but that option was looking prohibitively expensive. Discussion got bogged down in whether this new hybrid H-1 proposal the city was proposing was legal, stripping HZC of its state-granted authority in municipally designated cases. Much of the conversation concerned the longtime reputation of the Dance family, owners of apparel manufacturer Bacon and Co., which is headquartered in another unkempt Victorian building next door to the Cal Johnson Building. If they’ve rarely fixed up buildings, they have been in business downtown since 1950, and a record like that always goes a long way with MPC. An amended version of the mayor’s proposal restored the HZC review but also added a review by the presumably

less fussy Downtown Design Review Board. If the necessity of review by one board displeases the property-rights folks, adding a second is unlikely to provide much solace. It failed 9-6. The discussion seemed to confuse some of the participants, and it’s easy to imagine that if it had gone on for another half hour, or another H-1-lite motion had been cobbled together, the vote might have been different. Most of the members of the commission expressed some respect for the building and trust that it would be saved and soon renovated—based not on law, but on trust in the Dance family’s word. The discussion raised an interesting issue. Is there a way to prevent demolition of a building without subjecting the owner to strict renovation guidelines? But it’s unfortunate that the place where MPC chooses to take an uncharacteristic stand against a mayor’s preservationist initiative turns out to be the only historic building downtown built by an African American. It’s the oldest big building in town built by a black man, and the only remaining building associated with an extraordinary career. Most of the buildings MPC helps save don’t tell such a story. Even Hollywood would reject Cal Johnson’s story as unbelievable. The slave who became a millionaire philanthropist once owned several buildings in town. This factory building is the only one still standing. Anyway, that’s not the end of the Cal Johnson building or, necessarily, the H-1 proposal. Jed Dance declares he’s going to fix it up on his own. He just doesn’t want to be forced to abide by strict government guidelines. Thus HZC will make its recommendations to City Council instead of MPC. Then City Council will decide for itself. ◆

Jed Dance declares he’s going to fix it up on his own. He just doesn’t want to be forced to abide by strict government guidelines.

www.TennesseeTheatre.com April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 9

MUCH ADO

Teaching Fairy Tales At Knox County Schools, where’s the education in sex ed? BY CATHERINE LANDIS

ou might have a problem if your sex ed teacher tells rape jokes. Or if he warns girls against catching “ho-itis.” You might have a problem if students leave class thinking condoms don’t work or if your curriculum includes slides that serve as anti-abortion propaganda. You might have a problem if teachers are afraid to teach, students are afraid to ask questions, and nobody knows if it’s working. Knox County Schools has a lot of problems with its current sex education curriculum, as documented by Heather Duncan in her March 17 Knoxville Mercury cover story, but they all seem to arise from what appears to be a guiding principle: If you have sex with someone you aren’t married to you’ll probably get an STI, you might get pregnant, but most certainly you’ll be damaged goods and nobody will ever love you again. It’s a virginity cult and it’s corroding the curriculum and endangering our children. Take item number 17 in the high school Family Life and Human Sexuality Curriculum: “What are you saving for whom you will marry? This is a rhetorical question where we encourage students to think about what their future marriage will look like. Will they be able to offer their diamond zone or a list of people they have slept with?” Do they follow with a fairy tale where Prince Charming woos his always virginal princess? The idea

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

that virginity has some intrinsic value, like a prize, might have its origins in a time when abstinence was the only protection from infection. It became a religious value, although these days it remains so only in particular sects of certain religions. Yet Knox County Schools has employed a sex educator who clearly speaks from one particular sect of Christianity. And according to respondents in a survey from the activist group Just Educate, he is allowed to stand before our students, some who are parents already, and tell them if they’re having sex, they won’t be loved; and if they’re not heterosexual, something is wrong with them; and if they are sexually assaulted, they might want to reconsider how they dress. Teachers who would otherwise offer students a more fact-based approach are gagged by the state’s intentionally vague “gateway sexuality” law. According to Duncan’s Mercury article, research has shown that comprehensive sex education—offering detailed information about contraception, consent, and healthy relationships—is more effective at reducing pregnancies, infection rates, and even sexual activity. Dr. Kathleen Brown, director of UT’s Master’s of Public Health program, was quoted in the article as suggesting Knox County conduct an outcome-based evaluation to measure the current program’s effectiveness. A 2012 UT study found

a majority of parents and students favoring a curriculum that covered more topics than just abstinence and the biology of sex. And yet, Tennessee state law mandates that Family Life instruction should “promote sexual risk avoidance through abstinence and encourage sexual health by teaching students the consequences of non-marital sexual activity.” In other words, scare them to death at 14 but then leave them clueless by the time they’re seniors (when 55 percent report being sexually active), or in college, or how long after that? Let’s compare the consequences of “non-marital sexual activity” with the consequences of unprotected sex on a person’s health. Or let’s not. It would be an excellent idea to endorse comprehensive sex ed or, at least, repeal that “gateway” bill— but we could drop a brick wall of evidence on the heads of some of our legislators and they’d ignore it to keep believing what they want to believe. I suspect one reason our state law is so restrictive and Knox County tolerates an educator who teeters on the line of religious instruction is to defend against a small but extremely loud contingent of parents who will scream bloody murder if they think their kids—or anybody’s kids—are being taught anything that does not strictly adhere to their own narrow values. Forget the public in public schools! These people are bullies, and it’s easier to throw skewed information at students than to fight a bully, particularly one who claims, speciously, to hold the moral high ground. But if we caved to every sanctimonious bully, we’d be teaching creationism rather than evolution. Why then are we risking our children’s health? There’s no equivalent to “ho-itis” for the boys in the presentations

offered by Knox County’s sex educator. Think about that. When a teacher says “Why buy the cow if I can get the milk for free,” who is the cow? What is the milk? Who’s doing the buying? Is this really the message we want to be sending in 2016, this same old toxic brew of “boys will be boys,” and girls get to choose between being a slut or a prude? What is this saying to our boys? To our girls? How is this encouraging “sexual health?” The reason we encourage our kids to choose abstinence is because we want them to be ready physically and emotionally before engaging in sex, not because their virginity is somehow sacred. When they are ready (and particularly if they aren’t), we want them to know how to protect themselves from STIs and unwanted pregnancies. Whether they are 16 or 26, the information should be accurate. Some students have parents who can offer the information they need but far too many don’t. Reading the comments from the Just Educate survey is heartbreaking for all the reported shaming, but one young person’s comment continues to haunt me: “I don’t know how to have safe sex.” If we respect our students, if we care about their health and safety, if we want them to take us seriously on this most serious subject, then we should offer a sex education curriculum based on evidence and facts rather than a fairy tale. ◆ With Much Ado, Catherine Landis examines how political decisions and social trends affect the lives of the people around her. She is particularly interested in issues concerning feminism, civil rights, education, the environment, and immigration reform. A former newspaper reporter, she has published two novels, Some Days There’s Pie (St. Martin’s Press) and Harvest (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press). She lives in Knoxville.

There’s no equivalent to “ho-itis” for the boys in the presentations offered by Knox County’s sex educator. Think about that.

Lincoln Memorial University-DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine (LMU-DCOM) has been ranked #2 by U.S. News and World Report in medical schools that produce the highest percentage of primary care residents. “LMU-DCOM was founded with a mission to address the critical health care shortages in Appalachia and beyond,” said Brian A. Kessler, DO, FACOFP, vice president and dean of LMU-DCOM. “Clearly, this U.S. News and World Report data illustrates that the University and its graduates are fulfilling this mission. We are proud to be delivering as promised, but we aren’t sitting on our laurels. The provider to patient deficits in primary care are a real threat to the health care system of our country, and as one of the largest medical schools in the United States, LMU is taking new and innovative approaches to meeting these needs.”

Approximately 82% of the members of the graduating class at LMU-DCOM will enter their first year of residency training in a primary care track, including family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, OB/GYN, emergency medicine, osteopathic manipulative medicine and transitional year/traditional rotating internship. The members of the Class of 2016 will be in 121 different residency programs in 30 states. The DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine is located on the campus of Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee. LMU-DCOM is an integral part of LMU’s values-based learning community, and is dedicated to preparing the next generation of osteopathic physicians to provide health care in the often underserved region of Appalachia and beyond. For more information about LMU-DCOM, call 1-800325-0900, ext. 7108, email dcom@LMUnet.edu, or visit us online at med.LMUnet.edu.

Your career path is here.

med.LMUnet.edu April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 11

KPD Sgt. Will Wilson trains other officers on the use of automatic license plate readers, or ALPRs, a tool local police are using more often to track stolen vehicles and fugitives.

Photos by Clay Dudqa

Tracking Tags What is your license plate telling KPD’s automatic readers? BY CLAY DUDA

he laptop riding shotgun in Sgt. Will Wilson’s patrol car chirps quietly as he creeps through a parking lot in East Knoxville. It sounds a soft “ping” dozens of times a minute, one for each license plate it passes, reads, and catalogs. Mounted atop the cruiser overhead, four small lenses equipped with infrared and optical cameras cover a 360 degree field of view. Suddenly, the computer sounds an alarm, issuing three ear-piercing bursts in rapid succession. The cameras have hit on a suspicious vehicle. Over the past several years, the Knoxville Police Department has used a handful of these automatic license plate readers, or ALPRs for short, as high-tech crime fighting tools, from identifying stolen cars to searching for vehicles after an Amber Alert to locating potential gang members. The department currently has two ALPR systems mounted on two different patrol cars, and it’s been using them with increased frequency and more methodically in recent months, records show. In February, ALPRs recorded nearly 51,000 new license plates in Knoxville—a record number since KPD officers began filing monthly

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

reports on their use in mid-2015— feeding into a temporary database of about 188,000 plates that are crosschecked for local crimes and warrants and also compared with data from the National Crime Information Center, a national list of infractions. Privacy advocates for years have voiced concerns about the rise of this technology and how it’s being used by law enforcement. ACLU attorney Chad Marlow says it could potentially be used to target a specific person or group of people, amass large amounts of geographic location data to track someone’s activities or patterns, or cause legal issues if used for certain types of police work that may require a judge’s warrant. Sgt. Wilson, who oversees KPD’s ALPR training program, says the department is well aware of those issues with data and takes steps to protect information gathered by the readers, which includes things like license plate tag numbers, geographic location, and some other metadata. The alarm sounding in his patrol car is triggered by another police cruiser parked in front of KPD headquarters. The license plate pinged by the computer shows the vehicle as stolen. That’s because

Wilson was able to add it to the hot list and load it into the system on the fly, a helpful tool when responding to a crime in progress, he says. The readers can catch hundreds of license plates per minute and probably more—“basically as fast as you can go it’ll record them,” he says—but he stops short of offering a real-world demonstration on public streets, citing privacy concerns. “There’s no golden standard on what is private and what’s not, but our policy is to treat it as sensitive law enforcement information,” he says. The information is stored on a small server at KPD and deleted after 90 days, pursuant with a state law passed in 2014 aimed specifically at addressing similar concerns over privacy. One of KPD’s ALPR-mounted police cars is often taken out on targeted patrols, while the other is mostly used to make rounds at public housing developments maintained by KCDC. The idea is to police areas that are targets of crime or locations where some known criminals may be hanging out. But an ACLU attorney says the department may be getting into a legal gray area by using the readers to specifically target “high crime” areas and public housing complexes. “They can call it a ‘crime-plagued’ neighborhood, but I’d imagine that in many instances they’d be able to say ‘low-income’ or ‘community of color’ for that same neighborhood,” says Marlow, a New York attorney on ACLU’s Advocacy and Policy Council. “It’s one thing to have a warrant and use this technology to surveil someone particularly suspected of a crime, and it’s okay to use these in a general way to collect tolls or respond to Amber Alerts, but it’s another thing entirely to take these things into low-income neighborhoods or neighborhoods of color and have this be just another tool that dispropor-

tionately impacts these communities.” Compared with many other police departments, KPD’s use of ALPRs is pretty light, although it has been using them with increased frequency and more methodically in recent months. The devices are more widely used by the Tennessee Highway Patrol, for example, which has four readers on cars patrolling its 11-county Knoxville district, and 60 total state-wide. Nationally about 70 percent of departments were using the devices in 2011, more than three times as many than reported using them in 2006, according to surveys by the Police Executive Research Forum. According to KPD’s own statistics it has recovered at least 15 stolen vehicles, 12 stolen tags, and found one missing person since it started tracking ALPR performance in May 2015. At the time it only had one ALPR, a recently updated model that was given to the department years earlier in exchange for feedback by PIPS Technology, a Knoxville-based company that eventually sold its ALPR design to 3M. In September KPD purchased a second ALPR from 3M using $19,000 in grant money. Since both systems have come online the number of license plate recorded by the department has increased dramatically. It recorded just 3,450 new license plate reads in May compared with 33,286 new ones in November. In mid-February the department started to actively track vehicles involved with gang activity, according to the reports. It began using a more detailed breakdown of local data that included information from the department’s gang unit. All of the reports made available by police show that some information has been redacted. “The tag reader really does nothing more than draw an officer’s attention to something that might need to be investigated,” Wilson says. “I tell officers that it’s just like someone coming up in a parking lot and telling you a car is stolen. Until you investigate, you don’t know anything more than that.” So far they’ve proven a useful tool, he says. KPD chooses to only focus on more serious crime, though it could potentially configure the system to hit on things like unpaid traffic tickets, expired vehicle registration, and other misdemeanors. ◆

The CBT is proud to offer ticket discounts to our military personnel!

Photo: Charolotte Munson as Nellie; by Elizabeth Aaron April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 13

Courtesy Call City reviews police practice of tipping off UT Athletics about criminal investigations BY CLAY DUDA

he city of Knoxville is reviewing potential legal issues related to a “long standing practice” where Knoxville Police Department officials notify University of Tennessee administrators in advance if a student athlete is the subject of a criminal investigation. KPD Chief David Rausch has said that such “professional courtesy” calls were placed to UT athletics officials to allow them time to “prepare responses to the various interests” since many high-profile cases come under scrutiny. It’s unknown if Mayor Madeline Rogero knew about the practice before a recent report by the Tennessean showed that Rausch and a KPD detective made “professional courtesy” calls to UT football head coach Butch Jones and other team leaders in the early stages of a sexual assault investigation. Jones, in turn, called players A.J. Johnson and Michael Williams, tipping them off hours in advance that police were investigating them on allegations of rape. Both Rogero and Rausch declined interview requests for this story. A spokesman for the city cited the pending law department review. A KPD spokesman referenced an earlier statement made by Rausch in response to questions from the Tennessean, the Nashville newspaper that first unearthed evidence of the “professional courtesy” notifications after conducting an extensive review of phone records obtained under Tennessee’s Open Records Act. Such courtesy calls are not unheard of, but they typically do not happen so early in a police investigation. In this case, Johnson and Williams were told about the pending

investigation roughly four hours before their first interview with police. The Knox County District Attorney’s Office has already come out against the practice, noting it may violate state law. In a written statement, Assistant District Attorney Sean McDermott declined to discuss specifics of the case but said: “In any case, however, [District Attorney] General [Charme] Allen opposes pre-arrest notification to any person or agency that is not made in furtherance of the investigation … A pre-arrest disclosure of sensitive information that is not made for the purpose of advancing the criminal investigation potentially could violate state law regarding the misuse of official information.” In an email, city spokesman Eric Vreeland said Mayor Rogero will not be available to answer specific questions until the review has concluded. Rausch’s statement in full: “When we investigate an alleged crime involving an athlete at UT, as a professional courtesy, our long standing practice has been that we alert the head Coach and staff. At no time is any information shared with the university that would hinder or jeopardize any investigation. The purpose of the notification is due to the scrutiny these events bring to allow appropriate time to prepare responses to the various interests. Our paramount concern at KPD is to the victims and their families and to assure them that we will utilize every resource available to conduct a thorough and comprehensive investigation. That is our commitment to all citizens that we serve. Chief David Rausch” ◆

Such courtesy calls are not unheard of, but they typically do not happen so early in a police investigation.

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

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April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 15

2016 FUND DRIVE

PRESS FORWARD

Help support Knoxvilleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best alternative to corporate news media and keep our city moving forward

TO EDITORIAL >> ED

<< TO DISTRIBUTION

TO DESIGN >>

<< TO SALES

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

DONATE NOW

Direct Donations: gofundme.com/ pressforward2016

Advertising: sales@knoxmercury.com or 865-313-2048

Tax-Deductible Donations to Knoxville History Project: knoxmercury.com/KHP

Donate now at gofundme.com/pressforward2016 | PRESS FORWARD

ING

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TORY PRO

MMUNITY SU O C

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After the sudden closure of Metro Pulse in 2014 (despite its profitability), editors Jack Neely, Coury Turczyn, and Matthew Everett sought a new model of publishing that’s not beholden to corporate or personal agendas. They came up with a unique ownership structure: an educational nonprofit that governs a taxable not-for-profit weekly paper. Jack Neely heads the Knoxville History Project, dedicated to researching, promoting, and celebrating Knoxville’s cultural heritage and history. The Knoxville Mercury— KHP’s primary venue for educating the public—received startup funding from KHP as well as ongoing weekly ad purchases. The IRS reviewed this plan and approved KHP’s 501(c)(3) status. The KHP and the Mercury are separate organizations, run by separate boards of directors. The Knoxville History Project is the “sole member,” the equivalent of the owner, of the Knoxville Mercury. Any profits from the Mercury go not to enrich any owner or investor, but to support the educational programs of the Knoxville History Project.

HERE’S HOW IT STARTED

K NO

Now, in our second year, we must build on our achievements by ensuring the Mercury’s sustainability as an ongoing business. We need your help.

M O

N U D F ME . O G

RI TABLE A H

NORS

YOUR ONGOING SUPPORT IS CRITICAL TO KNOXVILLE’S FUTURE

PRESS FORWARD SPRING 2016

HERE’S THE UPSHOT:

To attain consistent profitability, we must add critical pieces to our organizations.

April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 17

PRESS FORWARD | Donate now at gofundme.com/pressforward2016

HERE’S WHAT WE ACCOMPLISHED In a year’s worth of issues, with a staff of one full-time and one part-time reporter, we’ve made a sizable dent into the local media landscape. Beyond our unmatched arts and entertainment coverage and criticism—plus our cornerstone of providing a unique view of Knoxville’s history—we have strived to report original stories that aren’t just clickbait headlines. We go into depth about local issues that truly matter—long-form journalism that you can’t get anywhere else: • We broke the news of a Walmart developer’s plans to demolish one of

the most historic houses in North Knoxville, the Howard House, for a parking lot, and later in the year its similar proposal for a West Knox County public park. Our Howard House story reached over 60,000 people on Facebook alone. The proposals were abandoned or defeated in the face of public outcry. • We exposed a plan to sell the Knoxville College campus to a developer—without public disclosure or a request for proposals. That plan was jettisoned and the KC board formed a committee to gather other proposals.

• We showed how guidelines for hilltop development—agreed-upon over a contentious years-long process—are virtually ignored by Knox County government and used inconsistently within the city. • We presented a three-part multi-story series that takes readers deep into how the Knoxville Police Department is managed—and found that officers with disciplinary problems rarely face any career repercussions. It also examined the KPD’s complicated relationship with Knoxville’s black community in the face of

troubling incidents. • We went beyond statistics to provide an up-close portrait of homelessness, showing what it’s truly like to live on Knoxville’s streets for a day. • We brought to light accusations by students and parents that Knox County Schools’ sex education presentations are full of questionable approaches and jokes that create shame and fear rather than an informed student body. Finally, we also provide the finest local crossword puzzle in Knoxville history.

Now, in our second year, we must build on our achievements by ensuring the Mercury’s sustainability as an ongoing business.

HAT MAKE T S

NEW 18

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

DIFFEREN A S

Donate now at gofundme.com/pressforward2016 | PRESS FORWARD

HERE ARE PEOPLE WHOSE LIVES WE TOUCHED Information can make a difference. The Knoxville Mercury serves a variety of constituents, from readers concerned about local issues affecting our quality of life to people who just want to find out what to do this weekend. Our advertisers have equally important messages, from new businesses that seek to build a customer base to nonprofit institutions such as the Tennessee and Bijou theaters that need to promote their programming. We’ve amassed a wide-ranging audience of readers who are more engaged, more outgoing, and more involved than any other media company’s in town. And they are connected together through our pages, our website, and our social media outlets. Here are just a few of their stories: FROM A DONOR

I was asked recently why I support the Knoxville Mercury. It caused me to ponder and sift through the many and various reasons why I love our independent, locally-owned weekly newspaper. I guess I would have to start by saying I am a miniaturist of sorts. I celebrate the smallness, the seeming insignificance of minutiae that are imperative to any complex ecosystem. “I believe a viable alternative weekly is a crucial resource in any community. It can serve and reflect its city’s diversity, scrutinize local government, and contribute to the cultural and political discourse in ways that traditional newspapers, constrained by budgetary and philosophical dictates of some remote corporate conglomerate, cannot. I believe the Knoxville Mercury, in small and often under-appreciated ways, helps shape our use of resources and our patterns of interaction with each other. Little by little, it raises awareness, broadens and enhances the fabric of social connection and, at the same time, provides a sharp, sometimes irreverent, but always entertaining view of Knoxville’s distinct flavor. —JUDY LOEST

FROM AN ADVERTISER

I have placed advertising in the Mercury for a number of our clients. We used the Mercury exclusively for advertising one of those clients— Gourmet’s Market—leading up to the 2015 International Biscuit Festival. By the time the festival opened, people were lined up around the block to get their hands on a Gourmet’s Market chicken biscuit (and Gourmet’s Market ended up winning Last Biscuit Standing at the festival). Shortly thereafter, we started running ads for our own company in the Mercury. —RICK LANEY PRESIDENT, CEO, RICK LANEY MARKETING, LLC

FROM A STORY SUBJECT

I am, personally, so grateful for Alan Sherrod’s presence in our community and his work at the Knoxville Mercury, which has been of the utmost value and importance to this city’s cultural landscape. The last few years have been such an exciting time for classical music in Knoxville, from the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra’s exceptional performances all over downtown (including two new series featuring thrilling small ensemble performances at the Square Room and the Knoxville Museum of Art), to the Knoxville Opera’s magnificent productions which continue to draw large and enthusiastic crowds throughout the year, to the emergence of astonishingly good new and independent small ensembles, to the hundreds of offerings each year by the UT School of Music. “Alan has been there for it all, bringing attention to these wonderful happenings that help make Knoxville the wonderful community that it is, and he is an indispensable journalistic voice for classical music in Knoxville, providing insightful reviews and observations to the Mercury readership. Knoxvillians who enjoy classical music in their city already know how incredible it is that a city of Knoxville’s modest size supports and is home to the KSO, KO, UT School of Music, and more. We musicians feel equally fortunate that Knoxville has Alan Sherrod and the Knoxville Mercury.

FROM A READER

The Knoxville Mercury has consistently excellent writing— not mere journalism, but passionate, highly literate journalism. Not only can I find important, interesting, and well-written pieces on history, music, the environment and politics, I can often identify who wrote each article without looking at the byline. Your writers, paid and unpaid, are all fantastic, readable, and talented. —CHARLES BARBER

FROM YOU

Do you have a story to share? Help us spread the word. Donate at gofundme.com/ pressforward2016, add your story in the comments, then share the link on social media.

—GABRIEL LEFKOWITZ VIOLINIST, COMPOSER, CONDUCTOR

April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 19

PRESS FORWARD | Donate now at gofundme.com/pressforward2016

HERE’S WHERE WE’RE AT FINANCIALLY practice these days, it’s not common for print publications. (Public radio, for instance, gets 34 percent of its funding from listeners and 19 percent from corporate underwriting.) • The League of Supporters is our third-highest “client” in terms of revenue. • All of the donations to the paper are not tax-deductible, as they would be to the Knoxville History Project. This tells us that our readers take our mission very seriously, enough that they’re willing to help underwrite our journalistic endeavor with their own money.

2016

3/19

3/17

3/26 3/24

4/14/16

+56%

Special Outdoors Guide

+87%

+164%

+105%

+85%

+75%

4/2

3/31

4/9

4/7

4/16

4/14

But we’re not where we need to be in order to proclaim “mission accomplished” just yet. And that’s why we must conduct an annual fundraising campaign.

over regular issue

Six Issues Starting in March 2015

We are utterly thankful and humbled by your vote of confidence in our abilities to fulfill our mission to report stories that wouldn’t otherwise be told—helping readers to have a better understanding of Knoxville’s critical issues, vital personalities, and unique cultural heritage.

+392%

Year on Year Revenue Comparison

GET OUT & PLAY!

But the advertising-only model for publishing print media is not a complete solution. Papers and magazines all across the country are struggling with that fact. So, beyond ad sales, another significant revenue stream has been you, the Knoxville Mercury’s readers. Since we established the League of Supporters, our donations program, we’ve had nearly 250 people write checks, charge their cards, and drop off cash directly to the paper. Interesting facts: • While public donations for TV, radio, and Web media are a standard

AD SALES REVENUE

We’re growing. Our April 14, 2016, issue was our biggest yet, featuring the Get Out and Play outdoors guide that we produced in conjunction with the Legacy Parks Foundation. It caps a year of establishing business relationships with Knoxville cultural institutions, community anchors, and vital businesses. For a complete list of over 300 clients who have advertised with us, go to knoxmercury.com/thankyou. We rode a wave of community support to launch our first issue and get back to the business of publishing a great paper. That initial excitement set the tone for the last year, but please don’t take us for granted. Publishing a weekly paper with an online presence is an expensive endeavor. We hear lots of positive feedback, but to stay in business we need your help—keep showing that love by supporting us financially and letting our advertisers know that the Knoxville Mercury is where you turn to when deciding where you will spend your dollars locally. Without your support, this groundbreaking and vitally important effort will die. We’re on our way to sustained profitability, but we still need you to get involved and ensure that Knoxville’s independent news source thrives and helps build the community we all want to see. Comparing the month of April’s sales, year over year, provides a good picture. (see chart)

4/23

But we’re not where we need to be in order to proclaim “mission accomplished” just yet. And that’s why we must conduct an annual fundraising campaign.

4/21

HERE’S WHAT WE NEED TO DO TO SUCCEED We need to cover our operating expenses for the rest of the year as sales grow and then institute some structural changes: • We need to expand our sales team. We have exactly two sales executives, Scott Hamstead and Stacey Pastor, who must attend to over 300 clients, from frequent advertisers to infrequent ones. But they must also contact and convey our message to new, potential clients. That’s simply too much work for only two people. We need another salaried sales person who’s got the experience and the passion to help us expand our client base. • We need to hire a development director. Our original budget plan for publishing the paper included significant public and foundation support. But when 20

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

it comes to managing all the facets of fundraising—cultivating a community of donors, planning and executing fundraisers, applying for grants—we need help. (For example, our Knoxtacular variety show was a lot of fun, but it turns out we’re not very good at asking people for donations.) We believe there’s potentially a lot more financial support to be found if we had one person whose sole responsibility is to develop it. • We need to increase our distribution. The Knoxville Mercury currently has about 300 drop-off points in Knox, Blount, and Anderson counties, with a distribution of 25,000 copies. Most of them get picked up and read. In comparison, Metro Pulse published about 30,000 copies—but at more than twice the drop-off points. So, while our

readership base is not that different, our public visibility is much less. We get a lot of complaints that readers can’t find the paper, or that their usual rack where they pick it up is out of papers too soon. We must fix this. (You can find a map of our newsstands at knoxmercury.com/find-us) • We need to hire an assistant art director to help with weekly layouts and special issues. Straight up: Our art director, Tricia Bateman, is working herself to death. And part of our plan to increase ad sales is to add more special publications and issues like Get Out and Play or our Top Knox readers’ poll. Those sorts of endeavors require a lot of extra effort on top of producing a weekly paper. For a publishing endeavor on this scale, our staffing is micro-sized. To put this into perspective, Asheville’s

longtime weekly paper, the Mountain Xpress, employs a staff of 22 full-timers, with seven sales executives and two distribution managers (managers—not delivery people). We have seven full-time employees, two part-timers, and one volunteer (business and distribution manager Scott Dickey, whom we’d like to pay soon). None of us are making grand salaries. None of us file expenses. None of us get much time off. We’re going to have to expand our staff and our capabilities in order to pull this off.

We aren’t complaining. We are passionate about this, but we need your help to create the paper you want and deserve.

Donate now at gofundme.com/pressforward2016 | PRESS FORWARD

OUR GOAL:

HERE’S HOW YOU CAN HELP ADVERTISERS

Our Press Forward 2016 campaign has an overall goal of $100,000. There are a variety of different ways you can pitch in to help us hit that target:

Been thinking about taking out an ad? Now’s the time to do it. We have lots of different options depending on your goals. Want to support a local nonprofit or charitable institution with marketing? We can match your donation. Need to tell a story? We can create a campaign for you. Contact sales@knoxmercury.com or 865-313-2048.

READERS

We’ve created a campaign page at gofundme.com/pressforward2016. Please contribute any amount you feel comfortable donating. Deadline: Friday, May 20.

CHARITABLE DONORS

If you’re interested in supporting the only nonprofit solely devoted to Knoxville’s history, you can make a tax-deductible donation to the Knoxville History Project. It can, in turn, help support the Mercury. Go to knoxmercury.com/ KHP to make an online donation, or contact Jack Neely at jack@knoxhistoryproject.org. If you donate, you’ll get an instant invitation to our Founder’s Party at Historic Westwood on June 24—if you donate $1,000+, you’ll get some special VIP perks. There will be food trucks, libations, and lots of interesting people you’ll want to meet!

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CONTINUE TO PROVIDE THE MOST IN-DEPTH AND DISCERNING COVERAGE OF THE KNOXVILLE AREA This is what makes the Knoxville Mercury unique. It’s what we know how to do. And you’re not going to find it elsewhere on a weekly basis. If you appreciate anything the Knoxville Mercury has published this past year, or if you feel that having an independent voice in Knoxville’s media landscape is important, now is the time to show your support. Just like public institutions NPR or PBS, we will need to make this request of you each year. It’s a necessary step in order to ensure our sustainability as a business and as an effort to make Knoxville a better place to live. Thank you for reading our plea, and thank you for anything you can do to support the Knoxville Mercury and the Knoxville History Project.

QUICK LINKS TO DONATION PAGES Direct Donations: gofundme.com/pressforward2016 Advertising: sales@knoxmercury.com or 865-313-2048 Tax-Deductible Donations to Knoxville History Project: knoxmercury.com/KHP or jack@knoxhistoryproject.org

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 21

A&E

P rogram Notes

Sound & Vision Scruffy City Film and Music Festival expands programming, looks to the future

ith its most high-profile feature film selections yet—including Ethan Hawke’s much-buzzedabout Chet Baker biopic Born to Be Blue—this year’s Scruffy City Film and Music Festival promises to fulfill its unique mission of celebrating “the musical heart and soul of film.” But the April 26-May 1 event is also facing a crossroads, according to longtime festival director Michael Samstag. “Running this all-volunteer film festival is very important to me, and to see it continue to expand has been a great joy of mine,” he says. “With that being said, I do have some concerns regarding the future of the festival if we can’t expand our resources. We simply need more help from the community—both locally and statewide—to bring these amazing films to Knoxville or the future of the festival is uncertain.”

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Shelf Life: In Search Of …

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

According to Samstag, half of the festival’s operating funds come from filmmaker submission fees, while the other half comes from Knoxville sponsors (including the Knoxville Mercury) and state and local film commissions. The festival’s biggest expenses involve filmmakers’ travel and accommodations, screening fees, and marketing expenses. “For the festival to grow, we would need two to three part-time staff for the three months prior to the festival, and the budget for expanded venue costs and marketing,” Samstag says, adding that efforts are already underway to secure the resources needed to do just that for the festival’s 2017 edition. This year, the festival is branching out with four screenings at Regal’s Downtown West theater on Thursday, April 29, and Friday, April 30.

Music: Yung Life

Previously, all screenings were at Scruffy City Hall (32 Market Square). The move westward not only upgrades the festival’s projection equipment—which is really needed for the larger studio films being programmed this year—but it also affords it a bigger room and potentially a new audience, Samstag says. Organizers sifted through nearly 350 submissions from 40 countries, which they started collecting last October via FilmFreeway, a website that facilitates film festival submissions. Entries came from as far away as Russia (the Oscar-nominated short film We Can’t Live Without Cosmos) and Jamaica (Dancehall Is Us, an examination of dancehall music and culture). Director of film programming James McNally says the festival is also stretching out conceptually this year. “It’s relatively easy to find great music documentaries and we’ll continue to do that,” he says. “But we were on the hunt for some great narratives that featured music as a subject or as a character. Our two narrative features are quite different from each

other but both add new dimensions to our festival.” Those features are Born to Be Blue, which has played at major festivals and is about to have a wide theatrical release. It features an actual movie star in Hawke, serving up a creative reimagining of jazz trumpeter Chet Baker’s attempt to make a comeback after years of heroin addiction. The other film is West of Her, which McNally describes as “a true discovery” making its world premiere in Knoxville. “One of the things that drew us to this was the incredible soundtrack by Ariel Marx, a young composer from New York, who also performs on fiddle, viola, mandolin, banjo, and guitar,” McNally says. “She was named a ‘Composer to Watch’ by ASCAP and we’re delighted that, along with the film’s director Ethan Warren, she’s coming to Knoxville!” There is a full slate of performances, screenings, panels, and parties to be found at scruffycityfilmfest.com. Festival passes are $40. —Coury Turczyn

It’s relatively easy to find great music documentaries and we’ll continue to do that. But we were on the hunt for some great narratives that featured music as a subject or as a character. —JAMES MCNALLY, Director of film programming for the Scruffy City Film and Music Festival

Classical Music: Steven Jarvi

Shelf Life

The Search How well can we know composers who lived centuries ago? BY CHRIS BARRETT

ritish fi lmmaker Phil Grabsky has dedicated his career to making space in cinema for fi ne arts and music. You need only skim any multiplex marquee to appreciate that fi ne arts and music are not where the money is. (It’s worth noting, however, that Grabsky’s production company is behind the Art and Architecture in Cinema series that streams digitally to Regal West Town Mall 9 theaters. The episodes Renoir: Revered and Reviled and Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse can be seen there in coming weeks.) Grabsky’s excellent In Search of… series of composer biographies—profi ling Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Chopin— combine terrific, in-depth interviews with historians, composers, and performers with fairly stunning and intimate digital performance footage. Knox County Public Library owns them all on DVD, and most of them offer the opportunity to hear and see extended or complete performances in isolation from the narrative content. The lives of these composers were well documented and serious attention was paid to their lives while they were living. Source material is abundant. Still, it’s difficult to imagine a text, however exhaustive, combining fact, domestic arrangements (or domestic confl icts), geographic location, trend and fashion back-

ground, the ongoing evolution of instruments, and disruptions like revolutions or dying loved ones in a way that is as transporting as these fi lms. We learn what the days of these men were like and how they turned those days into music that is both familiar and still capable of surprise. Although In Search of Mozart followed Milos Forman’s Amadeus by some 30 years, producers of the former seem to take some pleasure in busting myths generated or perpetuated by the latter. Mozart was not poisoned. He did not die in debt. He was not an addict. While much of the information shared by interviewees is stirring,

A&E

especially moving are conversations with great performers who approach the scores and manuscripts of these composers as personal correspondence from their distant idols. Before demonstrating a passage by Beethoven, Emmanuel Ax explains that Beethoven made manuscript notes dictating that it be played with the left hand in one sweeping motion. The elfi n Ax holds up his tiny hands and confesses with a shrug, “Beethoven had very large hands. I must use both hands.” And then he nails it, with the camera perched at his elbow. Before performing Chopin’s Opus 57 – Berceuse in D-flat major, Ronald Brautigam says that playing Chopin makes him feel like an intruder. “I like a little distance between myself and the composer. I feel like I shouldn’t be there. He should be sitting there playing his own music. It’s not meant to be played by others; it’s too personal for me.” Producers of the series tell us that there are no additional composers currently slated for the In Search of… treatment. But there is a deviation of the formula screening in select theaters this spring: Grabsky’s Concerto: A Beethoven Journey focuses on Beethoven’s music for piano and orchestra, as explored by Leif Ove Andnes’ extended exploration of that music through performance and recording. Coming soon, let us presume, to a public library near you. ◆

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April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 23

A&E

Music

be less active as a band than we were used to. In 2013 and 2014 we all lived together in the same band house, where we wrote a lot of new music and played together and explored new musical grounds. We haven’t been playing any out-of-town gigs over the past couple years, though. The album was a long work in progress, with many frustrations and constraints with us still being in school and having busy lives. We really liked what we made and we wanted this album to reach more people than the previous two. We decided to self-release the album and just get it out there to see how it does.

When you started out, you were pretty precocious—weren’t some of you still in high school? I imagine your lives have changed quite a bit over the last five or six years.

School’s Out Local synth-rock band Yung Life grows up on Soft/Divide BY MATTHEW EVERETT

or most of its eight-year existence, the aptly named Yung Life has been a hobby. That didn’t keep the members of the band—Elliott White, Gabriel White, Judah White, and Will Farner—from releasing two appealing albums of retro synth pop, but stuff like high school and college took up most of their time. Now that three of them have graduated from the University of Tennessee, they’re ready to make a more serious commitment to the band. The first step is the release of their ambitious and long-gestating third album, Soft/Divide, which serves as the next step in the band’s creative evolution. The band got together last

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

week to collectively answer some questions about the new album via email. Visit knoxmercury.com for the full interview.

It’s been four years since you guys released Yung Life, and it seems like there have been on and off periods where you didn’t play many shows. Can you fill me in on what’s been happening? You have been playing a little more frequently the last few months, right?

We released the self-titled album in 2012 and toured a lot that year and in 2013. Collectively, we all decided to finish up our college educations, which obviously put us in a position to

Yeah, Elliott originally began the band in like 2008 or something, then Will started playing with him, and it’s been the four us since 2012. So it started in high school and now college has wrapped up for everyone but Judah. Our lives have changed a lot since then, but the roots of our band haven’t really changed. We look forward to pursuing the band a lot harder now that we are freed up from school.

The new stuff sounds like a pretty serious effort—not in tone, necessarily, just a step up in songwriting and production from the last album, like you’ve finally defined your sound and what you want to be.

All of us wanted to make an album but we were really busy and we thought that one person would have to carry the bulk of the weight regarding writing and recording. It just so happened that Elliott had a lot of creativity for a new album and took the reins in making it. We deviated from the ’80s pop sound that our self-titled album has, and in a way deconstructed synth pop and synth sounds on this new album. We all were involved in recording the album and made collective suggestions to song structures and melodies. Technology and computers are very useful tools for samples during a

live show, but as we were learning the album to perform live we decided to no longer use a computer or samples during our live sets. We won’t be using laptops on stage anymore and want to focus on creating organic sounds like bands used to do. We’ve learned to strip our band down to the basics and just keep it simple. If we use any samples in the future, we’re going to use an analog tape rig onstage.

Tell me about writing and recording the album. Has some of this material been in the works for a while? Where did you record it? Did you use an outside producer? How much time did you spend working on it, from writing to recording to post-production?

The material has been in the works for a while—the bulk of the album’s songs were written and recorded in 2013. The majority of the album was recorded at our parents’ houses, where we had access to more instruments and abundant silent space to work with. We produced the album ourselves and would often all sit around our home studio and make group suggestions on the production and song arrangements. All four of us really enjoy recording and producing music, so it was a maximum group effort of combining our skills when tracking and mixing the songs. Our prior album was made when we were first learning how to use recording software—this one exploits that same software to a much greater extent. By the time we had a rough draft of an album it was almost like we bit off more than we could chew, and it literally took a couple years to polish it into what we wanted. All in all, its taken about four years to finish since we started it.

What are your plans after the album release—are you touring or hitting any festivals this summer? A local release party?

We’re planning a local release show in late May with Sweet Years and will be touring in the summer. Besides that, who knows about festivals or bigger shows. We have big ambitions ahead of us, though. ◆

Dramatic Realism Puccini’s Tosca has outlasted its early critics to become an opera classic BY ALAN SHERROD

ealousy, doubt, sexual extortion, and abuse of political power seem to be universal aspects of both our humanity and our civilization, whether we like it or not. Those qualities and actions are at the heart of verismo opera, of which Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca is a prime example. Premiering in Rome, at the Teatro Costanzi, in 1900, Tosca both confused and delighted audiences. It also disappointed critics, who wrote things like “Tosca, like all other operas of its type, will be an obscure and uncertain memory of a time of confusion,” and “Tosca is too artificial, and when the composer wishes to be most intense, there is little save irritating noise.” Of course, Tosca has become anything but obscure, and time has shown the definition of “irritating noise” is not an absolute one. Admittedly, turn-of-the-century music was taking many directions, some radical and some traditional. Puccini, somewhere in the middle of that range, was merely matching the musical textures to the dramatic intensity of the story. Puccini and his librettists, Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, based their work on a recently produced play by Victorien Sardou, set in 1800, during the Napoleonic Wars. Playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw had nothing good to say about Sardou’s La Tosca, calling it an “empty-headed ghost of a shocker,” but later suggested—sarcastically—that it might make a fine opera. As a realist drama, the time and place of Tosca is very specific: Rome, June of 1800. Napoleon’s army has just met the Austrian army at Marengo, a fact that is background for the political hostility. Floria Tosca is a beautiful—and jealous—opera singer loved by the painter Cavaradossi, who has agreed to hide his

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2016 festival guide

previously as Iago in Otello, Tonio in Pagliacci, and Jack Rance in La fanciulla del West. The role of Mario Cavaradossi, Tosca’s lover, will be sung by tenor Jonathan Burton, who thrilled Knoxville audiences last year as Manrico in Il Trovatore. Bass Peter Johnson, a veteran of many KO productions, will sing the role of Cesare Angelotti. Ian McEuen is singing the role of Spoletta, Scarpia’s henchman. Geoffrey Hoos will be seen in three roles, that of the sacristan, the policeman Sciarrone, and the jailer. This unique multi-venue production of Tosca has been conceived and designed by KO’s executive director, Brian Salesky, who will conduct the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra.

WHAT Knoxville Opera: Tosca WHERE Church Street United Methodist Church (Act I) Knoxville Convention and Exhibition Center (Act II) World’s Fair Park Amphitheater (Act III) WHEN Saturday, April 30, starting at 2 p.m. friend and escaped revolutionary ally, Cesare Angelotti, from the police. Tosca, Cavaradossi, and Angelotti all fear the Roman police captain, Baron Scarpia, who is searching for “enemies of the state” and who lusts for Tosca. Puccini, just as he had done before in La Bohème and would do afterward in Madama Butterfly, created short motifs or themes to identify characters and ideas. The composer’s most famous motive comes right at the Act I curtain—a series of three ominous-sounding chords played fortissimo by the

orchestra that will subsequently announce the entrances of the villain Scarpia. The composer’s success with the technique comes from his ability to seamlessly weave theme and melody so that the construction is transparent to the storytelling of singers and orchestra. New to Knoxville Opera and singing the title role of Tosca will be soprano Kerri Marcinko. No stranger to Knoxville audiences, however, is Scott Bearden, singing the role of the evil Scarpia. Bearden was most recently seen and heard in KO’s Hansel and Gretel in February, and

HOW MUCH $29-$109 INFO knoxvilleopera.com/Tosca DRESS REHERSALS The public is invited to three free dress rehearsals for Knoxville Opera’s production of Puccini’s Tosca; at Church Street United Methodist Church (900 Henley St.) on Friday, April 22, from 6:30-8 p.m., for Act I; at World’s Fair Park Amphitheater on Tuesday, April 26, from 9-10 p.m., for Act III; and at the Knoxville Convention and Exhibition Center on Wednesday, April 27, from 8:15-9:30 p.m. for Act II.

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festival guide

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YELLOW BLOCK (PARKING LOT) CH 1 Knox Academy of the Blade CH 2 WUOT CH 3 WUOT CH 4 WUOT 299 Casual Pint Brewtopia 308 Beer 309 Wine 310 Food Tickets

Repicci’s Italian Ice Silk N Sassafras RCD Honey Matilda Jane Clothing B-Sunny Jewelry LeafFilter North Wild Pony Studio Burning Art Burning Art Brown Chiropractic The Raw Edge Jewelry Viet Grill Knoxville News Sentinel Woodnit Rappee Jewelry Rich Robes Twenty Heads Sculpture Flamingo Silk Sarah Brobst Designs MR Pots TN Handspinners Redhed Harmon Art Hugh Bailey Pottery Hernandez Crafts Angelware International

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GOLD BLOCK (EAST) 169 Beer 170 Wine 171 Food Tickets 172 Lackey Concessions 173 Fancy Paints 174 Happy Skin Naturals 175 Southern Prettys 176 Mack Hickey Pottery 177 Just for Me-Mi Jewelry 178 Creative Outlets 179 Wilkerson Windows & Gutters 180 Real Time Pain Relief 181 Snowie on Rocky Top 182 Greek Corner Foods 183 Greek Corner Foods

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BLUE BLOCK (WEST) 271 Wood Oven Eats 272 Madaris Windows 273 Knoxville Pridefest 274 Homespun Happiness 275 Reelfoot Studios

GREEN BLOCK (WEST) 241 Beer 242 Wine 243 Food tickets 244 Wendy’s Hospitality 245 Wendy’s Hospitality 246 Wendy’s Hospitality 247 Rainbo Ice & Funnel Cakes 248 Kitchen Art

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Trading Spaces Knoxville Opera’s ambitious new production of Tosca moves the action among three very different venues BY ALAN SHERROD

n your first full day as a visitor to Rome, you’ve just taken in the ancient Pantheon and its awe-inspiring dome, after which you’ve splurged and enjoyed an expensive cup of coffee while people-watching in the nearby Piazza Navona. Wandering south a block or two, to the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, you discover a beautiful basilica church dating from the early Baroque, the Sant’Andrea della Valle, and step inside to view its beautifully frescoed dome and lavishly decorated vault ceiling. Outside again and feeling the need for a bit of lunch, you turn left and walk a hundred yards or so and make another left on the Via Dei Baullari, seeing a plethora of shops and cafes ahead. Within a minute or two, you pass through two plazas rimmed with cafes and filled with merchandise carts and stalls. Your walk ends a bit further at a third plaza, fronting an imposing Renaissance edifice, the Palazzo Farnese, which you learn was once a private palace but is currently the site of the French embassy. Just what is the significance of your five-minute stroll from the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle to the Palazzo Farnese? You’ve just walked between the actual existing locations of Act I and Act II of Giacomo Puccini’s opera Tosca. Next weekend’s production of Tosca by Knoxville Opera, on Saturday, April 30, will be the company’s first staging of the opera since 2008, but you won’t find it at the Tennessee Theatre. Or any theater, for that matter. KO executive director Brian Salesky had a different idea. “I always thought—and this is a purely romantic notion—wouldn’t it be amazing if one could actually

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perform Tosca in the real places? What would that feel like? In Rome, the church and the palace are literally a five-minute walk apart, and then you’ve got the Castel Sant’Angelo of Act III, which is 10 or 15 minutes down the block,” Salesky says. “It’s very easy to get between these places. And when you do this, knowing the timetable of Tosca—Act I is at noon, Act II is that evening, and Act III is at dawn the next morning—you can begin to understand what this would have been like for these characters.” Unfortunately, Knoxville Opera is not transporting its Knoxville audience to Rome. But they are attempting something a bit more economically viable: performing Tosca in real downtown Knoxville locations, all within walking distance, and with orchestra, sets, and lighting. Act I, set at the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, will be performed in the Gothic Revival splendor of the nave of Church Street United Methodist on Henley Street. Act II, set in the quarters of police chief Baron Scarpia,

in the Palazzo Farnese, will be performed on a set in the Knoxville Convention and Exhibition Center. Act III, at Castel Sant’Angelo as a prison, will be performed in the World’s Fair Park Amphitheater. (Due to limited seating in the church, Act I will be performed twice in the afternoon, at 2 p.m. and 3:45 p.m., with Act II at the convention center at 7:30 p.m. and Act III at the Amphitheater at 9:20 p.m. “It’s been a tremendous challenge to figure out the logistics,” Salesky says. “Plus you’ve got three completely different venues, with three completely different sets of rules. The church is the toughest of these, for obvious reasons, so we will go in and out three times—everything in, then everything out. “Once we got approval from the church, we determined you can stuff—and I mean stuff—700 people into the interior. That means putting the audience on the floor, in all three balconies, and in the chancel. Every audience member is going to have a

different experience of the opera, because the opera takes place everywhere—in the back of the church, in the aisles of church, on the side. It’s going to be a very exciting adventure. Now, I’m not trying to tell anyone that this is what Puccini had in mind to do, but I thought, let’s do it.” Choosing a location for Act II presented Salesky with a dilemma: Where, in walking distance of the church, can you theatrically stage the scene of Baron Scarpia’s residence and still seat hundreds of people? The Knoxville Convention Center was large enough but it had to be ruled out because of booking limitations and the fact that the facility’s spaces are not acoustically isolated from each other. The only other choice was the older Exhibition Center that fronts the World’s Fair Park North Lawn. But that space came with its own set of problems. “The KCEC is not designed to be a performance space,” Salesky says. “It’s really just a trade show space. So we’re setting up a stage; the orchestra will be on the floor next to it. Until we get into the space, we won’t really know whether it’s fabulous or not.” Presenting Tosca in a traditional way as far as characters and music, but in a different way for the audience’s experience, has risks and rewards. “I think it will be a very positive thing for our audience, because without the audience experience, there’s no reason for Knoxville Opera to exist,” Salesky says. “The last thing anybody in the theater business wants to be is boring. Not only should this Tosca be theatrically exciting and musically satisfying, but it should be an experience that the audience will remember forever.”

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More styles available!

Artisans The African Hut, 215-216 Angelware International, 335 Asparagus Soap Co, 129 B-Sunny Jewelry, 315 Boulder Park Gems, 133 Burning Art, 318-319 Carol’s Jewelry Creations, 253 Chimney Rock Bark & Twig, 160 Creative Outlets, 178 Crooked Creek Designs, 136 Crushable Seagrass Hats, 130 Deona’s Sleepy Little Dreams, 132 Design by Denae, 131 Doctor Sid Artwork, 155 Earth and Sky Jewelry, 256 Fallen Leaf Farm, 139 Fancy Paints, 173 Flamingo Silk, 328 Frazz, 128 The Forge, 165 Frog City Metal Art, 249 Gentry Family Farm, 163 Glitz and Glam Boutique, 258 Happy Skin Naturals, 174 Hats by Patricia, 218 Hernandez Crafts, 334 HomeSpun Happiness, 274 Hugh Bailey Pottery, 333 Jewelry by Renee, 153 Jessica Klaaren Jewelry, 254 Jo Blythe Designs, 119 Just For Me-Mi Jewelry, 177 KDD Jewelry, 162 Kitchen Art, 248 The Little Things Photography, 251 The Love Kitchen, 255 Mack Hickey Pottery, 176 Matilda Jane Clothing, 314 Michelle Monet Creations, 219 Mimi & Opa’s Soaps, 112 Morning Dew Tie-Dyes, 252 MR Pots, 330 Native Southwest, 140-141 Nectar of the Vine, 142 Oliver Shea Butter Products, 166 Once Upon a Time Jewelry, 139 Pampered Chef, 257 Papa Vince, 229 Peasant and Raven, 250 Rappee Jewelry, 325 The Raw Edge Jewelry, 321 RCD Honey, 313 Reelfoot Studios, 275 Redhed Beads/Helen Harmon Art, 332 Rich Robes, 326 Roxy Jane’s Jewels, 157 RS Creations, 220 Sarah Brobst Designs, 329 Set in Stone Sisters, 158 Seven Barrels, 154 Sherry’s Dips and More. 146 Silk N Sassafras, 312 Silly Willy Caricatures, 122 Simply Gourdgeous, 152 Southern Prettys, 175 Spotted Horse Collectibles, 164 Terranova Fine Arts, 237-238 T.H. E. Pearl Pagoda, 217 TN Valley Handspinners, 331 Twenty Heads Sculpture, 327 Untamed Naturals, 135 Vintage Liz, 118 Watson & Co., 260 Whiteside Art, 159 Wild Pony Studio, 317

Wonderworks Photography, 151 Woodnit, 324 Wright Mason Jar Lamps, 253 You Stop It, 157 Young Living Oils, 257

Adult Beverages

Children’s Area Market Sq.

Sponsors

93.1 WNOX, S-2 93.1 WNOX, S-3 Alcoa Good Times, S-1 Balloon Walk-Abouts, S-11 Gone Fishing, S-13 Henna Tattoos, S-10 Li’l Orbits, S-12 Master Dry, S-4 TCDE Bake Sale, S-14 Will’s Chills/Lil Jimmy’s Italian Ice, S-8

Food Vendors Cevapcci, 266 Concessions by Cox, 227-228 Coolato Gelato, 160A Denenie Weenies, 225 Denton’s Fun Foods, 147-150 Finney B’s, M8 Festive Vending, 223 Five, 145 Greek Corner Food, 143,182-183, 221-222 Gripps Grill, 230 Holy Smokin’ BBQ, M14-16 International Concessions, M-6 L&M Funnel Cakes, M-9 Lackey Concessions, 172 M&L Concessions, 168 Mrs. Grissom’s Salads, 267 Nana’s Kitchen, M-2 Papaw’s Eats & Treats. 120-121 Philly Pretzel Factory, 224 Rainbo Ice and Funnel Cakes, 247 Repicci’s Italian Ice, 311 Rocky Top Korn, 167 Sapphire, 144 Shirley Temple Drink Stand, 116 Snowie on Rocky Top, 181 Street Provisions, M12-13 TCDE Bake Sale, S-14 This Is It Pizza, 231-232 TNT Snacks, 235 Two Ladies Italiano, 124, 234 Viet Grill, 322 Wendy’s Hospitality, 126-127, 244-246 Wholey Smokey Waffles Café, M3-4 Will’s Chills/Lil Jimmy’s Italian Ice, S-8 Willy’s Butcher Shop, M-5 Wood Oven Eats, 271

Food Truck Court Market Street Granite Transformations, M-1 Finney B’s, M8 Freedom Chiropractic, M-44 Holy Smokin’ BBQ, M14-16 International Concessions, M-6 L&M Funnel Cakes, M-9 Nana’s Kitchen, M-2 Street Provisions, M12-13 Wholey Smokey Waffles Café, M3-4 Willy’s Butcher Shop, M-5

Food Tickets Food Tickets, 171, 243, 268, 310, K3, M17

Beer & Wine, 169-170, 241-242, 269-270, 308-309, K1-2, M18-19

Airport Honda, 261-264 Alcoa Good Times, S-4 Always Travel With Us, 239-240 American Home Builders, 161 AT&T Direct TV, 113 Bluegreen Vacations, 137-138 Brown Chiropractic, 320 Casual Pint Brewtopia, 299 Costco Wholesale, Inc, 125 Eagle Distrib. 168,239, 266, 339, K5, M18 Exodus Chiropractic, 117 Freedom Chiropractic, M-44 Granite Transformations, M-1 Hometrust Bank, 213-214 WNOX, S-2-3 Knoxville Mercury, 115 Knoxville News Sentinel, 323 Knoxville Opera Merchandise 123, 233 Knoxville Pridefest, 273 LeafFilter North, 316 Madaris Windows & Siding, 272 Master Dry, S-1 Pinnacle Home Improvements, 156 Premier Martial Arts, 134 Rainbow, 265 Real Time Pain Relief, 180 Regal Entertainment, 236 Renewal by Andersen, 259 Riot Printing, 233 TN Education Lottery, 226 WATE Television, K 6-7 Wilkerson Windows & Gutters, 179 WUOT-FM, CH 2-4 Younique Cosmetics, 114

Artisan’s Row Gay at Church Angelware International, 335 B-Sunny Jewelry, 315 Barony of Thor’s Mountain, 211-212 Brown Chiropractic, 320 Burning Art, 318-319 Flamingo Silk, 328 Hernandez Crafts, 334 Hugh Bailey Pottery, 333 Knoxville Academy of the Blade, CH 1 Knoxville News Sentinel, 323 LeafFilter North, 316 Matilda Jane Clothing, 314 MR Pots, 330 RCD Honey, 313 Rappee Jewelry, 325 The Raw Edge Jewelry, 321 Redhed Beads/Helen Harmon Art, 332 Repicci’s Italian Ice, 311 Rich Robes, 326 Sarah Brobst Designs, 329 Silk N Sassafras, 312 TN Valley Handspinners, 331 Twenty Heads Sculpture, 327 Viet Grill, 322 Wild Pony Studio, 317 Woodnit, 324

festival guide

ROSSINI 2016 | 7

ENTERTAINMENT SCHEDULE PILOT FLYING J OPERA STAGE 10:00 Univ. of Arkansas Opera: The Pirates of Penzance 10:30 Univ. of Tenn. VolOpera 11:00 Univ. of Tenn. Opera Theatre: Don Giovanni KNOXVILLE OPERA TOSCA CAST: 12:00 Peter Johnson, bass-baritone 12:30 Geoffrey Hoos, bass-baritone 1:00 Ian McEuen, tenor 1:30 Scott Bearden, baritone 2:00 Kerri Marcinko, soprano, and Jonathan Burton, tenor 2:30 Mayors’ Welcome Ceremonies: Mayors Madeline Rogero and Tim Burchett Maestro Brian Salesky Kerri Marcinko, soprano Jonathan Burton, tenor 3:00 Michael Rodgers, baritone 3:30 Sarah Fitch, mezzosoprano 4:00 Kevin Doherty, baritone 4:30 Elizabeth Peterson, mezzosoprano 5:00 Univ. of Arkansas Opera: The Pirates of Penzance 5:30 Makoto Winkler, baritone 6:00 Melanie Burbules, mezzosoprano 6:30 Brandon Bell, baritone 8 - 10 Soulful Sounds Revue

CHORAL STAGE 10:15 VOLume and ReVOLution (UT School of Music) 11:15 Webb School Madrigal Singers 12:15 VOLT (UT School of Music) 1:15 Sound Company Children’s Chorus 2:15 Maryville College Choir 3:15 Cedar Bluff Middle School Concert Choir 4:15 Knoxville Gay Men’s Chorus 5:15 Variations (Pellissippi State Comm. College) 6:15 Knoxville Opera Gospel Choir 7:15 Sound of the Smokies Women’s Chorus

YMCA MARKET SQUARE DANCE STAGE 10:30 Sandsation Dance Troupe 11:30 Momentum Dance Lab 12:30 African-American Drummers and Dancers 1:30 Debka and the Oasis Dancers 2:30 Broadway Academy of Performing Arts 3:30 Albi Belly Dance Troupe 4:30 Lucia Andronescu Flamenco Dancers 5:30 Go! Contemporary Danceworks 6:30 Circle Modern Dance 7:30 Ballet Gloria 8:30 Vikhr Russian Dancers

INSTRUMENTAL STAGE 10:45 Knoxville Jazz Youth Orchestra 11:45 UT Jazz Big Band 12:45 Ensemble Swing Time Jazz Band 1:45 Knoxville Community Band 2:45 Ready for Rain Instrumental Ensemble 3:45 HartStrings 4:45 Pellissippi State Comm. College Jazz Band 5:45 Robertsville Middle School Band 6:45 Tennessee Wind Symphony 7:45 UT Trombone Choir

JAZZ STAGE 10:00 Pellissippi State Comm. College Brass Ensemble 11:00 William Lovelace Harp Ensemble 12:00 Pellissippi State Comm. College Bluegrass Band 1:00 Black Oak Brass 2:00 UT Jazz Messengers 3:00 4 Strings 4:00 Knoxville Symphony Youth Orch. Quartet 5:00 Shamrock Road Celtic Band 6:00 Grayscale (East TN State University) 7:00 UT Trumpet Ensemble

Thank you for supporting the cultural arts in East Tennessee!

Robert H. & Monica M. Cole Foundation

festival guide

ROSSINI 2016 | 8

Classical Music

Last Call Guest conductor Steven Jarvi closes KSO’s music director search with an exhilarating performance BY ALAN SHERROD

t has been a long and winding road for the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra in its search for its next music director. But the journey is almost complete. Steven Jarvi, the sixth and final candidate appearing as a guest conductor this season, made his case with the orchestra last weekend. What remains now are the discussions and final judgments of the selection committee, made up of orchestra members, KSO board members, and management staff. Although there are scenarios where a decision could be delayed, I’ve been told to expect an announcement in May. Since January, I’ve maintained that the consistently impressive showings by the candidates—coupled with an orchestra that was currently playing with phenomenal craftsmanship and artistry—was probably making the decision agonizingly

difficult. Not only did Jarvi match the high level of musical competence of the other candidates, his technique as a conductor drew absolutely top-notch ensemble playing from the orchestra. And with that tight ensemble performance as a base, he guided the orchestra to some exhilarating artistic moments that nudged the sublime. Of course, it is hard to go wrong with the crowd-pleaser that is Edward Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme, popularly known as the “Enigma Variations.” The work, a theme and 14 variations, drips with tonal emotion, pulling the listener between alternating moments of reflection, exuberance, elation, sadness, and joy. Since those emotions are generally irrepressible even when the work is played adequately, one forgets how magnificent the work can be in the hands of a conductor who has

an inspired point of view and the ability to extract subtle details of color and focus from the orchestral lushness. Adding to the success of this work was the luminous playing by the KSO string sections. Although in the past I have hesitated to describe the KSO strings under Concertmaster Gabriel Lefkowitz as having a signature sound, the section has developed a sonic character of its own in the last year or so. That solid radiant clarity, supported by ensemble precision, has made a world of difference in the overall KSO presentation. Impressive, too, in the Elgar, was Jarvi’s balance between bombast and subtlety in brass and strings, with proper importance imparted to woodwind color. The beautifully layered Variation X, which opens with tiptoeing flutes, oboes, and clarinets punctuated by the violins, only to be smoothed out by a viola passage (played here by KSO principal Kathryn Gawne), was delicate and lovely. The cello solo in Variation XII was beautifully played by principal Andy Bryenton. And anyone who resisted the sad yet optimistic modulation between Variation VIII and Variation IX (“Nimrod”), accomplished by a sustained pianissimo G from Lefkowitz, is truly hard-hearted. The featured soloist of the evening in the Dvořák Cello Concerto was Susie Yang, who enjoys both a solo career and the position of associate principal cello with the Kansas City Symphony. Yang beautifully handled the contrasts of the piece, from the abrasive opening passages through the alternating delicacies and tribulation of the

A&E

Adagio movement. The Finale movement and its ebb and flow of musical energy was nicely controlled, as was Yang’s modulation in string tone from stormy to pastoral to forceful. In many ways, though, this concerto performance was truly a duet between soloist and orchestra. Jarvi kept the two in perfect balance without losing any of the orchestral texture or character, dramatics of volume, or the intensity of exposed instrumental passages. Jarvi’s opening selection, Finding Rothko, a 2006 work by American composer Adam Schoenberg, was of special interest on several levels, particularly in that this was my first experience with the piece, and a welcome one. The title comes from inspiration the composer received from viewing several paintings by abstract expressionist Mark Rothko at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. The through-composed four movements are each devoted to a specific painting and titled “Orange,” “Yellow,” “Red,” and “Wine.” Learning that Schoenberg teaches composition and film scoring at Los Angeles’ Occidental College explains a lot about the specific charms of the work and its cinematic-like textural images. This complex work was handled beautifully by the orchestra. In “Orange” particularly, Schoenberg used the haunting qualities of the English horn, given emotional substance by Ayca Yayman, and the oboe of Claire Chenette, to portray a hazy suggestion of Americana. A thank you goes to Jarvi for reminding us of this significant young American composer. ◆

Not only did Jarvi match the high level of musical competence of the other candidates, his technique as a conductor drew absolutely top-notch ensemble playing from the orchestra.

April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 33

CALENDAR MUSIC

Thursday, April 21 LEAH GRAMS-JOHNSON • 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 WARREN PINEDA AND JON MASON • Red Piano Lounge • 6PM THE BILLY WIDGETS • Scruffy City Hall • 6PM LAUREN ARP • The Orangery • 6:30PM RICKY MITCHELL • Asia Cafe West • 7PM • FREE JEREMIAH AND THE RED EYES • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • FREE R.B. MORRIS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM THE BROTHERS OSBORNE • Cotton Eyed Joe • 9PM • From the very start, TJ Osborne was the brother with the voice. He sang in a thick, low baritone, crooning like Johnny Cash long before he was even old enough to drive. Older brother John, on the other hand, was the family’s guitar shredder, his fingers capable of down-home bluegrass licks, arena-worthy rock riffs, country twang, and everything in between. Combined, the two Osbornes could play everything from traditional country music to rock & roll, creating a broad, full-bodied sound that would eventually fill the 11 songs on their major-label debut, Pawn Shop. 18 and up. • $10 DANGERMUFFIN WITH BURNED OUT, STILL GLOWING • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM MISS TESS AND THE TALKBACKS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Miss Tess & The Talkbacks is a grooving rock ‘n’ roll band rooted in swinging blues, throwback country, and rockabilly music from Brooklyn, NY. Front and center in this tight quartet is soulful songwriter and skilled guitarist, Miss Tess. SWEET YEARS • Pilot Light • 10PM • Sweet Years, formerly Zack and Kota’s Sweet Life, celebrate the release of their new EP. 18 and up. • $5 FUTURE THIEVES • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. Friday, April 22 FREEQUENCY • Cru Bistro and Wine Bar • 8PM • Acoustic trio playing originals and eclectic tunes in three-part harmony. DORI FREEMAN WITH WILD PONIES • 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: STREAMLINERS SWING ORCHESTRA • Knoxville Museum of Art • 6PM • This fabulous 17-member swing orchestra needs no introduction, as they are a perennial favorites at AA5. With male and female vocalists and power-packed rhythm and horn sections, they bring the classic music of Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Louis Prima, and more to life and ignite the dance floor. • $15 KBJAM • Vienna Coffee House • 7PM • FREE K PHILLIPS • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • K Phillips is pop-Americana, roots, and rock n’ roll, in the vein of Van Morrison, The Band, and the Counting Crows. • FREE NIC GAREISS AND MAEVE GILCHRIST • Clayton Center for the Arts (Maryville) • 7:30PM • Nic Gareiss and Edinburgh harpist Maeve Gilchrist met while teaching at the Shasta Fiddle Summit in Northern California. Sharing a deep respect for traditional music and culture while drawing on contemporary elements of music, movement, rhythm 34

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

Thursday, April 21 - Sunday, May 1

and improvisation, Nic and Maeve have emerged from the vibrant new acoustic scene as innovators in their fields. • $20 DAWES WITH HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER • Tennessee Theatre • 8PM • On All Your Favorite Bands , Dawes manage to transcend their well-documented Southern California influences to establish their own sound and themes, which range from the glass half full optimism of the first single, “Things Happen” and the minor-chord tension of “I Can’t Think About It Now” (featuring background vocals from Gillian Welch and the McCrary Sisters) to the soulful gospel of “Waiting for Your Call,” the rocking tongue-in-cheek lyrics of “Right On Time” and the epic, Dylan-esque set piece, “Now That It’s Too Late, Maria.” • $25.50 FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE CAROLINA WRAY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up. THE TEMPER EVANS BAND • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 9PM HANNAH, KIMBRO, AND DEACON • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE FISH STICKS • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM VINCE HARRIS • Red Piano Lounge • 9PM THE DELTA SAINTS WITH THE VEGABONDS • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM THE BURNIN’ HERMANS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • The Burnin Hermans specialize in creating unique cover sets that keep your legs moving, your mind wondering, and your soul enlivened. • $5 HADLEY KENNARY • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM YONAS WITH MONEY TREE MINI AND JAY STREETZ • The Concourse • 10PM • Hailing from New York City, Yonas is one of hip-hop’s most-hyped emerging artists. Known for his incredibly unique style, the 27 year old makes it known that he is unlike anyone else in the game. Fusing thought provoking content, with crossover music production, Yonas has begun changing the face of music. 18 and up. • $10-$15 BADLANDS • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. WILD PONIES WITH DORI FREEMAN • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE Saturday, April 23 TRAVIS HARRIS AND THE WEST COAST TURNAROUNDS WITH GEOFFREY LOUIS KOCH • 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 DRIVIN’ N’ CRYIN’ WITH THE BLACKFOOT GYPSIES • The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson (Maryville) • 6PM • The ‘80s/’90s Southern college rock favorites are still at it. • $20 KATY FREE • Red Piano Lounge • 6PM THE SCRUFFY CITY JAM BAND • Vienna Coffee House • 7PM • FREE CALLAGHAN • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • London born, Nashville based Callaghan plays piano and guitar and delivers a vocal which earns frequent comparisons with artists like Sarah McLachlan and Emmy Lou Harris. • $12-$14 THE GEORGIA CRACKERS • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Before Hank Williams or Bill Monroe & his Bluegrass Boys, Georgia musicians such as Fiddlin’ John Carson, Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers, and many others pioneered the golden age of Hillbilly Stingbands. The Georgia Crackers faithfully recreate the vintage sound of the 1920s, while keeping alive the spirit of spontaneity

and improvisation. • $14 WISEWATER • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up. NUTHIN’ FANCY • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 9PM FEW MILES ON • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM THE BREAKFAST CLUB WITH SAME AS IT EVER WAS • The Concourse • 9PM • The Breakfast Club is the longest running, most recognized ’80’s tribute band in the United States. Formed in 1993, the group was the first of its kind. The mission was simple: create an entertainment group

that embodied the enigmatic, creative, and buoyant spirit of music and live performances of the original MTV generation of the 1980’s. That mission remains today. 18 and up. • $8-$10 KEITH BROWN AND THE KB3 • Red Piano Lounge • 9PM • Keith Brown’s new solo release The Journey is ostensibly a jazz record, to be released on Space Time Records, a jazz label. But Brown’s musical footprint is much larger than the tag would seem to imply. A composer,

SCRUFFY CITY FILM AND MUSIC FESTIVAL Scruffy City Hall (32 Market Square) and Regal Downtown West Cinema 8 (1640 Downtown West Blvd.) • April 26-May 1 • $40-$100 • scruffycityfilmfest.com

Chet Baker was certainly a beautiful man. The West Coast jazz trumpeter entered the 1950s post-bop scene as sort of an anomaly: a white player with movie-idol looks who gained mass popularity among record-buyers, if not immediate respect from his fabled peers in New York. But here’s the twist: He played his trumpet with a yearning, romantic tone that may have lacked pyrotechnics but was nevertheless entrancing. He was also an inveterate junkie. And in writer/ director Robert Budreau’s beguiling Born to Be Blue—the headlining feature film at this year’s Scruffy City Film and Music Festival—we see all his contradictions on display with a standout performance by Ethan Hawke. It’s not exactly a traditional music biopic, that film genre most notable for its earnest replications of Important Turning Points. Instead, Budreau reimagines an actual missed opportunity in Baker’s life. In the 1960s, Italian film producer Dino DeLaurentis offered Baker his own film. It didn’t happen. Born to Be Blue uses that nonevent as a launching point into fictional biography: What if it had come together? What if Baker tried to make that movie his comeback? What if he could actually fall in love like in one of his songs? Could he make himself a better man? Hawke presents Baker as a man whose heroin-obsessed lifestyle has left him haggard yet unrepentant—whatever ill happens to him, he knows he deserves it. But even doomed, he still has an inkling of something better. Hawke teeters on that edge, just short of redemption, with devastating effect. There are plenty of other worthy music-themed films at the festival, opening with The Smart Studios Story (a documentary on producer Butch Vig) and ending with A Song for You: The Story of Austin City Limits. Plus, there’s a headline performance by cellist Ben Sollee on Saturday, April 30, at 10 p.m. at Scruffy City Hall. (Coury Turczyn)

Spotlight: Tech N9ne

Q&A: Sasha Reynolds

CALENDAR bandleader, and pianist/keyboardist nonpareil, Brown is one of the busiest players in town. His involvement as both a leader and a sideman include soul-rock outfit Aftah Party, jazz combo the BluePrint, and sideman gigs with Vance Thompson projects Five Plus Six and Marble City Five. CUMBERLAND STATION WITH ETHAN PARKER • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM THE ROUGH AND TUMBLE • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM KANSAS BIBLE COMPANY WITH ROMAN REESE AND THE CARDINAL SINS • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. MARK BOLING • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • $0 KELLY MCRAE • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE THE MARK SCHIMICK STRINGBAND • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • The Mark Shimick String Band is an eclectic group of multi-instrumentalists who wow crowds with hard-hitting bluegrass and jam fused music. Sunday, April 24 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 JON STEELE QUINTET • Red Piano Lounge • 7PM THE BROCKEFELLERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM THE NICK MOSS BAND • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM • While other artists settle into a genre, Nick Moss has always been about discovering new sonic territory, new textures and new musical frontiers. His recording career spans decades and his albums are staples at blues radio worldwide, and are now in rotation at stations with jam and rock formats. All ages. • FREE ARGYLE GOOLSBY AND THE ROVING MIDNIGHT WITH LA BASURA DEL DIABLO AND BACK FOR BLOOD • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Having spent nearly two consistent decades writing, releasing and touring music internationally with Blitzkid, Argyle Goolsby returns to conjure up the curtain on Argyle Goolsby and the Roving Midnight: a black iron cauldron feverishly boiling the bones of horror rock, deathrock. and darkwave sensibilities. All ages. • $10-$15 ANDREW TUFANO • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. Monday, April 25 AIRSHOW WITH WILKINSON’S QUARTET • 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 VIENNA COFFEE HOUSE JAZZ TRIO • Vienna Coffee House • 5PM • FREE WIDESPREAD PANIC • Tennessee Theatre • 7PM • Formed in the tradition of the great southern guitar blues bands, with an improvisatory ethos, Widespread Panic continue to explore a sound all its own on the band’s 12th album, Street Dogs, their first studio effort since 2010’s Dirty Side Down. OUTCRY TOUR • Thompson-Boling Arena • 7PM • Featuring Hillsong Worship, Kari Jobe, Jesus Culture + Martin Smith and Elevation Worship with Brian Houston. • $29.95$99.75 IAN FITZGERALD AND DYLAN SEVEY • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • Ian Fitzgerald is a folk singer and songwriter. Based in New England, Ian has toured solo up and down the east coast and through the midwest. • FREE WHO’S GOT THE JUICE? TRUE SCHOOL VS. NEW SCHOOL • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • $5

THE BLUEPRINT • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Local pianist Keith Brown’s cool jazz combo. THE DOWNRIGHT BAND • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. THE WERKS AND CBDB • The Concourse • 11PM • 18 and up. • $5-$10 Tuesday, April 26 SCRUFFY CITY FILM AND MUSIC FESTIVAL • Market Square • 12AM • A celebration of film and music, Film Score and the Scruffy City Film Music Festival features live musical performances, music documentaries, music videos, animation, shorts and feature films that runs from April 26-May 1. Our festival is conveniently located in the epicenter of the Downtown Knoxville Renaissance, on Historic Market Square, where cafes, street musicians, magicians and shops keep our festival company; venues include Preservation Pub, Scruffy City Hall, and Knoxville Uncorked, with select film screenings at Regal Downtown West Cinema 8 on Thursday and Friday. Tickets to individual events will be available at the door. Visit scruffycityfilmfest.com for tickets and a complete schedule. • $40-$100 • See previews on pages 22 and 34. AARON PARNELL BROWN • 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 WIDESPREAD PANIC • Tennessee Theatre • 7PM • Formed in the tradition of the great southern guitar blues bands, with an improvisatory ethos, Widespread Panic continue to explore a sound all its own on the band’s 12th album, Street Dogs, their first studio effort since 2010’s Dirty Side Down. THE MARBLE CITY 5 • Red Piano Lounge • 8PM TECH N9NE’S INDEPENDENT POWERHOUSE TOUR • The International • 9PM • Featuring Kansas City underground legend Tech N9ne, Krizz Kaliko, Rittz, ¡MAYDAY!, Stevie Stone, and Ces Cru. 18 and up. • $25-$75 • See Spotlight on page 39. SWAMP CANDY • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM Wednesday, April 27 SCRUFFY CITY FILM AND MUSIC FESTIVAL • Market Square • A celebration of film and music, Film Score and the Scruffy City Film Music Festival features live musical performances, music documentaries, music videos, animation, shorts and feature films that runs from April 26-May 1. Visit scruffycityfilmfest.com for tickets and a complete schedule. • $40-$100 • See previews on pages 22 and 34. BRIAN DOLZANI WITH CASEY JAMES PRESTWOOD AND THE BURNING ANGELS • 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: SHINYRIBS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7PM • After fronting Austin’s most rambunctious Americana band The Gourds for 18 years, Kevin Russell is now mastermind of Shinyribs, a bluesy, twangy, funky and funny embodiment of the “Keep Austin Weird” ethic writ musical. Russell brings his whole band to our stage, which may buckle from the weight of their mighty talent. • $10 THE HUNTER SMITH TRIO • The Bistro at the Bijou • 7PM • Live jazz. • FREE GROOVE THERAPY • Red Piano Lounge • 7PM MOBLEY WITH MATHIEN AND JORDAN SEARCY • Open

Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • All ages. • $8 OG MACO WITH THE CAPTIN, STORMY, TYRIQUE SHAMIR, AND DJ KLWD • The Concourse • 10PM • Having completed a sold out European Tour and releasing several projects including 2016’s fan favorite The Lord Of Rage mixtape, it comes as no surprised the 2015 XXL Freshman alum, OG Maco, is ready to light up stages across the US. 18 and up. • $15 CITIZEN COPE • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • Dug deep into the rich soil of American music, Cope’s roots are complex. You may think of Bill Withers or Neil Young or John Lee Hooker or Van Morrison or Willie Nelson or Al Green. Yet, listening to Cope, you also may think of none of the above. You may not think at all, but rather feel a man exposing stories that haunt his heart. • $29-$39 Thursday, April 28 SCRUFFY CITY FILM AND MUSIC FESTIVAL • Market Square • A celebration of film and music, Film Score and the Scruffy City Film Music Festival features live musical performances, music documentaries, music videos, animation, shorts and feature films that runs from April 26-May 1. Visit scruffycityfilmfest.com for tickets and a complete schedule. • $40-$100 • See previews on pages 22 and 34. ANDREW MCKNIGHT WITH REAGAN BOGGS • 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 WARREN PINEDA AND JON MASON • Red Piano Lounge • 6PM NANCY BRENNAN STRANGE • The Orangery • 6:30PM ZACH JOSEPH AND THE SOCIETY • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • Zack Joseph is a 25 year old singer, songwriter, and guitarist based out of Nashville, TN. • FREE MIKE FARRIS AND THE ROSALIND RHYTHM REVUE • Clayton Center for the Arts (Maryville) • 7:30PM • Shine For All the People, Mike Farris’ 2015 Grammy Award winner for Best Roots Gospel album, bears witness to the determination of putting one foot in front of the other and to the power of music to get you there. • $15.50-$28.50 BREAKING BENJAMIN • Tennessee Theatre • 8PM • Six years have passed since Breaking Benjamin released their last album—2009’s Dear Agony—but one listen to their new album, Dark Before Dawn, and it becomes clear that time away from the music world hasn’t caused them to lose a step. • $40-$50 THE BLUE RIBBON HEALERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM MARK ARSHAK • Brackins Blues Club ( Maryville) • 8PM MAGNOLIA MOTEL WITH 7HORSE AND THE ROYAL BUZZ • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Magnolia Motel is an alternative-rock band from the Marble City of Knoxville. Their unique sound combines an array of diverse music genres. From funky bass lines and rocking drum beats to bluesy vocals and psychedelic guitar licks, Magnolia Motel’s sound will be sure captivate your attention along with their energetic stage presence. All ages. • $8-$10 BACKUP PLANET • The Concourse • 9PM • Backup Planet is a progressive funk-rock band based out of Nashville, Tennessee. To see Backup Planet perform live is to simultaneously travel back in time and forward into the future. 18 and up. • $5-$10 THE BROTHERS BURN MOUNTAIN • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Based out of Duluth, MN, The Brothers Burn Mountain are a soulful, energetic, eclectic duo of real-life brothers, Ryan and Jesse Dermody. April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 35

CALENDAR Friday, April 29 SCRUFFY CITY FILM AND MUSIC FESTIVAL • Market Square • A celebration of film and music, Film Score and the Scruffy City Film Music Festival features live musical performances, music documentaries, music videos, animation, shorts and feature films that runs from April 26-May 1. Visit scruffycityfilmfest.com for tickets and a complete schedule. • $40-$100 • See previews on pages 22 and 34. DARRELL SCOTT WITH SCOTT MCMAHAN • 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 VOLAPALOOZA • World’s Fair Park • 5PM • Volapalooza is UT Knoxville’s biggest annual concert for the campus and the Knoxville community. Featuring Portugal. The Man, Raury, Niykee Heaton, Moon Taxi , The Royal Bangs, Tut, Three Star Revival, and Roots of a Rebellion!. ALIVE AFTER FIVE: DELTA MOON • Knoxville Museum of Art • 6PM • Blues and Southern Roots sound with two slide guitars. Winners of the International Blues Challenge and Best Overall Music Act in Atlanta. • $15 KEVIN MCGUIRE • Red Piano Lounge • 6PM HAZEL • Vienna Coffee House • 7PM • FREE HANDSOME AND THE HUMBLES • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • Handsome and the Humbles play old-fashioned heartland country-rock record, inspired by Uncle Tupelo, the Drive-By Truckers, Ryan Adams, and the Hold Steady, specializing in a kind of three-chord wistfulness. • FREE

Thursday, April 21 - Sunday, May 1

JOHN PRINE WITH DARRELL SCOTT • Tennessee Theatre • 8PM • Two time Grammy-award winner, John Prine, is a singer songwriter who, from his eponymously titled first LP release in 1971, has continued to write and perform songs that have become central to our American musical heritage. Classics like, ‘Angel from Montgomery’,‘Sam Stone,’ ‘Paradise,’ and ‘Hello in There’ speak to the everyday experience of ordinary people with a simple honesty, and an extraordinary ability to get right through to the heart of the listener. • $49.50-$94.50 THE NAUGHTY KNOTS • Laurel Theater • 8PM • The East Tennessee trio The Naughty Knots bring together a blend of country, jazz and blues and old time fiddle tunes that are as homegrown as garden tomatoes. • $12 THE WOOD BROTHERS • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • The cover of The Wood Brothers’ gorgeous new album, ‘Paradise,’ is the band’s most sophisticated work to date and also their most rocking, with bassist Chris Wood playing electric on tracks for the first time. FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE BLUE MOTHER TUPELO WITH TRAVIS MEADOWS AND WHISKEY JACK • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Rising up from the bluffs of Memphis to the mountains of east Tennessee, through the Delta lowlands and muddy banks of Indianola, Mississippi along the way - comes the unique Southern Soul sound of Blue Mother Tupelo. • $8-$10 KIEFER SUTHERLAND • The International • 8PM • Kiefer Sutherland has been a professional actor for over thirty

years. But unknown to many during the course of his career, he has taken on other vocations with the same kind of dedication and commitment, like his upcoming debut album: ‘Down In A Hole’. All ages. • $17-$20 HOLY WHITE HOUNDS WITH PLVNET AND ANNANDALE • The Concourse • 8PM • Holy White Hounds is an apt name for the quartet’s endearing but feral alt-rock. The moniker also conjures the band’s origins as small town underdogs who are rising to earn national prominence. All ages. • $7-$10 KITTY WAMPUS • AC Band • 8:30PM • Classic rock, blues, and R&B. All ages. • FREE SPECTRUM • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE THE NATTI LOVE JOYS • Two Doors Down • 9PM THE ROMEO KINGS • Brackins Blues Club • 9PM BRIAN CLAY • Red Piano Lounge • 9PM CHRIS JANSON • Cotton Eyed Joe • 9PM • $20 THE AFRO-DISIACS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • A 12 piece Disco/Funk band playing music by James Brown, Earth Wind and Fire, Michael Jackson and many more classic artists. • $5 THE BLUEGRASS DRIFTERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM THE PIPER JONES BAND • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE Saturday, April 30 SCRUFFY CITY FILM AND MUSIC FESTIVAL • Market Square • A celebration of film and music, Film Score and the Scruffy City Film Music Festival features live musical performances, music documentaries, music videos,

Coming in Spring 2016 RIVER’S EDGE APARTMENT HOMES RIVERSEDGEKNOX.COM

Coming in Spring 2016: the Urban Wilderness’s newest Class A apartment complex, located in the heart of the upcoming Rail Trail along the banks of the Tennessee River. • • • •

1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom units available Class A apartments Brand new construction Amenities to include over-size pool, bike- and pet- iendly community, patios / porches, grill area, river ont access, directly on the Rail Trail.

LEASING OFFICE NOW OPEN 36

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

865-225-9838 | M-Fri. 9am-5pm | Sat. 10am-12pm 1701 Island Home Avenue Knoxville, TN 37920 Virtual Tours and more information at riversedgeknox.com

animation, shorts and feature films that runs from April 26-May 1. Visit scruffycityfilmfest.com for tickets and a complete schedule. • $40-$100 • See previews on pages 22 and 34. JASON WILBER WITH THE MICHAEL MARTIN BAND • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-aweek lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE ELIZABETH COOK WITH DEREK HOKE • The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson (Maryville) • 6PM • $20 KATY FREE • Red Piano Lounge • 6PM BIG VALLEY MUSTANGS • Vienna Coffee House (Maryville) • 7PM • FREE DOOM IN THE HILLS • The Bowery • 7PM • Enter the shadowy depths as Night Owl Music presents their 2nd installment of “Doom in the Hills,” a concert series dedicated to the celebration of all things doom metal. Guitarist of doom pioneers Pentagram, Victor Griffin brings his side project Place of Skulls to headline the event with support from the theatrical Summoner’s Circle, Swallow the Sky, and more. • $10 UT EXAM JAM • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 7PM • WUTK’s annual benefit blowout, featuring 332 Studios, the Harakiris, the Billy Widgets, Sang Sarah, and Demon Waffle. All ages. • $7 MY GIRL, MY WHISKEY, AND ME • Sugarlands Distilling Co. • 7PM • FREE KENNY MUNSHAW • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 7PM • The Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church Refugee Task Force

AD Y F M OR AY M 3 1 OV E !

CALENDAR Committee announce a benefit concert featuring Canadian songwriter and recording artist Kenny Munshaw. All proceeds will be used to assist refugee families, as they settle in the Knoxville community. Munshaw is a native of Toronto and his commercial projects have included writing for Justin Bieber and The Tenors, and collaborations with Marc Jordan. Tickets may be purchased online at http://tvuuc.org/refugeeconcert. • $15-$20 RILEY BAUGUS • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Riley Baugus represents the best of old time American banjo and song. His powerful singing voice and his expert musicianship place him squarely in the next generation of the quality American roots tradition.• $14 MIDNIGHT VOYAGE LOCAL SHOWCASE • The Concourse • 8PM • Featuring Magmablood, Fast Nasty, Spooky Jones, J-Mo, Psychonaut, Ursa Major, Pool Pardy, Lunch Money, Peripheral, Remembering Humans, and more. 18 and up. • $5 SOUTHBOUND • Two Doors Down • 9PM HARPER • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM NEW RADIO DIALECT • Red Piano Lounge • 9PM HAYSEED DIXIE • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Hayseed Dixie was formed when, after drinking enough whiskey to float a battleship across the Sahara Desert, it became suddenly obvious to the boys that the “Lost Highway” of Hank Williams and the “Highway To Hell” of AC/DC were the same damned road. • $5 THE STOOP KIDS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM LACHLAN • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE

Sunday, May 1 SCRUFFY CITY FILM AND MUSIC FESTIVAL • Market Square • A celebration of film and music, Film Score and the Scruffy City Film Music Festival features live musical performances, music documentaries, music videos, animation, shorts and feature films that runs from April 26-May 1. Visit scruffycityfilmfest.com for tickets and a complete schedule. • $40-$100 • See previews on pages 22 and 34. 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 MORGAN BIRDWELL WITH CAROLINE SMITH • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 2PM • All ages. • FREE SCHOOL OF ROCK: THE MUSIC OF PINK FLOYD • The Concourse • 6:30PM • Students from Knoxville’s chapter of the School of Rock present the music of Pink Floyd. All ages. • $7-$10 THE PAPER CROWNS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM TIM HALPERIN • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • With his distinctive voice, soulful piano vibe and acumen for writing original songs that tell a story, Tim Halperin has emerged as one of the brightest young singer/ songwriters in the United States. • $12-$15 LUPE FIASCO • The International • 9PM • Lupe Fiasco has been all over the place since his 2006 debut, Food and Liquor. But Lupe’s new album, Tetsuo and Youth is a welcome return to form, full of precise, literate rhymes

VIOLET

Music by Jeanine Tesori Book & Lyrics by Brian Crawley Based on The Ugliest Pilgrim by Doris Betts AUG. 31 - SEPT. 18

THE CRUCIBLE

By Arthur Miller SEPT. 28 - OCT. 16

THIS IS OUR YOUTH By Kenneth Lonergan

OCT. 26 - NOV. 13

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Adapted by Edward Morgan & Joseph Hanreddy

OUTSIDE MULLINGAR

By John Patrick Shanley

FEB. 1 - 19

THE BUSY BODY: A COMEDY By Susanna Centlivre

FEB. 22 - MAR. 12

TOP GIRLS

By Caryl Churchill

MAR. 29 - APR. 16

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS

Adapted by Mark Brown From the Novel by Jules Verne

APR. 19 - MAY 7

NOV. 23 - DEC. 11

Or call the CBT Box Office:

April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 37

CALENDAR and production that’s just ambitious enough without alienating mainstream listeners. 18 and up. • $29.50$74.95

OPEN MIC AND SONGWRITER NIGHTS

Thursday, April 21 VIENNA COFFEE HOUSE OPEN MIC NIGHT • Vienna Coffee House (Maryville) • 7PM • Visit viennacoffeehouse.net. • FREE IRISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Held on the first and third Thursdays of each month. • FREE Tuesday, April 26 PRESERVATION PUB SINGER/SONGWRITER NIGHT • Preservation Pub • 7PM OLD-TIME JAM SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Hosted by Sarah Pickle. • FREE Wednesday, April 27 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 ACOUSTIC OPEN MIC NIGHT • Asia Cafe West • 7PM • Bring an acoustic guitar and a few songs every Wednesday.

Thursday, April 21 - Sunday, May 1

Sign-up sheet available 30 minutes prior to 7 p.m. start. Three songs or 10 minutes per performer. • FREE Thursday, April 28 VIENNA COFFEE HOUSE OPEN MIC NIGHT • Vienna Coffee House (Maryville) • 7PM • Visit viennacoffeehouse.net. • FREE SCOTTISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Held on the second and fourth Thursdays of each month. • FREE

DJ AND DANCE NIGHTS

Saturday, April 23 HEROES AND VILLAINS: MARBLE CITY COMICON AFTERPARTY AND COSTUME BALL • The International • 9PM • 18 and up. Free with Marble City Comicon pass. • $5 Sunday, April 24 LAYOVER SUNDAY BRUNCH • The Concourse • 12PM • Enjoy good eats, refreshing libations, and the most appropriate afternoon tunage in the company of this city’s most dedicated loafers. We’ll be serving our normal brunch in all it’s glory, courtesy of Localmotive. Musical accompaniment by the likes of Slow Nasty, Psychonaut, and a rotating list of special guests. All ages. • FREE Sunday, May 1 LAYOVER SUNDAY BRUNCH • The Concourse • 12PM • Enjoy

good eats, refreshing libations, and the most appropriate afternoon tunage in the company of this city’s most dedicated loafers. We’ll be serving our normal brunch in all it’s glory, courtesy of Localmotive. Musical accompaniment by the likes of Slow Nasty, Psychonaut, and a rotating list of special guests. All ages. • FREE

integrate the classical guitar into the 21st century’s nascent musical lexicon. The Trio exclusively performs music that they have commissioned; they seek to expand the guitar ensemble’s repertoire to encompass all of the myriad currents passing through contemporary art music. Visit www.knoxvilleguitar.org. • $15

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Sunday, April 24 KSO CHAMBER CLASSICS: LEFKOWITZ PLAYS MOZART • Bijou Theatre • 2:30PM • April’s Chamber Classics concert includes Benjamin Britten’s Simple Symphony and Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major featuring KSO Concertmaster Gabriel Lefkowitz. The program concludes with Dvořák’s Serenade in E Major, a piece that evokes the old-world atmosphere of the musical performances on the castles of the late Baroque period. THE EVELYN MILLER YOUNG PIANIST SERIES • University of Tennessee Natalie L. Haslam Music Center • 2:30PM • Join us in our 36th season for a series of three recitals by three internationally acclaimed pianists: Josh Wright (Feb. 21), Mayuki Miyashita (March 20) and Jiayan Sun (April 24). Programs include classic and contemporary offerings for all audiences, from Bach and Beethoven to Chopin and Rorem. • $25

Thursday, April 21 THE SAINT THOMAS (NEW YORK) CHOIR OF MEN AND BOYS • St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral • 7:30PM • Each year, the Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, which was under the direction of John Scott from 2004-2015, sing at nearly 200 choral worship services. • FREE Saturday, April 23 READY FOR THE WORLD MUSIC SERIES: SOUNDS OF THE MIDDLE EAST • McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture • 2PM • The Arabesque Ensemble of Chicago will introduce Middle Eastern compositions that combine Eastern and Western sonorities and instruments. An exploration of how traditional Middle Eastern instruments naturally blend with Western instruments to create new and exciting forms for musical expression. Artistic and cultural artifact exhibit and reception at 12:30 p.m. Music and lecture at 2:00 p.m.• FREE MOBIUS TRIO • Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan • 7PM • Described by the eminent Sergio Assad as “the most inventive and exciting young guitar ensemble today”, Mobius Trio has made it its mission to fully

Monday, April 25 MARYVILLE COLLEGE COMMUNITY CHORUS: ‘A NEW CREATION’ • Clayton Center for the Arts • 7:30PM • The Maryville College Community Chorus, under the direction of Alan Eleazer, and the Maryville College Orchestra, led by Dr. Christy Lee, will present a spring concert featuring René Clausen’s “A New Creation.” Tickets are $5 for adults,

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.

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

CALENDAR seniors and area students. Admission is free for MC students, faculty and staff with ID, although a printed ticket is required for admission. To purchase tickets, please contact the Clayton Center Box Office at 865.981.8590 or visit claytonartscenter.com. • $5 Thursday, April 28 PELLISSIPPI STATE SPRING CHORAL CONCERT • Pellissippi State Community College • 7PM • This musical performance features our Concert Chorale and Variations Ensemble. • FREE Saturday, April 30 KNOXVILLE OPERA: ‘TOSCA’ • Downtown Knoxville • 2PM • Puccini’s masterpiece of corruption and intrigue. The audience will experience each act in a different venue in one amazing day—performed at Church Street United Methodist Church, Knoxville Convention Center, and World’s Fair Park. For the first time in history, Puccini’s dramatic Tosca will be experienced through an unforgettable one-day event. The audience will travel with the artists and orchestra between three unique locations to personally witness the suspenseful story of

corruption, torture, murder and suicide as Puccini wrote it to be experienced. Visit knoxvilleopera.com for tickets and more information. See insert for preview.

THEATER AND DANCE

Thursday, April 21 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘SOUTH PACIFIC’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • From the haunting “Bali Ha’i” to the exquisite “Some Enchanted Evening,” this Rodgers & Hammerstein classic features some of the most beautiful music ever composed for the theatre. The Pulitzer Prize and 10-time Tony Award winner is set on a tropical island during World War II and tells the romantic tale of how the happiness of two couples is threatened by the realities of war and prejudice. April 20-May 8. V isit clarencebrowntheatre.com. Friday, April 22 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘SOUTH PACIFIC’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • April 20-May 8. V isit clarencebrowntheatre.com.

FREE PROGRAMS! CHECK SCHEDULE FOR DETAILS

FILM SERIES

SPEAKER SERIES

Knoxville Film Office

Friends of the Library

Desperate Man Blues

An Evening with Joe Bussard

presented by

Discovering the Roots of American Music

Tennessee Trilogy:

Silent Stomp

The Tennessee Recording Sessions 1927-1930

with Live Accompaniment

Louie Bluie on 16mm film

Knoxville Folk on the Knoxville Sessions

Documentary Field Recording in the Great Smoky Mtns.

The Blues According to Fred McDowell

Before & After the National Park

Shake ‘Em on Down

Films from the TAMIS Vaults

The Knoxville Sessions and Location Recordings in the 1920s

TECH N9NE The International (940 Blackstock Ave.) • Tuesday, April 26 • 9 p.m. • $25-$75 • 18 and up • internationalknox.com

A lot of hip-hop trends have come and gone since Tech N9ne released Anghellic, his first nationally distributed album, in 2001. But the Kansas City rapper kept doing what he does—agile, introspective, sometimes violent, always fantastical raps over hard-hitting, bare-bones productions—and in the process he steadily became a reliable mid-level star, with three straight top 10 albums and an increasingly impressive roster of A-list collaborators. On Special Effects, from 2015, he gets the most expansive sound of his career, a real divergence from the workmanlike Midwestern style that worked for him for nearly 20 years. Special Effects has sampled strings, gospel choirs, metal guitars, and a vibe somewhere between nu-metal and brostep. (Tech gets guest spots from Slipknot’s Corey Taylor and EDM superstar Excision here, in addition to contributions from 2 Chainz, T.I., Lil Wayne, and Eminem.) (Matthew Everett)

Sugarlands Speakeasy and Dom Flemons tickets available for purchase.

Voices from the 78rpm Groove Tracking Down the Artists Who Made the Records

Preserving Regional Music Culture

The Roots of the Roots

April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 39

CALENDAR WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON: THE FLORENCE REECE STORY’ • Pellissippi State Community College • 7:30PM • Do good works overcome evil, in the end? This is the ultimate question posed by “Which Side Are You On: The Florence Reece Story,” a fictional retelling of the life of an American social activist, poet and folksong writer. The daughter and wife of coal miners, she penned the song “Which Side Are You On?” which became a social justice anthem after Pete Seeger recorded the tune in 1940. April 15-24. Visit pstcc.edu. • $12 OAK RIDGE PLAYHOUSE: ‘URINETOWN’ • Oak Ridge Playhouse • 8PM • This funny show with the funny name is a hilarious side-splitting take on greed, love, revolution - and musicals! Set in a time when water is worth its weight in gold, a Gotham-like city is facing a 20-year drought that leads to a government-enforced ban on private toilets. As a result, the citizens must use public amenities, regulated by a single malevolent company that profits by charging admission for one of humanity’s most basic needs. But those who fail to pay are sentenced to a dreaded penal colony. A hero decides he’s had enough, and plans a revolution to lead them all to freedom! An irreverently humorous satire in which no one is safe from scrutiny. April 22-May 8. Visit orplayhouse.com. THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: ‘BETRAYAL’ • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • Actors often have to face the challenge of growing older on stage, but Betrayal they have an even more difficult task: they must grow younger as the play progresses. Harold Pinter’s play tracks the course of an affair, but it does so backwards: it opens

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

Thursday, April 21 - Sunday, May 1

with a meeting between the two lovers some years after the affair ended; it finishes with the first erotically charged encounter between the two, nine years earlier. The classic dramatic scenario of the love triangle is manifest in a mediation on the themes of marital infidelity, duplicity, and self-deception. Pinter writes a world that simultaneously glorifies and debases love. April 22-May 8. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $13-$15 Saturday, April 23 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘SOUTH PACIFIC’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • April 20-May 8. Visit clarencebrowntheatre.com. WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON: THE FLORENCE REECE STORY’ • Pellissippi State Community College • 7:30PM • April 15-24. Visit pstcc.edu. • $12 OAK RIDGE PLAYHOUSE: ‘URINETOWN’ • Oak Ridge Playhouse • 8PM • April 22-May 8. Visit orplayhouse.com. THE 5TH WOMAN • Carousel Theatre • 8PM • The 5th Woman production combines the beauty and grace of dance, the melodic harmony of song, visual art forms and the force that is spoken-word poetry to provide Knoxville with an opportunity to empower women and learn the struggles and oppression that women from all walks of life face. The cast consists of Queen Sheba, an international poet out of Atlanta, Taria “The Realest” Person, a creative writing graduate of the University of Tennessee from Atlanta, Kimbi “the Goddess” Tiez, a singer and poet from Greeneville, SC, Jasmine “Baby J” Newton, host of the 5th Woman Poetry Slam, and Daje Morris, singer/songwriter and poet, both from Knoxville. •

$20 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: ‘BETRAYAL’ • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • April 22-May 8. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $13-$15 Sunday, April 24 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘SOUTH PACIFIC’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 2PM • April 20-May 8. Visit clarencebrowntheatre.com. OAK RIDGE PLAYHOUSE: ‘URINETOWN’ • Oak Ridge Playhouse • 2PM • April 22-May 8. Visit orplayhouse.com. WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON: THE FLORENCE REECE STORY’ • Pellissippi State Community College • 2PM • April 15-24. Visit pstcc.edu. • $12 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: ‘BETRAYAL’ • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 3PM • April 22-May 8. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $13-$15 KNOXVILLE CHRISTIAN ARTS MINISTRIES: ‘EMMANUEL’ • Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church • 6:30PM • Simon just can’t catch a break until Joseph hits town; a story about what happens when God shows up. A unique opportunity to see the production KnoxCAM has presented in prisons across Tennessee this year. Wednesday, April 27 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘SOUTH PACIFIC’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • April 20-May 8. Visit clarencebrowntheatre.com. Thursday, April 28 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘SOUTH PACIFIC’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • April 20-May 8. Visit

clarencebrowntheatre.com. OAK RIDGE PLAYHOUSE: ‘URINETOWN’ • Oak Ridge Playhouse • 8PM • April 22-May 8. Visit orplayhouse.com. THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: ‘BETRAYAL’ • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • April 22-May 8. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $13-$15 Friday, April 29 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘SOUTH PACIFIC’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • April 20-May 8. Visit clarencebrowntheatre.com. OAK RIDGE PLAYHOUSE: ‘URINETOWN’ • Oak Ridge Playhouse • 8PM • April 22-May 8. Visit orplayhouse.com. THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: ‘BETRAYAL’ • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • April 22-May 8. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $13-$15 Saturday, April 30 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘SOUTH PACIFIC’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 7:30PM • April 20-May 8. Visit clarencebrowntheatre.com. OAK RIDGE PLAYHOUSE: ‘URINETOWN’ • Oak Ridge Playhouse • 8PM • April 22-May 8. Visit orplayhouse.com. THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: ‘BETRAYAL’ • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • April 22-May 8. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $13-$15 Sunday, May 1 CLARENCE BROWN THEATRE: ‘SOUTH PACIFIC’ • Clarence Brown Theatre • 2PM • April 20-May 8. Visit clarencebrowntheatre.com. OAK RIDGE PLAYHOUSE: ‘URINETOWN’ • Oak Ridge

CALENDAR Playhouse • 2PM • April 22-May 8. Visit orplayhouse.com. THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: ‘BETRAYAL’ • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 3PM • April 22-May 8. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $13-$15

COMEDY AND SPOKEN WORD

Thursday, April 21 THIRD THURSDAY COMEDY OPEN MIC • Big Fatty’s Catering Kitchen • 7:30PM • We will showcase local and touring talent in a curated open mic of 6 to 8 comics. The event starts at 7:30, and there is no charge for admission. The kitchen will be open as well as their full bar. • FREE AN EVENING WITH KEVIN SMITH • Bijou Theatre • 7:30PM • Pop culture fans rejoice! Director, actor, and podcast network founder Kevin Smith is coming to the U.S. Cellular Stage on Thursday, April 21. Tickets on sale Friday, March 4, at 10 a.m. • $37 Saturday, April 23 FIRST BLUSH’ • The Bowery • 9:30PM • A show that dares to bedazzle your senses in Knoxville, it’s a burlesque extravaganza with lots of lusciousness. Headlined by 3 local starlets and 3 out-of-town starlets, we also feature a headliner singer and classy emcee. Plus, we will introduce you to the starlettes in training. Feel decadent for an evening and enjoy a happy, fun filled, joyfully sexy and scandalous night. Visit mkt.com/moxie365forever/ luxe. • $10-$15 Sunday, April 24 UPSTAIRS UNDERGROUND COMEDY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A weekly comedy open mic. Monday, April 25 QED COMEDY LABORATORY • Pilot Light • 7:30PM • QED ComedyLaboratory is a weekly show with different theme every week that combines stand-up, improv, sketch, music and other types of performance and features some of the funniest people in Knoxville and parts unknown. It’s weird and experimental. There is no comedy experience in town that is anything like this and it’s also a ton of fun. Pay what you want. Free, but donations are accepted.• FREE ON THE MIC WITH MIKE • Scruffy City Hall • 7PM • Bee Valley Productions and Scruffy City Hall are proud to present an attention-deficit, topsy turvy take on the late-night talk show format. Mike Bartlett created the show as a way of marrying his passion for music and comedy. Originally developed as a web series for Bee Valley, the purpose is to showcase the abundance of talented artists in the Knoxville music scene. Each episode features unique interviews and performances from Knoxville’s best artists, as well as sketches, segments, games, and more. Visit beevalleyproductions. com/comedy/onthemicwithmike. Tuesday, April 26 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 COMEDY AND SPOKEN WORD • April 26 • 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 long branch.

info@gmail.com to learn more, or simply come to the show a few minutes early. • FREE KRISH MOHAN • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • When you’re born in India and immigrate to the U.S., it can be hard to find a place to fit in. Using his quirky attitude and intelligent comedy, Krish tries to find where he fits in. Is it with Americans or the Indians in the U.S? Thursday, April 28 SUGAR HIGH! COMEDY SHOW • Sugar Mama’s Bakery • 8PM • A new comedy showcase at the brand new home of Sugar Mama’s on the 100 block. No cover. • FREE Sunday, May 1 UPSTAIRS UNDERGROUND COMEDY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A weekly comedy open mic.

FESTIVALS

Saturday, April 23 ROSSINI FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL STREET FAIR • Downtown Knoxville • 10AM • As one of the Southeast’s most alluring cultural attractions, Knoxville Opera’s Rossini Festival International Street Fair brings a taste of Europe to East Tennessee by celebrating the color, fun, and excitement of opera and international culture. This extraordinary event also presents a golden opportunity to attend one of the Knoxville Opera’s professional productions. Combining a vibrant International Street Fair with world class opera performances, art and craft exhibitions, wine tasting, and a wide variety of other events, the Rossini Festival transforms downtown Knoxville’s Gay Street into a colorful International festival. The festival features four stages with a range of entertainment options, an upscale artisan’s market, the smells and tastes of wonderful foods and beverages, and a special children’s area on Market Square, complete with fun entertainment and games. Visit knoxvilleopera. com.• FREE MARBLE CITY COMICON • Knoxville Expo Center • 10AM • Knoxville’s hometown comicon returns featuring Tennessee’s largest artist alley, largest cosplay contest, best vendor’s room, celebrities, and tons more. • $20-$99

C e n t e n n i a l

FLORENCE THE MACHINE

O l y m p i c

P a r k

I n t e r n a t i o n a l

MY MORNING JACKET

P l a z a

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

Sunday, April 24 TENNESSEE STAGE COMPANY SHAKESPEARE BIRTHDAY WAKE • Scruffy City Hall • 5PM • Tennessee Stage Company kicks off its 2016 Shakespeare On The Square season with a “birthday wake” for Shakespeare, commemorating the 400th year since the Bard’s death on his birthday, April 23, 1616. Party events include local bands, Shakespeare trivia and a screening of Shakespeare In Love.Shakespeare On The Square celebrities from previous shows will be on-hand to tend bar. For more information on the 2016 Birthday Wake, visit TennesseeStage.com or call (865) 546-4280. MARBLE CITY COMICON • Knoxville Expo Center • 10AM • Knoxville’s hometown comicon returns featuring Tennessee’s largest artist alley, largest cosplay contest, best vendor’s room, celebrities, and tons more. • $20-$99 Friday, April 29 SOUTHERN TEQUILA AND TACO FESTIVAL • Gander Mountain • 6PM • Come join us for a very fun festival to raise funds for Remote Area Medical. This will be our 2nd annual event, and will continue growing to be the largest annual tequila and taco festival in the country. We have some of the biggest names in tequila showcasing their signature products and the best food in East Tennessee. Join us to taste hand-crafted tequilas, margaritas,

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CALENDAR cocktails and beer, listen to some great music & eat some tacos! We’ll also have our VIP attendees judge a taco competition, as well as the best-decorated food booth. • $10-$125 ROCK AROUND THE DOCK FOR AUTISM • The Shrimp Dock • 6:30PM • Live entertainment by Tall Paul, Cajun shrimp boil by The Shrimp Dock, complimentary wine, beer, and non-alcoholic beverages, side dishes and dessert, and admission to the silent auction. All proceeds benefit the Autism Society East Tennessee, a nonprofit that provides support, services, advocacy, education, and public awareness for all individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and their families as well as educators and other professionals throughout 36 East Tennessee counties. For tickets, visit www.shrimpboilforautism.com. • $50-$55 RETROWEEKEND • LeConte Event Center (Pigeon Forge) • A throwback to the sounds and culture of yesteryear. The weekend allows attendees to immerse themselves in the culture, music and feelings of the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. RetroWeekend offers great opportunities to learn, compete, dance and laugh, all while making a significant charitable impact in the community. From featured workshops on health, wellness and financial management to dance lessons featuring swing, shag and 2-step, the weekend will place mental and physical health at the forefront of participants’ minds. To register or receive more information about RetroWeekend, visit: https://goretrorunning.com/. GYPSY CIRCUS CARAVAN TOUR • Last Days of Autumn Brewery • 5:30PM • Join Tennessee’s first cidery, Gypsy

Thursday, April 21 - Sunday, May 1

Circus Cider Company for the roaming Caravan Tour. Our next stop on the Tour is Knoxville TN for the official Brewhibition kick-off party. This is a free event as we start the Resist Prohibition movement. Starting at 5:30 PM at Last Days of Autumn Brewery in Knoxville with entertainment by Knoxville’s own, Kukuly and the Gypsy Fuego. East Tennessee made local cider by Gypsy Circus Cider Company can be purchased by the glass as well as soft cider (aka apple juice) for kids. Gypsy Circus, Tennessee’s Original Cidery. • FREE 2016 DOGWOOD ARTS FESTIVAL ON MARKET SQUARE • 11AM-9PM • With quality arts and crafts booths, arts in action, performing arts, culinary arts demonstrations and tastings, and an expanded children’s creation station, several blocks of downtown Knoxville are transformed into a lively street fair for the Dogwood Arts Festival. There will be more than 60 local and regional juried artists exhibiting and selling their original work. In addition to the artist areas in Market Square and Krutch Park extension, enjoy cooking demonstrations, festive food creations, and delicious wine and beer pairings at the Culinary Arts Stage. Live performances all weekend long on the Market Square stage, the Union Avenue pop-up stage, and the Children’s stage. Blooming Boulevard returns to the Dogwood Arts Festival providing unique colorful flower markets filled with live blooming plants, herbs, flowers, and trees. Join us for a spring celebration of our region’s arts, culture, and natural beauty in the heart of downtown Knoxville. Visit dogwood arts.com. • FREE Saturday, April 30

RETROWEEKEND • LeConte Event Center (Pigeon Forge) • To register or receive more information about RetroWeekend, visit: https://goretrorunning.com/. BREWHIBITION • Old City Courtyard • 1PM • Resist prohibition! Knoxville’s Spring Craft Beer Festival is not only a celebration to the end of Prohibition, but also an homage to the amazing Tennessee and regional brewers who were born out of Prohibition.Located in the Bowery area of Knoxville, Brewhibition promises to be a “one of a kind” event and a “must do” for craft beer lovers in the region. For more information, go to brewhibition.com • $35-$65 2016 DOGWOOD ARTS FESTIVAL ON MARKET SQUARE • 10AM-9PM • Join us for a spring celebration of our region’s arts, culture, and natural beauty in the heart of downtown Knoxville. Visit dogwood arts.com. • FREE Sunday, May 1 2016 DOGWOOD ARTS FESTIVAL ON MARKET SQUARE • 11AM-5PM • Join us for a spring celebration of our region’s arts, culture, and natural beauty in the heart of downtown Knoxville. Visit dogwood arts.com. • FREE

FILM SCREENINGS

Sunday, April 24 PUBLIC CINEMA: CEMETERY OF SPLENDOR • Knoxville Museum of Art • 2PM • Soldiers with a mysterious sleeping sickness are transferred to a temporary clinic in a former school. The memory-filled space becomes a revelatory world for housewife and volunteer Jenjira, as

she watches over Itt, a handsome soldier with no family visitors. Magic, healing, romance and dreams are all part of Jen’s tender path to a deeper awareness of herself and the world around her. Visit publiccinema.org. • FREE Monday, April 25 THE BIRDHOUSE WALK-IN THEATER • The Birdhouse • 8:15PM • A weekly free movie screening. • FREE Tuesday, April 26 SCRUFFY CITY FILM AND MUSIC FESTIVAL • Market Square • A celebration of film and music, Film Score and the Scruffy City Film Music Festival features live musical performances, music documentaries, music videos, animation, shorts and feature films that runs from April 26-May 1. Venues include Preservation Pub, Scruffy City Hall, and Knoxville Uncorked, with select film screenings at Regal Downtown West Cinema 8 on Thursday and Friday. Visit scruffycityfilmfest.com for tickets and a complete schedule. • $40-$100 • See previews on pages 22 and 34. 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, April 27 SCRUFFY CITY FILM AND MUSIC FESTIVAL • Market Square • A celebration of film and music, Film Score and the Scruffy City Film Music Festival features live musical

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016 WUOT_Ad_5.5x4.25_WhyWUOT_KnoxMerc.indd 1

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CALENDAR performances, music documentaries, music videos, animation, shorts and feature films that runs from April 26-May 1. Visit scruffycityfilmfest.com for tickets and a complete schedule. • $40-$100 • See previews on pages 22 and 34. Thursday, April 28 SCRUFFY CITY FILM AND MUSIC FESTIVAL • Market Square • A celebration of film and music, Film Score and the Scruffy City Film Music Festival features live musical performances, music documentaries, music videos, animation, shorts and feature films that runs from April 26-May 1. Visit scruffycityfilmfest.com for tickets and a complete schedule. • $40-$100 • See previews on pages 22 and 34. Friday, April 29 SCRUFFY CITY FILM AND MUSIC FESTIVAL • Market Square • A celebration of film and music, Film Score and the Scruffy City Film Music Festival features live musical performances, music documentaries, music videos, animation, shorts and feature films that runs from April 26-May 1. Visit scruffycityfilmfest.com for tickets and a complete schedule. • $40-$100 • See previews on pages 22 and 34. Saturday, April 30 SCRUFFY CITY FILM AND MUSIC FESTIVAL • Market Square • A celebration of film and music, Film Score and the Scruffy City Film Music Festival features live musical performances, music documentaries, music videos, animation, shorts and feature films that runs from April 26-May 1. Visit scruffycityfilmfest.com for tickets and a complete schedule. • $40-$100 • See previews on pages 22 and 34. Sunday, May 1 SCRUFFY CITY FILM AND MUSIC FESTIVAL • Market Square • A celebration of film and music, Film Score and the Scruffy City Film Music Festival features live musical performances, music documentaries, music videos, animation, shorts and feature films that runs from April 26-May 1. Visit scruffycityfilmfest.com for tickets and a complete schedule. • $40-$100 • See previews on pages 22 and 34.

SPORTS AND RECREATION

Thursday, April 21 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 greenway ride at an intermediate pace of 14-15 mph. Must have lights. Weather permitting. cedarbluffcycles.net. • FREE Friday, April 22 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 Saturday, April 23 SMOKY MOUNTAIN HIKING CLUB: FROZEN HEAD STATE PARK WILDFLOWER HIKE • 8:30AM • Bring along your favorite wildflower reference guide as we walk along enjoying and identifying this year’s showing of Mother Nature’s botanical splendor. On this annual club hike, we will start off by walking up to beautiful DeBord Falls. We will then take Panther Branch Trail up to the North Old Mac Trail. We will enjoy lunch at a scenic outcropping overlook and then continue down North Old Mac Trail to the parking lot. The hike is 6 miles, rated easy to moderate. Meet at Oak Ridge Books-a-Million, 310 South Illinois Avenue, at 8:30 AM. Leader: Billy Heaton, bheaton8@yahoo.com. • FREE TENNESSEE ASSOCIATION OF VINTAGE BASE BALL • Historic Ramsey House • 12PM • Vintage base ball, played according to the rules and customs of 1864, returns to Tennessee for its fourth season. As revived iterations of Tennessee’s historic base ball teams, TAOVBB member clubs combine living history with sport, organizing barehanded, Civil War-era base ball games to educate and entertain their communities. TAOVBB ballists, or base ball players, adhere to rules and customs of 1864, wearing period-appropriate uniforms and using historically-correct equipment. All regular season matches of the TAOVBB are free and open to the public. • FREE Sunday, April 24 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 TOUR DE KNOX BIKE RALLY • University of Tennessee • 2PM • Students in a service-learning class at UT will host the Tour de Knox bike rally beginning at UT Parking Lot 9, located at the corner of Phillip Fulmer Way and Peyton Manning Pass. Proceeds from the bike rally benefit Knoxville’s Legacy Parks Foundation. In the tour, billed as a “scavenger hunt on wheels,” participants receive a map of locations where they can receive tickets to win prizes supplied by local businesses and organizations. The locations are scattered around campus and nearby greenways, including the Bearden area and Cherokee Farm. • $15 April 21, 2016

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CALENDAR Monday, April 25 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, April 26 CYCOLOGY 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, April 27 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 SMOKY MOUNTAIN HIKING CLUB: PORTERS CREEK TRAIL • Smoky Mountain Hiking Club • #N/A • This hike will take the Porters Creek Trail to campsite 31 and return. Hike: 7.4 miles, rated moderate. Meet at Comcast, 5720 Asheville Hwy, at 8:00 AM or at the Greenbrier entrance parking lot by 8:45 AM. Leader: Ray Fuehrer, Ray.fuehrer@yahoo.com • FREE Thursday, April 28 CYCOLOGY BICYCLES THURSDAY MORNING RIDE • Cycology

Thursday, April 21 - Sunday, May 1

Bicycles • 10AM • FREE FLEET FEET GROUP RUN/WALK • Fleet Feet Sports Knoxville • 6PM • FREE NORTH KNOXVILLE BEER RUNNERS • Central Flats and Taps • 6PM • 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 SOUTH KNOXVILLE TRASH RUN • Alliance Brewing Co. • 5:30PM • KKB Trash Runs are fun-runs where runners pickup litter along the way. This a family friendly and all runner levels event. Participants will be able to collect raffle tickets based on the amount of trash they collect for some awesome prizes. Runners will get $1 off beers from Alliance after the run. $5 suggested donation to participate. Friday, April 29 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 VALOR FIGHTS 32 • Knoxville Civic Coliseum • 5:30PM • The event will benefit www.fightingforautism.com.au and will feature a main event pitting former training partners Adam Townsend vs Steven New at a 150lb. catchweight. In a battle of light heavyweights, Isaac Fine will meet

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

Cody Bruce, both men are currently 3-0. For information on purchasing tickets fans can visit www.valorfights. com, there is also an option to watch the event via live stream. Please follow us on Twitter, on Facebook and on YouTube under Valor Fights. • $15-$100 Saturday, April 30 WALK MS: KNOXVILLE 2016 • Sequoyah Park • 9AM • Walk MS is a charity walk series to that take place in over 550 locations with more than 330,000 people participating annually. We’ve been walking since 1988 and to date have raised more than $920 million to drive groundbreaking research, provide life-changing programs and guarantee a supportive community for those who need it most. Together, we become a powerful force. Together, we will end MS forever.Registration starts at 9 a.m. Walk starts at 10 a.m. KTC DOGWOOD CLASSIC 5K • Sequoyah Park • 8AM • The splendor of spring in East Tennessee comes alive with the blooming of the Dogwoods. Where better to see the Dogwoods and flowers than along Cherokee Boulevard in the Sequoyah Hills area of Knoxville, one of the premier areas of beautiful homes and manicured lawns in the Southeast? This area also hosts a scenic greenway in the median that covers the entire length of Cherokee Boulevard. This is the setting for the annual Dogwood Classic 5k Run/Walk. • $20-$30 SMOKY MOUNTAIN HIKING CLUB: OLD SETTLERS TRAIL • 8AM • We’ll hike the interesting middle section of the Old Settlers Trail which was once filled with subsistence farms. Nature has reclaimed former fields, but traces of

homesites, chimneys and rock walls remain. Our trail climbs up and down several significant ridges and crosses many streams requiring rock hops (or wades) of varying difficulty. There is also a lot of deadfall to clamber over, under and around. Hike: 10 miles, rated moderately difficult due to downed timber and numerous rock hops. Meet at Comcast, 5720 Asheville Hwy, ready to depart at 8:00 AM. Leader: Claudia Dean, claudiadean0@ gmail.com. • FREE Sunday, May 1 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

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 29-APRIL 30: Artwork by Lisa Kurtz and Dennis Sabo. Bennett Galleries 5308 Kingston Pike

CALENDAR MARCH 15-APRIL 30: Masterworks From the Estate of Carl Sublett From the 1950s Through the End of the 20th Century. The Birdhouse 800 N. Fourth Ave. April 1-30: Artwork by Susan Jenkins. Bliss Home 24 Market Square MARCH 4-APRIL 30: Artwork by Lindsey Teague. Broadway Studios and Gallery 1127 Broadway APRIL 1-30: Artwork by Owen Weston. Clayton Center for the Arts 502 E. Lamar Alexander Parkway APRIL 7-22: Dogwood Arts Festival Synergy Student Exhibition. The District Gallery 5113 Kingston Pike APRIL 22-MAY 31: Along the Way, oil paintings by Kathie Odom. An opening reception will be held on Friday, April 22, from 5-8 p.m. Downtown Gallery 106 S. Gay St. APRIL 8-30: Japanese prints from the University of Tennessee permanent collection. East Tennessee History Center 601 S. Gay St. APRIL 16-OCT. 30: Come to Make Records, a selection of artifacts, audio and video recordings, and photographs celebrating Knoxville’s music heritage and the 1929-30 St. James Hotel recording sessions. Emporium Center for Arts and Culture 100 S. Gay St. APRIL 1-29: Dogwood Arts Regional Fine Art Exhibition, a juried show featuring artwork by more than 40 artists from the Southeast and beyond, and Whimsical and Reflective, paintings and drawings by Stephanie Robertson. Envision Art Gallery 4050 Sutherland Ave. April 22-May 20: Find Ourselves, paintings and drawings by Sarah Moore. An opening reception will be held on Friday, April 22, from 5-8 p.m. Ewing Gallery 1715 Volunteer Blvd. APRIL 15-22: UT MFA thesis exhibitions by B.J. Alumbaugh, Jade Hoyer, Keeley Snook, and Ed Miller. Flow: A Brew Parlor 603 W. Main St. APRIL 1-30: The Art of Cynthia Markert: Representing 40 Years of Painting. Knoxville Museum of Art 1050 World’s Fair Park Drive 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. Pioneer House 413 S. Gay St. APRIL 1-30: Photos by Darrell Cecil Belcher.

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.

LECTURES, READINGS, AND BOOK SIGNINGS

Friday, April 22 UT SCIENCE FORUM • Thompson-Boling Arena • 12PM • The Science Forum is a weekly brown-bag lunch series that allows professors and area scientists to discuss their research with the general public in a conversational presentation. Free and open to the public, each Science Forum consists of a 40-minute presentation followed by a Q-and-A session. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own lunch or purchase it at the cafe in Thompson-Boling Arena. The Science Forum, sponsored by the UT Office of Research and Quest magazine, is an initiative to raise awareness of the research, scholarship and creative activity happening on campus. • FREE Saturday, April 23 JOE KING: ‘ARTIFICE HISTORICA’ • McKay Used Books • 12PM • Joe King will sign copies of his horror comedy novel. • FREE Sunday, April 24 CIVIL WAR LECTURE SERIES: “CIVIL SERVANTS, TRADES, FARMERS, AND MILITARY: JUST TRYING TO HOLD IT TOGETHER” • McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture • 2PM • The McClung Museum’s 6th annual Civil War Lecture series is titled “An All-American City Endures: Knoxvillians at War 1860-1865,” and will examine Knoxville families before, during, and after the upheaval of war. This month’s lecture examines the war through the lens of working men, and is titled “Civil Servants, Trades, Farmers, and Military (local): Just trying to hold it together.” • FREE CONVERSATION MATTERS: CHALLENGING SEGREGATION • First United Methodist Church Maryville • 5PM • In 1963, a group of white Methodist ministers took a stand against segregation by signing a simple “Born of Conviction” declaration. Now, more than 40-years later, Emory & Henry College professor, Dr. Joseph Reiff has released a book (Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi’s Closed Society) detailing the struggles these courageous ministers faced. Dr. Reiff comes to 1st United Methodist Church-Maryville as part of the church’s ongoing Conversation Matters event series. Visit www.1stchurch.org. • FREE CORNEL WEST: “RACE MATTERS” • University of Tennessee Alumni Memorial Building • 1:30PM • West was the first African American to graduate with a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University, and from that position launched a public career speaking and writing on governmental institutions, institutional racism, gender, jazz music, and spoken word poetry. As a professor and lecturer at Harvard, Princeton, and Union Theological Seminary, West’s brilliant spread of expertise has reached a massive spread of audiences as well, and has constantly fascinated the American public as one of its leading intellectual voices on the issues they face every day. With Race Matters, he offered a treatise on race relations in America in 1994, and with his lecture in Knoxville he will re-examine those issues and how they have

PORTUGAL. THE MAN RAURY NIYKEE HEATON MOON TAXI

FRIDAY, APRIL 29 WORLD’S FAIR PARK 5-11PM

WITH APPEARANCES BY: ROYAL BANGS, TUT, THREE STAR REVIVAL, AND ROOTS OF A REBELLION HEADPHONE DISCO with guest appearance by DJ A-WALL

tickets available at knoxvilletickets.com OPTED-IN UTK STUDENTS: FREE GENERAL ADMISSION: $15 (advance) $25 (door) plus applicable fees VIP: $50 (advance) $60 (door) plus applicable fees For more information or to arrange disability accommodations please contact the Center for Student Engagement at (865) 974-5455 or visit volapalooza.utk.edu

April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 45

CALENDAR evolved, as well as how they impact Americans of every color. 865-974-5455. Monday, April 25 PAULA DEEN • Barnes & Noble • 7PM • Join Barnes & Noble and Paula Deen for a discussion and signing of her new cookbook, Paula Deen Cuts the Fat: 250 Favorite Recipes All Lightened Up. Just in time for Mother;s Day Deen shares lightened up versions of fifty of her classic southern recipes, plus two hundred new and exciting healthier recipes for everyone to enjoy. For the first time ever, learn how to re-create the authentic, southern meals Paula is known for, with a little less butter, salt and sugar. • FREE Wednesday, April 27 BOOKS SANDWICHED IN • East Tennessee History Center • 12PM • Knox County Public Library invites you to join Pastor Chris Battle, Tabernacle Baptist Church, and Chris Woodhull, former Knoxville City Councilman, for a discussion of Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, a program series sponsored by the Friends of KCPL. • FREE Friday, April 29 UT SCIENCE FORUM • Thompson-Boling Arena • 12PM • FREE Saturday, April 30 UT COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN 2016 LECTURE SERIES • Bijou Theatre • 5:30PM • General Shale Lecture featuring Thom Mayne, design director of Morphosis. • FREE

Thursday, April 21 - Sunday, May 1

Sunday, May 1 LIN STEPP: ‘WELCOME BACK’ • Union Ave Books • 1PM • Book signing with local author Lin Stepp, author of Welcome Back, the newest novel in the Smoky Mountain series. • FREE

FAMILY AND KIDS’ EVENTS

Sunday, April 24 ART IN THE PARK FOR KIDS • Founders Park • 3PM • Hosted by the Farragut Business Alliance and Town of Farragut, the popular features of this 17-acre park, including its art sculptures, open play area, and beautiful trees and flowers, make it a perfect home for this official Dogwood Arts Festival event. Art in the Park for Kids is enjoyed by hundreds annually and features hands-on art projects designed to embrace the nature of the area. Creative and out-of-the-box art activities make this a unique and memorable artistic adventure for families of all ages. Overflow parking is available across the street at Farragut Assembly of God. In addition to TDS, this event is made possible by SouthEast Bank, Costco, and Horne Properties, as well as numerous other Farragut businesses. It is free and open to all. • FREE Saturday, April 30 SMOKY MOUNTAIN BICYCLE RODEO • Downtown Maryville • 9AM • A bike rodeo is a bicycle skills event which

provides an opportunity for bicyclists to practice and develop skills that will help them to become better bicyclists and avoid typical crashes. The goal of any bicycle rodeo is to provide an opportunity for the participants to learn, practice, and demonstrate their bicycle handling skills in a fun, noncompetitive atmosphere. This event is planned in conjunction with the Smoky Mountain Wellness Harvesting Wellness Program of the Maryville Farmers Market. The Rodeo is open to all children ages 7-12. The mission is to teach participants the primary bicycle handling skills and traffic concepts that will help them to avoid the most common types of crashes. East Tennessee Children’s Hospital will provide free bike helmets or adjust helmets as needed. • FREE

CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS

Thursday, April 21 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 PORTRAIT AND LIFE DRAWING SESSIONS • Historic Candoro Marble Company • 2PM • Portrait and life drawing practice at Candoro Art & Heritage Center. $10. Call Brad Selph for more information (865-573-0709). • $10

Saturday, April 23 IMPROV COMEDY CLASS • The Birdhouse • 10:30AM • A weekly improv comedy class. • FREE “THE IMPORTANCE OF SLEEP TO GOOD MENTAL HEALTH” • Grace Lutheran Church (Oak Ridge) • 10:30AM • Presented by Dr. Paul Gurecki, certified sleep specialist. Free child care provided. • FREE KNOX COUNTY MASTER GARDENERS: “PLANTIN’ AND PICKIN’: A SUMMER GUIDE” • Beardsley Community Farm • 12:30PM • Join Master Gardener Marsha Lehman for a hands-on class on how to direct sow summer vegetable seeds and properly transplant your purchased plants. Learn tips on harvesting and maintaining your summer garden. This free public event is scheduled on Saturday, April 23, from 12:30 to 2:00pm at CAC Beardsley Community Farm, 1719 Reynolds St, Knoxville, TN 37921, phone 865-546-8446 or web www.beardsleyfarm.org • FREE MARBLE SPRINGS PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP • Marble Springs State Historic Site • 11AM • This workshop will be taught by Doug Mills, videographer for the award winning Heartland Series. At this workshop guests will be taking pictures of the scenic historic site while developing some basic photography techniques as well as their own artistic vision. Space is limited to 20 participants so please remember to register early. For more information or to register please call 865-573-5508 or email info@ marblesprings.net. • $20 Sunday, April 24 YOGA AT NARROW RIDGE • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

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Q&A

CALENDAR

Unsolved A new books shines light on a decades-old Knoxville murder mystery BY CLAY DUDA

hat happened to Michelle Anderson? To some extent, that’s still a mystery nearly 30 years after the 15-year-old disappeared from North Knoxville. In 1989, nearly two years after her disappearance, Anderson’s remains were discovered in Cumberland County, though to this day nobody has been charged with her murder. Knoxville police didn’t initially investigate the disappearance as a homicide, instead treating Anderson as a runaway even though she was last seen catching a late-night ride home with Larry Lee Smith, a convicted sex offender who police say has remained their prime suspect in her death. In 2007, Sasha Reynolds began researching and writing about the decades-old murder mystery, which had haunted her for years—Reynolds, who currently lives in Huntsville, Ala., was a young mother in Knoxville when Anderson disappeared. As Reynolds researched Anderson’s case, Smith sat in a Georgia prison for sexually assaulting another teenage girl. But as his sentence ran out the author found herself pulled into a real-life drama. After his release from prison, Smith made his way back to Knoxville, where he eventually stood trial and was convicted of raping another young woman. Intent on stopping a sexual predator, Reynolds reached out to prosecutors to help piece together the puzzle. It’s an account she lays bare in her fi rst book, Similar Transactions, released in January by Simpson Point Press.

How did you first learn about the Michelle Anderson case, and what prompted you to research her murder? I lived in North Knoxville at the time and my children went to Fulton High

School, where Michelle went. I never knew Michelle Anderson, but my son had a class with her. He was an open kid and he told me one day about this girl in his gym class he thought was attractive. I remember he came home from school one day and said, “Hey, you remember that girl? Well, she’s missing.” I remember seeing her fl iers posted in the local grocery stores. Weeks went by and it sort of haunted me. I learned the detective handling the case was someone I worked with before [as a social worker], so I called him and found out he wasn’t doing much on it. It bothered me greatly that this girl had disappeared, and there was no evidence that she ran away, but it was still being treated that way.

How would you characterize the way Michelle’s case was handled by law enforcement?

I think that the late Knoxville Police Department Det. Jerry McNair dropped the ball. He was very laid-back and passive. I shared two cases with him as a social worker prior to Michelle’s disappearance and I experienced that in both of those cases. This case really haunted me because it was so much more serious than those other abuse cases I had worked on. All abuse cases are serious, but this girl was dead.

Having talked with so many experts and investigators during your research for this book, are there things that should have been handled differently?

Had anything been handled differently we still wouldn’t have Michelle, but if things had been handled differently they might have solved the case. The family put out fliers and stuff but there was no formal police search. Maybe if there was they would have found her body in the mountains early. I just

don’t know. Just because a lot of kids run away doesn’t mean she ran away— plus the fact that Larry Lee had already been convicted of kidnapping and raping a 14-year-old girl in Florida. But since there was no investigation until Michelle’s remains were found two years later, the forensic evidence was all compromised.

You end up helping prosecutors and law enforcement connect some dots on related cases they’re working on involving Larry Lee Smith. Do you feel like your involvement affected the outcome for Smith? I don’t want to take credit that’s not mine to take. It was Knox County Assistant District Attorney Leslie Nassios’ brilliant courtroom performance that ultimately manifested in Smith’s conviction [for a 2011 sexual assault in Knoxville]. When he got arrested for the latest crime and the prosecution for that came down, I was just this weird person lurking on the outside saying I was writing a book about this case. I slowly earned Nassios’ cooperation and sent her information and paperwork. Assistant district attorneys are very busy, so I just gave her anything I could that might help. She got motivated and understood what was at stake. The thing with Michelle’s case— forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Bass and his team were called in as soon as the remains were found and all the evidence was meticulously gathered, recorded, documented, and it was even sent to the FBI lab for analysis. All of that was lost. It’s all still missing. One segment of jeans remained mostly intact. If there was a chance DNA existed anywhere it was probably in that crotch fiber of those blue jeans, but it’s all missing. It’s just crazy tragic.

Do you still have hope that Michelle’s case will be solved?

I doubt that there’s much chance. There has been some renewed activity, but without any DNA or any physical evidence, or without any physical way to tie [Smith] to Crossville, there’s just a lot of really good speculation. Evidence is another matter.

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April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 47

CALENDAR 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, April 25 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 5:30PM • Call 865-5772021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. 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 for loved ones who are diagnosed with a mental illness. To

Thursday, April 21 - Sunday, May 1

register, contact Cookie Spillers, 865-671-0703, or Joyce Judge, 865-966-4731. • FREE AARP DRIVER SAFETY SMART DRIVER CLASS • Blount County Courthouse • 9AM • Call (865) 382-5822. Tuesday, April 26 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. AARP DRIVER SAFETY SMART DRIVER CLASS • Blount County Courthouse • 9AM • Call (865) 382-5822. MY LIFE. MY STORY PI PATIENT SUPPORT PROGRAM • K Town Tavern • 6:30PM • Hear from other adults with primary immunodeficiency (PI) about their first-hand experiences and learn about PI treatment administration options from a clinical nurse educator. This event is open to adults with PI and their caregivers. For questions or to RSVP, please call MyIgSource at 1-855-250-5111. • FREE Wednesday, April 27 NIA CARDIO-DANCE WORKOUT TECHNIQUE CLASS • Broadway Academy of Performing Arts • 6PM • Email emilybryant24@yahoo.com. INTRODUCTION TO HIKING • REI • 6PM • New to hiking? On this outing you’ll learn about the gear and clothing that can make your hikes more comfortable and practice some techniques to help you hike more efficiently. • $25 CLIMBING FUNDAMENTALS • River Sports Outfitters • 6PM • Come learn the basics of climbing. Call 865-673-4687. Visit riversportsoutfitters.com/events. • $20 HIKING BASICS • REI • 6PM • Go take a hike! Learn about the basics of hiking - trip planning, essential items,

equipment, safety precautions, along with local resources and places to go. • FREE Thursday, April 28 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 PORTRAIT AND LIFE DRAWING SESSIONS • Historic Candoro Marble Company • 2PM • Portrait and life drawing practice at Candoro Art & Heritage Center. $10. Call Brad Selph for more information (865-573-0709). • $10 KNOX COUNTY MASTER GARDENERS: HOW TO BUY A HEALTHY PLANT • Humana Guidance Center • 3:15PM • Don’t bring home a pathetic plant! Be alert when buying veggies, annuals, perennials, trees or shrubs. Join Master Gardener Barbara Emery to learn what to look for, how to look for it, and what to do when you get those items home. 865-329-8892. • FREE MOUNTAIN BIKING BASICS • REI • 6PM • Join REI Mountain Bike experts to learn about the bikes, essential gear, safety & responsibility on the trail, basic bike maintenance and more. • $20 Friday, April 29 AARP DRIVER SAFETY SMART DRIVER CLASS • Farragut Town Hall • 8AM • Call (865) 382-5822. Saturday, April 30 IMPROV COMEDY CLASS • The Birdhouse • 10:30AM • A

weekly improv comedy class. • FREE LEARN TO MEDITATE WORKSHOP • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 2PM • By the author of “800 Stepping Stones to Complete Relaxation.” Info & 12-easy meditations: mikewright102348@gmail.com or 865-851-9535. • FREE BEARDSLEY COMMUNITY FARM SKILL SHARE AND PLANT SALE • Beardsley Community Farm • 10AM • CAC Beardsley Community Farm is happy to announce a day of workshops: Skill Share. We hope to bring together individuals with different levels of experience in gardening for a day of learning and connecting. We have three workshops scheduled for the spring Skill Share; please see the following for more in-depth descriptions. Our Spring Skill Share will also feature our plant sale. Choose from a wide variety of herbs, heirloom tomatoes and peppers, strawberries, ornamentals, and more. Activities will be provided for kids, too!. Bring the whole family for this spring community event. Tickets available here: http://beardsleyskillshare2016.brownpapertickets. com/ Sunday, May 1 YOGA AT NARROW RIDGE • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 9:30AM • For information call 865-497-2753 or email community@narrowridge.org. • FREE SLOW FOOD TN VALLEY MOTHER’S DAY BISCUIT-MAKING WORKSHOP • Just Ripe • 10AM • Come dig your hands into some biscuit dough and learn the Southern tradition of biscuit making with your child/children for a fun family activity. Participants will have the opportunity to sample

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

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CALENDAR their biscuit creations, with some added biscuit toppings, as well as enjoying some additional breakfast snacks courtesy of Just Ripe. To accommodate everyone there will be two sessions offered: 10-12 or 1-3, so be sure to mark the appropriate time you will be attending. Let’s butter some biscuits together. • $15 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! 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. • $20

MEETINGS

Thursday, April 21 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 THE SOUTHERN LITERATURE BOOK CLUB • Union Ave Books • 6PM • Union Ave Books’ monthly discussion group about Southern books and writers. • FREE CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY FAMILY BEREAVEMENT GROUP • Cancer Support Community • 6PM • CSC is committed to providing bereavement services to those who have lost a loved one to cancer. Please contact our clinical staff before attending. Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer. Saturday, April 23 AL-ANON • Faith Lutheran Church • 11AM • Visit our local website at farragutalanon.org or email us at FindHope@ Farragutalanon.org. • FREE Sunday, April 24 NARROW RIDGE SILENT MEDITATION GATHERING • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 11AM • For information call 865-497-2753 or email community@narrowridge.org. • FREE THREE RIVERS! EARTH FIRST! • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 7PM • Call (865) 257-4029 for more information. • FREE 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. To find out more, visit our web page (http:// knoxville-tn.sundayassembly.com) or email saknoxville. info@gmail.com. • FREE Monday, April 25 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

Be a winner with the Mercury and

Appalachian Mountain Bike Club meets the fourth Monday of each month. • FREE Tuesday, April 26 ATHEISTS SOCIETY OF KNOXVILLE • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 5:30PM • Weekly atheists meetup and happy hour. Come join us for food, drink and great conversation. Everyone welcome. • FREE Wednesday, April 27 KNOXVILLE WRITERS’ GROUP • Naples Italian Restaurant • 11AM • Judy Bingham, founder of The Write Place and Write to Grow Workshops, will be the guest speaker. All-inclusive lunch is $12.00. RSVP to 865-983-3740 by Mon., April 25. THE BOOKAHOLICS BOOK GROUP • Union Ave Books • 12PM • Union Ave Books’ monthly book discussion group. Visit unionavebooks.com. • FREE Thursday, April 28 SCRUFFY CITY ORCHESTRA • First Baptist Church • 7PM • FREE KNOXDEVS QUARTERLY MEETUP • Scruffy City Hall • 7PM • This is a technology-neutral meeting intended to bring together Knoxville-area software developers of all skill levels under one roof to network and learn. Whether you’re a student or a senior specialist, come get inspired, build some new relationships, and help make an impact in the local software development community. • FREE Saturday, April 30 AL-ANON • Faith Lutheran Church • 11AM • Visit our local website at farragutalanon.org or email us at FindHope@ Farragutalanon.org. • FREE Sunday, May 1 NARROW RIDGE SILENT MEDITATION GATHERING • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 11AM •For information call 865-497-2753 or email community@narrowridge.org. • FREE THREE RIVERS! EARTH FIRST! • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 7PM • Call (865) 257-4029 for more information. • FREE

ETC.

Friday, April 22 YOUTH SHOWCASE AND AUCTION • Grove Theatre (Oak Ridge) • 6PM • The Youth Showcase & Auction is a benefit performance by rising stars. Enjoy both live and silent auction with raffle. All proceeds will be used to provide services for children at the Child Advocacy Center of Anderson County, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable organization. • $15-$25 ASSOCIATION OF SULTANA DESCENDANTS AND FRIENDS REUNION • Mount Olive Baptist Church • 7PM • The 29th annual reunion of the Association of Sultana Descendants and Friends will be held in Knoxville Friday and Saturday evenings April 22 and 23. The Sultana steamboat exploded on April 27, 1865, killing 1,800 people, mostly recently released Union POWs, making it the worse maritime disaster in American history.Friday evening program 7 p.m. at Mt. Olive Baptist Church with speakers and music. Free and open to the public. Saturday evening banquet 7 p.m. at Bearden Banquet Hall. Cost is $22 each. For more information, contact Norman at shawclan4@bellsouth.net. • FREE CATTYWAMPUS PUPPET COUNCIL SPRING REVUE AND VARIETY SHOW • Pilot Light • 9PM • Join us for an evening of puppet-filled fun, as we celebrate spring blooms, food,

Come celebrate 15 years of magic with Pearl Jam, Dead & Co., LCD Sound System and so much more!

Enter to win tickets to Bonnaroo! (2 pairs of general admission weekend passes will be given away)

Enter any time between April 15th - May 8th. Winners will be chosen on May 12th.

To enter, visit either:

Open Chord Music 8502 Kingston Pike, Knoxville

Boyd’s Jig and Reel 101 S. Central St, Knoxville

*Disclaimer: Winners will be chosen at random by the Knoxville Mercury from all submissions. Winners will be notified in advance. (1 pair of tickets per winner.) NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Void where prohibited. Must be a legal U.S. resident, 18 years of age or older, and not be a sponsor or an employee, family member, or household member of a sponsor. Once notified, winner has 24 hours to respond. Odds of winning depend on number of entries received. Sponsor: Knoxville Mercury, 706 Walnut Ave., Suite 404, Knoxville, TN 37902. April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 49

CALENDAR and community. This show will feature puppets of all shapes and sizes, dancing, live music and more, guaranteed to incite and delight your senses. For more info, visit www.cattywampuspuppetcouncil.com. • $5

Thursday, April 21 - Sunday, May 1

starts at 2:30pm. For more info, visit www.cattywampuspuppetcouncil.com. • $7

Saturday, April 23 EAST TENNESSEE MUSIC COLLECTORS SHOW • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 10AM • This unique event is for music lovers and collectors and features music dealers from all over the South selling rare vintage vinyl LPs, 45s, and bargain records, plus CDs, DVDs, memorabilia, and more. • $2 ASSOCIATION OF SULTANA DESCENDANTS AND FRIENDS REUNION • Bearden Banquet Hall • 7PM • For more information, contact Norman at shawclan4@bellsouth. net • $22 STRIPED LIGHT’S ROLL UP AND ROLL OUT DEAL BAZAAR • Striped Light • We have lots of great stuff and you should buy it. One day only, rain or shine. The deals are so big we’re opening all three garage doors. For sale: antique lead type with cabinets and cases; vintage clothes and objects; music gear and audio equipment; and vinyl, books, and more. Family friendly, of course. • FREE Sunday, April 24 CATTYWAMPUS PUPPET COUNCIL SPRING REVUE AND VARIETY SHOW • The Birdhouse • 2PM • Join us for an afternoon of puppet-filled fun, as we celebrate spring blooms, food, and community. This family-friendly show will feature puppets of all shapes and sizes, dancing, live music and more, guaranteed to incite and delight your senses. Free puppetmaking booth from 2-2:30pm. Show

Thursday, April 28 LITTLE RIVER TRADING COMPANY PINTS WITH A PURPOSE • Little River Trading Co. (Maryville) • 5PM • The next Community Partners Pints for a Purpose will benefit Keep Blount Beautiful. Sponsored by Little River Trading Co., Blount Partnership, and Merrell; 100 % of beer sales are donated to KBB. With beer from Devil’s Backbone, food by the Dinner Bell Fresh truck, and music by Cats Away. • FREE Friday, April 29 KNOXVILLE BOTANICAL GARDEN SPRING PLANT SALE • Knoxville Botanical Garden • 12PM • This year’s sale will be held on the Welcome Center’s patio with a wide variety of plants to choose from, including hydrangeas, native perennials, annuals, shade plants, herbs and vegetables. On Friday, members and donors can come out for a first choice of this year’s offerings. On Saturday, everyone is welcome. For more information, contact Ann White, by calling (865) 862-8717. • FREE Saturday, April 30 KNOXVILLE BOTANICAL GARDEN SPRING PLANT SALE • Knoxville Botanical Garden • 8AM • This year’s sale will be held on the Welcome Center’s patio with a wide variety of plants to choose from, including hydrangeas, native perennials, annuals, shade plants, herbs and vegetables. On Friday, members and donors can come out for a first choice of this year’s offerings. On Saturday,

Clarence Brown Theatre Ticket Giveaway

WIN TICKETS TO SOUTH PACIFIC!

everyone is welcome. For more information, contact Ann White, by calling (865) 862-8717. • FREE ORTHOTENNESSEE RUMMAGE SALE FOR CHARITY • Knoxville Orthopedic Clinic • 8AM • All proceeds from the event will be donated to Lost Sheep Ministries. All OrthoTennessee Associates have come together to donate to this worthy cause. Treasures galore: furniture, toys, decorative items, housewares, electronics, clothes, and more. • FREE MASTER GARDENERS OF ROANE COUNTY PLANT SALE AND GARDEN SHOW • Roane County Park • 9AM • Shop for plants and other gardening items, attend gardening demonstrations, have lunch or sweet treats from our food vendors, stop by and visit with our other community vendors, and get your gardening questions answered by the experts. All proceeds from this event helps support our community projects, such as HUG (Habitat Urban Garden), Children’s Community Gardens, Community Workshops, Adopt-A-Highway Litter Pickup, and 4-H scholarships. • FREE RETROPOLITAN CRAFT FAIR • Historic Southern Railway Station • 10AM • Vendors from around the southeast will be there selling high quality handmade and vintage items in this fun familyfriendly atmosphere. With goods such as prints and posters, apparel, home decor, ceramics, vintage furniture and clothing, there is a little something for everyone. Learn more about the Retropolitan Craft Fair at retropolitancraft.com. • FREE

Downtown Knoxville • 4:30PM • Rally begins on the north side of W. Fifth Avenue at Richards Street. March to the Federal building, then to Market Square for camaraderie and fellowship. Share the word with the peoples of the mall. Afterward, meet at the Public House on Magnolia. Details and updates: rogerostan.blogspot.com. • FREE

Sunday, May 1 FREE PEOPLES URBAN HOMESTEADING MAY DAY MARCH •

Saturday April 23rd 10:30 am Journey by steam train along the Tennessee River, watch a Civil War style baseball game played by the Knoxville Holstons at the historic Ramsey House.

2 pair of tickets available for the Apr. 27th performance.

2560 University Commons Way, Knoxville, TN 37919 • 865-524-9411 www.threeriversrambler.com

Name a song from this classic and send your name, phone and email to contests@knoxmercury.com 2 winners chosen at random will be notified on Mon. Apr 18th. Brought to you by:

*Disclaimer: Winners will be chosen at random by the Knoxville Mercury from weekly submissions. Winners will be notified in advance. (1 pair of tickets per winner.) NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Void where prohibited. Must be a legal U.S. resident, 18 years of age or older, and not be a sponsor or an employee, family member, or household member of a sponsor. Once notified, winner has 24 hours to respond. Odds of winning depend on number of entries received. Sponsor: Knoxville Mercury, 706 Walnut Ave., Suite 404, Knoxville, TN 37902.

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

When you want to reach the local market, advertise in Knoxville’s best local, independent newspaper. For more information, call 865-313-2048 or email sales@knoxmercury.com

OVER

SCHEDULE AT-A-GLANCE

TUESDAY, APRIL 26 7PM

8PM

10PM

10:30PM

Singer-Songwriter:

Open Mic Night

VIP Sponsor Party

The Groove Orient

The Dank

Presented by

Preservation Pub

Preservation Pub Speakeasy

Scruffy City Hall Rooftop VIP & Staff Passes

HAVE A BEER WITH US!

Scruffy City Hall

We can’t promise Bill Murray will be there, but we can’t promise he won’t either. We can promise some great conversation and plenty of Beer Murray to go around. Every evening there’s a film screening at Scruffy City Hall.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27 7PM

9PM

11PM

Musical Shorts!

Smart Studios Story

Cullen Wade and the Waters

Kilted Creature

Scruffy Science Cinepub 6000

Presented by

Scruffy City Hall

Saturday 6PM at Uncorked Mingle with local and visiting filmmakers, composers, judges, and special guests.

Scruffy City Hall

Preservation Pub

Scruffy City Hall

THURSDAY, APRIL 28 6PM

7PM

9PM

11PM

JC and the Dirty Smokers

In Pursuit of Silence

Presenting Princess Shaw

Modoc

Presented by

Scruffy CityHall

Regal Downtown West

Preservation Pub

#SCFMF #beermurray @filmscorecomp

KEY: n FILM n MUSIC n WORKSHOPS n MIXERS

FRIDAY, APRIL 29 7PM

9PM

11PM

The Possibilities are Endless

Born To Be Blue

Bark, The Grand Shell Game, & Hudson K

The Empire Strikes Brass

Ben Maney Scores Charlie Chaplin Live

Presented by

Regal Downtown West

Talent Trek Agency

Scruffy City Hall

Preservation Pub

Scruffy City Hall Rooftop

Regal Downtown West

SATURDAY, APRIL 30 1PM

3PM

4:30PM

6PM

7PM

10PM

The Art of Title Design

Docu Shorts

Cinematic Shorts

Mixer

West of Her World Premiere Presented by

Andrew Leahey and the Homestead

Ben Sollee

Presented by

Scruffy City Hall

Presented by

Farm

Spotter

Scruffy City Hall

Presented by

Scruffy City Hall

Preservation Pub Uncorked Scruffy CityHall

Scruffy City Hall

SUNDAY, MAY 1 1PM

3PM

5PM

7PM

9PM

Composer Round Table

Quirky Shorts!

Animated Shorts

Presented by

A Song for You: Austin City Limits Story

Rooftop Awards Party

Presented by

Scruffy City Hall

Scruffy City Hall Rooftop April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 51

OUTDOORS

Out side Insider

Far left: Kirk Eddlemon at work. Top right: The author being “interrogated” by Kentucky Fish and Wildlife ranger Stuart Bryant on Lake Cumberland. Photo by Randy Russell. Photo by Randy Russell.

Photo by Kim Trevathan

Outdoors Etiquette How to not drive other people nuts when you’re enjoying the wilderness BY KIM TREVATHAN

any of us covet the notion that once we get into the wilderness there are no rules and we can go crazy and be our sloppy selves without inhibitions or worries about the feelings of others, human and non-human. And then we see a toilet seat hanging from a bush on the side of a beautiful river, as I did on the lower Cumberland, and we reconsider what freedom in the wilderness means (and also wonder how it got there). It’s clearly not “anything goes” in the wilderness. Most are aware of the obvious stuff—don’t feed the bears, don’t litter, don’t dig up ferns in a national park—but sometimes we

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

forget the more subtle transgressions of etiquette in the wild. In the spring, when the human population in wilderness areas increases, I thought it would be a good idea to ask some outdoor types what breaches in etiquette get on their nerves. The most frequently recurring annoyance focuses on intrusive noise and technology. Class V boater, whitewater instructor, and guidebook author Kirk Eddlemon hates it when people rev their engines in tunnels or honk at him from the road when he’s negotiating the rapids of the Little River in the Smokies. “To me, it’s analogous to someone driving down the golf cart path while

you’re focusing on a shot and honking and saying ‘That looks like fun!’” Eddlemon says. Another paddler, Andrew Gunnoe, says that when he’s sitting somewhere remote beside a wild river and someone takes out a cell phone, it diminishes the experience. Gunnoe says he leaves his phone at home now because once, while canoeing with his wife in Florida, he took it out for a photo and dropped it into the water. Jeremy Lloyd, who has worked in the Smokies since 1996, says it “drives him nuts” to climb to the top of a mountain to find people checking their messages on their phones or exclaiming in ecstasy as their signal revives itself. “I go to wilderness to get away from all of that, but here I’m stuck on a mountain with someone entranced less by the view before them than with space-age technology they’re employing to ‘share the moment’ with a friend.” He acknowledges this pet peeve as a “lost cause.” A more low-tech noisemaker that bothers hiker Sam McGroom, from Walland, are bear bells. McGroom, who has hiked all of the trails in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park twice, says she considers hiking to be “a full sensory experience, and I don’t want to listen to your bear bells jingling away with every step on the trail. Truth be

known, they probably don’t do a darn thing to deter black bears.” Evy Linkous, a senior at Maryville College, would appreciate it if outbound hikers yielded to inbound hikers on trails, a notion she learned when she hiked at the Grand Canyon. The reasoning, she thinks, comes from the fact that incoming hikers are usually going uphill, outgoing coming down, and “it is frustrating to break pace to let someone aside.” Knoxville fisherman Nathan Nelson noted the commonplace occurrence of having his fishing spot violated by a competing angler, but takes particular umbrage at braggarts at boat ramps who, after a slow day all around, talk about how great the fishing was at this same spot just yesterday, when they filled up their boat with lunkers. Trout fisherman Neil Norman, who has a blog on fly tying (“Soft Hackles, Tight Lines”), goes even further with his territoriality: “Throwing rocks is an acceptable way to scare off inner tubers who get too close.” (Inner tubers might perceive Norman’s tactic as a breach in etiquette.) When it comes to fellow anglers, Norman wants more than elbow room: “In the past, what’s drawn my attention more than anything is the smell of an approaching angler—the most inconsiderate ones always seem to reek of chain smoking and beer sweat.” When a fellow flycaster asks what you’re catching them on, he adds, you are under no obligation to answer with complete accuracy. Elbow room, that phrase associated with Daniel Boone, also counts at campgrounds. Johnni Freer, an avid RV camper, feels that people who take short cuts through campsites without asking permission are violating personal space. It’s different though, she says, when it comes to the campers next to her, and the boundaries are less distinct. Kim Raia, former president of the Little River Watershed Association, is peeved by unburnable materials like plastics or aluminum left in fire rings

OUTDOORS I’ve broken a rule or two out of ignorance or forgetfulness, and I’ve annoyed people at one time or another during my wilderness escapades.

town to trail

20% OFF and by loud generators and TVs at campgrounds. Just about all of my interviewees mentioned litter, but I’m saving that for a column on its own, with perhaps a prize for most interesting litter. One might argue that the items above already illustrate the occasional lack of consideration of our fellow humans, but sometimes we have to be even more blunt. People may be lacking in that part of the brain that tells them to slow down and ponder a bit before speaking or taking action. Eddlemon loves it when people ask him if his feet are sticking out the bottom of his kayak. He also loves the question, “Where do you rent them things?” as if it were as simple as standing in line at Splash Country for a turn down the water slide. Seeing folks less than prepared amazes Jeremy Lloyd. “Plant yourself halfway up Alum Cave Trail and count the number of park visitors hiking to LeConte with poor footwear [fl ipflops] and no water.” Lloyd sees “a declining sense of personal responsibility and for taking wilderness seriously. Risk is involved with going on even a quarter mile hike in the Smokies, but people forget this, or operate under the assumption that they are entitled to a rescue.” McGroom says she has come upon hikers in the Smokies who don’t have a map and have no idea where they are. Though she is “amazed” by how often she sees this, she is gracious enough to carry along “dollar maps” to hand out to these wayfarers. Scarlett Fox, a Maryville College student who survived my January nature writing course, remarks upon

hikers in fl ip-flops with Coach purses, upset about “getting dirty” and wondering when this darn trail will end. She recalls being overtaken by a concerned park ranger searching for four women who thought Spence Field sounded like a good place for a picnic but had gotten lost, apparently unaware that this prime lunch spot was a few miles uphill from where they started out. Greg Rowe, co-owner of the Little River Trading Company in Maryville, referred me to the book, How to Shit in the Woods, a classic on the intricacies of outdoor propriety and comfort. More than one of my sources mentioned that “paper flowers” and aromatic vestiges of human visits are a turnoff on the trail. I’ve broken a rule or two out of ignorance or forgetfulness, and I’ve annoyed people at one time or another during my wilderness escapades. (I may have been a party to a selfie or two.) Nobody’s perfect. Nobody’s completely pure or blameless. We all mess up, and sometimes our different activities bring us into confl ict. We don’t have to all agree on what constitutes the ideal wilderness experience or what drives us nuts, but being sensitive to others and to our environment seems like a good thing to keep in mind as we go outside to seek peace and diversion. ◆ A writing instructor at Maryville College, Kim Trevathan is the author of Paddling the Tennessee River: A Voyage on East Water and Coldhearted River: A Canoe Odyssey Down the Cumberland. He will teach an outdoor writing workshop on May 21, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Central United Methodist Church (201 E. Third Ave.). Info: knoxvillewritersguild.org.

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY 53

’BYE

Sacred & P rofane

A Renewed Friendship Madeleine’s stroke of good fortune BY DONNA JOHNSON

adeleine’s eyes dart back and forth as she tells me, “I heard on the radio today that 10,000 people turn 65 every day.” She pauses, as if to gather her thoughts, and says, “Or maybe it was every hour. That’s scary, isn’t it?” “Yeah, it is,” I reply. “Thousands of us baby boomers crawling the Earth and lurking in corners, checking ourselves out in mirrors to make sure we haven’t acquired another wrinkle.” I light another cigarette and send smoke rings into the air. “We are a vain bunch, aren’t we? All the yoga and veganism and meditation won’t keep us from growing older, will it?” I throw down a shot of whiskey and add, “I myself am trying to hasten the process. Might as well get on with it.” Madeleine laughs. We have been listening to Rickie Lee Jones’ first album and trying to remember what it was like to be 25. “We were ruthlessly arrogant and didn’t really know anything, but we thought we did, didn’t we?” Madeleine asks with a sigh, shifting to put the blanket around her shoulders—it’s turning dusk and the room is growing cold.

“I would so love to feel arrogant again,” I reply. “I wonder if it’s better to be really arrogant and ignorant, or know a lot and feel like you’re really, really stupid? I think I’d go for stupid and arrogant.” Madeleine agrees with a vehement nod. Since her stroke six months ago, she has an air of fragility and uncertainty that moves me deeply, so that I often find myself tearful when I am around her. It is daunting to see the change in her spirit, which has become subdued and humble after the stroke— but she’s also softer, more tender, and at times even peaceful. Madeleine was (and is) one of the brightest people I have ever known— she’d read everything, had traveled the world. I was often jealous of her impervious attitude regarding other people’s opinions of her. She was completely indifferent, riding high and noble on her own opinion of herself, which was steady and strong like the heartbeat of an athlete. A tall, large woman, she has the chiseled bone structure of an aristocratic. Before her stroke, I had been estranged from Madeleine for three months, having told her that I never

BY MATTHEW FOLTZ-GRAY

KNOXVILLE MERCURY April 21, 2016

www.thespiritofthestaircase.com

wanted to see her again. I don’t remember why and it doesn’t seem to matter much now. Then one day I got a call from her friend. “It’s Dan,” he said. “Madeleine has had a stroke. She’s been in the hospital for three months and she needs to talk to you.” I had first met Madeleine when we were both social workers. She worked in the Social Security office and I worked for the Department of Human Services, so we knew of each other without really having experience with one another. Our friendship really began when I moved into a little house on Forest Park Drive in Bearden. She lived past the cemetery in Westwood, in a two-story house that fascinated me. It was filled with books: art books, literary books, and, if you can imagine it, 16 boxes of books on gardening. I had not noticed a garden outside. Instead, there were rather large cherry trees, branches bowed to the ground with blossoms. Bright pink azaleas grew in the front yard, and red tulips sprouted proudly in a circle nearby. The grass had not been mowed in some time—it came almost to my waist. “Do you garden?” I asked her, staring in wonderment at her boxes of gardening books. “Not yet,” Madeleine said. “I have to read about it first.” “Well, okay then,” I replied. Reading was Madeleine’s life before the stroke. Since her stroke she has been unable to read at all.

This is not as bad as it seems, for her habit of living her life through books was in many ways preventing her from experiencing it. Now she often sits outside basking in the sun—smelling the air, a rose, the earth—in a way she was unable to do before. She spends more time in conversation with real people now rather than with characters in novels. Before her stroke, one of her favorite sayings was, “Niceness is not something I value very highly.” Now she says she realizes how important other people are in her life. Madeleine was a hoarder par excellence before her stroke, and as passionate a shopper as I am. Now, miraculously, she is letting go of everything and preparing to sell her house. She has become quite generous, giving me lush, beautiful fabrics I could never afford, a marble bodhisattva that I have cherished for years, a heirloom clock, and all of her expensive perfumes. When I encourage her to keep her things for herself to enjoy, she will look at me and say, “Why? I can’t take this stuff where I’m going.” This makes me nervous. Where is she going? Arizona, Africa, Tahiti… heaven? Another dimension that we do not even know exists? The thought of Madeleine being in a place where I am not is inconceivable to me. I had always assumed we would grow old together, bitching and moaning till the end, fighting and making up, always somehow there for one another.

’BYE “I realize now how little things matter,” she says, pulling the shawl around her shoulders. “Also, if something should happen to me, I don’t want my son to be left with all this mess.” “Are you talking about death?” I ask, aghast. “Yes,” she says, looking out the window at the pale pink cherry blossoms. It is not something we have ever talked about. The words hang in the air like the smoke from my endless cigarettes. “Do you think about it often?” I ask. I myself have pondered it since the moment I was able to have a coherent thought. “Not really,” she says. “What can you do about it?” “You can fight,” I tell her, startled by the vehemence in my own voice. After a few minutes, dusk steals

BY IAN BLACKBURN AND JACK NEELY

over the room full of boxes and Madeleine’s decrepit cat cries mournfully in the corner, as if grieving over the departure of the sun’s light. “What does death mean to you, Madeleine?” “It just means the end of life. That’s it and that’s all.” “I don’t know how you can live just thinking we go into the ground and vanish forever and ever. I think we go on and on and on in some form or another,” I say, taking her hand. “Well, that’s just as likely as what I think happens,” she admits, and we sit in darkness until I fi nally get up and put on the third movement of Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto, staring out the window into the darkness as the violin plays its melancholy strains, like the sound of a soul weeping as it tries to rise from its own ashes yet fails again and again.◆

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HOUSING

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DANE KRISTOF, The popular Nashville psychic and clairvoyant that the tabloids call,” the Seer of Music Row,” is accepting appts. for when he is in Knoxville this month. One Nashville paper said, “This guy’s the real deal. He starts by telling you little known things that only you could know not to impress you but to add validation to the reading.” Call (615)4294053 for a Knoxville appt. – www.DaneKristof.com. PLACE YOUR AD AT STORE.KNOXMERCURY.COM

C e n t e n n i a l

FLORENCE THE MACHINE

O l y m p i c

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ONYX - is an 8 year old female Shepherd mix. She’s such a sweet heart and loves treats. Visit Young-Williams Animal Center or call 865-2156599 for more information.

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NEAL - is an 8 year old miniature smooth haired male Chihuahua, short coat/ Dachshund, that is neutered. Look into those big brown eyes! All you see is love! Visit Young-Williams Animal Center or call 865-2156599 for more information.

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JANE’S ADDICTION (PERFORMING RITUAL DE LO HABITUAL)

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

April 21, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 55