Vol. 2, Issue 2 - Jan. 14, 2016

JAN. 14, 2016 KNOXMERCURY.COM V.

2 / N. 2

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PART 2 OF A 3-PART SERIES

EQUAL PROTECTION Amid rising gang violence, can KPD overcome the doubts of Knoxville’s black community?

BY S. HEATHER DUNCAN

NEWS

KAT’s Old-Fashioned Trolleys May Get New Schedules, Routes

JACK NEELY

The Cal Johnson Building: New Hope for a Neglected Landmark

MUSIC

Mark Lamb and Nancy Brennan Strange Pay Tribute to Dolly

JOE SULLIVAN

Does Knoxville Really Need a New $150 Million Arena?

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

Jan. 14, 2016 Volume 02 / Issue 02 knoxmercury.com

CONTENTS

“ If you’re going through hell, keep going.” —Winston Churchill

12 E qual Protection

NEWS

COVER STORY

10 Timed Travel

In the second part of our three-part series examining the Knoxville Police Department, S. Heather Duncan reports on its relations with Knoxville’s black community. Local tensions have been discussed publicly by hundreds of people who attended forums held by Community Step Up, the FBI, and a local Black Lives Matter group. While some of that distrust has been put aside as both the community and Knoxville police grappled and grieved over a spate of gang-related shootings, the gap between the police experience and that of some vocal black residents is wide.

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Knoxville’s trolley riders are generally a happy bunch. Their chief complaints about the three free downtown trolley routes is that they want more: more routes, going farther, running later. They won’t get all that they ask for, but Knoxville Area Transit has just unveiled a plan intended to expand and improve the quality of the service, at no extra cost to taxpayers. S. Heather Duncan reports.

DEPARTMENTS

OPINION

A&E

4 Letters 6 Howdy

7 Scruffy Citizen

20 Program Notes: Rhythm N’

26 Spotlights: Ratatat, Ewing Gallery

21 From the Vault: Eric Dawson

FOOD & DRINK

Start Here: Roadside Sketches

by Andrew Gresham, Believe it or Knox!, Public Affairs, Quote Factory

38 ’Bye

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

Jack Neely tells the singular history of the Cal Johnson Building, and the city’s effort to preserve it with a new H-1 overlay.

8 Possum City

Eleanor Scott reveals the awful truth of volcano mulching: It actually does more damage to trees than good.

9 Perspectives.

Joe Sullivan looks to Columbia, S.C., for some ideas on how to provide a serviceable arena for Knoxville.

CALENDAR Blooms announces its final list of performers. Plus news from Waynestock and Bonnaroo. relates some tall tales about Knoxville’s early television history.

22 Music: Rose Kennedy talks Dolly with Mark Lamb and Nancy Brennan Strange.

Artist in Residence Biennial

36 Sips & Shots

Rose Kennedy attends the inaugural Pint of Science event at the Casual Pint downtown.

23 Home Video: Lee Gardner grits his way through Sicario.

24 Movies: April Snellings withstands

the wintry expanse of The Revenant.

January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 3

LETTERS Delivering Fine Journalism Since 2015

WHERE ARE THE LOCAL OUTDOOR ARTISTS?

Greenville, N.C. Pembroke, N.C. Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

Glenside, Pa. Interlochen, Mich.

Haverhill, Mass.

Anchorage, Alaska Alfred Station, N.Y. Lexington, Ky. Pontiac, Mich.

Greensboro, N.C. Sylva, N.C. Notre Dame, Ind. Detroit, Mich.

Waco, Texas These are the cities represented by the large-scale, outdoor art work exhibited in Knoxville, Tenn. It is disheartening, at least, to note that not a single piece of artwork in the current Dogwood Arts “Arts in Public Places Knoxville” guide was produced by a Tennessee artist, much less one from Knoxville.

I have nothing against the talented artists who have produced these works, but this list of cities is, to me, a horrible indictment on Knoxville’s relationship to the arts, and more specifically, to her artists.

Knoxville is teeming with talented, struggling artists who often must work several different jobs that have nothing to do with art to be able to survive and do what they love to do.

Dogwood Arts and all their sponsors (Central Business Improvement Development, Emerson Process Management, Gerdau, Lane Hays, Liz-Beth & Co., Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority, Mr. & Mrs. James Begalla, ORNL Federal Credit Union, Prestige Cleaners, Scripps Networks Interactive, Stuart Worden, Tennessee School of Beauty, and the Tennessee Arts Commission) would do well to use their influence and money to encourage local art first so the public can be exposed to the amazing work being produced in our city limits.

The brochure states that public art work has “transformative power to express the soul of a city … and contribute to civic pride.” I fail to see exactly how 17-plus sculptures by artists from every state in the union but Tennessee express the soul of 4

KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

EDITORIAL

Knoxville, or inspire any kind of civic pride. All it inspires in me is more anger at our never-ending capacity to not see the blessings blooming in our own back yards.

Here’s to the local artists of Knoxville. May you not be discouraged by the misguided actions and the misappropriated funds of those who have set themselves up as the representatives of art in your hometown.

May you carve your place in the Knoxville landscape in spite of their inattention and agenda. May your work shine and grow in our city so you can finally quit working at a coffee shop or convenience market and actually make a living doing what you do best, with all the support you need.

John thomas Oaks Knoxville

ED. NOTE:

The 2015 sculptures for Art in Public Places were selected by an out-oftown judge, sculptor Kenneth M. Thompson of Blissfield, Mich. He operates Flatlanders Sculpture Supply and Art Galleries as well as the Midwest Sculpture Initiative.

LOWER TAXES FOR THE POOR IS UNFAIR!

In reference to Joan Worley’s [ Jan. 7, 2015] letter to the editor, “Highway Robbery,” where she calls for a state income tax that somehow creates fairness: How is an income tax, which will discriminantly tax people based on their income, fair? In short, those who make less pay less. Not fair at all—regardless of how much disposal income you think people have.

As is the case almost everywhere, renters pay zero property tax. Fair? No. It’s simple. You spend a dollar, you get taxed the same as everyone else, regardless of your socioeconomic status.

Public/mass transit from outlying communities so that people can commute “cheaper”? Really, who’s paying for such reduced rates?

William Hall Knoxville

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

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

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

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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

Martin Luther King in Knoxville Dr. King inspired his supporters here in 1960, but Knoxville’s civil rights effort began many years earlier. race relations. I’m convinced that segregation is on its death bed and the only thing uncertain is the day it will be buried.” He added a warning. “The temptation, for those of us who have been trampled on, is to enter the new age with hate and revenge in mind. If we do that, the new order will be nothing more than a duplication of the old.”

Martin Luther King spoke in Knoxville on Memorial Day, 1960, as the commencement speaker at Knoxville College. At the time, he was the 31-year-old co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, only becoming nationally famous. His visit had a galvanizing effect on local activists, and had an effect on the morale of participants in sit-ins that summer.

However, the civil-rights struggle in Knoxville began at least a century earlier.

Tennessee blacks earned the right to vote shortly after the Civil War, in 1867.

When political tides shifted, things got worse. Statewide “Jim Crow” laws introduced years after the Civil War legally enforced segregation. Black Knoxville attorney William Yardley (1844-1924) was Knoxville’s first black justice of the peace, founder of the city’s first black newspaper, and the first black man to run for governor of the state, in 1876. He became one of our first civil-rights activists when he attacked practices unfair to blacks and other poor people.

In 1905, when the city first segregated its popular streetcar lines, it resulted in a black boycott of the system. It lasted only a few days, without success; for most working people, using the streetcar was a necessity.

Bob Booker, a KC alumnus, witnessed King’s speech. Six years later, he became the first Knoxville black to serve in the state legislature. King’s visit may have emboldened many students who heard it.

Demonstrations and sit-ins at previously segregated lunch counters and movie theaters downtown had a positive effect.

Some demonstrations received national press coverage.

Civil-rights activists at the Highlander Folk School in Grundy County, Tennessee, 1957. Martin Luther King, then 28, had studied there. With him are folksinger Pete Seeger; Charis Horton, daughter of Highlander founder Myles Horton; legendary activist Rosa Parks; and Ralph Abernathy, future president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Four years later, the Highlander Center moved to Knoxville, where it remained for about 10 years.

It’s now located near New Market.

A book, Diary of a Sit-In (1962), by participant Merrill Proudfoot, is an unusual documentation of the Knoxville demonstrations.

Some restaurants began serving blacks in 1960, within a few weeks of the first sit-ins. Others were more stubborn. Movie theaters remained segregated until 1963.

UT first admitted black undergraduates in 1961. The first black students were Theotis Robinson, who would later be elected the first black city councilman since 1912; and Jimmie Baxter, who was later elected the first black president of the student government association. Baxter later became a U.S. attorney.

Photo courtesy of the Highlander Research & Education Center. highlandercenter.org

In 1919, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, formed in New York 10 years earlier, organized a Knoxville chapter. It looked into unequal treatment of blacks and whites, specifically protesting the fact that black women had far inferior restroom facilities on Market Square.

The NAACP also tried to desegregate the University of Tennessee. Six black men tried, and failed, to enroll at UT in 1939. An effort in 1951 to enroll at UT’s graduate schools was more successful, and under the pressure of a federal lawsuit, four black students were accepted to law and other graduate schools.

When King spoke in Knoxville on the subject “It’s a Great Time to Be Alive,” he told the Knoxville College crowd, in the thousands: “We’re on the threshold of the most constructive period in history with regard to

Meanwhile, Knoxville and Knoxvillians were playing a role in other ways. Knoxvillan Avon Rollins co-founded the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and worked with King and many other leaders in the Deep South.

In 1961, the Highlander Folk School, which had already made a major mark on the movement through its training of civil-rights demonstrators like King and Rosa Parks, moved its headquarters from rural southeastern Tennessee to Riverside Drive, on the east side of downtown Knoxville. In the 1960s, civil-rights leaders from Stokeley Carmichael to Julian Bond came to study and teach at Highlander.

Source: The Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection and the book 200 Years of Black Culture in Knoxville by Bob Booker.

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 January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 5

Illustration by Ben Adams

HOWDY

Believe It or Knox!

BY Z. HERACLITUS KNOX

Roadside Sketches by Andrew Gresham (agreshamphoto.com)

Knoxville is the population center of Tennessee’s second Congressional district—which is THE ONLY DISTRICT IN AMERICA REPRESENTED BY REPUBLICANS SINCE THE CIVIL WAR!

QUOTE FACTORY “ The people of Tennessee deserve to know how their tax dollars are being spent, especially in situations like this.”

—State Representative Eddie Smith (R–Knoxville), in a statement regarding his request to Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey and House Speaker Beth Harwell to appoint a special committee to investigate the activities of the University of Tennessee Office of Diversity and Inclusion. The cost to taxpayers of this extremely important, pressing investigation was not estimated.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS

1/14MEETING: KCAC’S FUTURE THURSDAY

6 p.m., Civic Auditorium (500 Howard Baker Jr. Ave.).

Free.

What’s to be done about the Knoxville Civic Auditorium and Coliseum? Funky architecture aside, its crumbling infrastructure and outdated facilities are a growing problem. The city will be discussing its new feasibility study and various options. Info: knoxvilletn.gov/kcacstudy.

6

KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

The two big cannons in front of the Knox County Courthouse ARE FIBERGLAS REPLICAS OF SPANISH CANNONS USED TO FIRE ON U.S. FORCES DURING THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR! The real iron cannons were there from about 1900 to the early 1940s, but were removed to be melted down for iron for the World War II effort. They were replaced with fiberglass replicas in the early 1990s, partly to please older folks who were nostalgic about the old Spanish cannons, gone for 50 years, but remembered from childhood.

1/16 DIVERSITY DAY & RACE AGAINST RACISM SATURDAY

11 a.m., YWCA Phyllis Wheatley Center (124 S. Cruze St.). $5-$30.

This certified 5K, 1-mile walk, and Kids Fun Run celebrates diversity while promoting wellness and dignity for all. Which are all things we need to be doing more of these days. More info and register: ywcaknox.com.

Knoxville, Iowa, is much smaller than Knoxville, Tenn., but it’s home to the Knoxville Raceway, famously the Sprint Car Capital of the World!

1/18 MLK ANNUAL PARADE AND MEMORIAL 1/20 CHARITY SCREENING: ‘THE 5TH WAVE’ MONDAY

10 a.m., YWCA Phyllis Wheatley Center (124 S. Cruze St.). Free.

Celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr. The parade (which gathers at the YWCA starting at 8:30 a.m.) goes from Tabernacle Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Avenue to Greater Warner Tabernacle AME Zion Church, where a memorial tribute service will be delivered at 11:45 a.m. Info: mlkknoxville.com.

WEDNESDAY

6:30 p.m., Regal Riviera Stadium 8 (510 S Gay Street).

Knoxville author Rick Yancey’s alien invasion novel The 5th Wave gets a Hollywood adaptation. He and his wife, Sandy, are premiering the film as a fundraiser for their Making Waves Scholarship fund, which provides financial assistance to female college-bound students from rural counties in East and Middle Tennessee,

SCRUFFY CITIZEN

The Cal Johnson Building New hope for a neglected landmark

BY JACK NEELY

L

ast month, the Rogero administration made an executive decision about one of the very few decrepit buildings left downtown. The three-story brick building on State Street known as the Cal Johnson Building now has a city-imposed H-1 overlay, a historic-preservation initiative that’s rarely used in Knoxville. That status sends future building permits to the Historic Zoning Commission, which encourages preservation and complicates demolition. H-1 is intended to make fixing up or selling more attractive options. It doesn’t always work, but it’s the strongest gesture available to a city to save a building.

Maybe it doesn’t look like much, from a distance, a battered, boarded-up brick building of that dull purplish brown that disappoints kids get when they try to use all the crayons in the box. The bottom floor was once converted into a garage of some sort. The iron ladders and landings on the front look ornate, even if they’re just part of an Victorian-era fire escape.

But there may not be another building like it in East Tennessee. It tells an extraordinary story.

The owner, Bacon & Co., who once used it for storage, has been mum about any long-term plans for it.

But they took the trouble a few years ago to board up the windows and repair the roof, so it wouldn’t keep raining into the place.

What is in one respect the most

forlorn-looking historic building downtown is in a couple of respects also the rarest building downtown.

You might not notice it at first, but if you look up at the small white stone tablet on the second floor, and you’ll see part of the story. “BUILT 1898.

CALVIN F. JOHNSON.” It’s the only big urban building I know of that was built by a man who was raised to be a slave.

Calvin F. Johnson (1844-1925) was one of the most remarkable people who ever lived in Knoxville. He was born a stone’s throw from here, up on Gay Street, a slave to one of the McClung families. His father, Cupid Johnson, was a slave, too, but was a respected trainer of horses. Some of that rubbed off on Cal. Emancipated as a very young man, Cal scratched out a living, taking on some jobs others wouldn’t handle, like disinterring war dead in Cumberland Gap and reburying them with their families.

In the 1870s, he was still a young man when he rented a saloon known as the Poplar Log on the corner of Vine and Crozier—what’s now Summit Hill and Central—and made a success of it.

He later owned a couple of saloons on Gay Street. Cal Johnson was black, and he ran some saloons mainly for blacks, but some of his saloons were for whites.

After seven years, he made so much money that he bought the Poplar Log. He opened a saloon on the 200 block of Gay Street called the Lone Tree, named for the fact that the only tree growing on Gay Street in the 1890s was the one

right in front of his saloon. He was a non-drinker himself, but made his money selling alcoholic beverages. He was a man of paradox if not contradiction, but he made a very good living.

Popular even as a young man, in the 1880s, he was elected to two terms on Knoxville’s Board of Aldermen. He diversified. By the 1890s, some claimed he was a millionaire. He was involved in horse racing. He owned a string of nationally competitive racehorses, one of which showed well at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair—you never know whether to take those claims of world speed records seriously, but maybe—and he also owned whole racetracks, one in South Knoxville and later near Chilhowee Park, the Cal Johnson Racetrack.

He and his wife lived in a goodsized Victorian house on State Street, when it was considered a mixed-race middle-class residential street. He was in his mid-50s when he built a three-story clothing factory next door to his home.

The 19th century suited Cal Johnson well. But in 1907 we banned his saloons, along with everybody else’s. Soon after, we banned gambling, which doomed his famous racetrack.

But even in his mid-60s, Johnson was nimble. He established Knoxville’s first movie theater for blacks. The Lincoln Theatre on South Central was in fact one of Knoxville’s first movie theaters of any sort. The Cal Johnson Racetrack, built for horse racing, saw the beginning of local automobile racing. In 1910, the 66-year-old not-quite-retired Johnson made special arrangements for his old racetrack to host Knoxville’s first landing of an airplane. He became a bit of a philanthropist, helping establish what would

be known as Cal Johnson Park, on old Mulvaney Street, by donating a big marble fountain to it.

Most of his legacy has been torn down. His house on State is long gone. His movie theater’s gone. All his saloons are gone. The Lone Tree Saloon was still standing until the 1970s, when we decided it was in the way of the Summit Hill Drive project.

We cut down the tree, too.

The marble fountain he donated to the public was somehow misplaced during urban renewal. No one knows what happened to it. But the recreation center later built there was named for him.

The Cal Johnson Racetrack in East Knoxville was redeveloped as a residential neighborhood. Today the half-mile oval is known as Speedway Circle. The tiny little street that connects it to Fern Street is called Calvin Street.

Somehow his old clothing factory, with his name high on the front, survives. It’s been little more than a warehouse for 80 or 90 years. For decades, Knoxville didn’t care much about State Street. But with the completion of Marble Alley—the biggest residential development downtown in decades—just across the street, the old Cal Johnson Building is suddenly central to a high-density, affluent residential area.

There were once at least two other buildings each known as “the Cal Johnson Building,” but they were torn down many years ago. This is the only one that remains.

One thing I’ve learned: When physical remnants of even the most remarkable and inspiring life vanish, people tend to forget about them.

That’s hardly surprising, because everything they did is gone. That’s not quite true for Cal Johnson. ◆

The 19th century suited Cal Johnson well.

But in 1907 we banned his saloons, along with everybody else’s.

Soon after, we banned gambling, which doomed his famous racetrack.

January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 7

water, nutrients, and sugar from moving up and down in the tree vascular system, stressing the tree and, oftentimes, killing the tree,” Krouse says.

He adds that mulch retains heat and moisture, benefiting the root system. But volcano mulching fosters the growth of decay fungi at the trunk and prevents the tree from hardening off before the winter freeze, causing the bark to split.

As for the trees in the Target parking lot, Krouse says the splitting of the bark can be caused by different factors. It may have been caused by improper mulching, or the trees may have been planted too deep, a situation that also creates girdling roots.

“Trees can recover from the effects of improper mulching, but the excess mulch needs to be removed and girdling roots often need to be pruned,” Krouse says.

Krouse says his urban forestry crew is working with city horticulture manager Mark Wagner’s crew to rectify the effects of improper mulching of the city’s trees by raking back old mulch piles and pruning roots.

Most importantly, Krouse and Wagner have trained the crews on the correct way to mulch trees, leaving some space near the trunk.

Now that you, too, know about these devastating effects, you may never again be able to walk by a parking lot tree erupting from a volcano of mulch without dropping to your knees and clawing back the pile.

POSSUM CITY

Arboricide The interfering, tree-killing mistakes of well-intentioned landscapers

BY ELEANOR SCOTT

T

he grassy medians in the East Knoxville Target parking lot are planted with small maples and oaks. The grass is neatly trimmed and each tree has a tidy cone of dark mulch packed around its trunk. At first glance, it looks like an ideal parking lot, like an architect’s CGI rendition of a utopian shopping center, one that attains “green” goals without requiring us to give up our cars.

If you take a closer look, you will see long vertical wounds in the bark of these young trees and the exposed wood rotting at the base. If you kneel down beside a tree and scrape back the mulch, you will find thin false or “adventitious” roots growing from the trunk just under the surface. Some of these roots are beginning to wrap around the trunk.

This tidy cone of mulch is the dreaded “volcano mulching,” a practice of uninformed landscapers

that is responsible for weakening and killing the very trees it is meant to nurture and protect.

According to a Target manager, the parking lot landscaping is contracted out by the corporate owner of the strip mall in which the Target is located. He didn’t know the name of the company used, or who specifically is responsible for hiring them. Due to their mulching game, we can infer the landscapers are not professional arborists.

Before Mayor Madeline Rogero hired arborist Kasey Krouse in 2012 as Knoxville’s first urban forester, the city was killing its trees with volcano mulching.

Krouse explains that the hill of excess mulch piled against the base of a volcano-mulched tree causes the growth of adventitious roots that encircle or “girdle” the trunk.

“Girdling roots restrict the flow of

Before Mayor Madeline Rogero hired arborist Kasey Krouse in 2012 the city was killing its trees with volcano mulching.

8

KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

Photo by Eleanor Scott

as Knoxville’s first urban forester,

Thanks to longtime underwriter Cortese Tree Specialists, all WUOT listeners know “Tree topping hurts one of nature’s classical performances.”

How does tree topping hurt?

“Topping of trees is done by non-professional tree cutters,” Krouse says. “Tree topping leaves large wounds, which decay the tree. Trees that are topped have a shorter life expectancy and will often become more susceptible to breaking. [They] will spend a lot of resources in growth to make up for the lost tree canopy. This growth is in the form of tree sprouts. As these sprouts get larger, they are more prone to breaking from wind, snow, or ice than if the original branch was left to grow. In order to prevent this, tree owners will often top trees several times, which ends up costing more.”

Why would anyone maim their trees this way?

“Tree cutters will often employ fear tactics when trying to sell tree-topping services, telling people that topping the tree is the only way to prevent the tree from falling or causing property damage,” Krouse says.

Krouse recommends the website treesaregood.org for solid tree intel and encourages people to seek a professional arborist for tree work on their property. ◆ Eleanor Scott is a freelance writer and columnist living in East Knoxville. Possum City tells small stories of wildlife and people thriving on the edges of the city.

PERSPECTIVES

Flawed Analysis Does Knoxville really need a new $150 million arena?

BY JOE SULLIVAN

A

recent consultant’s study does a good job of identifying problems with the antiquated Knoxville Civic Auditorium and Coliseum, but is flawed in its assessment of solutions.

The study, conducted for the city

by Convention, Sports and Leisure, concludes that the 6,500-seat coliseum is deficient beyond reclamation and needs to be replaced.

After canvassing numerous more modern arenas in comparably sized cities, the study recommends that Knoxville ought to have a new 10,000-seat arena with state-of-theamenities. Building such a facility, it projects, would draw many more events to the city and double the coliseum’s attendance of 180,000, which is the lowest of any of the comparable cities surveyed. “Failure to do so will result in continued erosion of market share and diminishing event and attendance levels at the KCAC,” it says.

The study goes on to state that, “Should the KCAC be decommissioned and no other facilities are developed, remaining event venues that presently exist in Knoxville would not be able to sufficiently accommodate KCAC’s displaced activity.”

This is where the flaws in CSL’s analysis start coming to the fore. The first is its assumption that no other venue in Knoxville could meet the need, while giving a superficial dust-off to the

one that might: namely, Thompson-Boling Arena. The second is its failure to include in its analysis of comparables the one city that could come closest to serving as a model for Knoxville in this very regard: Columbia, S.C. The 18,000-seat Colonial Life Arena in Columbia was built by the University of South Carolina in 2002 and is home to the university’s men’s and women’s basketball teams. But it takes pains to bill itself as a “multi-purpose arena” and its bookings even during basketball season are a testament to that.

Between now and early March the arena will host four performances of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, three Monster Jam events, concerts by R. Kelly and Janet Jackson, a Winter Jam event, and a Disney Live family show.

These bookings put the lie to one of the reasons CSL doesn’t consider Thompson-Boling fit to meet Knoxville’s needs—because it “is limited in terms of availability due to basketball season, which usually conflicts with large tour kick-off dates.” No doubt, adept scheduling is involved on the part of Comcast Spector, which operates Colonial Life, whereas Thompson-Boling is managed by a 30–year university employee, Tim Reese, who is nearing retirement age.

A look at UT’s basketball schedule shows that there are two weekends in

each of January and February when there are no men’s or women’s home games. Yet Thompson-Boling only has bookings on three of these 12 evenings.

Colonial Life has also gotten rid of what CSL considers “perhaps the biggest issue for concert and live entertainment promoters at Thompson-Boling—that alcohol sales and consumption is prohibited.” (Except in the suites leased to big donors who can stock and consume as much booze as they like.) Colonial Life offers beer and wine at non-university events while adhering to a Southeastern Conference ban on their sale at games.

It seems clear that the city’s consultants didn’t even look into the possibility that Thompson-Boling might do the same. Had they done so, they surely would have noted that State Rep. Martin Daniel is pushing hard for just such a change in UT policy. Daniel estimates that the university is missing about $500,000 in revenues on just the events held at TB in 2014 without taking into account how many other events it may have missed out on because of the policy.

As parochial and hypocritical as the policy may be, UT Vice Chancellor for Communications Margie Nichols says there is “nothing in the works” to change it while adding that, “I’m not saying it couldn’t be discussed.” If Mayor Madeline Rogero were to initiate the discussion in the name of strengthening Knoxville’s attractions in an area of weakness, I’ll bet the university would listen.

To be sure, a state-of-the-art new arena would have even more pulling power, but I can’t imagine the city justifying CSL’s price tag of close to $150 million. That’s more than the

now not-so-new convention center cost and would more than double the city’s debt. Finance Director Jim York offers, as a rule of thumb, that each $1 million in new debt takes $70,000 in annual debt service at present interest rates. So that equates to $10.5 million a year for which city taxpayers would have to foot the bill, most probably in the form of a 24-cent property tax increase (though CSL lists some other less probable financing options).

One thing Colonial Life offers that Thompson-Boling can’t match is ice. So even if the old coliseum were shuttered for the rest of the year, it would still need to stay open during hockey season as a home for our beloved Ice Bears. As the CSL report brings out, its rink size is below standard and its 4,700 seating capacity for hockey is the smallest in the league. But then again, average attendance during last year’s championship season was only 3,400 and there were only three sell-outs.

Making a virtue of necessity, a retro or vintage hockey arena might have some cachet. After all, Fenway Park in Boston is more than 100 years old and has an undersized playing field.

But does anyone think that Red Sox fans would trade it in for anything?

As ugly as Thompson-Boling Arena is to look at from the outside, it’s become quite handsome on the inside since a $20 million renovation in 2007 that upgraded seating and concourses. The renovation also added to the load-bearing capacity of its roof to support events, such as the circus, for which the Civic Coliseum’s riggings are inadequate.

In sum, Knoxville should look no further than Columbia for a model that could result in a win-win for both UT and the city. ◆

Knoxville should look no further than Columbia, S.C. for a model that could result in a win-win for both UT and the city.

January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 9

Photo by Clay Duda

Timed Travel KAT’s old-fashioned trolleys may get new schedules, routes

BY S. HEATHER DUNCAN

T

he mist is turning to rain as the downtown trolley pulls to the curb on Main Street one afternoon shortly before Christmas. The doors open, breathing out a smell of wet wool and stale beer. Riders arrange themselves on the green padded seats among shiny brass fittings and glowing wood paneling. Three generations of a Spanish-speaking family climb a second set of steps to sit high in the back. In the front, the driver greets a man in a wheelchair by name and nimbly snaps his wheels in place for the ride.

“I’m used to public transit in bigger cities that is not as good,” says Pat Beck, who describes herself as temporarily homeless in Knoxville.

She finds the trolley waits reasonable, the trolley drivers “universally respectful and mannerly,” and the ride “family-oriented, because (regulars)

10

KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

get to know each other, and that improves safety.”

Knoxville’s trolley riders are generally a happy bunch. Their chief complaints about the three free downtown trolley routes is that they want more: more routes, going farther, running later. They won’t get all that they ask for, but Knoxville Area Transit has just unveiled a plan intended to expand and improve the quality of the service, at no extra cost to taxpayers.

Among the proposed improvements are trolley service to the Old City every 10 minutes, a posted schedule for every trolley stop, and later service on weekdays—all rolling out in a few months.

The plan was announced in December after an online survey and six “listening sessions” were conducted at various downtown businesses during the fall. Dawn Distler, KAT

director of transit, says the project grew out of feedback she received soon after starting the job 18 months ago. Everyone told her they loved the trolleys, but didn’t know when they would show up, and thought they didn’t go to the right places.

Distler is the first to hold her city position, which was created by Mayor Madeline Rogero after a consultant analyzing the city’s bus system found its governance too confusing. Distler jumped in feet first.

An important early result of the trolley study, Distler says, is a changed understanding of the purpose of the trolleys. They are not just moving tourists around—which had until recently been seen as their primary focus—but also downtown residents and workers. City employees have been given free bus passes that bring them into the city center so they can take the trolley to work, Distler says, and business people and government officials are using the trolley to scoot between meetings.

Riders on different trolleys in the week before Christmas seemed almost exclusively to be locals: A mix of big families, professionals on short rides, disabled downtown residents, people living in shelters, and residents of low-income housing complexes within walking distance of downtown.

(It’s also not unusual to see locals with kids who are just taking a spin for the sake of the ride, and the occasional chance to ring the bell.)

The trolley drivers tend to be gregarious and often greet riders by name. For public transportation, the atmosphere is unusually friendly.

Strangers joke with each other, look for each other’s lost items, and offer cough drops to the afflicted on the opposite end of the trolley.

Even with the University of Tennessee on winter break, the Vol trolley is packed. A well-dressed woman asks the trolley driver if he knows a non-profit where she can volunteer for Christmas, and they strike up a conversation about their faith. (“All you got to do is be obedient,” says the driver. “That’s the thing our human nature doesn’t want to do.”) An older black lady wearing a knitted cap with ear flaps and pompoms tries to convince some little boys across the aisle to strike up a round of “Jingle Bells” with her.

Avoiding Cumberland Avenue construction, the trolley travels

through the UT campus. Its stops aren’t marked by signs. Miranda Starkey and a friend are picking at each other good-naturedly on the ride to University Commons. They live at the Austin Homes public housing complex and walk to the trolley to go to the library and Walmart, Starkey says. She’d like to trolley to run later on weekdays and at least half the day on Sundays, but generally she says the waits are reasonable and the service is a big help.

The service times, frequency, and routes of the trolleys would change under the KAT proposal. All routes— most of which currently run until 6 p.m. weekdays—would continue service until at 8 p.m. weekdays and 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

The later service is something that visitors have said they’d like, enabling them to go out to dinner and take the trolley back to their hotel, says Kim Bumpas, president of Visit Knoxville.

The majority of those who took KAT’s online trolley survey wanted a longer service day, with service running until 10 p.m. (158). Almost as many (154) said they wanted trolleys running every five minutes instead of every 10 to 12 minutes.

Almost half those surveyed (220) asked for service to be expanded to the Old City, something Bumpas says would help tourists, too. KAT plans to change the Gay Street Line to make a loop through the Old City, with a well-lit stop opposite the free parking area there.

The next most popular expansion possibilities were around Cumberland Avenue (148 votes) and the downtown waterfront (92). KAT has prioritized the waterfront for now. Distler says the Cumberland Avenue road work makes it too hard to expand service there at the moment, and the city is already offering free bus rides to that area during construction.

The new waterfront emphasis would be part of an updated Downtown Loop. It would serve The Landings apartments, where many University of Tennessee students live, while still connecting with the transit center and Civic Coliseum parking garage.

“From a visitor perspective, the waterfront makes sense,” Bumpas says. “Sometimes visitors want to see the water because it’s a river city, they like to go down there and walk around or go to Calhoun’s.”

The revised Vol line would run to

“I’m used to public transit in bigger cities that is not as good.”

—PAT BECK

the same locations around UT but terminate at a new, covered Locust Street hub. This would eliminate direct service from the transit center to the university, but that can be achieved by bus or by connecting between trolleys. In theory, that should get easier because all the trolleys will be scheduled to stop at the Locust Street hub at about the same time, Distler says. That hub is likely to be by the parking lot at the old Supreme Court building, she says.

Eliminating bus runs through the parking lots of Summit Towers and the Marriott, reducing the total length of the Vol line, and eliminating duplicated service (multiple trolleys going to the same place) will save enough time to improve trolley frequency to once every seven minutes on the downtown loop/waterfront line and to every 10-12 minutes on the Vol line, Distler says. Although trolleys are currently supposed to run every 10-12 minutes, the length of the Vol line combined with construction on Cumberland Avenue and downtown had stretched waits for the Vol line to 20 to 25 minutes, Distler says. “We were always running a little bit behind,” she says.

Those who took KAT’s online survey reported much longer waits than advertised and complained about uneven spacing of trolleys.

Liam Hysjulien takes the Vol trolley daily from near his downtown apartment to work at UT after he stopped paying for campus parking two years ago. “I can’t say it comes every 10 to 12 minutes, but it has always come at the same general time,” he says. “It’s super-convenient, and the drivers have always been really friendly and helpful about

passing along information.”

Hysjulien says he’d like KAT to add a GPS tracking system like the buses on campus, allowing riders to tell how far away the bus is by using a smartphone app.

This isn’t in the current plan, but KAT does propose to run the trolleys on set schedules for the first time ever. Scheduled times would be posted at each stop. (Signage at the stops would also be larger and clearer, with extra signs to direct visitors to popular nearby attractions like the elevator to the waterfront and the Knoxville Museum of Art.) The public feedback process revealed a widespread desire for trolley service to expand to redeveloping neighborhoods near the city center, such as Emory Place, Happy Holler, Sevier Avenue, Fourth & Gill and Parkridge.

Distler says such an expansion would “require a much heftier investment” because it would likely require new trolleys and new employees. She says she’d rather focus on educating residents about the bus options in those neighborhoods, and improving those if needed.

“That serves more people, and later (at night),” Distler says. “To me it’s a matter of looking at what Knoxville needs as a whole, and not just the downtown area.”

Of course, the trolleys are free.

Buses aren’t. But Distler says that different people have repeatedly approached her during the trolley project to say they’d be willing to pay for service between two points—service that does, in fact, exist via bus line.

Distler says KAT kept its trolley proposal “budget neutral” partly because she wanted to start right

away. “We didn’t want to wait until another budget cycle to make some changes we knew would be better for the public and people who work and live downtown right now,” she says.

“This gives us a period of time to see how our budget-neutral changes work, and see what we need to do to expand the service more or expand bus service more.”

The first of two public open houses about the plan will be held Friday, Jan. 15 from 9 a.m. to noon at Lawson McGhee Library. Distler hopes to learn whether KAT’s proposal came close to what people wanted. Since posting the plan online, Distler says she has heard satisfaction about the Old City route and the expanded hours. But she says people insist they want trolley service to extend further outside the downtown core, especially to the South Waterfront once redevelopment at the Baptist Hospital site and Sevier Avenue area are complete.

Bumpas says adding these kinds of routes would benefit tourism, but tourists are finding their way to hip nearby neighborhoods already.

“Trolley service there would be an added benefit, but we really should be happy and celebratory with where we’re at,” she says. “Because a lot of cities don’t have this, especially with it being free, and we get that feedback all the time. While it can always be better, it’s pretty dang awesome right now.” ◆

Public Forums It’s not too late to share what you think about the trolley proposal, which you can read at knoxvilletn.gov.

Two public open houses will be held on the plan in January: From 9 a.m. to noon Friday at Lawson McGee Library, and from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Jan. 21 at the Knoxville Station Community Room.

Then the Knoxville Transit Authority will hold a public hearing on the proposal at its Jan. 28 meeting, and vote on a final version at its Feb. 25 meeting. Each will be held at 3 p.m. in the City-County Building at 400 Main Street. You can also email comments by going to katbus.com and clicking on the “contact us” link, or calling 637-3000.

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January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 11

PART 2 OF A 3-PART SERIES

EQUAL PROTECTION Amid rising gang violence, can KPD overcome the doubts of Knoxville’s black community?

BY S. HEATHER DUNCAN

12

KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

PART TWO OF A THREE-PART SERIES:

the Knoxville Police Department DEC. 17 - THE POLICE: Checks and Balances: How well does KPD police its own officers?

JAN. 14 - THE COMMUNITY: Equal Justice: Can KPD overcome the doubts of Knoxville’s black community?

JAN. 21 - THE ARBITRATOR: Citizen Review: Does the Police Advisory Review Committee hold KPD accountable?

16 years with the Knoxville Police Department. But he tells the man he can put him in touch with the right person in the police department.

The would-be informer thinks Hopkins just doesn’t want to go after the big fish.

“You all come over here and mess with these people in the ’hood, and they ain’t got nothin’,” he says “You could warn people, but you don’t do that. You take ’em straight to jail.”

“You don’t know me,” says Hopkins, who the night before tried to let a man off with a citation for drug possession until realizing it was the guy’s third drug arrest. Those require a felony charge. “You don’t know how I do business.”

“You don’t got to bust everybody all the time,” the man says.

“I don’t,” says Hopkins. “But lemme ask you, is it okay for someone to come here to sell dope?”

The man shrugs and shuffles his feet. “If they’re not messing with kids or with old people,” he says.

“Do you know how many times I’ve been in this parking lot picking up shell casings?” Hopkins asks. “If these dealers weren’t here, there wouldn’t be innocent people getting hit.”

“All the time, they just mess with folk on my side of town,” the man says. “‘They?’”

“The police.”

When you talk about police, the community, and race, there are a lot of “theys.” Since a 2014 police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., raised questions nationwide about police brutality toward blacks, local tensions between Knoxville’s black community and police have been discussed publicly by hundreds of people who attended forums held by Community Step Up, the FBI, and a local Black Lives Matter group.

Many blacks in Knoxville say they are targeted by police for minor traffic violations as an excuse to search them for drugs or check for warrants. In 2015, several court cases appeared to show a few white officers who patrol East Knoxville doing this repeatedly.

Residents of poor black neighborhoods, especially on the East Side, say they live “in a police state,”

“In our community, when we see law enforcement, we don’t see protection.

We see being stopped, arrested, and charged, even if we were not doing anything wrong.”

—THE REV. JOHN BUTLER, president of the Knoxville chapter of the NAACP

BY THE NUMBERS

2014 Knoxville Police Department Crime Reports Calls for Service* Arrests Field Interviews Collisions

EAST

WEST

UNKNOWN

TOTAL

16,252 120,901 5,531 2,476 3,142

16,086 124,178 6,114 3,027 5,641

0 0 0 0 208

32,338 248,561 12,246 5,503 8,991

*Does not include duplicate calls or wireless hang up calls

Photos by Clay Duda

L

ate on a Friday night, Officer J.D. Hopkins is walking through a cluster of black men huddled against the cold in a courtyard at the Walter P. Taylor Homes. Scattered along the walkway are empty Taaka vodka bottles, cigarette butts, and a child’s pink-and-purple striped sock.

When the white officer approaches, the men go silent. The harsh streetlight above casts their faces in shadow.

“What are we doing?” Hopkins asks.

“Hangin’ out,” one responds.

“Waiting on my daddy,” another says quickly.

“You gotta be careful,” Hopkins warns them, knowing they aren’t residents. When you are hanging out at this public housing project at 11:30 p.m., and you don’t live there, questions come to mind. (Also, legally you are trespassing.)

One of the men separates from the group and asks to speak to the officer. They step aside. Hopkins, who works this beat five days a week, is used to this. But the conversation that follows is not what he’s expecting. In fact, it is a microcosm of a larger debate about the relationship between police and the community.

It starts with two men who are frustrated because they feel stereotyped.

The stocky black man wearing a Stanford University sweatshirt starts berating Hopkins for arresting penny-ante drug dealers in East Knoxville instead of going for the big dealers he says are in Sequoyah Hills.

Hopkins explains that the west side is not his patch. He’s been patrolling “Short East” (the part of East Knoxville closest to downtown) for most of

KPD Officer J.D. Hopkins talks with a person who was part of a group of men blasting music late night in Walter P. Taylor Homes in East Knoxville. He says it’s the third times he’s warned them about listening to loud music in the parking lot.

January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 13

During a traffic stop, KPD Officer J.D. Hopkins questions a man pulled over on suspicion of soliciting prostitution.

surrounded by cops who assume everyone on the street is a criminal.

“In our community, when we see law enforcement, we don’t see protection,” says the Rev. John Butler, president of the Knoxville chapter of the NAACP and pastor at Clinton Chapel AME Zion Church in Mechanicsville, a historically black neighborhood in Northwest Knoxville. “We see being stopped, arrested, and charged, even if we were not doing anything wrong.”

Andre Canty, president of 100 Black Men of Greater Knoxville and an organizer of the Knoxville Black Lives Matter chapter, says, “As a black man, I have to walk out every day and think, ‘Is this going to be my last day?’

[Unlike a cop], I didn’t sign up for that.

I didn’t sign up for a difficult job.”

However, the Knoxville Police Department’s arrest and citation records don’t show that blacks are arrested or ticketed more often than whites. Whites are also more often on the receiving end when police use force—although KPD uses force against black suspects at a rate far exceeding their proportion in the 14

KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

city’s population. Because only 17 percent of Knoxville’s residents are black, some activists suggest that poverty is a factor more than race.

And during the last few months, some Knoxvillians have set aside distrust as both the black community and Knoxville police grapple and grieve over a spate of gang-related shootings. In particular, the death of Zaevion Dobson has galvanized a new series of public marches and meetings.

The 15-year-old Fulton High School student, whose memory has been praised twice by President Barack Obama, died shielding two girls from random gang-related gunfire last month, police say. Days after Dobson’s funeral brought thousands of mourners to Overcoming Believers Church in East Knoxville, a public forum was held there on how to stop the violence.

Gang members were invited to attend, and to support that effort, Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch told his officers not to arrest any wanted suspects near the meeting during a five-hour period.

KPD policies do not allow profiling. Rausch says biased policing isn’t tolerated. (A handful of states, although not Tennessee, have outlawed bias-based policing, in some cases classifying it as a felony.)

Rausch attended many of last year’s community forums related to police and race, and says he investigated claims made there against the department, finding none true. He questions why more residents of high-crime neighborhoods don’t work as partners with police to stop crime, and some older black residents at the public meetings agreed with him.

But many young people aren’t buying it. “They try to play it off like, ‘We’re KPD, we can be nice. You should love us,’” says Darius J. Hunt, a

27-year-old who grew up in East Knoxville, including several stints in Walter P. Taylor Homes. “They have this delusional view of themselves.

But when they’re really in these neighborhoods, that’s not what they’re doing, and that’s not how they act.”

The gap between the police experience and that of some vocal black residents is wide.

FLASHBACKS

Most agree the worst moment in the relationship between Knoxville’s police and the black community came in 1998, after four men, three of them black, died in seven months after altercations with police. (Two of the black men were unarmed, and one was suicidal.)

In the face of public outrage, then-Mayor Victor Ashe agreed to create the Police Advisory Review Committee (PARC), a group of community members who evaluate police policy and complaints against the Knoxville Police Department.

At the time of the shootings, Ron Davis was an organizer of Citizens for Police Review, a nonprofit that helped establish PARC to provide oversight of police.

“The tension is still there,” he says. “The corner hasn’t been turned in terms of getting to the place where all people feel comfortable when they are confronted with police officers.”

For a generation of blacks in Knoxville, the shootings define their perception of police.

“Before I got in the streets, before I ever went to jail, it was just like—being able to see the things [the police] did to people—it was like they were the real gangsters,” says Hunt, who has had several drug convictions and admits to dealing drugs in the past.

“There were instances where I know

“As a black man, I have to walk out every day and think, ‘Is this going to be my last day?’

[Unlike a cop], I didn’t sign up for that.

I didn’t sign up for a difficult job.”

—ANDRE CANTY, president of 100 Black Men of Greater Knoxville

they’ve killed people and gotten away with it, especially on the East Side. …

But if I go and kill somebody in my own community, they’re going to fry me.”

Joe Tolbert Jr., a black professionalwho grew up in Mechanicsville and East Knoxville, says he thinks blacks like himself in their 20s and 30s feel less comfortable calling the police for help than those in their parents’ generation.

“If I call cops on this person, what’s actually going to happen, and what are the repercussions?” Tolbert says he’d wonder. “Could they get hurt or killed because I made this call?

Because you just never know.”

BLACK OR POOR

Often people clarify that things aren’t so bad between police and Knoxville residents because “we’re not like Ferguson.”

“Right, but that’s because white and black people here are related,” says Elandria Williams. She is an organizer and educator on Southern economic issues for the Highlander Research and Education Center, a nonprofit that supports community organizing around issues related to social justice, equality, and sustainability in Appalachia. She says police profiling in Knoxville may have more to do with poverty than race, with poor blacks and poor whites disproportionately affected.

“The work I do nationally is around policing,” she says. “It’s a very nuanced line … in this particular region, how race and class fall in that policing conversation. So it’s not as cut and dry as in other cities with a major black population.”

Butler, with the NAACP, says he thinks race and economic status are factors in who becomes a crime suspect and how they are treated. “If you can afford an attorney, it’s more likely the investigation will go at a considered pace,” he says.

Williams argues that police exist primarily to protect property—which means that historically they were not working for blacks, many of whose ancestors were property, and who even today tend to have less of it to protect.

“Police tend to pick on people who are less affluent,” agrees Joe Kendrick, executive director of Knoxville Community Step Up, which works to help reduce the number of

waited while the officer called for black men behind bars. He and his backup. wife have spent 30 years teaching Knoxville Police could not find a study skills to public school students record of the incident, which would in Knoxville. have occurred more than a decade Kendrick, a veterinarian, says he ago. More recently, Hunt jumped from learned to wear a tie as a survival a moving car, allowing it to continue skill, just as his grandson has learned down the street without a driver, he won’t be hassled when wearing his because he feared being caught Webb School uniform. without a license while on parole. (He “When you have survival skills, admits it was a bad decision.) race seems to be less important,” Kendrick says, which is why Community Step Up offered a forum last PROFILING August at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church Four times a year, KPD’s Internal to teach young black men how to Affairs Department conducts an respond when stopped by police. internal review of the department’s Among the 250 people who arrests, tickets, property seizures, attended, some accused his group of and field interviews, looking for any teaching people how to give up their indication that people are being rights. He says that wasn’t the point. treated differently based on their race, “I can’t change police attitudes sex, or age. Reports issued for the right now,” Kendrick says. “What I’m first three quarters of 2015 found no trying to tell my son or grandson is: In indication of bias-based policing. spite of how that police guy acts, you need to think, ‘I’m going to do whatever I can do to go home tonight.’”

Because there are mothers

BY THE NUMBERS waiting up for them. Even in neighborhoods your momma told you never to visit, mommas are waiting up.

Kendrick, Rausch, and Avice Reid MALE MALE MALE FEMALE with the Police Advisory Review (White) (Black) (Other) (White) Committee all advise people to Chief 1 0 0 0 cooperate with the police, then file a complaint later if they think they were Captain 6 1 0 1 mistreated. Reid points out that the Sergeant 50 5 0 0 recording devices are gathering Specialist III 1 0 0 0 evidence all the time, and can back up Deputy Chief 2 1 0 1 a claim.

“It’s a lot easier to tell me what Lieutenant 26 1 0 5 they did wrong than for us to come to Criminal Investigator III 2 0 0 0 the scene after you’re dead,” Reid says.

Police Officer I-IV 233 18 6 34 But Hunt, who says he has had more than a dozen brushes with DEMOGRAPHIC TOTAL 321 26 6 41 police, disagrees with that approach.

“By complying with it, it’s like you agree,” he says, recalling an incident when he refused to follow a police officer’s commands. “The cop told “I can’t change police attitudes me to spread my legs and right now. What I’m trying to tell tried to push my head into my car. I pulled my hands my son or grandson is: In spite of how out of his so I could brace that police guy acts, you need to think, myself on the car,” he says.

“If I let him bust my ‘I’m going to do whatever I can head on his car, there’s no do to go home tonight.’” guarantee I would have got out of that situation. I saved —JOE KENDRICK, my life or a trip to the executive director of Knoxville Community Step Up hospital. … I’m not trying to fight him, but I’m not going to let him abuse me, either.”

He says he sat down and

KPD Rank as of December 10, 2015

FEMALE (Black)

RANK TOTAL

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2

1 8 55 1 4 32 2 293

2

396

January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 15

KPD officers question a young woman during a traffic stop on E. Fifth Ave. in East Knoxville.

There was one complaint about racial profiling filed with the city’s Police Advisory Review Committee during the third quarter, but it was determined that the officer knew the driver being pulled over and was aware the person didn’t have a license.

In each quarter, 76 to 77 percent of the people ticketed by the Knoxville Police were white, while between 18-19 percent where black. That’s pretty representative of the city’s population, which is 17 percent black.

A slightly higher proportion of of black people were arrested—between 23 and 25 percent—while 74 to 78 percent of people arrested were white.

However, the numbers get less proportional when it comes to incidents when police use force against suspects. Blacks citizens were involved 44 percent of the time.

Nevertheless, the majority—54 percent—were white, according to KPD’s own internal reports. (Hispanics made up an additional 2 percent.)

“We don’t profile,” Rausch says.

“We pull people over for things which are legal or safety issues.”

In one recent example of alleged profiling, Officer Thomas Turner pulled over Jamie Allen Foxx repeatedly during the course of a year, often 16

KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

for minor traffic violations such as window tinting, then found reasons to search him or his car for drugs. The most recent charges were thrown out by the judge, who said Turner didn’t have probable cause to hold Foxx until a drug dog could arrive.

Rausch says this wasn’t racial profiling but criminal profiling, because Foxx had a (short) police record.

But Butler, with the NAACP, notes that people who have been released after serving their jail time have rights, too, and police should not treat them as if they are committing crimes at all times.

Many black men say they’ve been the victims of profiling.

“I don’t think there’s a person in this barber shop who hasn’t had a negative interaction: profiling, continuously getting pulled over,” says Chuck Brown as he gets his hair cut in Gam’s Barber Shop in Mechanicsville. “They just want to know your name for outstanding warrants and probation violations.”

Another customer, Darrow Davenport, who works for the city at the E.V. Davidson Community Center in East Knoxville, says he is careful how he conducts himself when pulled over. “I’m definitely scared,” he says.

“You have more fear if you’re a black man.”

Rex Howard, one of the barbers, says he thinks police training contributes to these loaded situations.

“Cops start out probably because it’s a passion,” he says. “Then in training, they’re taught to fear certain areas, to be extra-prepared for the worst. … In a pull-over situation, then, everybody’s nervous. The cops are nervous. The people are nervous. And the first person who makes a wrong move is in trouble.”

Hunt says he received more than a dozen traffic tickets (only one for speeding) during the year after he started driving. He says they ended up

being so expensive that he lost his license when he was unable to pay them, a problem he says is common in East Side neighborhoods.

“I started selling drugs just to pay off my tickets,” he says. “In one year I went from having a license and insurance to owing them $1,400 for tickets and court costs” before fees.

“Especially on the East Side, most people don’t even spend $1,400 a month on rent and utilities combined.

If you want to go to school, if you have kids, you want to have a license so you can drive back and forth. It disenfranchises the entire community.”

In Mechanicsville, they also tell stories of being targeted by police.

Black women, too, express distrust of the police. Williams recalls walking back to her car with a girlfriend late at night when they felt footsteps behind them. “We looked back, and there are two men coming after us, and we got so scared,” she recalls. “So we took off. Broke some heels in process.” Although they saw a policeman, at first they didn’t consider asking for his help. “[The presence of] a cop did not signal it was okay to stop, until we saw he was black,” she says. “That says everything I know about police.”

Law-enforcement agencies try to recruit more minority officers partly to build trust with black residents. At the FBI forum, city, county, state, and federal law-enforcement officials say they’d like to attract more.

Just 20 of the Knoxville Police Department’s 293 patrol officers are black—7 percent, much less than the city’s overall black population of 17 percent. (Six more patrol officers are other racial minorities.)

Rausch says he is trying to make sure that the Knoxville Police Department isn’t unintentionally eliminating good minority candidates with the cognitive hiring test it has used since the 1980s. “Experts will tell you these can be biased,” he says.

“I’m definitely scared.

You have more fear if you’re a black man.”

—DARROW DAVENPORT

“We’re not an occupying force.

Our efforts are to keep the community secure.”

—KNOXVILLE POLICE CHIEF DAVID RAUSCH

An industrial and occupational psychology testing company is helping Knoxville develop a new test with both cognitive and behavioral elements, covering both book learning and practical knowledge, as Rausch describes it.

EAST/WEST

East Side residents like Diane Jordan, who represented the area on the Knox County Commission for many years, say they feel overwhelmed by the level of police presence. Jordan’s brother, Kevin Taylor, was murdered in 2004 after a botched cocaine delivery, and two of her eight sons served time for drug convictions. She knows the crime problem is real, but she says police have overreacted.

Starting four or five years ago, she says, “If you were driving down the street or walking, they’d stop you.

Now it’s like the twilight zone at 9 [p.m.]. Police have shut it down. You’re scared to go out after 9”—because of the police, not the crime.

Jordan says once the area around Walter P. was designated a gun zone, “It got to where you couldn’t stand and talk, or walk. If you were on street, they’d stop and search you,” she says.

“You had no rights if you lived over here, and if you were black.”

But Jordan acknowledges that police might receive mixed signals: “Older people are calling all the time wanting more police presence,” she says, adding that neighborhood watches have “turned into neighbors spying on you.”

Criminal defense attorney Mike Whalen notes that simply living in rough areas of East Knoxville can be a strike against you criminally. For example, police have to prove just two factors from a list of possibilities to show someone is in a gang, which makes a related crime eligible for enhanced punishments. One of those factors is simply living in “a criminal gang’s area.”

Hunt says his experience has been that police seem to think, ”‘Okay, you’re in this area, so we’re going to target you.’ It’s just you being there is like a violation of the law.”

Rausch says the areas with the most calls for service are assigned the most officers.

“We’re not an occupying force,” Rausch says. “Our efforts are to keep the community secure.”

KPD’s 2014 annual report actually showed more calls coming from the West District (124,178) than the East District (120,901). The number of arrests was also greater in the West District: 6,114, compared with 5,531 in the East District. But according to KPD calculations, about 9,000 more people live in the West District, although the two districts cover about the same number of square miles.

Since that could vary significantly by neighborhood, the Mercury requested information on call volume by police squad in early November.

Public Information Officer Darrell DeBusk says the department cannot provide such a breakdown because it is in the process of migrating to a new records-management system.

Patrol officers in the East District are more likely to use force and more likely to be flagged as potential problems by the department.

A 2014 KPD “response to resistance analysis” produced by its internal affairs unit found that half the incidents when police used force on a suspect occurred in the East District; 34 percent of such confrontations happened in the West District, and the remainder were in special units.

The department has an early warning program to help identify officers who are developing problem behavior patterns; the program automatically flags officers annually and each quarter if they meet a certain threshold for complaints, internal investigations, vehicle

pursuits, discipline, and use of force.

Rausch says being flagged is not necessarily an indicator that the officer is a problem. But over the past three years, officers in the East District were flagged three times as often as those in the West District.

And within the East District, four officers from a single squad (D Squad) were flagged, some repeatedly—as many as in all the other East District squads combined.

“Like many people, I want to live in a crime-free environment,” says Butler with NAACP. “But I also want to live in a community where my

Officer J.D. Hopkins arrests a man in Walter P. Taylor Homes for felony posession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia, a misdemeanor. Hopkins initially sought to issue citations for the offenses, but was forced to take the man into custody after learning the marijuana offense was his fourth.

January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 17

rights will not be violated and I will feel safe.”

Hopkins is answering his questioner again, in another reversal of the cop stereotype.

“You just come here now and then,” says the black man in the Stanford shirt, in between the squat brick rectangles of Walter P. Taylor Homes.

“Every day I work,” says Hopkins.

Blue light flickers from a television onto their faces through an open window. “You never met me,” Hopkins tells the man. Without moving his feet, he leans his tall frame forward and his voice thickens. “You don’t know how I take care of people over here.

You ask anybody in here about me, and they’ll tell you.”

Maybe they do. Because as Hopkins continues weaving through the parking lots, the man emerges following 10 steps behind. At Hopkins’ police cruiser, the man gets a contact for the drug squad so he can give details about the West Knoxville drug supplier. “This should reflect on your stripes, too,” he tells Hopkins generously.

The officer chuckles and shakes his head. He offers to give the fellow a lift. The man says he’s staying at the rescue mission but can’t go there tonight because he’s been drinking.

He doesn’t want to get banned as the weather gets cold.

“It’s already cold,” says Hopkins, his breath hanging in the air. “I can call and get you in over there.”

No, the man wants to sleep on a church porch near the bus station.

“You sure? I don’t want you to be cold.” It’s something a momma would say.

He’s sure. So Hopkins pats him down before giving him a ride into town. In the car, Hopkins finally asks the man’s name.

“If I tell you my name, you’ll look me up and think I’m full of shit,” the man says. “I know who I am. … At least I’m trying to be a good boy now, and get back in with my momma.”

Turns out, Hopkins knows his mother. They agree she’s a good woman, a mother to be proud of.

The officer eases the car to a the curb and the men wave before heading in different directions, one into a crowd, another toward blue lights flashing a few blocks away. Into a night that hasn’t ended yet.◆ 18

KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

ON THE STREETS KPD officers don’t often “walk the beat,” but some residents say that’s exactly what’s needed

BY S. HEATHER DUNCAN

I

t’s one of the first truly cold nights of the winter when Officer J.D. Hopkins parks his patrol car next to a dumpster at Walter P. Taylor Homes and starts walking. The sodium lights in the parking lot don’t so much scatter the darkness as turn it the color of yellowed parchment. It’s closing in on 11 p.m. and 38 degrees, but plenty of people are in the parking lots that wind like a maze through the complex: men in ski caps huddled together smoking, young women gathering to hit the clubs, even children running and laughing.

“Hello. How are ya?” Hopkins calls to three teenage girls mincing along in heels and revealing tops, their curls bobbing.

“Cold,” one chatters.

“Why don’t you got a coat on?” he asks.

“I mean, not cold,” she says quickly, ducking her head and speeding up.

Ahead of him he hears the first shout: “Sarge!” The voice is not calling to him.

The word echoes away, from building to building, but in different voices. “Sarge! Sarge!”

“You hear that?” he asks. “That’s for the drug dealers, letting them know I’m coming.”

Hopkins tries to walk through Walter P. two or three times a night.

He’d like to arrest more dealers, but he figures if they leave because he keeps showing up, he’ll have done his job.

“The problem is not primarily the people who live here,” Hopkins says.

“It’s the people who come here to sell drugs and take advantage of the people who live here.”

Several different people approach Hopkins and ask to speak with him privately. Someone jokes that Hopkins has picked up a few pounds.

Hopkins is white, with a grayish buzz cut and a way of carrying himself that projects both compassion and authority. Everyone he encounters at Walter P. is black. But Hopkins has worked this neighborhood for the last 16 years, and for stretches before

that. He knows these folks. He’s eaten their barbecue.

SHOE LEATHER AND RELATIONSHIPS

Police Chief David Rausch says that community policing is different at KPD than at many other law enforcement agencies: It’s a department-wide philosophy instead of a “program.”

“Every officer is trained in community engagement and what that means, and that every contact … is an opportunity to build trust in the community and to build relationships,” Rausch said at an FBI-sponsored forum on race relations this fall.

Community policing is a general strategy focused on building ties and partnerships with neighbors as a way to address crime near their homes and businesses. In some towns, it’s an initiative with its own squad, whose members walk neighborhoods, sometimes with neighborhood-based precinct offices.

Knoxville doesn’t do that, Rausch says, because every officer should be using community policing principles— and because “walking the beat” doesn’t work in most of the city’s spread-out neighborhoods.

“Walking patrols aren’t effective outside the urban environment,” he says. “I encourage officers to stop and chat with people when driving.”

However, conversations with black community leaders and residents of Mechanicsville and East Knoxville demonstrate a huge demand for walking patrols.

Residents would trust police more if officers spent even one night a month walking the neighborhood and getting to know people, argues Darius Hunt, an East Knoxville resident on parole for a drug conviction.

“There’s no common level of human respect,” he says. “If they came into the community and made it to where people got to know them on a first-name basis, it would be different. As soon as these guys come out of the academy—a lot of people

have never lived in these areas and only know what they see in movies.

Make [the new recruits] see these are people’s children, just like you are.”

“If you could put precinct officers in a neighborhood, I guarantee crime would drop 50 percent in that area,” says Joe Kendrick, executive director of Knoxville Community Step Up, a group that aims to reduce the number of black men in jail. “It would be better to not have us meet when everybody’s angry.”

Capt. Eve Thomas, who heads the KPD internal affairs unit and who used to oversee the East Knoxville KPD district, says the department tried mandating that patrol officers spend some time on bikes. But then patrols had trouble responding quickly enough to calls.

At a recent meeting of the Police Advisory Review Committee, Sgt. Shane Watson said most officers would love to spend more time walking the beat, but they feel like “slaves to the radio,” rushing from one call to another.

Gary Gamble, whose barber shop, Gam’s Hair Fashions, is a community gathering place in Mechanicsville, expresses disappointment about the attitude he sees from police in the neighborhood. He says they rarely get out of the car.

When they do, he says, “I have tried to engage with them, and I don’t get a positive response, with a couple of exceptions,” he says.

Gamble’s shop is one of the few successful businesses in the once thriving blue-collar neighborhood that in recent years has grappled with poverty and crime. Many days, all the barber’s chairs are filled with black men, mostly in their 20s and 30s, getting a sleek trim. The “Gam’s Urban Flava” shop in the front offers black T-shirts that say, in white lettering, “Know Your Rights.” A long, detailed reference list follows, with advice such as “Say clearly and repeatedly, “I do not CONSENT TO ANY SEARCHES” and “Cops can and do lie.”

Gamble finishes trimming businessman Chuck Brown’s hair.

“Police presence is one thing,” Brown says. “Interaction is another. That’s what the whole beat-walking in the neighborhood is all about.”

Rex Howard, another barber at Gam’s, says when an officer walks in the shop, he’s frowning and holding his hand near his gun.

Everybody looks up.

Everybody stops breathing.

“I just want to see some cops smile now and then,” Howard says.

“You don’t always have to wear your badge on your face.”

Some officers, like Hopkins and Lt. Gordon Gwathney (who was defended by Walter P. residents when he had to subdue a violent, drug-addled woman there in March) find a way to spend more time getting to know locals. But they do have the advantage of patrolling populations concentrated in a small area.

Hopkins says he requested the night shift because there are fewer calls and more opportunities to “saturate the area” and focus on specific neighborhood problems, though he still sometimes faces busy call nights.

This spring, KPD officers started working the same shift every day for the first time, so they see the same people and circumstances regularly.

(Before, they worked a beat, but at different times of day.) Although it’s too soon to tell the impact on crime, Rausch says, “There’s more consistency, and that will start to resonate.”

Officers who do build relationships can make a lasting difference.

André Canty, an organizer of the Knoxville Black Lives Matter group, says his first role model was the late David Gaston. Gaston was a black policeman who worked as Canty’s school resource officer at Green Elementary School and later SouthDoyle Middle School. Canty recalls that Gaston would approach young black kids “not in an authoritative role” but as a friend, even if they had been in trouble before.

Police officers need to spend more time developing these human connections, Canty says. “Not just a finger in the face saying, ‘You’re a thug.’ Call them by their name. When a person has a name, they’re not a walking set of stereotypes. They’re a person.”

Rausch says KPD community policing includes outreach efforts like the community liaison program, which pairs officers with neighborhood organizations; the department’s chaplain program; the Citizen Police Academy; and neighborhood bike officers.

Community liaisons might be the closest thing to what residents mean when they ask for community policing. Liaisons are officers who volunteer to be the contact for a neighborhood group, attending neighborhood

association meetings and inviting calls at all hours about neighborhood safety problems.

“You develop a relationship, and it just makes people more comfortable that they’re really being listened to, because they do get things done,” says Paul Ruff, president of the Chilhowee Park Neighborhood Association. At the group’s request, their liaison officer has instigated more traffic patrols; his predecessor in the job helped arrange drug busts and prostitution stings, including at a house next door to Ruff’s.

Still, liaison assignments often last only a year or two. Ruff says the Chilhowee Park liaison officer has actually been assigned a new North Knoxville beat and is no longer in the neighborhood regularly.

Relationships in the neighborhood make police more effective crime-fighters, says KPD’s Thomas.

“The core of community policing is not that we solve crimes,” she says. “It’s that we talk to people and they solve crimes by telling us what they know.”

After trying to track down a report of gunshots on South Chestnut Street, Hopkins answers a call about a brick thrown through a window near the corner of Beamon Lake and Yellowstone roads. He recognizes the house.

He dealt with a fight there between two large groups several years back.

Tonight’s vandalism seems to be retaliation for a more personal fight between a man and a woman whose friends and relatives got involved in the revenge.

Officer Kevin Crigger arrived first and is talking with people in the house when Hopkins joins him.

A woman says two sisters threw the brick, accompanied by “Dave somebody.”

The men know their beat. Both ask at the same time, “Super Dave?”

“Yes,” she says.

“We know where Super Dave is,” Crigger says grimly. She continues for a moment before he has a second thought. “Wait, Westside Super Dave?” he clarifies.

“No, not Cocaine Super Dave!” she says with horror.

Hopkins nods. “It ain’t the crazy one,” he says to Crigger. “It’s the Super Dave that runs around with prostitutes.”

“Yes! That’s the one!” the woman agrees. One of the alleged brick-throwers “works the street,” she adds.

(How many Super Daves are there? Three, Hopkins says, although the third one “ain’t that super.”)

The witness sends Hopkins to an address on Castle Street to look for the girls, Super Dave, and matching bricks. At first Hopkins sees no bricks and thinks she was mistaken. He drives slowly up the street looking for other matches, but he keeps muttering, “She grew up out here. She knows the neighborhood.”

So he returns to the house. Super Dave, in a baseball cap and blinding white tennis shoes, has just pulled in.

Super Dave readily admits he rode along with the sisters “as backup” but denies brick-throwing involvement. He calls one of the girls, and Crigger speeds off to get her side of the story.

“You want your brick back?”

Hopkins asks Super Dave.

“It ain’t my brick!” Super Dave yells angrily.

Hopkins says nothing more. But he retrieves the brick from his back seat, walks past Super Dave, and sets it next to identical bricks securing the base of a basketball goal in the driveway.

Silently he retraces his steps to his car. Super Dave watches, also silent.

Hopkins drives away. He’s going to swing by the after-hours clubs on his beat, then make his way back to Walter P. “I work for those people,” he says. ◆

“I just want to see some cops smile now and then. You don’t always have to wear your badge on your face.”

—REX HOWARD

January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 19

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P rogram Notes

Your Attention, Please Festival-announcement season kicks into high gear with news from Rhythm N’ Blooms, Waynestock, and Bonnaroo

I

f late spring and early summer are the official festival season, then winter is turning into the official festival-lineup-announcement season.

Here’s a rundown of recent news:

RHYTHM N’ BLOOMS

Earlier this week, the organizers of the Rhythm N’ Blooms festival named the last few artists for the April event, part of the Dogwood Arts Festival. In addition to previously announced acts the Mavericks, Robert Randolph and the Family Band, the Lone Bellow, G. Love and Special Sauce, the Black Cadillacs, and more than a dozen more, the last round of announcements includes headliners Mutemath and the Old 97’s, Green River Ordinance, Guy Marshall, Mic Harrison and the High Score, Elliott Brood, the Crane Wives, Paleface, the Meadows Brothers, Electric Darling, J-Bush, Matt Honkonen, Daniel Miller and High Life, Knoxville Stomp, and Jubal. There will also be a reprise of last year’s late-night songwriting showcase the Midnight Merry-GoRound.

Rhythm N’ Blooms will be held April 8-10 at Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria, Boyd’s Jig and Reel, Cripple Creek Stage across from Barley’s and under the Interstate, Lox Salon, Pilot Light, and the Standard. Tickets are on sale at rhythmnbloomsfest.com.

holidays—this year’s fest will be held at Relix Variety Theatre in Happy Holler on Jan. 28-30 and will, as usual, serve as a handy survey of Knoxville’s music scene, with performances by Kevin Abernathy, Emi Sunshine, Handsome and the Humbles, Heiskell, Hellaphant, the Jank, Knoxville Tells, the Tim Lee 3, the Lonesome Coyotes, the Lonetones, Jennifer Niceley, the Pinklets, Psychic Baos, Senryu, and Jonathan Sexton. Music starts at 7 p.m. each night.

The first Waynestock was held in 2011 to benefit the family of News Sentinel music writer Wayne Bledsoe after the unexpected death of his son Andrew. Subsequent editions have been less tearful but have still raised money for good causes; this year, proceeds will go to Knoxville Girls Rock Camp.

BONNAROO

Dates and lineup for the sixth installment of the local music fest Waynestock were announced over the

Bonnaroo veteran Conan O’Brien, who performed at AC Entertainment’s Middle Tennessee music festival in 2010, will announce the lineup on Tuesday, Jan. 19, on his late-night TV show on TBS. It’s not the first time organizers have been creative with the announcement—last year, artists were revealed through a combination of a toll-free hotline and social media.

In 2013, “Weird Al” Yankovic hosted a YouTube video to make the announcement.

Bonnaroo is scheduled for June 9-12.

—Matthew Everett

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WAYNESTOCK

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Inside the Vault: The Golden Age of TV

KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

Music: Dolly Parton Tribute

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Video: Sicario

24

Movies: The Revenant

Inside the Vault

The Producer Jack Wiedemann remembers Knoxville’s original Golden Age of TV

BY ERIC DAWSON

W

hen TAMIS donor Joe Longmire brought in a collection of home movies recently, there was a surprise at the bottom of his bag full of films: reel-to-reel tapes containing the audio of a 1964 episode of WATE’s TV Classroom Quiz. Longmire was a contestant on the program, which pitted Gibbs against Powell in the Scholars’ Bowl-like contest, and his parents recorded the audio from their television.

No film or video survives, and a few photographs from the set are the only other evidence of the show’s existence.

In those days, it wasn’t uncommon for stations to record over taped programs to save money, and to send film to the landfill to save space. Most station managers didn’t think what they were doing would ever be of historical import. It’s only because of people like Longmire’s parents and forward-thinking producers, hosts, engineers, camera operators, and others working in television that much pre-1970s material has been saved and found its way to archives like TAMIS. One person who saved a good deal of interesting programming was the host of Classroom Quiz, Jack Wiedemann. A few days before Christmas, we took Wiedemann a CD of the Quiz audio and interviewed him about his life and work in broadcasting, particularly his time in Knoxville. I don’t have

the space to go into all of Wiedemann’s accomplishments as a local television pioneer, but Jack Neely wrote an excellent biographical piece on Wiedemann in the Oct. 24, 2013 issue of Metro Pulse that I wish I could direct you to online. (Since I can’t, I’ll put in a plug for Neely’s subject files at the McClung Collection, where you can find most of his articles going back to 2002.) I’ll focus mostly on the contents of Wiedemann’s archives.

Wiedemann was born in New Orleans to a performing family that included the Wiedemann Bros. circus troupe. He started his broadcasting career on radio in Harrisburg, Ill., and then worked at several television networks in the South, introducing viewers to such talents as James Brown, Brenda Lee, and Jim Nabors. He moved to Knoxville in the late 1950s, working at WATE studios on North Broadway, where Petree’s Flowers shop is today.

Before it was a television studio it was a mayonnaise factory, and Wiedemann says it reeked of rotten mayonnaise.

Later, Wiedemann, who has a degree in architecture from Columbia University, would convince the station to move into the more refined setting of the Greystone building. He says he even helped design the studios there. He produced and hosted a variety of shows for WATE, from which most of his collec-

tion at TAMIS is sourced. When asked why he kept all of the audio and video all these years, why he took them home in the first place, he says simply, “I was proud of them.”

Some of the more interesting items from his collection include audio from Cas Walker’s evening show on WATE, which Wiedemann produced. Other than a short commercial, no film is known to survive from Walker’s WATE show, and these recordings from 1959 and 1961 are the only known audio recordings. The sound quality, sourced from open reel-to-reel tapes, is excellent. You can hear Willie G. Brewster’s quartet performing a lovely gospel performance of “Reunion in Heaven”; Red Rector and Fred Smith tell jokes and run through a flawless version of “Gathering Flowers From the Hillside”; tap-dancing youngsters Curly Dan Bailey and Glory Belle, who were going to do “Today I Burned Your Love Letters” but realized they didn’t know the words so settled for the reconciliatory “Let’s Be Sweethearts Again.”

A big part of the recordings, naturally, consist of Walker hawking wares at his supermarkets and reeling off his hard-to-beat prices. If you’ve seen clips from his shows floating around online, you know even these seemingly mundane activities can be fairly entertaining. Walker is “as unhappy as he can be” that his Midtown supermarket ran out of meat over the weekend, taking the time to list all of the missing meats. It was uncalled for, he says, sounding genuinely pained, before threatening the butcher on air. He’s perturbed there was no one at the snack bar that day, either.

Perhaps inevitably, Wiedemann says he and Walker had a disagreement when Walker wanted to use his show to promote his political ambitions. The producer reminded the host of the equal-time rule, and cut the show off the air, surely the only person who ever dared such a thing.

Walker threatened to have his job, and Wiedemann reminded him he was doing his job. He says Walker respected him even more after that.

Through a Walker-sponsored contest, he also helped his old friend Jim Nabors cut his first record, in New

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York City. It was an ill-fated attempt at rockabilly, which you can hear online via the TAMIS Facebook page.

Wiedemann was also a staunch supporter of Al Carpenter, best known as Captain Al on the local installment of The Popeye Club. Carpenter had a good singing voice that lent itself well to the folk boom of the 1960s.

Wiedemann recorded a two-song demo he tried to shop around and produced The Al Carpenter Variety Show. Carpenter does pop-folk takes on songs like “Take This Hammer,” “Cotton Fields,” and “Oh Shenandoah, I Long to See You,” with ace Knoxville wrecking-crew players Chubby Beeler, Ray Rose, and Stoney Stonecipher backing him.

Another curio in the Wiedemann collection is an audio recording of two live 1962 Stepin Fetchit performances at Whittle Springs Hotel, from which WNOX was broadcasting at the time.

Much of the routine is old vaudeville style—wife and mother-in-law jokes and bad puns—but there is a fair amount of racially based material. It’s an excruciating listen, especially during the laughter of the well-heeled, all-white audience. Knoxville would desegregate the following year, and the recordings are an interesting cultural document that displays the sort of ingrained mindset civil-rights activists were up against.

After leaving Knoxville in the early 1970s, Wiedemann opened a pair of nightclubs in Virginia called the Roaring Twenties, where a young Pat Benatar got her start as a flapper-styled waitress and singer. There are lots of stories about the Roaring Twenties, but we’ll leave those for another time.

Wiedemann continued to work in television in Richmond and even invited Al Carpenter up to host another variety show. He would go on to work in film, on projects such as Gator, Smokey and the Bandit, and The River. He still keeps his hand in motion pictures today, operating out of a West Knoxville home that resembles a ’70s bachelor pad trapped in amber, where an illuminated sign above the driveway lets visitors know they are entering “Shangri-La.” ◆ January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 21

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Music

Happy Birthday to Dolly!

Mark Lamb and Nancy Brennan Strange put together an all-star local tribute to Dolly Parton

BY ROSE KENNEDY

A

rtistic director Mark Lamb first pulled together a cast and performed the Dolly Parton tribute A Boy and His Dolly six years ago at Metro Baptist Church in New York City. An evening-length show with live music, it’s the story of Dolly’s impact on the young Lamb growing up in rural Kentucky. He performed it as a birthday present to himself.

“It seemed fitting to do the show at the Metro, because it is a holy place, and I consider Dolly Parton to be a spiritual guide,” he says.

Next week, Lamb will bring the latest version of the tribute show to the Bijou Theatre, with about a dozen regional musicians—including Robinella, Kelle Jolly, Christina Horn, Sean McCollough, and Sarah Pirkle— lending their voices and Dolly interpretations under the creative leadership of Lamb and the musical direction of Knoxville folkie-jazz favorite Nancy Brennan Strange. This time, it’s Dolly’s birthday—her 70th— and they will celebrate back in the city where she got her start as a 9-year-old girl, singing for the Cas Walker radio show, to benefit Dolly’s Imagination Library program.

Lamb is from Sturgis, Ky.—pop.

2,000—and first saw Dolly on her television show in the 1970s. “When she came out of the ceiling on a red velvet rope swing, I thought she was an angel from heaven,” he says.

He wrote the show in 30 minutes,

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

“like it came to me in a vision,” on a drive from Kentucky to East Tennessee. He says he ultimately envisioned it at the Bijou. It will pick up more local flavor from the artists he’s working with this go-’round, all musicians he’s collaborated with in the past, some from his 14 years as a dancer in Knoxville. (He now lives in Brooklyn.)

“Dolly’s not easy to play,” he says.

“As we work together, it is always nice to see my collaborators start to understand her depth of lyric and music. It’s also fun to see the audience react not only to what Dolly means to me but how much she has done for the world, which I also explain in my story.”

The show is an easier reach for audiences in the South, Lamb says.

“Here, it is very much like preaching to the choir—a celebration of someone we all know and love. When I do this show up north, I feel like I am evangelizing the merits of the genius that is Dolly Parton. People usually join the Dolly flock after they’ve heard my story.”

Strange says the show is not precisely a tribute to Dolly the celebrity. “It’s more a tribute to how Dolly affected Mark spiritually and made him feel good about himself. It’s his story, with her songs running through it,” she says.

Strange was part of the cast the first time Lamb’s show ran in Knoxville, three years ago, and she went on tour with him last year. She started playing here in Knoxville at age 19;

she honed her performance skills when she was a secretary at a psychiatric ward, and the patients needed calming interactions. She’s been a big fan of Dolly’s music “ever since I knew about her when I was a little girl,” and particularly loves the “greatest song ever, ‘Coat of Many Colors.’” But Strange says she’s never considered performing any Dolly-written songs before now.

“I was a folk singer, and then got into jazz, and wrote my own stuff, and just never thought about it,” she says.

“I didn’t think I could do Dolly justice.”

She’ll sing on three numbers in the show and notes that all the songs do Dolly justice, “There’s not a bad one in the bunch,” she says. “Mark is really fun to work with. We are doing Dolly songs, but if you’ve got a way you want to do it, yes, he lets you put yourself in.”

Eventually, Lamb would like this show to be a springboard to something bigger. “My ultimate goal is to have it be part of a larger celebration of Dolly Parton—perhaps a festival that happens annually in East Tennessee? I recently spent time at Dolly’s Dream More resort, and I would love to perform it there, too.”

Due to Dolly’s longstanding policy of not singling out any of the charities she supports, she will not be in attendance, but her company did

send a short video to open the show, with previously unseen footage of Dolly in East Tennessee. A documentary filmmaker has also been shadowing the show’s production, and the entire performance will run in the finished film.

Both performer-directors have tantalizing hints about the show.

Strange is especially looking forward to “Here You Come Again,” Dolly’s 1977 crossover pop hit. She doesn’t want to reveal the unusual nature of the arrangement they’ll use: “That would be a spoiler.”

Lamb’s favorite Dolly song is also in the show. “It is sung by my friend Jodie Manross. I would rather not give away the title because it is part of the show, but this particular song that Dolly wrote gives me strength and courage and it is also my way of saying thank you to Knoxville for growing me as an artist.”

One number that’s not a secret is the finale, and it harks back to that first church show, says Strange. Dolly wrote it a long time ago and resurrected it for the Joyful Noise movie she did with Queen Latifah in 2012: “Light of a Clear Blue Morning.”

“We all sing it together, and it’s real positive—we will raise the roof,” says Strange. “We are giving ourselves an encore, too, even if the audience doesn’t.”

WHAT

A Boy and His Dolly: A Tribute to Dolly Parton

WHERE

Bijou Theatre (803 S. Gay St.)

WHEN

Tuesday, Jan. 19, at 7 p.m.

HOW MUCH $25

INFO

knoxbijou.com

Video

A&E

Photo by Richard Foreman

Did you get your copy ?

Border War Dramatically overreacting in art-house action pic Sicario

BY LEE GARDNER

T

he first thing you see FBI agent Kate Macer do is kill someone— she plugs a Mexican cartel thug without a second thought during a raid to rescue hostages in a suburban Arizona rancher. But as writer/ director Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario soon makes clear, the lengths to which she’s willing to go to prosecute the war on drugs may not be far enough. The cartels kill indiscriminately, send gruesome messages scribed in corpses, co-opt police and governments, and operate by abject loyalty and terror. How can you fight an enemy who will do almost anything to beat you?

That’s how Kate (Emily Blunt) finds herself tagging along with smug shadow operative Matt (Josh Brolin) and his enigmatic sidekick Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) as they take the war across the border. When Kate asks Matt what his plan is, he says, with a

smirk, “To dramatically overreact.”

Things go according to plan.

Sicario sets an uneasy course.

It’s part allegory for the dangers of meeting your enemy on his level—especially the dehumanizing sub-basement where the cartels operate. At the same time, it’s also part police procedural and part action film, and thus liable for the satisfactions and occasional thrills those aspects bring.

With Kate as your proxy, you clench your way through a tense confrontation at a border crossing. You descend into the starlight-scoped darkness of an underground tunnel filled with smoke, gunfire, and bleeding bodies.

Villeneuve, the increasingly interesting French-Canadian auteur behind Prisoners and Enemy, ramps up the dread with overhead God shots of the sere border landscape, courtesy cinematographer Roger Deakins, and blasts from Johan Johansson’s

groaning score. But he also infuses the going-after-the-bad-guys set pieces with grim adrenaline. It doesn’t feel good to enjoy this film, as much as it would seem to lend itself to that at times.

Like The Silence of the Lambs before it, Sicario gains potency through its focus on Kate, a capable person trying to do her job in a setting where she’s an outsider at the chromosomal level. That remove, and taking machismo out of the protagonist’s emotional palette, allows the true horrors of the situation in which she finds herself to come through.

But she remains a little bit of a blank (as do all the Mexicans in the film).

Del Toro, with his weary charisma and his character’s mysterious background, threatens to steal the show—with Villeneuve’s blessing, as it turns out. Imperfect, but powerful nonetheless. ◆

You can still pick up a print copy of our Top Knox Readers’ Poll at any Knox County Public Library branch, while supplies last!

And you can always find out who are Knoxville’s favorites at: knoxmercury.com/ topknox2015

January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 23

A&E

Movies

Left Behind Leonardo DiCaprio suffers for his art in The Revenant

BY APRIL SNELLINGS

T

he story of famously durable frontiersman Hugh Glass has proved to be one of America’s most lasting legends. The first embellisher was most likely Glass himself, who reportedly enjoyed spinning a tale and took an active role in engineering his own myth.

Every era seems to rediscover Glass and recast him in its own image. He was the subject of an epic poem in 1915, a bestselling book in 1954, and a mostly forgotten Richard Harris film in 1971, along with numerous articles, TV shows, and books along the way. In recent years, Glass has become Internet famous thanks to his inclusion on clickbait lists of notable badasses—a sort of rallying cry for a generation that has produced legions of privileged urbanites who favor bushy beards and flannel.

It’s that most recent iteration of Glass that shows up in The Revenant, a film that delights in both the majestic beauty and gore-soaked brutality of the American frontier.

24

KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

This version of Glass is one of the most interesting so far—he’s an icon of stoic manliness, stripped of mountain-man braggadocio and weighted down with existential suffering to match the physical trials he endures.

Who better to play this conflicted creature than Leonardo DiCaprio, who sprouted a Brillo beard to cover that famous baby face and subjected himself to relentless torture at the hands of director Alejandro González Iñárritu, all in the name of verisimilitude?

His prolonged suffering makes for a riveting cinematic experience, and that’s not a backhanded compliment. The Revenant is exactly the sort of movie that makes the “not for all tastes” caveat such a useful one for film reviewers; it’s nearly three hours of non-stop violence and ugliness, punctuated by moments of breathtaking beauty and, it must be said, a fair amount of navel-gazing. I loved it. I also understand why others might hate it.

The Revenant isn’t particularly

concerned with historical accuracy, at least when it comes to recounting Glass’s story, but its broader plot points hew fairly close to what we think we know. In 1823, Glass is part of a 100-man fur-trading expedition that travels up the Missouri River into territory that has not been settled by Europeans. The Revenant picks up in the middle of their journey, just minutes before the party comes under attack by Arikara warriors. It’s a harrowing scene that sets the tone for the rest of the movie. It’s visceral, dizzying, relentlessly gruesome, and technically stunning, playing out in long, incredibly choreographed takes.

It’s the first part of a one-two punch that launches the movie into the meat of its simple plot. Glass survives the raid, only to be nearly mauled to death by a bear shortly afterward in a scene that’s entirely free of the close-ups and choppy editing that usually mark such on-screen attacks. It’s both frightening and gut-wrenching, and it’s probably a good thing that the movie never manages to top that level of intensity.

The film settles into something a little tamer and more contemplative as it chugs along. The grievously wounded Glass can’t make the journey to the relative safety of a frontier fort, so the sympathetic Captain Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) assigns two men to stay behind and care for him until his seemingly inevitable death. Glass’s biracial son,

Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), and a young trapper named Bridger (Will Poulter) stay behind for honorable reasons; the villainous Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) does not. In short order, Fitzgerald and Bridger are on their way back to the fort, and Glass is left to dig his way out of a shallow grave and fend for himself, without weapons or provisions, as winter sets in.

The Revenant will likely be remembered as much for its torturous creation as for its monumental technical achievements, so it’s hard to say how much of DiCaprio’s performance is acting and how much is simply filmed suffering. Either way, his commitment to the role is incredible, and he disappears in it; he’s nearly mute for a large swath of the picture, communicating only in snarls, grunts, and wheezes. It’s saying a lot, then, that Hardy—who’s only slightly more intelligible with his marble-mouthed grumbling—steals so many scenes.

The real star of the film, though, is cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who brought his trademark long takes and fluidly mobile camera to the unspoiled wilderness of Canada, America, and Argentina. The Revenant occasionally becomes a victim of its own grandiosity and loses some of its intensity in its final hour, but, if you’ve got the stomach and the patience for it, it’s a remarkable and haunting piece of cinema that should be experienced on the biggest screen you can find. ◆

5 Movie Ticket

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at any Regal Cinemas in Knoxville!

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ENTER TO WIN TICKETS! The Knoxville Mercury and Atom Tickets are giving you the chance to see this much-anticipated film, based on the book by the soldiers who lived it. Enter for the chance to win two tickets to see 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. To enter, send an email with your name and phone number to: contests@knoxmercury.com 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. Five winners will be selected on 1-17-2016 and notified by email. Once notified, winner has 24 hours to respond. Winners will receive their tickets through the Atom Tickets app. Odds of winning depend on the number of entries received.

Sponsors: Knoxville Mercury, 706 Walnut Ave., Suite 404, Knoxville, TN 37902 and Atom Tickets. Valid through 1-17-2016.

January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 25

CALENDAR MUSIC

Thursday, Jan. 14 THE APPLEBUTTER EXPRESS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • The band’s story begins in 2004, when Kyle Biss met his future wife Shannon while working at a record store in Bradenton, Florida. Still a focused bass player, Kyle picked up a ukulele in 2010 and began to write songs, with the idea of singing with Shannon (his then girlfriend) for fun on the couch. Pretty soon the duo began making a name for themselves among the open mic community; in no time, the eclectic, tuneful duo – now known as The Applebutter Express – were the talk of Tampa, Fl. Kyle and Shannon married in 2011, and in 2012 added Joe Trivette on the fiddle. Newest member, Zach Rogers (bass) joined in 2015.

NICK DITTMEIER WITH CICADA RHYTHM • 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 GHOST EAGLE • Scruffy City Hall • 10PM • Ghost Eagle is a high energy, Appalachian roots trio consisting of drums, telecaster and amplified harmonica.

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

WDVX 6 O’CLOCK SWERVE: EMI SUNSHINE • Scruffy City Hall • 6PM SAM LEWIS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM SECRET CITY CYPHERS • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 9PM • Who’s ready to get their art out to the world? This is Knoxville’s premier Open Mic-style event that allows mcs, poets, singers, musicians, dancers, comedians, visual artists, and others to not only have a place to showcase their talent, but a place to network with other artists, and build their fan base. So if you, or someone you know is interested in performing, then come to Open Chord / All Things Music Thursday, January 14th . You can choose to perform either with a backing track or with our live band. Signups start at 8:30, and are first come, first serve. All ages. • FREE Friday, Jan. 15 A BODY DIVIDED WITH AMOUR, ILLUSTRIOUS, INSIGHTS, AND THE GUILD • The Concourse • 7PM • Local metal band A Body Divided plays its final show. All ages. • $10 ALIVE AFTER FIVE: WALLACE COLEMAN • Knoxville Museum of Art • 6PM • Harmonica ace and vocalist Wallace Coleman returns to his native East Tennessee to play some Chicago-style electric blues. • $10 CICADA RHYTHM • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up.

THE DARNELL BOYS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE TYLER FARR • Cotton Eyed Joe • 10PM • Tyler Farr’s a thinker, an observer of the human condition, a man in the middle of a surging testosterone country movement in today’s Nashville who insists on digging a little deeper, getting a little realer and owning how hard it can be. On Suffer In Peace, the son of a Garden City, Missouri farmer opens his veins and examines the pain that comes from being truly engaged with living. • $15 IAN FEATHERS • 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 JOE FLETCHER • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 5PM • Joe Fletcher is a midwestern born, New England raised singer-songwriter living in East Nashville, TN. He released his third independent record, You’ve Got the Wrong Man, in October of 2014. This intimate solo album 26

KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

Thursday, Jan. 14 - Sunday, Jan. 24

is a departure from his previous efforts with his band The Wrong Reasons (White Lighter and Bury Your Problems).

Made up of his gritty original songs as well as covers by his peers Brown Bird and Toy Soldiers, it was recorded live over a few months on a mobile recording unit in Rhode Island, Georgia, and Tennessee in the spirit of some of Joe’s favorite records by Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Jimmie Rodgers, Bruce Springsteen, among others. • FREE FOLK SOUL REVIVAL WITH AMYTHYST KIAH • The Bowery • 8PM • Folk Soul Revival has consistently played sold-out shows across the southeast with their radio ready sound and original, country-roots-rock. The band has amassed a loyal fan base, lovingly referred to as “The Congregation.”

The Congregation is so devoted they crowd sourced more than $38,000 to fund the FSR’s last two albums, including their fourth and most recent Out of the Box produced by Barry Bales (Alison Krauss & Union Station).Supporting act Amythyst Kiah & Her Chest of Glass are the southern gothic, alt-country blues collaboration of singer/songwriter Kiah and members of the east Tennessee folk-rock band this mountain. Kiah, a scholar of American roots music, is known for her power house vocals and contemporary interpretations of music from the Library of Congress, aside from her substantial original material.

Drawing heavily on old time and inspired by vocal stylings of R&B and country music vocalists ranging from Big Mama Thornton and Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Dolly Parton and Patsy Cline, Amythyst is a true talent and definitely one to watch. • $12 FREEQUENCY • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine Lounge • 8PM FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE KINCAID • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 10PM JOEY KNEISER AND KELLY SMITH WITH JOE DUNN, WILL CARTER, AND LEW CARD • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Members of the indie-rock band the Glossary head out on their own for a solo performance.

All ages. • $7-$10 JAMEL MITCHELL • Red Piano Lounge • 9PM MOJO FLOW • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM NICK MOSS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Distinct, honest, and intense — a blend of traditional blues and progressive, jam-oriented blues rock.

Face-melting guitar solos that rise above the crowded field of pretenders, and a versatile band that brilliantly delivers unparalleled improvisational jams to packed houses night after night, city after city. • $5 ANDY SNEED • Vienna Coffee House (Maryville) • 7PM • Andy Sneed has been writing and performing music for nearly 30 years. Sneed’s songs can be funny, thought-provoking and touching all at the same time.

STEEP CANYON RANGERS • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • From Asheville, NC, Steep Canyon Rangers are an acoustic Bluegrass group. In 2013 the band’s 8th record “Nobody Knows You” won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album.

Before embarking on a world tour backing comedian/ banjoist Steve Martin, the Rangers were also nominated for 2 International Bluegrass Music awards including Album of the Year “Lovin’ Pretty Women” (2007). Steep Canyon Rangers were also named ‘Emerging Artist of the Year’ in 2006 at the IBMA awards ceremony in Nashville, TN. The group performs heavily in the Bluegrass and Americana music world at festivals like MerleFest, Telluride, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Grey Fox, DelFest and RockyGrass. Abroad, Steep Canyon Rangers have

performed in Sweden, Ireland, England, Germany, Switzerland and Canada. • $20 GREG TARDY • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • FREE TREETOPS WITH VAGABONDS • Scruffy City Hall • 8PM WENDEL WERNER • Red Piano Lounge • 6PM Saturday, Jan. 16 KEITH BROWN • 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, 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 • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM FECKLESS FEAR DEARG • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE FOURTH ANNUAL BIJOU AWARDS • Bijou Theatre • 7PM • Our 4th annual Bijou Awards showcases the talent of high school students in and around Knoxville. Local teenagers will have the opportunity to not only show off their performing arts and create writing skills, but also to

RATATAT The International (940 Blackstock Ave.) • Wednesday, Jan. 20 • 9 p.m. • $25-$40 • 18 and up • internationalknox.com

Not much has changed for the Brooklyn disco-rock duo Ratatat in the five years between LP4 and its new follow-up, Magnifique, released in July. Evan Mast and Mike Stroud are still cranking out psychedelic jams that straddle the dance floor and the arena bleachers, just as they have been for the last 15 years.

Magnifique finds the pair in back-to-basics mode, stripping down the elaborate electronic beats of recent albums for a return to the sugary sweet melodies and overt guitar heroics of 2006’s Classics. The spirit of Queen pervades the new album, outstripping earlier influences like Daft Punk for a streamlined collection of rock gestures, candy-coated pop hooks, and blissed-out yacht-rock atmosphere.

With Jackson and His Computerband. (Matthew Everett)

30

Spotlight: UT Artist-in-Residence Biennial

Thursday, Jan. 14 - Sunday, Jan. 24

turn a $5 entry fee into a $1,000 individual scholarship and a $500 award for their school. Auditions began this fall and the top five contestants in each category will perform in front a panel of celebrity judges at our 2016 Bijou Awards Gala January 16 on the U.S. Cellular Stage at the Bijou Theatre. • $12 KATY FREE • Red Piano Lounge • 6PM J. LUKE • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine Lounge • 8PM THE JAILHOUSE REVIEW • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 10PM JIMMY AND THE JAWBONES • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM KIRK AND MEREDITH • Meksiko Cantina of Farragut • 6PM • Acoustic duo.

ANDREW LEAHEY AND THE HOMESTEAD • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 4PM • An American rock & roll band, Andrew Leahey & the Homestead make music for city highways and open horizons, for pop fans and roots rockers, for the heart as well as the heartland. It’s the kind of anthemic, guitar-driven sound that’s been blasting out of car stereos at 65 mile per hour ever since God created FM radio. Written in the wake of an emergency brain surgery operation that nearly wiped out Leahey’s hearing, the upcoming Skyline in Central Time is the band’s collective rallying cry, an album that funnels desperation and gratitude and heartbreak -- as well as a lot of Tom Petty-worthy melodies -- into eleven tracks produced by Wilco co-founder Ken Coomer. It’s also the band’s label debut, due out on Thirty Tigers in April 2016.

• FREE HAROLD NAGGE AND ALAN WYATT • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • FREE NOX YORC • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM ORCHARD FIRE WITH JAKE BOOK • 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 REALM WITH MASS DRIVER • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

ROUX DU BAYOU • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Accordionist Paul Gregoire from the town of Dulac in South Louisiana leads this Nashville based band Roux du Bayou, always a treat for Cajun dance enthusiasts. On guitar and vocals is South Louisiana native Wade Bernard; Jerry Prevost on drums and rounding out the group on fiddle, lead guitar and trumpet, from Nashville, Jimmy Clark. • $12 ZIGADOO MONEYCLIPS • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up.

Sunday, Jan. 17 THE AMERICANS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM • Los Angeles band The Americans perform original rock & roll with deep roots in traditional American music. They have performed on the Late Show with David Letterman, twice joined Grammy and Oscar winner Ryan Bingham on national tours, and played the first dance at Reese Witherspoon’s wedding. They have backed up Nick Cave, Tim Robbins, and Lucinda Williams. The Americans appear throughout American Epic, a four hour primetime PBS / BBC special produced by Jack White, Robert Redford, and T Bone Burnett, featuring Nas, Elton John, Alabama Shakes, and Willie Nelson (coming spring 2016).

• FREE KELLY RICHEY • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 7PM SHIFFLETT AND HANNAH • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. • FREE SUNDAY JAZZ BRUNCH • Downtown Grill and Brewery • 12:45PM • Knoxville’s coolest jazz artists perform

CALENDAR

every Sunday. • FREE Monday, Jan. 18 IAN FITZGERALD • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 1PM • 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. Ian has independently released four albums of original material and has become known for his storytelling and skillful use of language. In their review of his latest album, No Time To Be Tender [2013], Performer Magazine called Ian “a polished songsmith who is high atop a field of great artists breaking through to festival and folk concerts throughout the States.” Since that record’s release, Ian has performed at the Newport Folk Festival and recorded its follow-up, which is coming soon. • FREE LIONS • Longbranch Saloon • 8PM • Lions’ music—an emotional, caffeinated mix of twinkly emo, anthemic pop-punk, and technically adept indie rock—promotes constant motion and scream-alongs.

THE DIRK QUINN BAND • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Dirk Quinn is the guitarist for a high energy funk/ jazz band based out of Philadelphia that travels extensively throughout the US and Canada. Utilizing over a decade of steady performing, Quinn has developed a unique and progressive style – one that appeals to a wide variety of music listeners with fans ranging from the jam band hippies to the jazz snobs.

SCRUFFY CITY JAZZ BAND • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • FREE Tuesday, Jan. 19 THE MARBLE CITY 5 • Red Piano Lounge • 8PM JAY MATTHES • 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 KELLEY MCRAE • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Kelley McRae grew up in Mississippi but called Brooklyn home for years before teaming up with guitarist Matt Castelein in 2011, when the duo traded in their NYC apartment for a VW camper van and hit the road full time. Thousands of miles and hundreds of shows later, they have toured coast to coast in the US, played to packed rooms across Europe, sold-out the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, and continue to build a passionate and dedicated following on the strength of their live performances.

A TRIBUTE TO DOLLY PARTON • Bijou Theatre • 7PM • An all-star lineup of local musicians, featuring Robin Ella Bailey, Michael Crawley, Nate Barrett, Kelly Jolley, Laith Keilaney, Jodie Manross, and more—pay tribute to one of East Tennessee’s greatest artists on her birthday. All proceeds benefit Dolly’s Imagination Library. • $25 • See story on page 22.

Wednesday, Jan. 20 TENNESSEE SHINES: THE DUPONT BROTHERS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7PM • Nimble finger-style guitar work and snug harmonies make Burlington, Vermont’s The DuPont Brothers a remarkable discovery for listeners. Brothers Sam and Zack didn’t start writing songs together until Sam went away to school in Arizona. And once they started playing shows together over holiday breaks, the duo’s path was clear. They released their debut CD, Heavy as Lead, in 2014. • $10 FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 6:30PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE THE CASEY GREEN TRIO • The Bistro at the Bijou • 7PM •

Live jazz. • FREE GREENSKY BLUEGRASS • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • The five members of Greensky Bluegrass have forged a defiant, powerful sound that, while rooted in classic stringband Americana, extends outwards with a fearless, exploratory zeal. • $18-$20 JAMEL MITCHELL • Red Piano Lounge • 8PM RATATAT • The International • 9PM • Following up on the experimental sounds of LP3 and LP4, Ratatat return to their core guitar-driven sound on 2015’s Magnifique. • $20-$40 • See Spotlight on page 26.

Thursday, Jan. 21 THE J.D. BAKER BAND • Longbranch Saloon • 8PM WDVX 6 O’CLOCK SWERVE: BRANDON FULSON AND THE REALBILLYS • Scruffy City Hall • 6PM THE GREAT AFFAIRS • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

HANDSOME AND THE HUMBLES • Scruffy City Hall • 8PM • 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.

KIRK AND MEREDITH • Meksiko Cantina of Farragut • 6PM • Acoustic duo.

BEN RABB WITH MISSY RAINES AND THE NEW HIP • 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 MISSY RAINES AND THE NEW HIP • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM SECRET CITY CYPHERS RIVERBOAT MASQUERADE BALL • Star of Knoxville Riverboat • 8PM • Featuring Amour, J Bush, Profit Levi, RTS (Resound the Sound), Outlaw the CEO, and Soultron. • $12-$16 SHADY BANKS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM Friday, Jan. 22 BIG BAD OVEN WITH ZACH AND KOTA’S SWEET LIFE AND TANGLES • Pilot Light • 10PM • Local rock! 18 and up.

BLACK JACKET SYMPHONY: JOURNEY’S ESCAPE • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • The Black Jacket Symphony offers a unique concert experience through recreating classic albums in a live performance setting. A selected album is performed in its entirety by a group of handpicked musicians specifically selected for each album, with no sonic detail being overlooked--the musicians do whatever it takes to musically reproduce the album. The performance is separated into two sets. The first set features the album being recreated as a true symphonic piece. The second set, which features a selection of the album artist’s “greatest hits,” opens in full contrast to the first set with an incredible light display and the symphony being much more laid back. The tone is set very quickly that the show will feature the high level of musicianship of the act being covered and will also be accompanied by all the bells and whistles of a major rock and roll show. • $28 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 TAMARA BROWN AND FAMILY • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE THE TEMPER EVANS BAND • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 10PM January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 27

CALENDAR FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE HAYDEN GARBER AND WHISKEY ROAD • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM JAMEY JOHNSON • Cotton Eyed Joe • 9PM • Jamey Johnson’s response to success was almost predictably contrary—after his 2008 self-released album, That Lonesome Song, landed the burly Nashville singer/ songwriter a major-label deal, he followed up with The Guitar Song, an expansive but resolutely noncommercial double album, and Living for a Song, an old-fashioned tribute to the songwriting legend Harlan Howard.

Excellent records, but not exactly the kind of thing Mercury executives knew how to market. Johnson had been introduced to Nashville as a new outlaw; he lived up to that reputation, quickly demonstrating that his creative instincts would override his label’s sales plans. • $25 JESSICA LAMB • 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 MIKE MAINS AND THE BRANCHES • Sugarlands Distilling Co. • 6PM • Formed in Texas, flourishing in Detroit, this indie rock collective has spent the last few years making waves everywhere around and in between. Following the release of their debut album, Home, Mike Mains & the Branches used their unique sound, captivating live performances, and relentless touring to carve out a firm place for themselves in the hearts of indie rock music

Thursday, Jan. 14 - Sunday, Jan. 24

fans everywhere. • FREE 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. The Naughty Knots can cookup some delicious tunes and serve them to you on a silver platter, with a focus on great songwriting, tight harmonies and solid instrumentation.

Check out their first CD 12 Song in the Pan. • $11 SHADOWED SELF WITH VANKALE, BELFAST 6 PACK, AELIANA, AND TRANSPARENT SOUL • The Concourse • 7:45PM • 18 and up. • $10 SNOW DAY 2016 • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 7PM • The 8th annual Snow Day, a CAC Beardsley Community Farm Benefit, will be hosted at Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria at 7 pm on Friday, January 22nd 2016. Pre-order discounted tickets on Brown Paper Tickets: $8 for soup AND admission (plus processing fees). Click here: http:// www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2477917.CAC Beardsley Community Farm is Knoxville’s only urban demonstration farm that helps get fresh, healthy, local food to Knoxville’s under-served communities. Snow Day will feature seven performances by a diverse group of local musicians, a soup contest between some of Knoxville’s finest restaurants, a Homegrown and Homemade Beard Pageant, and a silent auction. So far, silent auction prizes include a 2 night stay at the Butterfly Gap Retreat, a 1 night stay in the King Suite at The Oliver Hotel, a CSA Half Share with Abbey Fields, one craniosacral therapy session with Dr. Natalie Kurylo, tickets to the Knoxville Zoo, tickets to see the Ice Bears,

gift certificates to several local Knoxville businesses and so much more. Featured Musicians: Mic Harrison And The High Score, CrumbSnatchers, Old City Buskers, Roman Reese, Scruffy City Syncopators, Sunshine Station and more. Soup with Flour Head Bakery Bread: This year’s contestants are: Olibea, Babalu, Sweet and Savory Truck, Sunspot and more...Come try delcious soup featuring local ingredients! At the door: $8 admission, plus $5 for soup • $8 SUPATIGHT • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM TALL PAUL • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine Lounge • 8PM ALIVE AFTER FIVE: THE TENNESSEE SHEIKS • Knoxville Museum of Art • 6PM • The Tennessee Sheiks is an acoustic swing band led by mandolin maestro, Don Cassell, and singer, Nancy Brennan Strange, who have performed together in an assortment of bands for over twenty years and with the Sheiks, along with original member and gypsy jazz-style guitarist Don Wood, for eleven years. New members, bassist Grant Parker, guitarist Barry “Po” Hannah, and Ken Wood on percussion, have injected new blood into the musical chemistry that makes this band special. • $10 CALEB WARREN AND THE PERFECT GENTLEMEN • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE Saturday, Jan. 23 FRED EAGLESMITH • 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

FRED EAGLESMITH • The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson (Maryville) • 8PM • The heart of rock and roll is alive and well with Fred Eaglesmith’s 20th album, Tambourine. Fusing together all of Fred’s past influences, the result is pure rock ‘n ‘roll reminiscent of 1966.

Eaglesmith is a veteran of the music industry and at the same time is about as far away from actually participating in today’s music industry as one could be. • $20 THE FREIGHT HOPPERS • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Those who had the pleasure to see the fabled Freight Hoppers perform from 1992 to the band’s lay-up will certainly know what a sight and sound it is to witness the fiddle and banjo combination driven by David Bass and Frank Lee. The current line-up is Barry Benjamin on fiddle, Frank Lee on bottleneck guitar, and vocals, Mclean Bissel on guitar and vocal and Bradley Adams on string Bass.

Their latest album Mile Marker was released in 2010. • $13 MATT HIRES • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg)• 4PM • FREE INAEONA WITH DECONBRIO, AMONG THE BEASTS, AND THE ART OF • The Concourse • 8PM • A spellbinding mix of spacey post-prog melodies and epic industrial heaviness.

18 and up. • $10 INTERNATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP COLLEGIATE A CAPPELLA SOUTH QUARTERFINALS • University of Tennessee Natalie L. Haslam Music Center • 7AM • FREE JAKE AND THE COMET CONDUCTORS WITH THE ROYAL BUZZ AND DUSTIN SELLERS • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM AARON KIRBY AND THE TENNESSEE JAM BAND • Two Doors

h ? s a c y a d i l o h a r t x e e m o s Got

TOUCH: INTERACTIVE CRAFT Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts • National Juried Exhibition Sandra J. Blain Gallery

On Exhibit: January 16 - March 11, 2016 Opening Reception: Friday, January 22, 6-8pm Gallery Hours: Monday-Friday: 9am - 5pm, Saturday: 10am - 4pm

For more information visit www.arrowmont.org

556 Parkway

28

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Gatlinburg, TN 37738

KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

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865-436-5860

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www.arrowmont.org

long sleeve: orange.

short sleeve: grey, black, and white.

Spend it on some WUTK swag!

AvAilAble At Disc exchAnge, Fizz, AnD Open chOrD. All sales help support WUtK.

Streaming 24.7.365 at WUTKRADIO.COM

Thursday, Jan. 14 - Sunday, Jan. 24

Down (Maryville)• 10PM LACHLAN • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE MARTY AND TRACE • Mind Yer Ps and Qs Craft Beer and Wine Lounge • 8PM MOON TAXI WITH THE LONELY BISCUITS • Tennessee Theatre • 8PM • $28 THE CHUCK MULLICAN JAZZ BONANZA • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE PAPADOSIO • The International • 8PM • Mesmerizing, spellbinding and genre-defying: With their fourth full-length studio release Extras In A Movie, Papadosio reveals a striking cinematic cornucopia of sounds: orchestral, electronic, organic, acoustic, psychedelic and celestial. The 16 selections that comprise the song cycle are concise and structured – launch pads for the improvisational excursions that are a hallmark of the band’s celebrated concert performances.

QUARTJAR WITH SOMETHING WICKED • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM THE STAGGER MOON BAND • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up.

STATE STREET RHYTHM SECTION • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • State Street Rhythm Section is a powerhouse funk band with horn section playing high-energy dance, funk and soul music in the vein of Tower of Power, James Brown and the Average White Band.

MATT WOODS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM Sunday, Jan. 24 SHIFFLETT AND HANNAH • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. • FREE SUNDAY JAZZ BRUNCH • Downtown Grill and Brewery • 12:45PM • Knoxville’s coolest jazz artists perform every Sunday. • FREE

OPEN MIC AND SONGWRITER NIGHTS

Thursday, Jan. 14 SCOTTISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Held on the second and fourth Thursdays of each month.

• FREE Saturday, Jan. 16 OLD-TIME SLOW JAM • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 4PM • A monthly old-time music session, held on the third Saturday of each month. • FREE Sunday, Jan. 17 FAMILY FRIENDLY DRUM CIRCLE • Ijams Nature Center • 3:30PM • Ijams monthly Family Friendly Drum Circle has moved indoors for the winter months. Join us inside at the Miller Building the third Sunday of the month. Bring a drum or share one of ours. All ages from toddlers to great-grandparents welcome. Follow us on Facebook: Drumming@Ijams. • FREE Tuesday, Jan. 19 OLD-TIME JAM SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Hosted by Sarah Pickle. • FREE PRESERVATION PUB SINGER/SONGWRITER NIGHT • Preservation Pub • 7 p.m. • 21 and up. • FREE Wednesday, Jan. 20 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

CALENDAR

instruments and skill levels welcome.

BRACKINS BLUES JAM • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM • A weekly open session hosted by Tommie John. • FREE JUST FOR BANDS OPEN-MIC NIGHT • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • It’s time once again for The Just-For-Bands Edition of our Open Mic Night. *You must be in a band of two or more people to participate.*Come 30 minutes early to sign up for a slot. Are you tired of having band practice in your basement? This is the perfect chance to practice with your band on a REAL stage in front of a REAL audience! We’ll supply everything you might need backline-wise - just bring your guitars. • FREE Thursday, Jan. 21 IRISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Held on the first and third Thursdays of each month.

FREE BREWHOUSE BLUES JAM • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Join Robert Higginbotham and the Smoking Section for the Brewhouse Blues Jam. We supply drums and a full backline.

Friday, Jan. 22 TIME WARP TEA ROOM OPEN SONGWRITER NIGHT • Time Warp Tea Room • 7PM • Songwriter Night at Time Warp Tea Room runs on the second and fourth Friday of every month. Show up around 7 p.m. with your instrument in tow and sign up to share a couple of original songs with a community of friends down in Happy Holler. • FREE

DJ AND DANCE NIGHTS

Saturday, Jan. 16 TEMPLE DANCE NIGHT • The Concourse • 9PM • Knoxville’s long-running alternative dance night. 18 and up. • $5

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Thursday, Jan. 14 KSO CONCERTMASTER SERIES • Knoxville Museum of Art • 7PM • Gabriel Lefkowitz, violin, and Kevin Class, piano, perform Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 in A minor, Debussy’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, and Dvorak’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major.

Saturday, Jan. 16 KNOXVILLE OPERA: ‘HANSEL AND GRETEL’ • Blount County Public Library • 11AM • “Hansel and Gretel Opera (by Humperdinck)” will be performed as a full opera by the Knoxville Opera Company under the direction of Brian Salesky, Conductor and Executive Director. Parents and teachers are encouraged to bring children/students to enjoy this fairy tale brought to life in song and dramatic action. The performance will be at the Reading Rotunda end of the Main Gallery of the library. • FREE KSO POPS SERIES: FANTASIA LIVE! • Knoxville Civic Auditorium • 8PM • Enjoy one of Disney’s crown jewels of feature animation accompanied by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, showcasing scenes from the 1940 film Fantasia and Fantasia 2000. This concert features Paul Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”– with Mickey Mouse’s hilarious foray into magic – and Beethoven’s “Pastorale” Symphony with mythical unicorns and winged horses.

UT VIOLIN FESTIVAL • University of Tennessee Natalie L. Haslam Music Center • 8PM • Workshops, lectures, master classes, and performances, highlighted by the Violin Festival Concert on Saturday, Jan. 16, at 8 p.m. and the Violin Festival Closing Gala on Sunday, Jan. 17, at 3 p.m. • FREE Sunday, Jan. 17 UT VIOLIN FESTIVAL • University of Tennessee Natalie L. Haslam Music Center • 3PM • Workshops, lectures, master classes, and performances, highlighted by the Violin Festival Concert on Saturday, Jan. 16, at 8 p.m. and the Violin Festival Closing Gala on Sunday, Jan. 17, at 3 p.m. • FREE Monday, Jan. 18 NIGHT WITH THE ARTS: A CELEBRATION CONCERT • Tennessee Theatre • 8PM • Resident Conductor James Fellenbaum conducts the KSO Chamber Orchestra joined by the Celebration Choir directed by Aaron Staple. This year’s theme is “Embracing the Dream by Living with Purpose.” The performance will include an original one act play: Living the Dream with Purpose written, directed and produced by Sherineta Morrison. KSO pieces include gospel tunes with the Celebration Choir and works by African American composers George Walker and William Grant Still. The concert will also feature a new work, The 8th of August, composed by KSO horn player William Mark Harrell to honor Walter Spears who has supported music and music education in East Tennessee for over 40 years. For more information visit knoxvillesymphony.com or mlkknoxville.org. • FREE Thursday, Jan. 21 KSO MASTERWORKS SERIES: BEETHOVEN AND BRUCH • Tennessee Theatre • 7:30PM • January’s concerts will be conducted by Aram Demirjian with special guest artist Philippe Quint, violin. This concert opens with Adams’ Lollapalooza, followed by Ligeti’s Romanian Concerto. The Orchestra will be joined by Philippe Quint for Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and the program will conclude with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. • $15-$89 Friday, Jan. 22 KSO MASTERWORKS SERIES: BEETHOVEN AND BRUCH • Tennessee Theatre • 7:30PM • January’s concerts will be conducted by Aram Demirjian with special guest artist Philippe Quint, violin. This concert opens with Adams’ Lollapalooza, followed by Ligeti’s Romanian Concerto. The Orchestra will be joined by Philippe Quint for Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and the program will conclude with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. • $15-$89 Sunday, Jan. 24 READY FOR THE WORLD MUSIC SERIES: THE MIDDLE EAST • University of Tennessee Natalie L. Haslam Music Center • 2PM • The University of Tennessee’s Ready for the World Music Series brings renowned artists to perform and talk about musical styles and literature from diverse regions around the world. Three regions will be featured in the 2015-2016 academic year: Latin America (Sunday, October 11), The Middle East (Sunday, January 24), and Scandinavia (Sunday, April 3). Ready for the World: The Middle East, featuring 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. • FREE

January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 29

CALENDAR

Thursday, Jan. 14 - Sunday, Jan. 24

THEATER AND DANCE

Southern Railway Station • 8PM • Jan. 21-31. Visit tennesseestage.com. • $15

Thursday, Jan. 14 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: RABBIT HOLE • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • Becca and Howie Corbett have everything a family could want, until a life-shattering accident turns their world upside down and leaves the couple drifting perilously apart. Rabbit Hole charts their bittersweet search for comfort in the darkest of places and for a path that will lead them back into the light of day. Jan. 8-24. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $15

Saturday, Jan. 23 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: ‘SARA CREWE: A LITTLE PRINCESS’ • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 1PM and 5PM • Jan. 22-Feb. 7. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: “RABBIT HOLE” • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • Jan. 8-24. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $15 TENNESSEE STAGE COMPANY: ‘HOUSE RULES’ • Historic Southern Railway Station • 8PM • Jan. 21-31. Visit tennesseestage.com. • $15

Friday, Jan. 15 BROADWAY AT THE TENNESSEE: JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT • Tennessee Theatre • 8PM • Directed and choreographed by Tony Award-winner Andy Blankenbuehler, this new production is a reimagining of the Biblical story of Joseph, his eleven brothers and the coat of many colors. • $37-$77

Sunday, Jan. 24 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: ‘SARA CREWE: A LITTLE PRINCESS’ • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 3PM • Jan. 22-Feb. 7. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: “RABBIT HOLE” • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 3PM • Jan. 8-24. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $13 TENNESSEE STAGE COMPANY: ‘HOUSE RULES’ • Historic Southern Railway Station • 3PM • Jan. 21-31. Visit tennesseestage.com. • $15

Saturday, Jan. 16 BROADWAY AT THE TENNESSEE: JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT • Tennessee Theatre • 2PM and 8PM • Directed and choreographed by Tony Award-winner Andy Blankenbuehler, this new production is a reimagining of the Biblical story of Joseph, his eleven brothers and the coat of many colors. • $37-$77 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: “RABBIT HOLE” • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • Jan. 8-24. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $15 Sunday, Jan. 17 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: “RABBIT HOLE” • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 3PM • Jan. 8-24. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $13

UT ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE BIENNIAL Ewing Gallery (1715 Volunteer Blvd.) • Jan. 14-Feb. 18 • Free • ewing-gallery.utk.edu

Every semester, the University of Tennessee School of Art names an artist in residence—a working professional artist, usually just a few years out of art school, who teaches undergrad and graduate-level painting and drawing classes. It’s good experience for the artists and it provides new perspectives for students. It’s also the basis for the Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture’s big-deal Artist-in-Residence Biennial, held every two years to feature work by the four previous artists in residence.

This year’s show will include recent pieces by Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Aliza Nisenbaum, Caitlin Keogh, and Dominic Terlizzi. All four are painters, but they have markedly different approaches: Zuckerman-Hartung, of Chicago, explores texture and color in mixed-media works; New York-based Nisenbaum presents a contemporary take on traditional portraits and still lifes; Keogh, also based in New York, is inspired by classic fashion photography and textiles; Baltimore’s Terlizzi builds elaborate, colorful mosaics of molded acrylic.

An opening reception will be held on Thursday, Jan. 14, from 5-7 p.m. Terlizzi, the current artist in residence, will discuss his work on Thursday, Jan. 28, at 7:30 p.m. in room 109 of the Art and Architecture Building. (Matthew Everett)

30

KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

Thursday, Jan. 21 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: “RABBIT HOLE” • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • Jan. 8-24. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $15 TENNESSEE STAGE COMPANY: ‘HOUSE RULES’ • Historic Southern Railway Station • 8PM • Tennessee Stage Company kicks off it’s 26th annual New Play Festival with Staci Swedeen’s House Rules. Swedeen’s play is the first of seven new plays appearing in this year’s festival.

Swedeen’s play is about two brothers who confront the intertwined nature of hatred and love and learn that all truths kept silent become poisonous. Jan. 21-31. Visit tennesseestage.com. • $15 Friday, Jan. 22 KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE: ‘SARA CREWE: A LITTLE PRINCESS’ • Knoxville Children’s Theatre • 7PM • Captain Crewe leaves his young daughter Sara at a school for girls, while he goes abroad to claim his fortune in jewels.

The school is run by a strict head-mistress named Miss Minchin, who takes special care of her wealthy new student, until a stunning twist of fate changes the destiny of everyone in the school and throughout the neighborhood. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s story remains one of the world’s most popular books for children, despite being written over 100 years ago. It is a timeless tale of rags-to-riches, and Sara Crewe has become a role model for grace-under-pressure and undefeatable hope.

Jan. 22-Feb. 7. Visit knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com. • $12 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: “RABBIT HOLE” • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • Jan. 8-24. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $15 TENNESSEE STAGE COMPANY: ‘HOUSE RULES’ • Historic

COMEDY AND SPOKEN WORD

Friday, Jan. 15 THE FIFTH WOMAN POETRY SLAM • The Birdhouse • 6:30PM • The 5th Woman Poetry slam is place where all poets can come and share their words of love, respect, passion, and expression. It is not dedicated solely women but is a place where women poets are celebrated and honored. Check out our facebook pages for the challenge of the month and focus for our poetry every month.

Sunday, Jan. 17 UPSTAIRS UNDERGROUND COMEDY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A weekly comedy open mic.

Monday, Jan. 18 QED COMEDY LABORATORY • Pilot Light • 7:30PM • QED ComedyLaboratory is a weekly show with different theme every week that combines stand-up, improv, sketch, music and other types of performance and features some of the funniest people in Knoxville and parts unknown.

It’s weird and experimental. There is no comedy experience in town that is anything like this and it’s also a ton of fun. Pay what you want. Free, but donations are accepted. • FREE Tuesday, Jan. 19 OPEN MIC STAND-UP COMEDY • Longbranch Saloon • 8PM • Come laugh until you cry at the Longbranch every Tuesday night. Doors open at 8:30, first comic at 9. No cover charge, all are welcome. Aspiring or experienced comics interested in joining in the fun email us at longbranch.info@gmail.com to learn more, or simply come to the show a few minutes early. • FREE EINSTEIN SIMPLIFIED • Scruffy City Hall • 8PM • Einstein Simplified Comedy performs live comedy improv at Scruffy City Hall. It’s just like Whose Line Is It Anyway, but you get to make the suggestions. Show starts at 8:15, get there early for the best seats. No cover. • FREE Thursday, Jan. 21 THIRD THURSDAY COMEDY OPEN MIC • Big Fatty’s Catering Kitchen • 7:30PM • We will showcase local and touring

Thursday, Jan. 14 - Sunday, Jan. 24

CALENDAR CLASSICAL TICKETS start at just $15

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 Sunday, Jan. 24 UPSTAIRS UNDERGROUND COMEDY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A weekly comedy open mic.

FESTIVALS

Saturday, Jan. 16 YWCA PHYLLIS WHEATLEY DIVERSITY DAY AND RACE AGAINST RACISM 5K • YWCA Phyllis Wheatley Center • 11AM • Diversity Day is a community event that celebrates diversity, wellness, and dignity for all people. Attendees and participants can expect food, entertainment, speakers and local exhibitors in addition to the certified 5K run, 1-mile walk, and Kids Fun Run. Registration and a pre-race festival will kick-off at 11:00 a.m. The race will begin at 1:00 p.m. and the event will conclude with an awards presentation at 2:15 p.m.

Sunday, Jan. 17 TENNESSEE STAGE COMPANY NEW PLAY FESTIVAL KICKOFF PARTY • Historic Southern Railway Station • 5PM • Join us for a free kickoff event with complimentary refreshments, meet-&-greet with the actors, directors and playwrights, plus a showcase of short scenes from the Festival’s selection of new plays. • FREE Monday, Jan. 18 MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. PARADE • Tabernacle Baptist Church • 8:30AM • The purpose of the parade is to offer the community a visual and audible display in tribute to the life and works of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The 2016 Parade route will stretch from the Tabernacle Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Avenue to Greater Warner Tabernacle AME Zion Church in Burlington, where we will present our annual Memorial Tribute Service. We look forward to seeing you along the parade route and at the church for the closeout of the celebration. Feel free to contact the Parade Chair at Parade@MLKKnoxville.com if you have questions or need additional information. • FREE Friday, Jan. 22 SNOW DAY 2016 • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 7PM • The 8th annual Snow Day, a CAC Beardsley Community Farm Benefit, will be hosted at Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria at 7 pm on Friday, January 22nd 2016. Pre-order discounted tickets on Brown Paper Tickets: $8 for soup AND admission (plus processing fees). Click here: http:// www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2477917.CAC Beardsley Community Farm is Knoxville’s only urban demonstration farm that helps get fresh, healthy, local food to Knoxville’s under-served communities.Snow Day will feature seven performances by a diverse group of local musicians, a soup contest between some of Knoxville’s finest restaurants, a Homegrown and Homemade Beard Pageant, and a silent auction. So far, silent auction prizes include a 2 night stay at the Butterfly Gap Retreat, a 1 night stay in the King Suite at The Oliver Hotel, a CSA Half Share with Abbey Fields, one craniosacral therapy session with Dr. Natalie Kurylo, tickets to the Knoxville Zoo, tickets to see the Ice Bears, gift certificates to several local Knoxville businesses and so much more. Featured Musicians: Mic Harrison And The High Score, CrumbSnatchers, Old City Buskers, Roman Reese, Scruffy City Syncopators, Sunshine Station and more. Soup with Flour Head Bakery Bread: This year’s contestants are: Olibea, Babalu, Sweet and Savory Truck,

Sunspot and more...Come try delicious soup featuring local ingredients! At the door: $8 admission, plus $5 for soup • $8 THE 1400 KICKOFF PARTY • The 1400 • 6PM • Kick off event for a new creative spaces for art, film and music in Knoxville. • FREE HEALTHY LIVING EXPO • Knoxville Convention Center • 9AM • If your New Year’s resolution is to get fit in 2016, then you should attend The Healthy Living Expo (HLE) at the Knoxville Convention Center on Friday, January, 22 at 9 am-3 pm and Saturday, January 23 at 9 am-4pm. The event focuses on fitness, nutrition, health and living green. It also offers educational exhibits, cooking demonstrations, informative speakers and fun entertainment. • $10 Saturday, Jan. 23 HEALTHY LIVING EXPO • Knoxville Convention Center • 9AM • If your New Year’s resolution is to get fit in 2016, then you should attend The Healthy Living Expo (HLE) at the Knoxville Convention Center on Friday, January, 22 at 9 am-3 pm and Saturday, January 23 at 9 am-4pm. The event focuses on fitness, nutrition, health and living green. It also offers educational exhibits, cooking demonstrations, informative speakers and fun entertainment. • $10

FILM SCREENINGS

Thursday, Jan. 14 THE BARKLEY MARATHONS: THE RACE THAT EATS ITS YOUNG’ • Relix Variety Theatre • 6PM • For years, the Barkley Marathons was the best-kept secret in the world of ultramarathons—no website, no press coverage, no public profile at all, really, outside of a handful of connoisseurs of extreme endurance and suffering. The race, a 100 or so-mile trek, mostly off trail, up and down the woody mountains in Frozen Head State Park, in Wartburg, Tenn., is considered one of the most difficult such events in the world. Now the Barkley is the subject of a feature-length documentary that’s winning festival awards and critical praise. The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young, directed by Annika Iltis and Timothy James Kane, looks at the 2012 race, when two-time winner Brett Maune set the race record, and features interviews with the race’s victims, a few of its conquerors, and founder Gary Cantrell, aka Lazarus Lake, an eccentric former runner from West Tennessee who gleefully expounds on the cruelties of his creation.

Cantrell will be at this screening of the new movie, along with associates with names like Raw Dog and Danger Dave, for a Q&A. Proceeds benefit Frozen Head State Park.

• $10-$15 Monday, Jan. 18 THE BIRDHOUSE WALK-IN THEATER • The Birdhouse • 8:15PM • A weekly free movie screening. • FREE Tuesday, Jan. 19 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 Sunday, Jan. 24 PUBLIC CINEMA: ‘JAFAR PANAHI’S TAXI’ • Knoxville Museum of Art • 2PM • Internationally acclaimed director Jafar Panahi (This is Not a Film) drives a yellow cab

through the vibrant streets of Tehran, picking up a diverse (and yet representative) group of passengers in a single day. Each man, woman, and child candidly expresses his or her own view of the world, while being interviewed by the curious and gracious driver/director.

Panahi’s camera, placed on the dashboard of his mobile film studio, captures a spirited slice of Iranian society while also brilliantly redefining the borders of comedy, drama and cinema. • FREE

SPORTS AND RECREATION

Thursday, Jan. 14 CYCOLOGY BICYCLES THURSDAY MORNING RIDE • Cycology Bicycles • 10AM • Join Cycology Bicycles every Thursday morning at 10:00 a.m. 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.• FREE FLEET FEET GROUP RUN/WALK • Fleet Feet Sports Knoxville • 6PM • Sometimes, a group of workout buddies is just what you need to get out there run! 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. • 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. • FREE WHOLE FOODS GAME NIGHT • Whole Foods • 6PM • Join us for everything from Candy Land to chess, and feel free to add a pint and a pizza. • FREE 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.

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. • FREE Friday, Jan. 15 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.• FREE Saturday, Jan. 16 PENGUIN PLUNGE 2016 • Volunteer Landing • 10AM • We’re ringing in the new year by plunging into the Tennessee River, and we want you to join in on all of the fun! By participating in our Penguin Plunge, you’ll be Freezin’ for

DEMIRJIAN

Music Director candidate

BEETHOVEN & BRUCH Thursday, Jan. 21 • 7:30 p.m.

Friday, Jan. 22 • 7:30 p.m.

Tennessee Theatre Aram Demirjian, conductor Philippe Quint, violin ADAMS: Lollapalooza LIGETI: Romanian Concerto BRUCH: Violin Concerto No. 1 BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 7

PREU

Music Director candidate

MOZART PIANO CONCERTO NO. 20 Thursday, Feb. 18 • 7:30 p.m.

Friday, Feb. 19 • 7:30 p.m.

Tennessee Theatre Eckart Preu, conductor Alon Goldstein, piano R. STRAUSS: Don Juan MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 20 HIGDON: Blue Cathedral PROKOFIEV: Selections from “Romeo and Juliet” Sponsored by Thermal Label Warehouse

CALL: (865) 291-3310 CLICK: knoxvillesymphony.com VISIT: Monday-Friday, 9-5 January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 31

CALENDAR a Reason. This event is all about having fun and helping improve the lives of children. You can be a corporate sponsor, a plunger, a designated plunger, or you can support your favorite plunger with a donation. However you choose to support, your help goes directly towards helping children of East TN become matched with caring Big Brother and Big Sister volunteers. • FREE SMOKY MOUNTAIN HIKING CLUB: LAUREL FALLS/COVE MOUNTAIN • 8AM • The hike starts on Laurel Falls Trail, one of the most popular destinations in the park. In just over 1.1 miles, we will arrive at the 60-foot falls, and spend some time looking around. We will cross the falls, climbing through old growth forest, past the Little Greenbrier Trail intersection. A left turn leads to an old fire tower and the summit of Cove Mountain. The tower is now an air quality monitoring station. The trail parallels the park boundary as we head down to the Sugarland Visitor Center. Along the trail, we will see the ski lift, the top of a chair lift, houses, and Cataract Falls. This moderate car shuttle hike is 12 miles. Meet at Alcoa Food City at 8:00 AM. Leaders: Mary Brewer, emiebrewer@ gmail.com; David Smith, dcshiker@bellsouth.net. • FREE YWCA PHYLLIS WHEATLEY DIVERSITY DAY AND RACE AGAINST RACISM 5K • YWCA Phyllis Wheatley Center • 11AM • Diversity Day is a community event that celebrates diversity, wellness, and dignity for all people. Attendees and participants can expect food, entertainment, speakers and local exhibitors in addition to the certified 5K run, 1-mile walk, and Kids Fun Run. Registration and a pre-race festival will kick-off at 11:00 a.m. The race will begin at 1:00 p.m. and the event will conclude with an

32

KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

Thursday, Jan. 14 - Sunday, Jan. 24

awards presentation at 2:15 p.m.

Sunday, Jan. 17 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. https://www.facebook.com/KnoxvilleHardcourtBikePolo • FREE Monday, Jan. 18 KTC GROUP RUN • Mellow Mushroom • 6PM • Join Knoxville Track Club every Monday evening for a group run starting at the Mellow Mushroom on the Cumberland Avenue strip on the University of Tennessee campus. • FREE BEARDEN BEER MARKET FUN RUN • Bearden Beer Market • 6:30PM • Come run with us. Every Monday year round we do a group fun run through the neighborhood. Open to all levels of walkers and runners. Everyone who participates earns a $1 off their beer. Come be a part of Knoxville’s active beer culture. • FREE Tuesday, Jan. 19 CYTOLOGY BICYCLES TUESDAY MORNING RIDE • Cycology Bicycles • 10:30AM • Join Cycology Bicycles every Tuesday morning at 10:30 am for a road ride with 2 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. • FREE WHOLE FOODS GAME NIGHT • Whole Foods • 6PM • Join us for everything from Candy Land to chess, and feel free to add a pint and a pizza. • FREE

CEDAR BLUFF CYCLES TUESDAY GREENWAY RIDE • Cedar Bluff Cycles • 6:30PM • Join us every Tuesday evening for a greenway ride at an intermediate pace of 14-15 mph.

Must have lights! Weather permitting. • 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. • FREE Wednesday, Jan. 20 SMOKY MOUNTAIN HIKING CLUB: QUILLAM’S CAVE AND COURTHOUSE ROCK • Smoky Mountain Hiking Club • 8AM • On this hike, we will visit Quillam’s Cave and Courthouse Rock. Hike: 5-6 miles, rated moderate due to off-trail.

Meet at Alcoa Food City at 8:00 AM or Sugarlands Visitor Center at 9:00 AM. Leader: Brian Schloff, brianschloff@ yahoo.com. • FREE KTC GROUP RUN • Runner’s Market • 5:30PM • During Daylight Savings Time, the run usually takes place on the Third Creek Greenway/Bike Trail. When darkness forces the courageous misfits off the trail, leaders generally head for the nearby Cherokee Boulevard/Sequoyah Hills neighborhood for a comfortably paced run of 5-6 miles. • FREE FOUNTAIN CITY PEDALERS SHARPS RIDGE MOUNTAIN BIKE RIDE • Fountain City Pedaler • 6PM • Join us every Wednesday evening for a mountain bike ride from the shop to Sharps Ridge. 6-10 mile ride with plenty of bail out points. Regroup as necessary. Lights required, call the shop if you need them. • FREE Thursday, Jan. 21

CYCOLOGY BICYCLES THURSDAY MORNING RIDE • Cycology Bicycles • 10AM • Join Cycology Bicycles every Thursday morning at 10:00 a.m. 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.• FREE FLEET FEET GROUP RUN/WALK • Fleet Feet Sports Knoxville • 6PM • Sometimes, a group of workout buddies is just what you need to get out there run! 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. • 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. • FREE WHOLE FOODS GAME NIGHT • Whole Foods • 6PM • Join us for everything from Candy Land to chess, and feel free to add a pint and a pizza. • FREE KNOXVILLE BICYCLE COMPANY THURSDAY GRAVEL GRINDER • North Boundary Trails • 6:30PM • Join Knoxville Bicycle

Thursday, Jan. 14 - Sunday, Jan. 24

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.

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. • FREE Friday, Jan. 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. http:// www.riversportsoutfitters.com/events/ • FREE Saturday, Jan. 23 SMOKY MOUNTAIN HIKING CLUB: WILLIAM HASTIE PARK • Smoky Mountain Hiking Club • 9AM • This will be a joint hike for SMHC and the Tennessee Trails Association, which will explore the William Hastie Park in Knoxville’s Urban Wilderness. This will be a moderate 7 mile hike using most of the trails to explore this unique area. Do not be deceived - there is plenty of rugged terrain in the area. Meet at the Anderson Elementary School parking lot (4808 Prospect Road) at 9:00 AM. Hike: 7 miles, rated moderate. Leader: Chris Hamilton, hikeintenn@gmail.com.

• FREE Sunday, Jan. 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

ART

Art Market Gallery 422 S. Gay St. JAN. 5-31: Artwork by Lil Clinard and Julia Malia.

Bliss Home 24 Market Square JAN. 1-31: Artwork by Ocean Starr Cline.

Broadway Studios and Gallery 1127 Broadway JAN. 8-FEB. 2: Paintings by Hannah Harper.

Downtown Gallery 106 S. Gay St. DEC. 4-JAN. 16: You Call That Art?, an exhibition of editorial cartoons by Charlie Daniel.

Emporium Center for Arts and Culture 100 S. Gay St. DEC. 4-JAN. 29: Arts and Culture Alliance Members Show. JAN. 8-29: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Commission Exhibition, featuring artwork by African and African-American artists from Knoxville and works about social justice and civil rights.

Ewing Gallery 1715 Volunteer Blvd.

JAN. 14-FEB. 18: UT Artist-in-Residence Biennial, featuring work by Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Aliza Nisenbaum, Caitlin Keogh, and Dominic Terlizzi. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, Jan. 14, from

CALENDAR

5-7 p.m. See Spotlight on page 30.

Knoxville Museum of Art 1050 World’s Fair Park Drive NOV. 27-JAN. 10: East Tennessee Regional Student Art Exhibition. ONGOING: Higher Ground: A Century of the Visual Arts in Tennessee; Currents: Recent Art From East Tennessee and Beyond; and Facets of Modern and Contemporary Glass.

Liz-Beth and Co. 7240 Kingston Pike JAN. 1-30: Feminine Icons With an Attitude, paintings by Cynthia Markert inspired by the free-thinking women of the early 1900s.

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.

Westminster Presbyterian Church Schiller Gallery 6500 S. Northshore Drive JAN. 12-FEB. 28: Paintings by Jennifer Brickey.

LECTURES, READINGS, AND BOOK SIGNINGS

Friday, Jan. 15 KNOX HERITAGE LOST AND FOUND LUNCH SERIES • Knox Heritage • 11:30AM • Guest speaker Jennifer Montgomery will present a fascinating look at the life of businessman and neighborhood developer, C.B. Atkin. A free lunch buffet will be served beginning at 11:30 a.m. and the program will begin at 12:00 p.m. Reservations for lunch are required. Call Hollie Cook at 865-523-8008 or email her at hcook@knoxheritage.org to make a reservation.

For more information visit www.knoxheritage.org. • FREE Tuesday, Jan. 19 TIM BAUMANN: “PAINTING IN THE SHADOWS: PREHISTORIC NEGATIVE-PAINTED POTTERY IN TENNESSEE” • McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture • 7:30PM • The East Tennessee Society of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and the McClung Museum present McClung Archaeology Curator Tim Baumann lecturing on, “Painting in the Shadows: Prehistoric Negative Painted Pottery in Tennessee and the Eastern Woodlands.”Lectures are held at 7:30 p.m. in the McClung Museum Auditorium and are open to the public and free of charge. A reception will follow each.

Sunday, Jan. 24 MCCLUNG MUSEUM CIVIL WAR LECTURE SERIES • McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture • 2PM • The museum’s sixth annual Civil War Lecture Series begins this month on January 24 at 2 pm with the talk, “Politicians and Lawmakers: Attempting to Maintain Control,” by Civil War curator, Joan Markel. This year’s monthly series is titled “An All-American City Endures: Knoxvillians at War 1860–1865,” and will examine the Knoxville community before, during, and after the upheaval of war through the lens of various professions and social groups. Visit mcclungmuseum.utk.edu for details on future talks in the series. • FREE

FAMILY AND KIDS’ EVENTS

Thursday, Jan. 14 BABY BOOKWORMS • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • For infants to age 2, must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. • FREE Friday, Jan. 15 S.T.E.A.M. KIDS • Blount County Public Library • 4PM • Every week will be a different adventure, from science experiments to art projects and everything in between.

Materials will be limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. For grades K-5. • FREE Saturday, Jan. 16 SATURDAY STORIES AND SONGS • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • A weekly music and storytelling session for kids. • FREE Tuesday, Jan. 19 PRE-K READ AND PLAY • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • Pre-K Read and Play is a pilot program specifically designed to prepare children to enter kindergarten. While the format of the program will still feel like a traditional storytime with books, music, and other educational activities, each weekly session will focus on a different standard from the Tennessee Department of Education’s Early Childhood/Early Learning Developmental Standards.

• FREE BLOUNT COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY LEGO CLUB • Blount County Public Library • 4PM • LEGO Club will take place in the children’s library. Kids will complete different themed and timed LEGO Challenges, as well as have some time for free building. The library will provide the LEGOs, so all you have to bring is your imagination • FREE EVENING STORYTIME • Lawson McGee Public Library • 6:30PM • An evening storytime at Lawson McGhee Children’s Room to include stories, music, and crafts. For toddlers and up. • FREE Wednesday, Jan. 20 BABY BOOKWORMS • Lawson McGee Public Library • 10:20AM • For infants to age 2, must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. • FREE PRESCHOOL STORYTIME • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • For ages 3 to 5, must be accompanied by an adult.

• FREE Thursday, Jan. 21 BABY BOOKWORMS • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • For infants to age 2, must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. • FREE Friday, Jan. 22 S.T.E.A.M. KIDS • Blount County Public Library • 4PM • Every week will be a different adventure, from science experiments to art projects and everything in between.

Materials will be limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. For grades K-5. • FREE Saturday, Jan. 23 SATURDAY STORIES AND SONGS • Lawson McGee Public Library • 11AM • A weekly music and storytelling session for kids. • FREE

CLASSES AND

UPCOMING EVENTS

DARNELL BOYS

JAN 15

FECKLESS FEAR DEARG

JAN 16

THE DUPONT BROTHERS

JAN 20

WHISKY SALUTE TO RABBIE BURNS

JAN 21

CALEB WARREN

& THE PERFECT GENTLEMEN

JAN 22

FULL EVENTS CALENDAR AT JIGANDREEL.COM 865-247-7066 January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 33

CALENDAR WORKSHOPS

Thursday, Jan. 14 PLANET MOTION WORLD DANCE FITNESS • Champion Ballroom Center • 10AM • All levels fun dance workout incorporating dance and music styles from around the world.

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

CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY: HEALING THROUGH ART • Cancer Support Community • 1PM • No experience necessary, just a willingness to enjoy the creative process. RSVP. Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer.

BLOUNT COUNTY LIBRARY BASIC COMPUTER CLASSES • Blount County Public Library • 2PM • Basic computer classes are offered, free, at the library. Jan. 6-March 10.

Visit blountlibrary.org. • FREE BELLY DANCE LEVELS 1 AND 2 • Knox Dance Worx • 8PM • Call (865) 898-2126 or email alexia@alexia-dance.com. • $12 Saturday, Jan. 16 IMPROV COMEDY CLASS • The Birdhouse • 10AM • A weekly improv comedy class. • FREE INTRODUCTORY INTERNET GENEALOGY • East Tennessee History Center • 1PM • Instructor: Eric Head, BA, Knox Co. Archives and/or Dr. George K. Schweitzer, PhD, ScD. Students use individual computers to explore the five

Thursday, Jan. 14 - Sunday, Jan. 24

major genealogical sites: Ancestry, Family Search, Roots Web, Google, Genealogy in Time. Participants should bring birth dates and birth places of parents and grandparents.

Pre-registration and a valid email address, as well as good internet searching capabilities, are required to attend. Call 865.215.8809 beginning Jan 4 to register.

Sunday, Jan. 17 CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY MINDFULNESS BASED STRESS REDUCTION • Cancer Support Community • 4:30PM • This 8-week training program, developed by Dr. Jon Kabat- Zinn from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, is a systematic practice that involves focusing attention, relaxing the body and integrating the mind and body to reduce stress. Evidence shows that this program can be effective for controlling anxiety, depression and stress. Must attend the January 10 orientation in order to participate in the series, which runs from January 17-March 6 from 4:30-6:30pm. RSVP. Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer.

Monday, Jan. 18 HIKING THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL: TRIP PLANNING • REI • 7PM • Come learn the basics of what you will need to know to get started hiking the Appalachian Trail. This in-store class will give you a solid foundation to get you started planning everything from a short hike to a long backpacking trip. This course helps start you on a journey of a lifetime. Registration required at www.rei.com/ knoxville. • FREE

Tuesday, Jan. 19 KMA WINTER ADULT WORKSHOPS • Knoxville Museum of Art • 8AM • All classes are held at the KMA with easy access and plenty of free parking. Registration is on a first-come, first-served basis. Classes and workshops are taught by professional artists, living and working in the East Tennessee area. For a full description of classes and registration information, visit www.knoxart.org.

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

BLOUNT COUNTY LIBRARY BASIC COMPUTER CLASSES • Blount County Public Library • 2PM • Basic computer classes are offered, free, at the library Jan. 6-March 10. • FREE OMNI VISIONS FOSTER CARE TRAINING • Omni Visions Inc. • 6PM • Omni Visions is in need of foster and adoptive families as well as families that will provide respite care.

Omni Visions Treatment Parents receive financial reimbursement for each day a child lives in your home, as well as 24/7 support from our staff. Join us for our free PATH (Parents As Tender Healers) Training and open your heart and home to a child in need. For more information and to RSVP, please contact Rebecca Horton at (865) 524-4393 ext 1204 or rhorton@omnivisions.com. • FREE Wednesday, Jan. 20 KMA WINTER ADULT WORKSHOPS • Knoxville Museum of Art • 10AM • All classes are held at the KMA with easy access and plenty of free parking. Registration is on a first-come, first-served basis. Classes and workshops are

taught by professional artists, living and working in the East Tennessee area. For a full description of classes and registration information, visit www.knoxart.org.

AARP DRIVER SAFETY CLASS • John T. O’Connor Senior Center • 12PM • For registration and information, call (865) 382-5822.

KMA WINTER ADULT WORKSHOPS • Knoxville Museum of Art • 2PM • All classes are held at the KMA with easy access and plenty of free parking. Registration is on a first-come, first-served basis. Classes and workshops are taught by professional artists, living and working in the East Tennessee area. For a full description of classes and registration information, visit www.knoxart.org.

Thursday, Jan. 21 PLANET MOTION WORLD DANCE FITNESS • Champion Ballroom Center • 10AM • All levels fun dance workout incorporating dance and music styles from around the world.

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

AARP DRIVER SAFETY CLASS • John T. O’Connor Senior Center • 12PM • For registration and information, call (865) 382-5822.

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

HELP CLEAR THE AIR IN KNOXVILLE.

Business

Product awareness

Company goodwill

JOIN FORCES WITH LOCAL HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS & PUBLIC HEALTH PROFESSIONALS TO MAKE MORE OF KNOXVILLE SMOKE-FREE.

There’s never been a better time to “go public.”

Meetings are held the second Wednesday of every month at noon at the Knox County Health Department (Community Room in the basement).

All guests must RSVP to attend. Lunch is provided.

For more information, contact Kerri Thompson at kerri.thompson@knoxcounty.org or 865-215-5445.

34

KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

WUOT_Ad_5.5x4.25_WhyWUOT_KnoxMerc.indd 1

9/7/15 9:52 AM

Thursday, Jan. 14 - Sunday, Jan. 24

affected by cancer.

BLOUNT COUNTY LIBRARY BASIC COMPUTER CLASSES • Blount County Public Library • 2PM • Basic computer classes are offered, free, at the library Jan. 6-March 10. • FREE BELLY DANCE LEVELS 1 AND 2 • Knox Dance Worx • 8PM • Call (865) 898-2126 or email alexia@alexia-dance.com. • $12 BIKE MAINTENANCE BASICS • REI • 6PM • Routine bike maintenance keeps you riding smoothly and prolongs the life of your bike. Join us for this introductory class to help you take care of your bike. Registration required at www. rei.com/knoxville. • FREE Saturday, Jan. 23 IMPROV COMEDY CLASS • The Birdhouse • 10AM • A weekly improv comedy class. • FREE ANDREW HURST: “CARING FOR YOUR PAINTINGS AND ARTIFACTS” • East Tennessee History Center • 12PM • Do you own a piece of art made by Knoxville artist Lloyd Branson? If so, the East Tennessee Historical Society would like to know about it. In the decades after the Civil War, Lloyd Branson rose from a precocious sketcher on his family’s East Tennessee farm to become an accomplished artist and Knoxville’s most popular portraitist. Lloyd Branson completed hundreds of paintings, but unfortunately we have no detailed original records listing his artistic production. To document the breadth of Branson’s career, ETHS is conducting a survey of works associated with Knoxville’s “native genius.” The public is invited to bring Branson paintings, photographs, and other materials to the East Tennessee History Center to be photographed or scanned by ETHS staff and entered into a database of Branson’s known works. At noon, Andrew Hurst, a retired professional from the University of Tennessee’s McClung Museum, will conduct a program on caring for your paintings and other artifacts. For more information about the Branson Documentation, please call Michele MacDonald, curator of collections, at 865-215-8829. • FREE SAFTA OUTSPOKEN WRITING WORKSHOPS • Sundress Academy for the Arts • 1PM • OUTspoken is a third-year program from the Sundress Academy of the Arts (SAFTA) that will take place in June 2016. Our goal is to create a platform for the LGBTQ community of Knoxville, Tennessee, and its surrounding areas to record and perform the experiences of sex- and gender-diverse individuals in the South. OUTspoken begins with a series of writing workshops taking place on January 23rd, February 20th, and March 26th. During these workshops, on-site participants will create, edit, and produce a piece of art to be performed during the summer OUTspoken events. Registration is open and available at: http://www. sundresspublications.com/outspoken. • $25-$60 Sunday, Jan. 24 CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY MINDFULNESS BASED STRESS REDUCTION • Cancer Support Community • 4:30PM • This 8-week training program, developed by Dr. Jon Kabat- Zinn from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, is a systematic practice that involves focusing attention, relaxing the body and integrating the mind and body to reduce stress. Evidence shows that this program can be effective for controlling anxiety, depression and stress. Must attend the January 10 orientation in order to participate in the series, which runs from January 17-March 6 from 4:30-6:30pm. RSVP. Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer.

MEETINGS

Thursday, Jan. 14 ATHEISTS SOCIETY OF KNOXVILLE • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 5:30PM • Weekly atheists meetup and happy hour. Come join us for food, drink and great conversation.

Everyone welcome. • FREE CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY LEUKEMIA, LYMPHOMA, AND MYELOMA NETWORKER • Cancer Support Community • 6PM • This drop-in group is open for those with leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma and myeloproliferative disorders and their support persons. Participants will be able to exchange information, discuss concerns and share experiences. Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer.

KNOXDEVS QUARTERLY MEETUP • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 6:30PM • Bringing 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.

Sunday, Jan. 17 LARK IN THE MORN ENGLISH COUNTRY DANCERS • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Call 546-8442. 17th-18th Century Social Dancing with live music. Beginners welcome, no partner is required. Also Rapper Sword dance group meets most Sundays at 7:00. Free.

RATIONALISTS OF EAST TENNESSEE • Pellissippi State Community College • 10:30AM • The Rationalists of East Tennessee focus on the real or natural universe. The group exists so that we can benefit emotionally and intellectually through meeting together to expand our awareness and understanding through shared experience, knowledge, and ideas as well as enrich our lives and the lives of others. The Rationalists do not endorse or condemn members’ thoughts or actions.

Rather it hopefully encourages honest dialogue, analytic discussion, and responsible action based on reason, compassion, and factual accuracy. Visit rationalists.org. • FREE Monday, Jan. 18 KNOXVILLE CONTRA DANCERS • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Call 599-9621. Contra dancing to live acoustic music. No experience or partner required. • $7 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.

Wednesday, Jan. 20 KNOXVILLE SWING DANCE ASSOCIATION • Laurel Theater • 7PM • Call 224-6830. Dedicated to the purpose of promoting swing dance. Lessons at 7 p.m., open dance at 8 p.m.

COMITE POPULAR DE KNOXVILLE • The Birdhouse • 7PM • A weekly meeting of the local immigrant advocacy organization.

CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY WOMEN WITH ADVANCED CANCER NETWORKER • Cancer Support Community • 1:30PM • Join other women who are living with cancer as a chronic illness to discuss feelings and experiences that are unique to women with advanced cancer. Please call before your first visit. Call 865-546- 4661 for more info.

All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer.

CALENDAR

ORION ASTRONOMY CLUB • The Grove Theater • 7PM • ORION is an amateur science and astronomy club centered in Oak Ridge that was founded in April 1974 by a group of scientists at the United States Department of Energy facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. We serve Oak Ridge, Knoxville, and the counties of Anderson, Knox, and Roane.We meet on the third Wednesday of each month for coffee and conversation, and our program begins 15 minutes thereafter. • FREE Thursday, Jan. 21 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. F REE CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY FAMILY BEREAVEMENT GROUP • Cancer Support Community • 4PM • 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.

Sunday, Jan. 24 LARK IN THE MORN ENGLISH COUNTRY DANCERS • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Call 546-8442. 17th-18th Century Social Dancing with live music. Beginners welcome, no partner is required. Also Rapper Sword dance group meets most Sundays at 7:00. Free.

SUNDAY ASSEMBLY • The Concourse • 10:30AM • Sunday Assembly is a secular congregation without deity, dogma, or doctrine. Our motto: Live Better, Help Often, Wonder More. Our monthly celebrations feature a different theme every month, with inspiring speakers and lively sing-alongs. Our community is also involved in rewarding service projects, with various discussion groups and events planned throughout the month. Sunday Assembly Knoxville is part of the international movement of people who want to celebrate the one life we know we have. We meet the fourth Sunday of every month. Assemblies are attended by around 50 people, are family-friendly, and children are welcome. We always follow up with a potluck, so please bring your appetite and a dish to share.

To find out more, visit our web page (http://knoxville-tn. sundayassembly.com) or email saknoxville.info@gmail. com. • FREE

Saturday, January 22 and 23, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., open to the public in the Library lower level. • FREE Friday, Jan. 22 FRIENDS OF THE BLOUNT COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY PRE-OWNED BOOK SALE • Blount County Public Library • 9AM • A fundraiser for the library where more than 50,000 books are available—$1 for soft cover and $2.50 for hard cover, plus movies (DVD & VHS), audiobooks and specially priced rare books, collectibles and others--by the Friends of the Blount County Public Library (FOL).• Thursday, January 21, 12 noon until 6 p.m.: Members-only sale, an opportunity for FOL members to purchase books before other members of the public are admitted to the sale. FOL memberships are available at the elevator doors, before accessing the Library lower level.• Friday & Saturday, January 22 and 23, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., open to the public in the Library lower level. • FREE Saturday, Jan. 23 FRIENDS OF THE BLOUNT COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY PRE-OWNED BOOK SALE • Blount County Public Library • 9AM • A fundraiser for the library where more than 50,000 books are available—$1 for soft cover and $2.50 for hard cover, plus movies (DVD & VHS), audiobooks and specially priced rare books, collectibles and others--by the Friends of the Blount County Public Library (FOL).• Thursday, January 21, 12 noon until 6 p.m.: Members-only sale, an opportunity for FOL members to purchase books before other members of the public are admitted to the sale. FOL memberships are available at the elevator doors, before accessing the Library lower level.• Friday & Saturday, January 22 and 23, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., open to the public in the Library lower level. • FREE

Send your events to calendar@knoxmercury.com

ETC.

Thursday, Jan. 14 KNOXVILLE SQUARE DANCE • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Jubilee Community Arts presents Knoxville Square Dance with live old-time music by The Helgramites and calling

by Stan Sharp, Ruth Simmons and Leo Collins. No experience or partner is necessary and the atmosphere is casual. (No taps, please.) • $7 Thursday, Jan. 21 FRIENDS OF THE BLOUNT COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY PRE-OWNED BOOK SALE • Blount County Public Library • 12PM • A fundraiser for the library where more than 50,000 books are available—$1 for soft cover and $2.50 for hard cover, plus movies (DVD & VHS), audiobooks and specially priced rare books, collectibles and others--by the Friends of the Blount County Public Library (FOL).• Thursday, January 21, 12 noon until 6 p.m.: Members-only sale, an opportunity for FOL members to purchase books before other members of the public are admitted to the sale. FOL memberships are available at the elevator doors, before accessing the Library lower level.• Friday & January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 35

DRINK

Sips & Shot s

Photos by Rose Kennedy

NATALIE KNAUTH, CASUAL PINT BARTENDER/CO-OWNER

Pint of Science, Peck of Fun Turns out, scientific inquiry and beer do mix

BY ROSE KENNEDY

A

n odd idea—and oddly appealing.

On Monday night I attended Knoxville’s inaugural Pint of Science event at the Casual Pint downtown. It was a nice evening, all part of some occasional events leading up to Knoxville’s first participation in POS’s national festival in late May, where our city will host 18 speakers at as many brew-centric venues over three days.

For this preview talk, there was a standing-room-only crowd seated snugly at tables in the softly lit pub, but instead of the typical trivia or house band, they were all intent on hearing certified health physicist and president of Ameriphysics (and “full-time beer drinker”) Tom Hansen discuss the mutations that X-ray and Gamma-ray radiations can cause. They were just as rapt when medical physicist Samantha Hedrick of the Provision Center for Proton Therapy shared how proton therapy compares to conventional therapy and her thoughts on the

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

potential benefits of the practice.

And there was beer. Lots of craft beer, and pizza donated by Hard Knox for the occasion.

This was no accidental pairing.

Started by a pair of London scientists in 2012, and now global, Pint of Science has the weird notion that people—both scientists and regular blokes—would enjoy science a lot more if they managed to have scientists bring their ground-breaking work to share at “adult playgrounds,” i.e., the local bar.

If Monday night was any example, they are correct. Admittedly, there were three additional health physicists in the audience for this talk, but some of us ordinary people, like the nonprofit middle manager and service-industry worker I brought with me, were intrigued, too.

It didn’t feel like studying or anything. Just enjoyable beer with the occasional bit of useful information permeating my enjoyment. I was

admiring the hint of rosemary and identifying pistachios in one Hard Knox pizza slice, for example, as I learned that the human body has 70 trillion cells.

Noting how well the touch of hot pepper in the Marci-Roni pizza paired with the slight sweetness of my Blackhorse Brewery vanilla ale made me more receptive to the message that while radiation could cause hair loss, or perhaps death, it could only work with the DNA present, and therefore could not really be responsible for the transformation of Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk. Rats.

My main science-y takeaway from Hedrick was that proton therapy could be more precise than traditional approaches, and I was also impressed with her ability to talk about very specific body parts so matter-of-factly no one even paused in their pizza eating. But I learned a few more things about beer during the break, just from talking to Alan Knauth, who co-owns

the host venue with wife Natalie and is the co-city coordinator of Knoxville POS with Elizabeth Gillenwalters, another health physicist.

I found out that Casual Pint has this machine that lets them pop any draft they have on tap into a can you can take home, and that their bartenders are smooth but sassy, like Evan Arneson, who showed me how the machine worked and also wanted me to make sure to mention how awesome he was.

The Knauths told me their most popular beer on tap is Saw Works Rocky Hop IPA, followed by Smuttynose Winter Ale. While I generally agree with Natalie that IPAs are an acquired taste, “and one which I have not acquired,” it was fun to sample the Rocky Hop and note its very malty nature, especially as compared to what Alan called the “in your face” hops of another Casual Pint favorite, an Alabama brew called Blue Pants Hop Busted IPA. Much more valuable to me personally, Alan shared a sample of his own draft choice that night, a mix of Founder’s Rubaeus, a raspberry ale, and Young’s Double Chocolate Stout Nitro. It was fresh and light, raspberry-kissed and creamy, with what I would call a “stout lite” dark chocolate-y finish at the end of a swallow. The chocolate stout also combines well with my current favorite regional beer, the Blackhorse vanilla ale, an experiment I completed successfully on the spot.

How I love science. ◆ For more information about Pint of Science Knoxville’s May festival or ongoing speakers: pintofscience.us/events/knoxville/

Pint of Science has the weird notion that people— both scientists and regular blokes— would enjoy science a lot more if they managed to have scientists bring their ground-breaking work to share at the local bar.

January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 37

’BYE

R estless Nat ive

Armed and Irritable Next-door neighbors in the Fort can sometimes get too close

BY CHRIS WOHLWEND

L

ate one morning in 1969 I was awakened by a persistent knocking on my front door in Fort Sanders. A quick glance through the bedroom window revealed an official-looking sedan on the street in front of my house.

I lived in the next-to-last house on Clinch Avenue, number 2303, in the block just as the street ends at the berm supporting the railroad tracks.

The tracks cross Cumberland Avenue and continue into the yard where Volunteer Boulevard makes its turn to the east.

I went to the front door and found two men in suits. One asked if I was Christopher Wohlwend. I answered in the affirmative and then said, “How can I help you?”

They identified themselves as being from the University of Tennessee police department. I told them that I was not a UT student (I had graduated a year or so earlier).

Sheepishly, they then explained that the woman who lived next door had

been calling the home of the university president, Andy Holt, complaining that her UT-student neighbors were spraying pepper into her house.

They then asked if I minded, to humor my neighbor (there was only a shared driveway between the two houses), if they came inside for a few minutes.

I let them in and explained that my roommate (at home in Nashville at the time) was a UT student, and that the elderly neighbor (I’ll call her Mrs. Parker) was always throwing crazy accusations around the neighborhood.

She had taken a particular dislike to my roommate when he had moved in a couple of months earlier.

There were nods from the two cops; she had been calling the department with various complaints for a couple of years. But, they added, somehow she had recently obtained Dr. Holt’s home phone number and the situation had gotten out of hand.

After a few minutes, the officers

BY MATTHEW FOLTZ-GRAY

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KNOXVILLE MERCURY January 14, 2016

www.thespiritofthestaircase.com

departed, and I escorted them down the sidewalk—an effort to ensure that my neighbor saw that they had made an official visit to 2303.

Mrs. Parker’s reputation in the neighborhood had been cemented a few months earlier when the young couple who lived in 2301 heard what they believed was a gunshot and saw their cat hightailing it back home from the direction of Mrs. Parker’s backyard. She was standing on the back stoop with a pistol.

There ensued a shouting match, and I was informed of the suspicion of Mrs. Parker’s being armed shortly after I moved in.

She confronted me—without any visible weaponry—within a month after I took up residence. The party marking my move-in produced a crowd, and, thanks to the jukebox I had installed in the house, the music was loud, helping broadcast the raucous celebration.

Mrs. Parker yelled at the guests who were on the front porch, then called the police. Two officers arrived and advised me to keep the party inside.

From then on, Mrs. Parker saw to it that the black and white city-police car was a regular visitor to 2303 on Saturday nights. In fact, on one visit, the cops told me that they might as well just add my house to their regular weekend beat.

Upset as she became when we were partying, Mrs. Parker was not shy about asking me for help. And that

led to a reversal of the usual confrontation—I sent the police to her house.

One afternoon she knocked on my door and asked if I would help her flip the mattress on her bed, as it was too heavy for her to do it by herself. So I followed her over and into her bedroom. On the nightstand next to her bed was a .38 revolver, bullets visible in the cylinder.

The next day I informed one of my co-workers at the Knoxville Journal, the city editor, who was married to a policewoman familiar with Mrs. Parker. His wife paid her an unannounced visit, and saw the .38.

Mrs. Parker was warned about firing it. She denied that it ever left her bedroom, insisting that it usually stayed in the drawer of the nightstand.

I was told about the visit, and the pistol and warning. Mrs. Parker continued the pepper-spray accusations against my roommate until he moved out. Mrs. Parker then advised me not to get another roommate. I did her one better—I moved to South Knoxville, leaving 2303 to a new houseful of UT students.

On a recent Saturday afternoon I drove by 2303—judging by the group on the front porch, it is still a residence to students. And Mrs. Parker’s house had gained a couple of ungainly, tacked-on additions since the late ’60s—I assume the present owner decided to do as the other neighbors and provide housing for UT students.

I didn’t hang around to see if the police were still regular visitors. ◆

’BYE

BY IAN BLACKBURN AND JACK NEELY

CLASSIFIEDS

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FOR SALE BLUE VINTAGE NORTHFACE HIKING BACKPACK, aluminum external frame.

Early 1980's or so, about 90 liters. Great condition for its age, but some wear. $100 OBO. 678-313-7077

NORTH KNOXVILLE’S PREMIER RENTAL HOMES pittmanproperties.com

COMMUNITY

MARYVILLE’S FAIR TRADE SHOP. Unique gifts from around the globe. Hours: Wednesdays 2-8 pm and Sundays 8:30-9:15 am and 11:30 am-12:15 pm. Monte Vista Baptist Church 1735 Old Niles Ferry Road. For more information call 865/982-6070.

JOBS

$5 NEW YEAR’S SALE, local and handmade, unique and modern, repurposed vintage beads, hand-painted geometric necklaces, and more. etsy.com/shop/triciabee

HOUSING 1BR APARTMENT IN PARKRIDGE - $425. 2BR $465. Take half off rent for first month, for December or January leasing. 865-438-4870

WANT TO FIND A COPY OF THE KNOXVILLE MERCURY?

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ANGEL IS A 4-YEAR-OLD medium-sized female black and tan Shepherd/ Rottweiler mix looking for her forever home.

Angel will be spayed, microchipped and fully vetted when adopted.

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

DOLLYWOOD IS HIRING EXPERIENCED THEATRICAL AUDIO TECHNICIANS AND LIGHTING TECHNICIANS FOR THE 2016 SEASON. At least one year experience required. College degree a plus. Pay starts at $10/hr.

Exceptional benefits package. Please bring resume and letter of interest to interview, Saturday, Jan 23rd, 11:00am - 2:00pm, at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge. Questions?

Please send an email to “auditions@dollywood.com”.

DOLLYWOOD ENTERTAINMENT WILL BE HOLDING AUDITIONS IN PIGEON FORGE, Saturday, January 23rd, 11:00am-2:00pm, at Dollywood, 2700 Dollywood Parks Blvd.

Casting singers who move and actors who sing and move. Registration begins at 9:00am. Must be at least 17. For more information, including audition requirements, pay rates and benefits, go to www. dollywoodauditions.com.

OLD CITY WINE BAR, KNOXVILLE’S FIRST URBAN WINE BAR; featuring an eclectic collection of wines, beer & cocktails from around the world is opening soon. We are seeking front of house team members with a passion for customer service, and a desire to learn more about the world of wine. Send Resume to info@oldcitywinebar.com

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January 14, 2016

KNOXVILLE MERCURY 39