MAY 26, 2016 KNOXMERCURY.COM
WHAT HE SAID V.
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NEWS
State Health-Care Task Force Meets in Knoxville for a Lot of Talk
JACK NEELY
“Paper to Pixels” Project Reveals Surprising Nuggets of Local History
MUSIC
Former Knoxville Songwriter John Paul Keith Finds His Music Home in Memphis
FOOD
T. Ho Makes Its Long-Awaited Return to North Knoxville
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May 26, 2016 Volume 02 / Issue 21 knoxmercury.com
CONTENTS
“Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.” —Margaret Mead
14 Blue Streak COVER STORY
Oak Ridge comic Trae Crowder catapulted to social media stardom last month after his “Liberal Redneck” videos went viral. Upwards of 21 million people on Facebook alone have watched his breakout two-minute commentary railing against conservatives who want to control bathroom access for transgender people. The early videos didn’t even include Crowder’s name, and many who watched didn’t realize he was a comedian (although he really does have those opinions and talk like that). Yet the exposure launched his first comedy tour. More importantly, this may be his opportunity to shatter Southern stereotypes. S. Heather Duncan profiles.
NEWS
12 A World of Hurt The 3-Star Healthy Project, a controversial task force empaneled by state House Speaker Beth Harwell, rolled into town last week for a public forum. Its plan is to set up a series of pilot programs to test the validity and financial impacts of different ideas to fill health-care gaps. Critics say the task force is just “kicking the can down the road.” Thomas Fraser reports.
Press Forward 2016 Thank you to all of the donors who contributed to our fundraising campaign. We value your words of support just as much as your donations!
DEPARTMENTS
OPINION
A&E
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Letters to the Editor Howdy Start Here: By the Numbers, Public Affairs, Quote Factory PLUS: “Photo Recollection: Knoxville Streets,” a photo series by Holly Rainey. ’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
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Scruffy Citizen Jack Neely digs into the digital archives of the Paper to Pixels project to uncover some surprising nuggets of history. Perspectives Joe Sullivan talks with departing Knox County Schools Superintendent Jim McIntyre about his eight years on the job. Guest Ed. Rachel Milford points out why residents may want to reconsider the installation of a KUB “smart meter.”
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CALENDAR Program Notes: A new Burning Man-like festival is kindled in Sneedville, and nief-norf prepares its summer festival. Shelf Life: Chris Barrett pulls some must-borrow selections from the Knox County Public Library’s A/V shelves. Music: Matthew Everett talks with expat John Paul Keith about the musical inspiration of Memphis. Movies: April Snellings crashes the party at Neighbors 2.
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Spotlight: Lexington, Ky., singer/ songwriter/guitarist Echo Wilcox’s band, Ancient Warfare, and Maryland death-metal band Dying Fetus.
FOOD & DRINK
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Home Palate Dennis Perkins visits the new incarnation of an old haunt, T. Ho in North Knoxville.
May 26, 2016
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 3
LETTERS Delivering Fine Journalism Since 2015
FEELING GOOD
Like a lot of Knoxvillans, I felt a void when the Metro Pulse suddenly quit publishing, but quickly became an avid reader of the Knoxville Mercury. I find the articles to be informative, diligently researched, and well written. Maybe I was just ready for some good news when I picked up the May 19 issue, so several pieces grabbed my attention. First, the letter from Charles Fels, in support of Jack Neely. Spot on! Jack truly is a “national treasure.” Perhaps some professors shouldn’t speak out of school, pun intended. By the way, another great article on downtown Burlington. Keep ’em comin’, Jack. Next, thanks for the story about Kinley Koontz. [“Street Art,” news feature by S. Heather Duncan] At only 15 she possesses incredible creativeness and compassion, along with the intelligence and ability to bring her ideas to fruition. Her philosophy reads like poetry. Not just a feel-good story, it’s an inspiration about how one person can make a huge difference in so many lives. I expect we will hear a great deal more about Kinley in the future. More good news: Our water is safe to drink! Timely, in light of recent news re: Flint, Mich., and comforting too. Finally, “Green Burial” [a sidebar to Eleanor Scott’s cover story on the Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center]—it’s not for everyone, but seems serene and spiritual, providing an alternative to the “modern” way of entering eternity. So, thanks for making my day yet again. Margie Hagen Knoxville
In a world where jobs are disappearing by the millions, students who in theory represent the nation’s future are held back by political leadership firmly anchored in an analog present created to serve the needs of the past. An Internet-savvy generation of youth who can learn on their own in real time, and who will eagerly seek knowledge that excites them without direction or guidance from educators, are restrained by politicians whose only concern is serving their corporate donors. Take, for example, the governor of Tennessee, who suggests that denying tens of thousands of students access to the Internet in their homes is acceptable because expanding Internet services to rural counties would harm the legacy providers: AT&T, Comcast, Charter Communications, and others. Some citizens take note that, coincidental to his announcement, his PAC receives a $10,000 donation; the coffers of the Lt. Governor’s PAC are increased by the same amount; and the campaign fund of the Speaker of the House accepts $7,500, from the same donors. Then consider the irony when, within days of his pronouncement on being unfair to corporate giants, his director of development, Randy Boyd, issues a report citing that 1.4 million of Tennessee’s 2.8 million jobs are at risk over a relatively short time due to rapidly changing technologies, and the solution is through expanding post-secondary education. Consider, too, that some 65 percent of the jobs young people will have in the future are in fields yet to be created. One has to wonder how prepared Tennessee’s workforce will be if large swaths of Tennessee’s youth are denied access to the best learning tools when they’re most needed. It’s an election year, folks. Now is the time to consider the actions of your incumbents. Joseph Malgeri Bean Station
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KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 26, 2016
EDITORIAL
CONSIDER THEIR ACTIONS
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
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR GUIDELINES
• Letter submissions should include a verifiable name, address, and phone number. We do not print anonymous letters. • We much prefer letters that address issues that pertain specifically to Knoxville or to stories we’ve published. • We don’t publish letters about personal disputes or how you didn’t like your waiter at that restaurant. • Letters are usually published in the order that we receive them. Send your letters to: Our Dear Editor Knoxville Mercury 706 Walnut St., Suite 404 Knoxville, TN 37920 Send an email to: editor@knoxmercury.com Or message us at: facebook.com/knoxmercury
Chris Barrett Donna Johnson Ian Blackburn Rose Kennedy Brian Canever Dennis Perkins Patrice Cole Stephanie Piper Eric Dawson Ryan Reed George Dodds Eleanor Scott Lee Gardner Alan Sherrod Mike Gibson April Snellings Carey Hodges Joe Sullivan Nick Huinker Kim Trevathan Chris Wohlwend
DESIGN ART DIRECTOR Tricia Bateman tricia@knoxmercury.com GRAPHIC DESIGNERS
Charlie Finch Corey McPherson CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
David Luttrell Shawn Poynter Justin Fee Tyler Oxendine CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS
Ben Adams Matthew Foltz-Gray
ADVERTISING PUBLISHER & DIRECTOR OF SALES Charlie Vogel charlie@knoxmercury.com SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Scott Hamstead scott@knoxmercury.com Stacey Pastor stacey@knoxmercury.com
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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
THANK YOU
TO ALL OF OUR PRESS FORWARD DONORS! Here’s what some had to say about why they gave: “Long live local journalism; long live Knoxville Mercury.” —DAVID BOOKER
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May 26, 2016
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 5
thinkstock
HOWDY
BY THE NUMBERS
Hazards of the Job
127
people killed on the job in Tennessee in 2014, a rate of about 4.8 deaths per 100,000 workers (well above the national average of 3.4 per 100,000).
32 62,000 97
more people killed on the job in 2014 than the previous year.
A man skateboards on Gay Street in downtown Knoxville, TN PHOTO RECOLLECTION: KNOXVILLE STREETS by Holly Rainey (loveh865.com)
QUOTE FACTORY “ My grandfather has false teeth and they are not very comfortable for him. The other evening he took them out and laid them on a table while he read. When he finished he asked me to hand them to him. I picked them up and they were literally crawling with small red ants.” —James Agee, in what may very well be his first published piece of writing, an entry to a Knoxville News contest called “I Spy,” in which readers were invited to report a “humorous, pathetic, or unusual incident.” It’s from August 22, 1923, when Agee was 13. For other surprising nuggets of history from the Knox County Public Library’s From Paper to Pixels project, see Jack Neely’s Scruffy Citizen column in this issue.
PUBLIC AFFAIRS
5/26 MEETING: FEDERAL COAL PROGRAM 5/30 HONOR FOUNTAIN CITY DAY THURSDAY
10 a.m.-4 p.m., Tennessee Theatre (604 S. Gay St.). Free. The federal Bureau of Land Management is conducting a series of public forums nationwide as part of the Department of the Interior’s comprehensive review of the federal coal leasing program. Are communities receiving a fair return from coal companies using public land? That and other concerns will be discussed. (There will also be a Sierra Club rally at Krutch Park starting at noon.)
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KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 26, 2016
MONDAY
10 a.m.-4 p.m., Fountain City Park. Free. Is there a better place to celebrate Memorial Day than at the 41st Honor Fountain City Day festivities? There will be bands, baton twirlers, speeches, barbecue, singers, antique cars, crafts, door prizes, a silent auction, politicians, and hot dogs. (As the press release helpfully notes, “some categories may overlap.”) Who will be this year’s Fountain City Man and Woman of the Year?
6/1 MEETUP: CRE865 HAPPY HOUR WEDNESDAY
5:30 p.m., The Pilot Light (106 E Jackson Ave.). Free. The city’s Knoxville Entrepreneur Center has a hit on its hands with Cre865, a series of meetups for creative types. The first one with Ashley Capps was SRO, and this one sounds equally fun as the Maryville Daily Times’ Steve Wildsmith hosts a discussion about nurturing the local music scene with Pilot Light owner Jason Boardman and musicians Tim and Susan Lee. Reservations: eventbrite.com.
estimated work injuries that same year.
years it would take for health and safety inspectors to visit and inspect each job site once at current staffing levels. There are currently 34 inspectors in the state, one for every 80,883 workers.
$215,537
in penalties issued to companies for health or safety violations that contributed to on-the-job deaths. —Clay Duda Source: 2016 Death on the Job report, AFL-CIO
6/2 MEETING: BEAUFORD DELANEY PROJECT THURSDAY
5:30-7:30 p.m., Beck Cultural Exchange Center (1927 Dandridge Ave.). Free. Beauford Delaney is likely Knoxville’s most globally significant artist of the 20th century—and there are plans in the making to at last honor his life and work here in his hometown. Find out what the Beck Cultural Exchange Center, the Knoxville Museum of Art, and the East Tennessee History Center have in the works.
Memorial Day Memorial Day has been celebrated in Knoxville for about as long as the holiday has existed. Originally known as Decoration Day, it was a day for decorating the graves of war dead with flowers. A day to remember Union soldiers killed in the Civil War, it was ignored in most of the South, but not in Knoxville, where it was celebrated with parades and cemetery observances. According to a generations-old story that may be unprovable, a Knoxville woman started a national tradition. During an unusual spring season in the 1870s when few flowers were available, Laura Richardson, who had been in charge of decorations, introduced the tradition of planting tiny U.S. flags on the graves of soldiers.
have been their last glimpse of their hometown. Knoxville has been home to veterans of every war fought by or for the United States. Several of Knoxville’s founders were Revolutionary War veterans, and Knoxvillians have participated in the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War. However, in inscribing names, planners chose to concentrate on war deaths beginning with World War I because records of 20th and 21st century wars are more complete and accurate. Inscribed on granite slabs are the names of 6,230 East Tennessee soldiers who were killed in battle since 1917. About 850 of them were from Knox County.
Knoxville’s National Cemetery is on Tyson Street, north of downtown, near Old Gray. Given special attention are soldiers awarded Now eight years old, the East Tennessee Veterans Memorial features Established during the Civil War, it’s older granite pylons with the names of more than 6,200 East Tennesseans the Medal of Honor. Among them are three than most national cemeteries, a little older who have died in war since 1917, with room for more. It’s central to Knoxvillians: James E. Karnes, who served in even than the famous Arlington National Memorial Day observances on May 30. France in World War I, and Troy McGill and Cemetery near Washington. The East Alexander Bonnyman, who died in the Pacific Image courtesy of The East Tennessee Tennessee campaigns of the Civil War Theater in World War II. Veterans Memorial Association. resulted in hundreds of soldier deaths, and https://etvma.org called for the establishment of a national Most of the dead were from one war that cemetery under the terms suggested by new wartime legislation in Congress. lasted less than four years: World War II. A total of 3,900 East Tennesseans died in that conflict, 557 of whom were from Knox County. It has one very strange bit of history. The marble monument, surmounted by a statue of a Union soldier, replaced a previous monument topped featuring The monument also includes a quotation from Brigadier General Lawrence an iron eagle perched upon an iron cannonball. The original, paid for by local Davis Tyson, who was a veteran of the Spanish American War and World War I. donations, was destroyed when struck by a lightning bolt in 1904. Federal In a 1921 speech he gave at the dedication of the memorial “doughboy statue” funds secured by Knoxville’s Republican U.S. Congressman Henry Gibson, who on Fifth Avenue in front of Knoxville High School, he said the following: was himself a Union veteran, provided for a new monument that would not attract lightning. THESE MEN HAVE PAID THE LAST FULL MEASURE OF DEVOTION TO MANKIND, AND IT NOW REMAINS FOR US TO BE WORTHY OF THE GREAT The East Tennessee Veterans Memorial was established in World’s Fair SACRIFICES THEY MADE FOR US. IT IS FOR US, THE LIVING, TO CONSEPark in 2008, after several years of preparation and fundraising from public CRATE OURSELVES TO CARRY ON THE WORK THEY DIED TO ACCOMPLISH, and private sources. It’s located between the L&N STEM Academy and the WHICH WAS TO MAKE THE WORLD A SAFER AND BETTER AND MORE Court of Flags area, well-known for its fountains. PEACEFUL PLACE IN WHICH TO LIVE. The memorial, designed by Knoxville architect Lee Ingram, is composed of 32 granite slabs, or pylons, each nine feet tall, an American flag on a 50-foot pole, and a 27-foot bell tower celebrating the Four Freedoms as enumerated by President Franklin Roosevelt at the beginning of World War II: Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear.
Tyson’s own son, Navy Lt. McGhee Tyson, was killed in an airplane crash on a mission over the North Sea in October, 1918. Gen. Tyson and his wife Bettie donated a park to the city--Tyson Park--with the understanding that Knoxville’s airport would always be named for their son, as a memorial.
Its location near the L&N station is appropriate, because it was one of the two stations from which trains full of new recruits, especially during World War I, left for training and service overseas. For some soldiers, the L&N may
Beginning at 6 a.m. on Memorial Day, the American Legion will sponsor a reading of the names of all the soldiers from East Tennessee who have died in battle in the last century. They do that every Memorial Day.
Sources: The Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection, University of Tennessee Professor John Romeiser
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 May 26, 2016
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 7
SCRUFFY CITIZEN
The Lost Years Prewar archives answer questions about a murky era in Knoxville’s music history, but raise even more BY JACK NEELY
F
or the last few weeks, the Knox County Public Library’s “Paper to Pixels” project has made a couple of decades of News Sentinel articles and ads available to us via the library’s website. Lots of interesting details of Knoxville’s cultural history are coming to light, especially in a generally underdocumented era before World War II. The 1922-1941 span of available material covers an era we’ve known mainly through personal memories and some biographers’ research, a fertile era in the development of a new form of popular music not yet known as country, and some interesting moments in the histories of other forms, like jazz. I can’t stay away. Following are some highlights of what’s keeping me up late at night.
Roy Acuff is the guy who made country music a national phenomenon, who created Nashville as Music City, first as a charismatic performer, then as a canny publisher and recording executive. For six or seven years in the 1930s, he was all over Knoxville, with his bands the Three Rolling Stones, then the Tennessee Crackerjacks, then the Crazy Tennesseans. He was broadcasting on both WNOX and WROL, and playing his first live shows, from the Tennessee Theatre to 8
KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 26, 2016
the roadhouses on the new highways. He developed the songs that became his first recordings here, during that period that’s suddenly available to researchers. In retrospect he was probably the most culturally influential person living in Knoxville in the 1930s. In the News Sentinel archives he shows up a lot, sure enough. But if we were to judge him by local news articles, Roy Acuff was mainly known as an athlete. Extremely competitive, he was a champion in football, basketball, and baseball, beginning in high school. Dozens of articles, in fact most of those that come up in a “Roy Acuff” search, describe his feats as an end for the Central High Bobcats on the gridiron. He was, by a 1923 account, “a deadly tackler.” The paper also reports him as a guy who gets in trouble. In August 1928, he was injured when his “roadster” collided with that of an Indiana tourist at Broadway and 5th. In November 1929, Acuff was arrested at a football game at Caswell Park. He was pouring liquor into a pop bottle. At the time, liquor was illegal in America. In July 1930, Roy Acuff showed up at St. Mary’s Hospital with a bullet in his arm. He’d had a spat with M.T. Gaultney at the Green Lantern Tea Room. That incident is not in his biographies. In January 1931, Acuff was arrested for assaulting Wee Willie Daniels at a tourist camp. In Novem-
ber 1932, he was indicted, along with a few others, for “gaming.” At the same time, though, Acuff was an active member of a committee to “clean and improve” Fountain City Park. He was a complicated fellow. Fortunately for his reputation, he was exploring another hobby, but it was less interesting to the News Sentinel than all the other stuff he’d done. He was listed a couple of times in the ‘20s as a vocalist for an upcoming Central High minstrel show. Other than that, I couldn’t find a single mention of him as a musician in a written story. Only an advertisement from 1936, touting “Roy Acuff and Band” doing a Friday night show at the Silver Slipper on Clinton Pike. However, his band the Crazy Tennesseans was a sudden phenomenon in Knoxville in early 1936. I didn’t realize how big it was, sometimes as many as “14 ace fiddlers, harmonica players, and guitar players.” Crowds for the Crazy Tennesseans overflowed one venue after another. Acuff is identifiable, but unidentified, in a group picture of nine Crazy Tennesseans that February. In early March 1936, they drew an audience of 1,500 to the Market Hall, eliciting the caption “Does the crowd like their particular brand of carefree singing and playing? Evidently!” There was a liberating anarchy about early country music that people loved, and maybe needed. In those days, the most popular individual local performer, by far, was comedian/singer Archie Campbell, both by his own name and by his comic character, “Grand Pappy.” But the first actual written news article mentioning Acuff, by name, as a country musician, was not about his becoming part of the Grand Ole Opry in 1938—but that he was featured in a
1940 movie about the Opry. The short article was headlined “Local Boy Makes Good.” By then, of course, he was a Nashvillian for life.
I almost wish The Knoxville Sessions, the most amazing local music-history event of the century so far, had been delayed a few months, so that the authors of the book about the 1929-30 Vocalion recordings at the St. James Hotel could have used this resource to fill in some missing pieces in the lives of some essentially mysterious performers. Leola Manning has been the voice that jumps out most remarkably on the box set, especially to music scholars who know it only from the six songs she recorded at the St. James Hotel, but not much is known about the East Knoxville cafeteria worker’s blues career after they turned off the microphones on Wall Avenue. The archives offer only a little, but something: an ad for “Leola Manning and Her Gang” performing at Negro Day of the Columbia Radio and Electric Show at a tobacco warehouse on McCalla Avenue, just past Winona: “Leola sings blues with the orchestra.” That was in September 1930, five months after her last St. James recordings. A crowd of 3,000 was expected. It doesn’t say much, but does suggest her fame within the black community, fleeting as it was. She was known by her first name. And it’s interesting that she was identified as a blues performer, which is how scholars describe her style today, even though she disliked the term. Charlie Oaks, remembered by some scholars as the first professional
“Does the crowd like their particular brand of carefree singing and playing? Evidently!”
country musician—he made records in New York, in 1925—kind of evaporates around 1930, and little is known of his later life. The little reporting we have of influential local musicians comes mainly by way of a guy who never claimed to be an arts critic. Bert Vincent was a roving columnist, and described everything interesting he encountered in his “Strolling” column. Thanks to Vincent’s habits, Oaks shows up once, late in his career. In 1935, Vincent wrote, “Blind Charlie Oaks and his blind wife [Alice], who five years ago sang and plucked a guitar on Market Square until they seemed like fixtures,” apparently left Knoxville for the Carolinas around 1930, but returned, on the far side of middle age, to play for a few more nickels on Market Square. His younger counterpart was George Reneau, “the Blind Minstrel of the Smoky Mountains,” who sometimes performed more marketable versions of Oaks’ songs. He seems to have been just a little better known to reporters, but sometimes as a subject of pity. He made records, and in 1925 Vocalion hailed Reneau as “the Blind Minstrel of the Smoky Mountains” in a big display advertisement. Hardly more than a year later, the same recording star faced “begging charges.” Pop-music careers rose and fell even faster in the ’20s than they do today. The charges were, fortunately, dismissed. A few months later, Reneau, perhaps rehabilitated, was entertaining the Kiwanis Club, and a few months after that, playing piano and singing “old-time favorites.”
The archive is also a new way, if an imperfect one, to track some legends about traveling jazz performers. I tried to use it to confirm some shows we know happened, like Duke Ellington’s show at the Market House Auditorium in the early 1930s. Ellington himself recalled it in an interview. But it didn’t show up in my searches. Neither does Ida Cox’s known shows at the Gem. Or several other legendary Gem shows featuring Bessie Smith or Billie Holliday. Jazz shows were only rarely described by reporters. The Knoxville newspaperman of the 1930s who paid most attention to popular music was
For New Year’s Eve, you’d think one of America’s most famous bandleaders would already be booked at the Savoy. But that night he played Knoxville’s Chilhowee Park. And he brought with him his 20-year-old singer, who was just becoming famous in New York.
Malcolm Miller, who wrote for the Journal, so his work’s not indexed yet. Another young guy, Richard Davis Golden, wrote occasionally about jazz for KNS for just a couple of years, then joined the Army. In October 1939, he interviewed bandleader Gene Krupa during a show at Whittle Springs Hotel. We know about most shows only by advertising—and moreover advertising just for shows that had enough crossover appeal that white people might be interested. Advertising was aimed mainly at the white audience, always noting that a “white section” was reserved at these shows. Such was the case for legend Earl “Fatha” Hines, perhaps the greatest jazz pianist of his day. I was surprised to learn he performed in Knoxville several times. When Hines and his orchestra played at Neal’s Savoy on University Avenue in 1941 (a nightclub in the downtown section of Mechanicsville actually run by a woman named Maggie Cansler), a reporter recalled he’d done a full week-long stand at the Riviera Theatre, which was usually whites only, around 1930. Hines performed to a mixed crowd at the black-oriented Gem Theatre in March 1934. The Gem was at Vine, near Central, erased in the 1960s by urban renewal and now the approximate site of the dog park. Noble Sissle, Broadway composer and a godfather of mainstream jazz (“I’m Just Wild About Harry”), was at the same venue just two weeks later. That may have been a great month for
jazz. Or it may have been a typical month at the Gem, and we know about it only because the management had decided to experiment with advertising to the white newspaper-reading public that month. There are several references to a jazz dance club I’d heard about, but never nailed down. It was on a street called Charles Place, or Charles Street, that may have been a glorified alley between Central and State, near Union. The venue went by several names, including Bert Hodgson’s Auditorium, a name startling to students of local history. Bert Hodgson was a local songwriter prominent in the 1920s, who was the nephew of English-born novelist Frances Hodgson Burnett. Andy Kirk and his orchestra were there in June, 1939, with major jazz singer Mary Lou Williams, as well as June Richmond and short-lived swing star Pha Terrell. Count Basie and his orchestra performed there five months later. Erskine Hawkins, famous for his tune “Tuxedo Junction,” played there in July 1940, when it was billed as the Charles Street Auditorium. During his visit, he even signed records at Miller’s mezzanine level the next day. The legendary Fats Waller was there the following March, performing a 9:30 p.m. show, about two years before his unexpected death. In June 1941, the extremely successful R&B/pop quartet known as The Ink Spots were at Hodgson’s. I found a reference to Frank
Sinatra singing with the Tommy Dorsey orchestra at UT the same year. A frustrating account, because the bandleader and his 25-year-old singer are barely mentioned. Even though they were both pretty big stars by then, Sinatra for “I’ll Never Smile Again” and several other hits, the article is mainly about what the female attendees at the dance were wearing. But for me the mother lode was the answer to a jazz-geek question I asked in a column about three years ago. A recent documentary, The Savoy King: Chick Webb and the Music that Changed America, brought out the Harlem drummer/bandleader’s place as a major influence in jazz, but also included a surprise. Disabled by childhood tuberculosis of the spine, Webb didn’t tour as much as some contemporaries, and he particularly avoided the segregated South. However, the documentary noted that he came to Knoxville at least once. In my column, I requested memories, knowing it was probably too late. I heard no clues about it. In fact Webb may have been here as many as three times, all the same year, 1937. He performed at UT’s once-famous Nahheeyayli Dance, probably at Alumni Hall, and apparently at another UT dance before that, both broadcast locally on WNOX. For New Year’s Eve, you’d think one of America’s most famous bandleaders would already be booked at the Savoy. But that night he played Knoxville’s Chilhowee Park. And he brought with him his 20-year-old singer, who was just becoming famous in New York. Her name was Ella Fitzgerald. It was advertised as a very big deal, but no after-the-fact account lets us know how many people came or what they played or how they sounded. It was in the park’s auditorium, in the ornate old 1910 exposition building; it burned down six months later. Chick Webb died about a year after that. But Fitzgerald’s singing career lasted more than half a century. We can assume she carried memories of that show. Anyway, have a look at these expansive digital archives. At the public library’s website, knoxlib.org, search for “From Paper to Pixels Campaign,” click on the “explore every issue” link, and follow directions. You may lose some sleep. ◆ May 26, 2016
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 9
PERSPECTIVES
Exit Interview A farewell assessment of Superintendent Jim McIntyre BY JOE SULLIVAN
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hen Superintendent Jim McIntyre steps down next month, he deserves an acclaimed farewell. Despite the controversies that led up to his resignation in January, a great deal has been accomplished in Knox County Schools during McIntyre’s eight years at the helm, and he’s entitled to a lot of credit for these successes. It’s easy now to forget that 2008 marked the advent of much more rigorous educational standards that brought Tennessee from being a bottom-feeder among the 50 states to the fastest improving in the nation as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. But the process of implementing these standards and then assessing both student and teacher performance under them has been traumatic, to say the least. The fact that Knox County Schools were recognized last year by the state as one of 12 Exemplary School Districts is testament to McIntyre’s success in doing so. The designation is based on “significantly improving student performance and narrowing achievement gaps,” and Knox County is the only large metropolitan school system in the state ever to be so recognized. Yet McIntyre also became a lightning rod for a lot of teacher frustration and resentment over the evaluation methodology by which they are held accountable and by what many considered to be excessive standardized student testing. As he now acknowledges, “I think in hindsight that at a point in time when there was a lot of focus on reform and
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accountability, that we could have pivoted a little more toward support than accountability and we could have gotten there a little faster and more smoothly.” So when asked what accomplishments he’s most proud of, McIntyre starts from a different place. At the top of the list is “the fairly extraordinary academic progress that we’ve seen in our high schools over the past eight years during which our graduation rate has gone from 79 percent to 90 percent. That’s 443 more students than we would have had whose lives have changed in terms of their opportunity for the future.” Also noteworthy is the fact that the percentage of high school graduates scoring 21 or better on the ACT test—considered a benchmark for college and career readiness—has grown from 35 percent to 42 percent (though it remains far short of an aspirational goal of 70 percent). “Another thing I’m very proud of is that we’ve taken to heart the notion of personalized learning,” he says. He cites the creation of three new high schools, the L&N Stem Academy, the Paul Kelley Volunteer Academy (for nontraditional students), and the Career Magnet Academy as all embodying a commitment to providing “multiple pathways to success.” The school of communications at Fulton High School and the International Baccalaureate program at West High School are other examples of distinctive programs that are open to students system-wide. Another pathway to more individualized learning in which McIntyre places great store is the
augmented use of instructional technology. In 2012, he was rebuffed when he sought a tax increase that would have gone initially to fund acquisition of a laptop or tablet for every student in fifth grade or higher for one-on-one instruction. But in 2013 he managed to earmark funding to do so in 11 schools, and that number has since been expanded to 19 (out of 90). This coming year’s budget provides for buying a Chromebook for every high school teacher and McIntyre hopes that the same amount of funding will be earmarked over the next four years to buy one for every high school student. “Technology is an important tool. It’s a way kids will learn and communicate and interact, and they need to have those skills,” he says. When it comes to where the most improvement is still needed, McIntyre cites closing achievement gaps for economically disadvantaged and minority students as well as those with disabilities. “We’ve made some progress in closing these gaps, but we have a lot more to do on these,” he says. The state has set annual measurable objectives (or AMOs) for gap closure, and my own take is that while Knox schools are making strides in math, the reading results are troublesome. The only reason the Grades 3-8 reading gap for racial minorities has narrowed between 2012 and 2015 is that their TCAP reading scores have fallen by less than those of students as a whole. The decline in reading proficiency from 57 percent of all students in 2012 to 53.4 percent in 2015 is especially disturbing. One possible explanation for the decline, which occurred statewide as well, is a misalignment between what was being taught and what was being tested. Full implementation of
Tennessee’s version of the politically much maligned and misunderstood Common Core standards was originally intended to be accompanied by conversion to a new online test known as PARCC that was keyed to the new standards. But when the new test and its supplier were dropped by the state as a political hot potato, the old TCAPs continued to be administered while the state sought another vendor. The failure of the one selected to deliver in time for 2016 testing has produced a travesty that will deprive the state of both student proficiency and teacher value added (TVAAS) data for the year. My final question of McIntyre was: Why did you tender your resignation in January after having sought and received a three-year contract extension by a 5-4 vote of the school board in November? An excerpted version of his response is as follows: “I asked for an extension of my contract because I wanted to continue to serve and lead as superintendent of Knox County Schools…. What became clear between when I sought the extension and when I announced my resignation was that the school board was going to change substantially and that the board that would take their seats in September might want to go in a different direction and that I probably wasn’t going to be their guy…. I’ll also say I was surprised how difficult it was to get a contract renewal despite all the success we’ve had….I’m very proud of the work we have done for children over the past eight years, and if we were going to get to the point where the issues in this year’s election revolved around me instead of continuing to make progress and have academic success, then it was time for me to take myself out of the equation.” ◆
“I think in hindsight that at a point in time when there was a lot of focus on reform and accountability, that we could have pivoted a little more toward support.” —SUPERINTENDENT JIM MCINTYRE
GUEST ED.
Cellular Concerns Before you agree to have a “smart” utility meter installed, consider your RF exposure BY RACHEL MILFORD
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his July, KUB will begin installing “smart” meters in every KUB serviced home and business as part of their “Meter Modernization” program. Over the past five to 10 years, smart meters have been installed in communities all over the United States and across the world. While they do provide many benefits, such as the ability for consumers to better track their energy consumption, many communities have experienced alarming side effects, particularly in regard to health. In fact, in California, one of the first states to receive smart meters, 57 counties, cities, and towns have opposed the mandatory smart meter programs, and 15 of them have passed ordinances banning smart meters all together (view list at stopsmartmeters.org). Fortunately, KUB is providing each and every one of us with the opportunity to educate ourselves on the matter and choose whether to participate or opt out of this new program. What is a smart meter? It’s a new utility meter that monitors and automatically transmits energy usage via wireless signals. The idea is that now instead of having to send meter readers to all of our homes and businesses, our wireless smart meters will send that information directly to a large cell tower constructed for that purpose. These meters will be sending wireless transmissions to these towers throughout the day in order to give KUB real time readings of each homeowner’s power usage. This $54 million, four-year project will begin with the downtown and North Knoxville areas, as well as parts of South, East, and West
Knoxville. Over the next four years, KUB will replace over 400,000 meters systemwide, installing one of these meters for every utility of KUB’s you use: gas, electric, and water. That is between two to three meters for most homes. According to KUB, this new advanced metering technology will offer many advantages, such as reporting outages to KUB automatically, allowing meters to be read without need of a physical meter reader, letting customers view an online, detailed usage report for each of their utilities, and most of all, saving KUB time and money. Sounds great, right? However, what KUB hasn’t publicly discussed much are the various concerns that these meters have raised in other communities. Smart meters essentially act like mini cell towers on each of our homes, emitting radio frequencies (RFs) that can radiate outward and into our homes. As described in news articles, as well as from personal testimonies to local governments and in court cases, people have reported headaches, dizziness, breathing problems, nausea, cognitive issues, and heart problems (among other effects) after installation of smart meters. According to Sensus, the company manufacturing the particular meters KUB will install, “RF energy produced by smart meters is not harmful and is comparable to cellular phone devices, wireless baby monitors, television broadcasts, garage door openers, microwave ovens, cordless home phones, and Wi-Fi networks.” This statistic, however, is based upon a time-averaged number, which hides
the fact that RF “pulses” coming off smart meters vary in strength throughout the day and include peak pulses that emit at much higher levels, documented by the Electric Power Research Institute. In 2013, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified RF emissions from electronic devices such as computers, cell phones, and smart meters, as “potentially carcinogenic” in the same class as lead and chloroform. According to the American Cancer Society, “Because RF radiation is a possible carcinogen, and smart meters give off RF radiation, it is possible that smart meters could increase cancer risk. Still, it isn’t clear what risk, if any there might be from living in a home with a smart meter.” Despite the lack of conclusive agreement amongst health experts on this topic, there is a wealth of peer-reviewed scientific studies establishing a strong link between exposure to RFs, such as the levels emitted by smart meters, and biological effects such as cancer, oxidative stress/DNA damage, reproduction/fertility effects, disrupted immune function, and cardiovascular issues. In the 2012 BioInitiative Report, one of the best compilations of these studies, researchers observed these negative effects at levels far below the FCC’s current maximum permissible exposure limits for radio frequencies. For those interested, this 1,479-page report can be read in its entirety at bioinitiative.org. In addition to health concerns, smart meters also pose privacy issues, as they transmit personal information about our daily activities to KUB through our energy usage profiles. As there is no law preventing it, this data may be sold to third parties, such as insurance companies, marketers, law enforcement, or government. Other communities around the world have experienced other concerns, such as meters catching fire and increased energy bill costs, not to mention the job losses that these meters cause. What KUB is not widely publicizing is this: you have the right and the opportunity to opt out of receiving these new smart meters. Opting out will certainly lessen you and your family’s exposure to RFs. Unfortunately, though, the damaging effects of RFs can extend distances of up to 100 meters, so the
decisions your neighbors make will affect your household as well. KUB will begin sending out notices in June letting you know about the smart meter program and giving you up to 30 days to opt out. If you do not opt out, you will automatically receive smart meters. In order to opt out, you can call KUB at 865-5242911. Stay on the line, ask to speak to a representative, and then ask to opt out. If you have questions about the program or would like to know when you are scheduled to receive a smart meter, you can email KUB’s Eric Greene at eric.greene@kub.org. It’s understandable that many may approach this issue with skepticism. Can we prove without a shadow of a doubt that this new technology will cause our bodies harm, that the RFs coming from our cell phones, Wi-Fi, and smart meters are making us ill? Do we know at exactly what level of cumulative RF exposure cancer cells may begin to appear in one’s body? Not yet. But what we do know, and what plenty of research suggests, is that the levels of RFs these smart meters and our other electronic devices emit may cause potentially significant health issues in people over time, if not immediately. This issue brings to mind many technologies once thought to be benign, such as DDT and mercury fillings. Perhaps it’s time to challenge the current logic of our government and our industries that assumes something is completely safe until proven otherwise. It’s time to reverse the burden of proof. Let’s demand that they prove something safe before exposing our bodies to it. We have the intelligence and capability necessary to create new technologies that both advance efficiency and promote the wellness of our human and ecological communities. For those of you interested in learning more, the local group Stop KUB Smart Meters will be screening an award-winning documentary on the topic called Take Back Your Power on Friday, May 27, at 7 p.m. at the Birdhouse Community Center (800 N. 4th Ave.). The movie will be followed by a Q&A and open forum. Rachel Milford is a community health advocate, small business owner, and a Knoxville native. If you have an opinion on a Knoxville issue that you’d like to share, please submit it for consideration: editor@knoxmercury.com. May 26, 2016
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Dr. Eboni Winford, a psychologist with Cherokee Health Systems, addresses the 3-Star Healthy Project panel at Pellissippi State on Thursday.
Photo by Thomas Fraser
A World of Hurt Local health-care providers and activists give the 3-Star Healthy Project an earful BY THOMAS FRASER
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ouise McKown and her flower-adorned walker moved slowly down the hall of the J.L. Goins Administrative Building at Pellissippi State the evening of May 19. She was there to voice her support for any effort to help some 300,000 people without health-care coverage in Tennessee. The 66-year-old McKown, of Oak Ridge, is now covered by Medicare, but her struggle to find subsidized health care more than 20 years ago made her a lifetime ally of those seeking coverage for the poor. “I’ve been in this battle since 1994,” she said after sitting through a two-hour meeting of the 3-Star Healthy Project, a controversial task force empaneled by state House Speaker Beth Harwell to seek ways to help close the “coverage gap” facing Tennesseans frozen out of both the state Medicaid program and coverage available through the federal Affordable Care Act. These “working poor” make too much for state coverage and too little to receive tax credits for ACA coverage. One presumption in planning the
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ACA was the expansion of state Medicaid to provide coverage for the poor. But in Tennessee and other states, that did not occur. After GOP General Assembly members killed Gov. Bill Haslam’s Insure Tennessee, a health insurance model for TennCare, they faced calls to take action themselves—so Harwell announced at an April 12 press conference the creation of “a task force that will delve into these ideas and formulate a specific proposal.” The 3-Star Healthy Project will present its recommendations to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid in June. From there, the plan is to set up a series of pilot programs to test the validity and financial impacts of different ideas, where successful initiatives can be phased in state-wide over time and those that don’t pan out (or where costs overrun projections) can be killed. The task force is also establishing “circuit breakers,” or financial caps that will automatically end pilot programs if the state’s share of costs increases
above a certain amount. What those caps may be, or how much testing these programs might cost, is at this point still unknown. Democrats promptly blistered Harwell’s task force, with House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rep. Mike Stewart calling it “a political charade.” Todd Shelton of the Tennessee Health Care Campaign says he and other advocates for expanding TennCare are “pretty discouraged. It seems they are looking at some piecemeal approaches,” which would only provide coverage to a fraction of those in need, and which the federal government may reject. He noted that polling by Vanderbilt University indicated 64 percent of registered voters supported the ill-fated Insure Tennessee expansion plan, and “the public has really been potentially discarded,” by state GOP leadership and the task force itself. “We feel like basically they are kicking the can down the road,” Shelton says. McKown didn’t much like what she heard last week, either—especially the emphasis on preventative care and ideas such as setting up health savings accounts for the indigent and working poor. That idea was described by health-care professionals at the meeting as unworkable—that it’s unrealistic to expect the working poor to accrue money in such an account and also pay copays on top of that. But it is one of three specific points the panel is tasked with, along with the preventative-care measures and work-placement assistance so people can receive private insurance plans. The panel—which on May 19 included Knoxville Republican Rep. Roger Kane, Crossville Republican Rep. Cameron Sexton, and Memphis Democrat Rep. Karen Camper—refereed discussions ranging from the importance of smoking cessation to obesity and substance abuse prevention, as well as the need for more primary care providers in the state. McKown thinks the panel missed a crucial health-care reality: Sometimes catastrophe strikes. In her case it was a progressive neurological disease called olivopontocerebellar atrophy (OPCA) she was diagnosed
with in 1989. “You know what? I’m not overweight. I didn’t smoke, I didn’t do drugs… Please. Enough is enough,” said McKown, who first took on the mantle of health-care reform when she went without care for a few months after her COBRA coverage expired in 1994 and she had to desperately search for a willing insurer. She advocates a single-payer system, and “we’ll get over this business of funding the gap.” She and dozens of others at the committee meeting sported “Close the Gap” stickers. That same simple message was communicated to lawmakers by silent protesters standing at the rear of an auditorium holding a banner. Most of the Knoxville-area healthcare providers and executives who offered testimony to the panel and provided materials for the record shared a similar theme: East Tennessee health care is in a world of hurt. While recent figures based upon University of Tennessee research suggest 8.2 percent of the state population is now without health insurance, “every county in East Tennessee is far above 8 percent in uninsured (adults),” said Ben Harrington, executive director of the Mental Health Association of Tennessee. He said the number of uninsured is about 14 percent in Knox County, and is higher in nearby, more rural counties. “Starting a pilot program and trying to chip away at 5-10 percent [of the uninsured population] isn’t going to help these folks one bit,” Harrington said. Kane said any initial pilot program based upon task force recommendations would include about 150,000 people. “We understand that the working poor, there’s really no other option for them,” he said. He noted “at this point there are a lot of variables we are working with.” “We want to have a phased-in approach,” Sexton said in response to Bo Carey, a small-business owner and member of the National Federation of Independent Business who told the panel other members were “wary” of an expansion of government-subsidized health-care in Tennessee. “I think anything we come up with, there will be measurable outcomes.” Executives and health-care providers from the University of Tennessee Medical Center, Covenant, Tennova Healthcare, and Cherokee
Health System concurred on the need to expand health services, bolster primary care networks, and adopt, in many cases, a case-management system for more vulnerable patients. This would likely limit visits to the ER for nonemergency ailments—a major source of monetary hemorrhage for hospitals. “I think we all agree that the problem is not access to care,” said David Hall, chief operating officer of UT Medical Center. “It’s where and when people receive that care.” Often, those lacking a primary care physician will wait for treatment “until they’re really, really sick.” He said more than 13,000 annual patient “encounters” at UTMC were with the uninsured, and 85 percent of those originated in the emergency department. This cost the medical system $19 million a year, money that otherwise would “be able to be invested back in our community,” he said. Other ideas included expansion of urgent care centers, “Telenet” remote diagnostic opportunities and other technology, expanding payment and fee-waiver options, and reducing the overall cost of health-care services. Mental-health needs have also
“Starting a pilot program and trying to chip away at 5-10 percent [of the uninsured population] isn’t going to help these folks one bit.” —BEN HARRINGTON, executive director of the Mental Health Association of Tennessee
driven discussion. Knoxville Police Department Deputy Police Chief Gary Holliday said more money is needed to fund a successful program in behavioral-health-based judicial diversions. The Knoxville Early Diversion Program is a $398,000 grant-funded collaboration with Helen Ross McNabb Center. Those charged with misdemeanor public disorder crimes are evaluated for behavioral health issues, including substance abuse, and are given the option to receive treatment in exchange for diversion of the case and ultimate dismissal of charges, Holliday said.
“It’s good to keep folks out of jail,” Holliday said, and the program has yielded a cost savings of $110,000 over three years. But the grant money “left us quickly,” largely because of the cost of providing health services to those in the program. The traveling 3-Star Healthy Project panel—the legislative task force has also met in Johnson City, Nashville, and Memphis—has been besieged by numbers, but one doctor who provided testimony said raw statistics should not cast a shadow over the real purpose of trying to close the health-care gap.
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Dr. Eboni Winford, a Cherokee Health System psychologist, relayed the story of a man who fi nally received TennCare coverage two weeks before he died. “We really want to emphasize that we are talking about people,” she said. Rep. Camper said after the meeting that failure to close the public insurance gap means “we’ll lose some of our rural hospitals,” and that common themes heard throughout the state include issues of “co-morbidity”—when a person has multiple health problems at once—worries from businesses about health-insurance costs and the need for better mental-health coverage. Knoxville’s task force meeting, she said, “really just continued stories we’ve heard from the working poor.” She urged those in attendance to “be positive. We’re not doing this just for show.” Sexton, the task force chairman, who also serves as the state House Health Committee chairman, called for patience as the panel works on a solution: “We know how high the mountain is; we’re willing to climb it, we just need a little time to get it right.” ◆
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Photo by Clay Duda /Illustration by Tricia Bateman
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It ain’t no schtick: Trae Crowder wears his heart on his sleeve(-less) when recording as the Liberal Redneck at his Oak Ridge home. Despite having a good reputation among other Knoxville comedians and having steady gigs, Crowder was rarely a headliner. “I never had fans,” he says. That has changed. He was surrounded by a ring of loud enthusiasts two or three deep after the Scruffy City performance. While he is being accompanied on the “wellRED Tour” by a couple of other liberal Tennessee comics—Corey Forrester and former Knox County public defender Drew Morgan, who has since moved to New York—Crowder is the main draw. “The running joke is they’re riding my sleeveless coattails,” Crowder says. Morgan, who told the Scruffy City crowd that his college football nickname was “Liberal Faggot,” has a similar rural Southern liberal viewpoint. “I never doubted Trae was special, but also thought he’d never break out if he didn’t move out of Knoxville so he could get more exposure,” Morgan says. “I was gloriously wrong.” Crowder released his latest Liberal Redneck video last week. It opens with
Photos by Clay Duda
t a surprise Wednesday night show two weeks ago, Scruffy City Hall on Market Square was filled with people who had heard, through social media or word of mouth, about this spur-of-the-moment chance to see a man best known for recording his own shirtless backporch tirades. It wasn’t jam-packed, but several of the comics who took the stage early squinted into the stage lights to incredulously greet the crowd filling uncomfortable church pews in the balcony. “Look at that! The balcony!” one murmured. Still, the audience was rather quiet in its appreciation until the headliner ambled onstage. This time he was wearing a shirt—a black button-down, actually—black-rimmed nerd glasses and loafers, none of which are in evidence during the viral online videos in which he practically yells his diatribes at social conservatives. Standing in front of Scruffy City’s pseudo-stained glass windows, he spoke in his signature deep twang, but the tone was low-key and ironic. “A funny thing happened to me on the way to relevancy,” he started, acknowledging his sudden ascension to Internet fame. “You talk funny and use big words, and people eat that shit up.” Oak Ridge comic Trae Crowder catapulted to social media stardom last month after his “Liberal Redneck” videos went viral. Upwards of 21 million people on Facebook alone have watched his breakout two-minute commentary railing against conservatives who want to control bathroom access for transgender people. (“Quit being a pussy and say what you mean: You’re freaked out,” he railed.) The early videos didn’t even include Crowder’s name, and many who watched didn’t realize he was a comedian (although he really does have those opinions and talk like that). Yet the exposure launched his first comedy tour. Its initial leg is selling out through Southern cities this week, culminating in a show at the Grove Theater in Oak Ridge at 8 p.m. Saturday. At the Scruffy City Hall show, which served as a test-run for the tour format, the crowd was on Crowder’s side from the start. “How often has that happened? NEVER,” Crowder laughs now. He used new, untested material, which he’d normally never do, “But I thought, these are my people.”
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him staring wide-eyed at the camera like a deer in the headlights before riffing again on conservatives who claim to be victimized by Target’s pro-transgender “potty” policies. “Believin’ something super-hard doesn’t make it any less wrong,” he says. “My 3-year-old believes he should get cookies for breakfast. That don’t matter to me, because he DON’T KNOW FACTS, so what he believes is irrelevant. You can’t expect people to respect your beliefs when your beliefs are so completely disrespectful.” His profanity-laced manifestos have covered not only LGBT rights but also topics like Tennessee trying to designate the Bible the “state book” and Ted Cruz’s exit from the presidential race. (More election commentary to come, Crowder promises.) Shot on his cell phone, Crowder’s rants are an unexpected juxtaposition, which is incidentally one of the building blocks of comedy: Here’s a guy who looks, sounds, and acts like what you’d expect from a redneck, firing off opinions you’d expect from an educated liberal. Which is what he is. Well, he’s both. Things you don’t know about the Liberal Redneck: He has an MBA. He manages engineering, utility, and construction contracts in a conservative workplace where button-up shirts are the norm and cursing is not. (He tries to keep his political views separate from his work environment, and asked us not to name his employer.) But he gets pretty het up if you question whether he’s a “real redneck.” Perhaps what’s so shocking is that this is so shocking. Why can’t a redneck be a liberal? And can this liberal redneck do anything to change those rules?
SH!TTY REDN#CKS & P@RTLAND BARI$TAS
So what is a redneck, then? And how does it compare with white trash or a good ol’ boy? Even in the South,
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Photos courtesy of Trae Crowder
Trae Crowder with fellow WellRED comedian Drew Morgan.
everybody’s definition seems a bit different. “A redneck is a poor, rural white person,” Crowder says. “It doesn’t have to be a Southerner.” (He says white trash are similar but can live in cities.) He adds, “I have never felt like redneck meant willfully ignorant or necessarily an asshole.” Crowder perhaps no longer exactly meets his own definition (he’s neither rural nor truly poor any more), although he did for most of his life. He grew up in Celina, Tenn. (population 1,500) on the border with Kentucky. The town hit conditions much like the Great Depression in the 1990s when the OshKosh factory moved overseas. Crowder’s family eked by with a business that combined his grandpa’s car lot, his dad’s video rental store, and (for a while) his Mema’s tanning beds in the back. Crowder was the first in his family to go to college, via financial aid, scholarships, and waiting tables. Crowder often tells a joke about his momma’s cooking—she cooked up “the best meth you ever had,” he says—then assures his audience he was just kidding. His momma only sold pills. That, however, is not actually a joke. She was in and out of jail for most of his childhood, which for the first decade featured a lot of violent pillheads with guns hanging out at his house and fighting, he says. From the time he was 11 or 12, he lived almost exclusively with his dad, who “liked to party” with beer and a cookout, but no violence. Crowder also spent a lot of time with his dad’s brother, who was gay. It was a small town and his uncle was in a long-term relationship, so everyone knew. Crowder says “The Shitty Rednecks” (a distinction he makes often) at school would make cracks about it, but the worst was when he went to church with his mom’s family. There he heard that being gay was an abomination.
“You can’t expect people to respect your beliefs when your beliefs are so completely disrespectful.” —TRAE CROWDER
“The most liberal people in this country, who abhor discrimination, they have absolutely no problem generalizing about poor white Southerners.” —TRAE CROWDER
about poor white Southerners.” Crowder says that’s accepted partly because it’s a redneck’s nature to shrug and say, “Who cares what you think?” At the show, he joked that the people who question his redneck credentials are mostly conservative rednecks and “Portland baristas,” neither of whom can stand to have their preconceptions challenged. “One of my primary motivators is shattering those expectations or stereotypes,” he says. “I hear from people like me who thank me, and a lot of messages from people who say they realized from watching videos that they have been ‘openly prejudiced against people with your accent my whole life and never thought twice about it. And now I realize that was shitty of me to generalize a whole group of people like that.’ I fucking love those.” In fact, Crowder has received messages of appreciation from around the world, and he responds to many of them. A portion come from people with LGBT family members. On his Facebook page, some speak of transgender loved ones who have committed suicide, and of crying while listening to Crowder’s posts. One woman writes, “As the parent of a transgender child, I can tell you that it’s really rough right now. We parents are afraid for our kids…. My 16-year-old is starting to look for colleges, and there are whole parts of the country we’ve marked off as ‘unsafe.’ I honestly can’t begin to tell you what it means to come across
Photos by Cinnamon Studios
Crowder remembers asking at around age 8, “Are you saying my uncle—who is one of the sweetest people on the planet, he doesn’t have a mean or vindictive bone in his body, he is so awesome—and his partner, my other uncle, they’re going to be tortured in hellfire for all eternity by God because of what they are?” He pauses. “That’s the thing with these fundamentalist Christians, they’ll get a question like that and look right into a child’s eyes and say, ‘Yes, that’s what the Bible says.’ When I think about that now, I think that’s such a fucking horrible thing to say to a kid about someone they love.” Crowder abandoned religion. But those early experiences, plus the influence of his progressive redneck daddy, formed Crowder into the liberal daddy he is today. Sometimes people online say they are praying for his babies (or make other “predictable” cracks, he says, along the lines of “I bet you’re a fag” and “all nonbelievers will face the Lord”). But Crowder is proud to be raising two very small boys to be progressive men. Occasionally he’s a little disturbed by his mixed notoriety, like when someone tracked down his Mema’s (pronunciation: Me-Maw’s) address to send “the Liberal Redneck” a package. It was a ukulele, but still. Leave Mema out of it. The version of Crowder you see on the videos is angrier and more ruthless in his hilarious put-downs than he is in conversation or at a comedy show. But the twang remains. “I really like showing people I’m not a fucking idiot just because I have an accent,” Crowder says. He rushes to point out he’s still a white man in America with plenty of privilege. “But… the most liberal people in this country, who abhor discrimination, they have absolutely no problem generalizing
these little bits of light, especially in unexpected places. So thanks Trae. I hope you know you’re doing a lot more that just making people laugh. You’re providing a bit of hope to people who are feeling pretty hopeless.”
Trae Crowder performing at Scruffy City Hall on Market Square.
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WHO
Trae Crowder, Corey Forrester, and Drew Morgan
WHAT
The wellRED Comedy Tour
WHEN
Saturday, May 28 at 8 p.m.
WHERE
Photos courtesy of Trae Crowder
Trae Crowder with fellow WellRED comedian Corey Forrester Other comments are from liberal Southerners, thanking Crowder for showing the world they exist. If Crowder has a further hope for his impact on the culture, it’s this: He’d like more of those folks to speak up. “I get a lot of messages from people who say they agree but ‘can’t even talk about it around here,’” he says. “Maybe those people will start talking about it so Shitty Rednecks don’t think they just have carte blanche.”
A C@REER IN C0M#DY
Crowder had been thinking about making the videos for a while, but hesitated because he lacked a high-quality camera or software. Then he saw that an anti-trans bathroom rant recorded on a cell phone by “some redneck preacher in front of his truck in the woods” had generated 15 million views. “If this is what I’m 18
KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 26, 2016
parodying, which it is, then I don’t need all that technology,” Crowder said to himself. Crowder’s ability to hit a timely national chord at the right moment isn’t all that surprising. He was one of just eight people chosen last year for the NBCUniversal Late Night Writers Workshop. The workshop preps comedy writers for staff positions at late-night shows, where the jokes are full of current-event references. Until the videos, Crowder had actually stepped back somewhat from stand-up this year to work on writing packets and pitches for TV. Crowder says he knew he wanted to be a comedian since watching Chris Rock: Bigger & Blacker at age 12. But his first time on stage was about six years ago, when he moved to Knoxville for a job and tried the open mic at the now-defunct comedy club Side Splitters. He says he was so nervous, he barely slept for two days beforehand. But when he got the laughs, he was hooked.
The Grove Theater (123 Randolph Rd., Oak Ridge)
TICKETS $10
INFO
wellredcomedy.com Local comic Shane Rhyne, who books monthly shows at local bars and restaurants like Saw Works Brewing Company (Food, Brews, and Tunes on May 27) and Sugar Mama’s (Sugar High! on May 26), joined the stand-up scene three years ago. “The first time I saw Trae perform, it was not a secret to anyone that he would blow up one day,” says Rhyne, who booked Crowder as a rare
local headliner in March. He says the reason the Liberal Redneck approach works for Crowder is, “He’s really talking about the way he grew up. So when he talks it’s authentic. If somebody else got up and tried that, it would come off as if they were making fun…. For a long time, if you wanted to be ‘a Southern comic,’ they expected you to be a Southern Christian person or a caricature like Larry the Cable Guy. What Trae does is just tilt that on its head.” Crowder eventually became a house emcee at Side Splitters, along with Morgan and several others. Crowder had already met Forrester, who had been doing stand-up since age 16. The three began to bounce ideas off each other, and Crowder and Forrester did shows in Atlanta together. Morgan says his skills, and those of other Knoxville comics, were shaped by the juxtaposition of telling clean jokes to suburban Knoxville conservatives at Side Splitters and performing edgier material for scruffier downtown audiences (more likely for free). When Side Splitters closed, Crowder branched into comedy festivals and alternative venues. He, Morgan, and Forrester still bounce new material off each other. Morgan says Crowder is “a great audience member because he loves to laugh, and he is a great writing partner because he has one of those brains that’s always on level 10.” At the same time, Crowder hates talking on the phone, so Morgan knows if he can make him laugh in a phone call, the bit is good. The three comics performed separately at the Scruffy City Comedy Festival last fall and have since developed a joint blog called Our Sunday Best (oursundaybest.word-
“For a long time, if you wanted to be ‘a Southern comic,’ they expected you to be a Southern Christian person or a caricature like Larry the Cable Guy. What Trae does is just tilt that on its head.” —SHANE RHYNE
WORMWOOD • Angelica • MACE • CORIANDER • CINNAMON • Citrus
“If I could stay here and make some kind of impact culturally, I would love to do that.” —TRAE CROWDER
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press.com) where they each riff on the same timely issue—such as which presidential candidate would win in a knife fight. (Crowder argued “Ted Cruz all day.” Trump? “He’s the type to talk mad shit to you but then act like you’re some caveman when you ask him to take it outside. Plus, I mean, how’s he even going to hold a knife with those stupid tiny baby hands?”) “I was always a liberal redneck, just less overtly political,” Crowder says. “It’s just who I am as a person.” His anti-racist and pro-gay material went over well at alternative comedy shows attended by young hipsters, but not so well when the audience was more conservative. The crowd might start out expecting Crowder to be like Jeff Foxworthy or Larry the Cable Guy. “Some shows, you didn’t know until you got there,” he says. Just five months ago or so, he and Forrester did a show at a small comedy club in Jackson, Tenn., where Crowder says they despised his ideology so much that he found it funny. Usually when this happens, he’s just met with hostile stares, although occasionally he’ll hear someone yell, “That’s bullshit!” (No tomatoes.)
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is future audiences may be a little more predictable. The wellRED tour was booked for a week to see whether it would be well-received, and the Atlanta show sold out almost immediately (“I couldn’t even get feature work at the Punchline in Atlanta three weeks ago!” Crowder says), followed by Nashville’s, before both added an additional show to the lineup. He anticipates new tour dates outside the South soon. Rhyne says Crowder’s career grew alongside the Knoxville comedy scene, which has started attracting regional comics. (He and Morgan both
credit Matt Ward, who started the Scruffy City Comedy Festival among other ventures, with building the local comedy scene to its level today.) Rhyne now calls Crowder “clearly the best comedian in Knoxville” and predicts, “One day people will be shocked in Knoxville they had a chance to see Trae free for years, and they’ll pay $90 to see him at the Tennessee Theater.” The free Scruffy City Hall show was put together on the fly to get film footage for a possible project Crowder says he can’t talk about yet. He’s been approached with ideas for TV, radio, and books, but he says it’s all nebulous right now—just like social media fame. And he’s not giving up his day job. “If it plays out in such a way that I can be successful without leaving the South, then I would really like to do that,” Crowder says. “Because one of the things I think is a problem with the South and small towns like where I’m from is, all the best people leave. The South as a whole may not improve all that much with that happening. If I could stay here and make some kind of impact culturally, I would love to do that.” His new notoriety has changed his daily life less than you’d think. The family members he stays in touch with mostly agree with his views. He’s not sure it’s going down so well with his in-laws or some of his co-workers, but no confrontations have ensued. He expects most of his old friends from Celina will not be happy. “We’ll see if that means we ain’t friends anymore now, next time I go home,” Crowder says. “But the guy I’m closest to called me when this started. He said, ‘Son, I ain’t gonna lie to you. I kinda hated it. But if you feel like it’s right for you, you need to do it. You’re gonna make some people mad around here, but fuck those people. Who gives a shit what they think.’” And there ain’t no more redneck self-defense than that. ◆
A portion of the proceeds from each sale will benefit The Legacy Parks Foundation.
LEGACY PARKS BENEFIT BALTER BEERWORKS
Thursday, June 2nd from 5pm-7pm For the launch of Urban Wilderness Herbal Liqueur, please join us in the Beer Garden at Balter Beerworks. Socialize, support Legacy Parks, and imbibe with friends!
Schedule a distillery tour online! Tasting Room Open 7 Days A Week 516 W. Jackson Avenue, Knoxville, Tennessee • Phone (865) 525-2372 www.KnoxWhiskeyWorks.com • Get Social With Us: @KnoxWhiskey
May 26, 2016
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 19
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P rogram Notes
Feel the Burn New Burning Man-style gathering opens in June
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n 2009, Andrea Kerns told some friends that she wanted to go with them to Burning Man, the communal art gathering and spectacle held every summer in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. Her friends instead recommended what’s called a regional burn—a condensed, slightly less intense version of Burning Man, sanctioned by the gathering’s organizers and run according to the same basic principles. “I told these friends, ‘I’ve been going to Bonnaroo for years!’ and they’re like, no, it’s not the same,” Kerns says. “Burning Man is such a monumental undertaking—to get there, the cost, the preparation. It’s nine days, so it’s not for the faint of heart or the easily offended or the emotionally unstable. They said I had to go to a regional first.” That fall, Kerns—the marketing director at the International and also for EDM promoters Midnight Voyage Productions—attended Alchemy, the regional burn in North Georgia. It’s the biggest regional burn in the United States, with more than 3,000 participants every year. “I was pretty overwhelmed by the sheer creativity and the openness of the people,” she says. “I decided that we need this in Tennessee. I don’t know what’s what, I don’t have any idea how to do it, but I want it in Tennessee and I’m German and I’m stubborn.” That led to Serendipity, a regional Burning Man event in Morrison, Tenn., that Kerns helped establish in the spring of 2012. After parting ways with the other organizers, Kerns is now staging a second Tennessee burn closer to home. To the Moon will be held June 2-6 at Spirit Crossing, a 175-acre farm and festival ground near Sneedville.
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KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 26, 2016
Kerns plans To the Moon as a microcosm of the larger Burning Man, with art, music, fire performers—“fire hoops, fire poi, fire-breathing, fire-spitting, whatever,” she says—and, on Saturday, the burning of a giant effigy, one of the most emblematic Burning Man rituals. The event is capped at 500 burners, and Kerns says they’re close to selling out. Serendipity, the state’s officially sanctioned regional burn, is still scheduled to take place this weekend. But Kerns has big ambitions for To the Moon. She’d like the organizing group to evolve into a nonprofit organization that can apply the Burning Man principles—self-reliance, decommodification, self-expression, and inclusion— to the surrounding communities in Knoxville and Sneedville. “We’d like this to start local and go global,” she says. “I’ve been in the music business so long and now I want to create a party with a purpose, where you create something of lasting value. For instance, one lofty idea is that an event of this size would support purchasing endangered habitat of the same size as the footprint that it takes up. That’s where we want to tie in with nonprofit organizations that have already established themselves, working right there on the ground with local government and officials to protect endangered habitat, species, people. After her 2009 trip to Alchemy, Kerns finally made it to the big Burning Man. “It’s the most insane thing I’ve ever done,” she says. “I highly recommend it—and don’t, at the same time. It makes you think you’re not doing enough with your life—the sheer magnitude of it. It’s like life amplified.” —Matthew Everett
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Music: Motel Mirrors
NEIF-NORF
Wild Energy The contemporary music ensemble nief-norf makes joyful noise at its summer festival
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he finale of this year’s Big Ears, a charming outdoor performance of the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Luther Adams’ Inuksuit at Ijams Nature Center, was something of a coming-out party for the local contemporary music ensemble nief-norf. Thanks to record attendance at the festival, and the fact that the Ijams performance was free to the public (and held on a nearly perfect sunny Sunday morning), hundreds of people who might not otherwise identify themselves as fans of 21st-century classical music found themselves towing their kids and dogs through a startling landscape of shifting percussion sounds and untraditional noise-making. nief-norf will return to Ijams in a couple of weeks during the annual nief-norf Summer Festival, a two-week marathon celebration of contemporary concert music that includes public performances, lectures, classes, and scholarly symposiums. Eight concerts, featuring music by Adams, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, David Lang, Iannis Xenakis, and more—will be held at five different venues during the festival, which runs from June 7-19. One of the
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expected highlights will be a program with Wild Energy, a sound installation by Annea Lockwood and Bob Bielecki, and Pléïades, a large-scale percussion piece by the 20th-century Greek composer Iannis Xenakis, at Ijams on Saturday, June 11, at 5:30 p.m. (Admission is free, but a $10 donation is suggested.) Other venues include the University of Tennessee Natalie L. Haslam Music Center, the Emporium Center, the Square Room, and the new Jackson Terminal space in the Old City, which will house the festival finale on Sunday, June 19, at 3 p.m. “This festival is designed as a think-tank environment for performers, composers, scholars, and lovers of contemporary music,” nief-norf co-founder and artistic director Andrew Bliss says in a press release. “We are very fortunate to have our festival hosted in Knoxville—a city with an unquenchable thirst for new music and an incredible curiosity for the unfamiliar and the experimental.” Tickets for the festival concerts range from $10-$30. Visit niefnorf.org for more information. —M.E.
Movie: Neighbors 2
Shelf Life
Reprise
Some new recordings of classical favorites available at Knox County Public Library BY CHRIS BARRETT PHOENIX CHORALE AND KANSAS CITY CHORALE, CHARLES BRUFFY, CONDUCTOR Rachmaninoff: All-Night Vigil (Chandos, 2015)
This is one of the most beautiful pieces of choir music you’ll ever hear. You may well be familiar with it; KCPL owns two other CD versions and offers streaming access to three others. The primary source of emotional power within traditional Russian Orthodox choral music is the simple fact of unison singing—a large number of trained voices singing the same words in the same notes. Surely it’s coincidence that Rachmaninoff composed his deviant All-Night Vigil (also referred to as Vespers) just two years before the Russian revolution of 1917? To unison singing Rachmaninoff added polyphony, occasionally created by soloists singing with and over the choir. Conductor Charles Bruff y is musical director of both the Phoenix Chorale and the Kansas City Chorale. The decision to combine the two groups was either genius or obvious, and the result is breathtaking.
ANGELA HEWITT Domenico Scarlatti: Sonatas (Hyperion, 2016)
Scarlatti did not invent the keyboard sonata. But he wrote 555 of them and lived and composed through the transition from the Baroque to the classical period (and from harpsichord to piano). So when many of us imagine the shape and spirit of a solo keyboard sonata, we hear Scarlatti. When assembled for recording or recital, Scarlatti’s sonatas are typically gathered in the arbitrary clusters he formed as he composed them. Since Scarlatti supported himself as a teacher, what you hear, then, often sounds like lessons and exercises. (A likely explanation for the uncommon beauty of the work is that he wrote many of them for his favorite
pupil, Princess Maria of Spain, with whom he was apparently in love.) Angela Hewitt is a great ambassador on Scarlatti’s behalf. She breaks ranks and presents a program of 16 pieces, each chosen individually for its ability to complement or flatter the group. Following the ruminative “Sonata in B minor K. 87”—in which one can hear the foundation of the form and understand its appeal to a brooder like Beethoven—Hewitt races through the “Sonata in D major K. 29,” with all of its scales and Italianate fi ligree of looping trills.
RACHEL BARTON PINE Beethoven and Clement Violin Concertos (Cedille Records, 2008)
Franz Clement is little known now; this is the first recording of his Violin Concerto in D major. During his lifetime (1780-1842), Clement was known less as a composer than as a conductor and virtuoso violinist—he began his career as a child prodigy. Here, in Clement’s own concerto, you see what a confident and capable soloist gives himself to perform. Rachel Barton Pine keeps her instrument far out in front of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by
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José Serebrier, and almost everything the orchestra plays sends attention back to the soloist. Her part requires her to be delightfully selfish, and no one will object. The familiar Beethoven Violin Concerto in D major is included here because Clement, friend to Beethoven, commissioned the concerto. According to online sources, Beethoven delivered the score at the last minute, and Clement performed its premier without rehearsing.
YOUSSOU N’DOUR ET LA SUPER ETOILE DE DAKAR Fatteliku (Live in Athens 1987) (Real World Records, 2015) This concert was recorded in in 1987. It captures Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour and his troupe of dancers and drummers when they opened for Peter Gabriel’s So tour and then stole the show each night by joining Gabriel for “In Your Eyes.” N’Dour rarely tours these days. When he does, it’s usually soccer stadiums in other parts of the world. He’s Muslim, and he’s been outspoken in his distaste for America’s apparent Islamaphobia. But there was a brief tick between N’Dour’s debut as a 20-year-old unknown and his meteoric rise to become the owner of Afropop, and I saw this band at a Detroit lodge hall full of African expatriates. I mostly remember audience members in royal garb dancing circles around the room, dropping exotic currency at the feet of the performers, a rainbow haze over the stage formed by the airborne splinters of drumsticks, and a squat, pre-war building that shook but remained impressively intact. ◆
The familiar Beethoven Violin Concerto in D major is included here because Clement, friend to Beethoven, commissioned the concerto. According to online sources, Beethoven delivered the score at the last minute, and Clement performed its premier without rehearsing.
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May 26, 2016
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 21
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Music
Memphis Mafia Former Knoxville songwriter John Paul Keith finds his music home in Memphis BY MATTHEW EVERETT
M
emphis has been good for John Paul Keith. During the late 1990s and early ’00s, following his departure from Knoxville big-league contenders the Viceroys, Keith was a wandering singer/songwriter, spending a couple of years at a time in different cities (Nashville, Birmingham) and different bands (the Nevers, Stateside) and flirting with label deals and mainstream rock success. Eventually, in 2005, when he was 29 and emotionally, professionally, and creatively exhausted, Keith landed in Memphis, where his sister lived. He said he was giving up on the music business—which is hard to do in a city with as distinguished a musical history as his new hometown. “It’s just the right niche for what I do,” he says. “I’ve always been a student of Memphis music, even well before I got here—Sun Records and Stax Records, all that stuff was stuff I was first getting hip to when I was in high school.” After a couple of years away from music, Keith was convinced by his new city to pick up his guitar again. Soon after that, he was leading a new band, the One Four Fives, and working on his debut solo album, The Man That Time Forgot, released in 2011. That was followed, in 2013, by Memphis Circa 3AM, an album that summed up Keith’s personal musical journey and his artistic vision—12 songs that stir up a West Tennessee mix of early rock ’n’ roll, pop, and country. (Think Buddy Holly, Jerry
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Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, and the Beatles’ Please Please Me.) “The creative spirit here in Memphis is completely open,” he says. “There’s no such thing as genre here, so you can do anything, as long as you mean it. The musicians are very open that way—everybody’s cool with everybody and that spirit has always been there.” Around the same time, Keith joined Amy LaVere, a Memphis singer known for her Mississippi River Gothic style of Americana, and drummer Shawn Zorn for an old-fashioned duet record under the name
Motel Mirrors. Their self-titled debut album, also released in 2013, wouldn’t sound unfamiliar to fans of either Keith or LaVere. But Keith says the collaboration—the first time he’d worked with another songwriter since his time in the Viceroys—brought out new dimensions of his songwriting. A couple of years ago, the collaboration took a further step when LaVere married guitarist Will Sexton after she met him on a tour with Nashville songwriter Shane McAnally. “They got married about a year after they met so he was always around,” Keith says. “He started coming to Memphis all the time when they started seeing each other, and then he moved here and he was here all the time—he was at all the gigs, so I was like, you might as well be put to work.” Keith, LaVere, and Sexton wrote and recorded a second Motel Mirrors album last year; they’re looking for a label to release it. Keith is also writing new material for a follow-up to Memphis Circa 3AM—he tossed a whole album’s worth of songs after writing the new Motel Mirrors album with LaVere and Sexton. “I’d go over to their house every evening and we’d sit around their kitchen table and we’d write a song—
we did that every day for eight days,” he says. “Writing that intensively and that quickly, with other people and with a deadline like that—I liked what we got out of that and decided to scrap my solo record because it wasn’t as good as what we came up with. “I felt like that was a breakthrough for me,” he says. “I liked where it was headed, I liked how we made the record, and I liked the process of it, and I just want to keep doing that.” There’s a lot about Memphis that Keith likes: the history, the opportunities to play, and there’s a blossoming analog recording industry (“It’s the way records used to be made, it’s the way we do it, I don’t have any interest in doing it any other way, and if I have to do it digitally I lose interest very quickly,” he says). But it’s the relationships and partnerships he’s found there that have allowed him to reclaim his career. “I like where I’m at,” he says. “I like the people I’m working it, and it’s all good now. Things line up to where you feel like you can do what you do the best you can. I feel like there are elements in place that are lining up to where I can really make the records I want to make with the people I like working with.” ◆
WHO
Motel Mirrors
WHERE
Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (200 E. Jackson Ave.)
WHEN
Friday, May 27, at 10 p.m.
INFO
barleysknoxville.com
Movies
Class Warfare College comedy Neighbors 2 gets smart without giving up the gross-outs BY APRIL SNELLINGS
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here’s something uniquely satisfying about a movie that’s far better than it needs to be, especially when that movie turns out to be an astute satire masquerading as a dumb gross-out comedy. With a great cast already assembled and a premise that’s as funny as it is simple—that the only thing worse than living next to a fraternity house might be living next to a sorority house—the bar was really pretty low for a sequel to 2014’s Neighbors. Director Nicholas Stoller’s greatest challenge could have been shoehorning in a few new characters while keeping the chemistry brewing between the familiar ones. And who could have blamed him? For fans of the fi rst installment—count me among them—“more of the same” would have been acceptable. That’s what’s teased in the fi rst few minutes of Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, which opens with a (literal) gag so spectacularly gross it put me off my popcorn for a while. The fi lm’s setup offers a few gentle tweaks to that of the fi rst installment: Now expecting their second child, Mac and Kelly Radner (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) are upgrading to a new home in the suburbs. They’ve just entered a 30-day escrow period, during which
time they need only to avoid disaster in order to complete the sale. In this case, disaster comes in the form of Shelby, Beth, and Nora (Chloë Grace Moretz, Kiersey Clemons, and Beanie Feldstein), three college freshmen who are understandably disgusted to learn that the National Panhellenic Conference essentially prohibits sororities from hosting their own ragers. If they want to party, they’re told, they’ll have to do it at a frat house. What could be safer? And that’s when this sequel takes its first big leap toward outshining its amiable predecessor. Shelby and her pals attend a frat party, and it’s remarkably similar to the bacchanals that were staged in the first film. This time, though, we see it from the girls’ perspective, and it’s horrifying: The frat house is essentially a giant rape funnel, with neon arrows pointing upstairs, where a banner reads “No Means Yes.” It’s a dangerous world that comes with its own explicit rules, like never drink the punch. Think of it as the Scream of college party movies. The girls ditch the party and decide to start their own unofficial, girl-safe sorority—right next door to Mac and Kelly, of course. Early on, then, Neighbors 2 takes a big step ahead of its predecessor—the guys of
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Delta Psi Beta rage because that’s what frat guys do, but the ladies of Kappa Nu rage because everyone is telling them they can’t. If it sounds like the writers are painting themselves into a corner when it comes time for the inevitable throwdown between the sorority girls and their thirtysomething neighbors, though, rest easy; Kelly and Mac quickly realize that Kappa Nu is capable of a level of psychological warfare that makes the couple long for something as relatively benign as getting launched through the ceiling by an airbag. But the greatest appeal of Neighbors 2 doesn’t lie in its clever gender twists or endearingly progressive politics. The movie’s greatest strength rests on the perfectly sculpted shoulders of Zac Efron, who reprises his role as the Radners’ former arch-nemesis, Teddy Sanders. Teddy hasn’t navigated life changes as well as Kelly and Mac or Shelby and her crew. His “quarter-life crisis” has left him feeling adrift and unvalued— ripe for exploitation by both the girls of Kappa Nu and the “old people” across the yard. Through plot machinations better left discovered, Teddy inserts himself into the brewing war. The results are kind of brilliant. As great as the rest of the cast is—Byrne in particular has proven herself to be one of the most gifted comedic actresses of her generation— Neighbors 2 is Efron’s movie all the way. He brings a surprising level of pathos to Teddy, a dim-witted but good-natured bro god who slowly comes to realize that the world he once ruled is being replaced by a very different one. If this all makes Neighbors 2 sound preachy or even high-minded, it’s not. There’s definitely something sweetly utopian about the world it imagines, where same-sex marriage is just called “marriage” and douchey behavior can be corrected simply by pointing it out. But it still works on the same level as the most delightfully brainless comedy you can imagine— it’s every bit as crass and ridiculous as Animal House, and that’s a compliment—just at a richer, more complex frequency. ◆ May 26, 2016
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CALENDAR Thursday, May 26 JESSICA MARTINDALE • 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 DOUG AND DOUG • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 5PM WARREN PINEDA AND JON MASON • Red Piano Lounge • 6PM CINDI ALPERT • The Orangery • 6PM THE GREG HORNE BAND • Scruffy City Hall • 6PM KITTY WAMPUS • The Rocks Tavern • 7PM • Classic rock, blues, and R&B. THE YOUNG FABLES • Market Square • 7PM • The Young Fables are a country music duo comprised of East Tennessee natives Laurel Wright and Wesley Lunsford. • FREE KANSAS • Back Porch on the Creek • 7PM • Kansas has spent more than four decades as a part of the soundtrack of the lives of multiple generations of music lovers. The band’s first public statement appeared on their self-titled album in 1974. “From the beginning, we considered ourselves and our music different and we hope we will always remain so.” Little did this legendary rock group realize that back in the early ‘70’s, what seemed to be “different,” was actually ahead of its time. • $43-$53 HOOT AND HOLLER • Sugarlands Distilling Co. • 7PM • FREE IAN THOMAS AND THE BAND OF DRIFTERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM MONTGOMERY GENTRY • Cotton Eyed Joe • 9PM • From “Hillbilly Shoes” to “Headlights,” Montgomery Gentry has become one of the most identifiable duos in the history of country music—as much for their outlaw-meets-gentleman sensibilities, their yin and yang personalities and their intensely energetic live performances as that balance of voices that gives their brand of country an edge or their version of Southern rock a softer place to fall. • $15 THE BLUEPRINT • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM CAPTAIN IVORY • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. AERIAL RUIN WITH KNIVES OF SPAIN AND PALATHEDA • Pilot Light • 9:30PM • Aerial Ruin channels the darkest of psychedelia in sonic ritual to a place where soaring heights and smoldering depths are one and the same. 18 and up. • $5 Friday, May 27 HARVEST THIEVES • 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 MALIBU DIAMOND • Last Days of Autumn Brewery • 7PM ANDY SNEED • Bluetick Brewery ( Maryville) • 7PM • Andy Sneed has been writing and performing music for over 30 years. In the last few years he has performed in venues, festivals and songwriting events throughout East Tennessee, in southwest Virginia and western North Carolina. Sneed’s songs can be funny, thought-provoking and touching all at the same time. HARVEST THIEVES • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • FREE METAL ALLIANCE TOUR: DYING FETUS AND THE ACACIA STRAIN • The Concourse • 7:30PM • One of the most infamous and influential death metal bands of the past 10 years, Dying Fetus pummel and pound their signature-style brutality into the worldwide landscape with the subtlety of full-fledged war. Descend into Depravity takes Dying Fetus to new sonic levels, and is easily the bands finest hour. They’re joined by the Acacia Strain, 24
KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 26, 2016
Bastards, The War on Drugs, Chelsea , Mr. Gnome, Horse Feathers, The Features. Ancient Warfare’s live show ebbs and flows from hushed harmony vocals to austere, tube-driven waves of sound. 18 and up. • $6 • See Spotlight. PALEFACE • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE SUPATIGHT • Preservation Pub • 10PM KUKULY AND THE GYPSY FUEGO • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM • Numerous titles from the Fuego’s long and varied set list are associated with—or performed in the style of—the late Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. In Paris between the World Wars, Reinhardt, with violinist Stephane Grappelli and others, invented the radical music still referred to as hot jazz.
Jungle Rot, Black Crown Initiate, and SystemHouse 33. 18 and up. • $22.50-$25 • See Spotlight on page 30. FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE DIRTY POOL • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 9PM KITTY WAMPUS • Buckethead Tavern • 9PM • Classic rock, blues, and R&B. GREG TARDY • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE STRUNG LIKE A HORSE WITH DUSTIN SELLERS AND WIGGINS AND HAACK • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM LEFTFOOT DAVE AND THE MAGIC HATS • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM KATE AND COREY • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE LIVINGSTONE WITH CRYSTAL BRIGHT AND SILVER HANDS • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. FREEQUENCY • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 10PM MOTEL MIRRORS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Motel Mirrors is a Memphis-based band featuring Amy LaVere, John Paul Keith, and Will Sexton. • See preview on page 22. Saturday, May 28 ADDISON JOHNSON • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE COLE GRAHAM AND PAUPER’S PRAYER • Vienna Coffee House ( Maryville) • 7PM • FREE CANDICE MCQUEEN • Last Days of Autumn Brewery • 7PM THE BAND OF DRIFTERS • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • FREE MASS DRIVER WITH WOLVES AND WOLVES AND WOLVES AND WOLVES, LA BASURA DEL DIABLO, AND THE BAD IDOLS • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • The band’s founding credo, as guitarist Drew Fulton tells it, is rooted in “power and energy and riffs, without any heavy-metal darkness or imagery.” The band’s sound comes off as a mash-up of Fu Manchu-style fun-time riff rock with the occasional splash of Nebula tail-of-the-comet spaciness added as a good-customer bonus. And the lyrics—in which Fulton and bassist Rodney Sheehan hold forth on weighty world affairs such as big robots and BMX bikes—are delivered with the same groovy sense of cadence and in the same cheerful yelp favored by Fu Manchu singer Scott Hill. All ages. • $5 HARVEST THIEVES • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up. SOUTHBOUND • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 9PM AFK WITH HOVERBOOTS, PAERBAER, AND FRESHCUTT • The Concourse • 9PM • Dallas Texas native and bass producing monster AFK is no stranger to the electronic music scene. With over 9 years on the decks and in the studio, AFK has captured the attention of music heavyweight hitters such as Must Die, Getter, Datsik, Mayhem, Jauz and more. As 2016 unfolds, it become more apparent that this is AFK’s year with several scheduled releases followed by an EP out Summer. 18 and up. • $7-$10 MARK BOLING • The Bistro at the Bijou • 9PM • Live jazz. • FREE THE HACKENSAW BOYS WITH ROMAN REESE AND THE CARDINAL SIN • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM GRITS • Brackins Blues Club ( Maryville) • 9PM ANCIENT WARFARE WITH WHITE GREGG AND HORIZONTAL HOLD • Pilot Light • 9PM • Based in Lexington, KY, with roots in both Savannah, GA and the California coast, Ancient Warfare are currently promoting their Summer 2015 Alias Records release, The Pale Horse. Since 2011, they have developed a fierce reputation for hard work and dynamic performance, sharing stages with artists such as Raveonettes, Heartless
Sunday, May 29 SHIFFLETT’S JAZZ BENEDICT • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. • FREE SUNDAY JAZZ BRUNCH • Downtown Grill and Brewery • 12:45PM • Knoxville’s coolest jazz artists perform every Sunday. • FREE FRANK TURNER AND THE SLEEPING SOULS • The Concourse • 7PM • For three long and often lonely years of life on the road, plying a brand of honest and passionate folk/punk, Frank Turner continued to rise to prominence with an ever increasing following. But it was in the sweaty
climes of the Lock Up Stage at Reading and Leeds 2008 that his solo career really started to take off. • $20-$23 THE BROCKEFELLERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM DIGG • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. Monday, May 30 BOY NAMED BANJO • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE VIENNA COFFEE HOUSE JAZZ TRIO • Vienna Coffee House (Maryville) • 5PM • FREE THE JAUNTEE • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. ANDY FERRELL • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM Tuesday, May 31 THE NOUVEAUX HONKIES WITH ZOE NUTT • 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 BRIAN CLAY • Red Piano Lounge • 7PM MARBLE CITY 5 • Market Square • 8PM • Live jazz every Tuesday from May 3-Aug. 30. • FREE PAUL LEE KUPFER • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Originally from the Mountains of West Virginia, Paul Lee
Photo by Ann Sydney Taylor
MUSIC
Thursday, May 26 - Sunday, June 5
ANCIENT WARFARE Pilot Light (106 E. Jackson Ave.) • Saturday, May 28 • 9 p.m. • $6 • 18 and up • thepilotlight.com
You won’t read many reviews about the evocatively named Lexington, Ky., singer/songwriter/ guitarist Echo Wilcox’s band, Ancient Warfare, that don’t include the word “cinematic.” For once, it makes sense—The Pale Horse, Ancient Warfare’s 2015 album, is grand old country-rock, rustic and regal, with fiddles and reverb and mournful harmonies. But the album—the band’s debut— has more than its fair share of surprises, too. It’s a beguiling introduction to Wilcox’s developing artistic vision, which draws subtle influence from the Everly Brothers, PJ Harvey, and ’60s girl groups as much as it does from more obvious touchstones like Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, and the Band. With White Gregg and Horizontal Hold. (Matthew Everett)
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Spotlight: Dying Fetus
CALENDAR Kupfer has traveled as a solo performer and band leader since 2006 while living in Philadelphia, California, Tennessee, Montana and towns in between. Restless touring and writing has allowed him to share the bill with some of his heroes. MODEL INMATES • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. Wednesday, June 1 KNOXVILLE BELLA CORDA • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 6:30PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE TENNESSEE SHINES: JOE MULLINS AND THE RADIO RAMBLERS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7PM • Joe Mullins & The Radio Ramblers have an energetic mix of quality bluegrass and gospel music, a professional presentation, inventive instrumental work, a wide variety of vocal arrangements including a capella quartets and tasteful, down-home humor. • $10 Thursday, June 2 JERRY CASTLE WITH THE FUSTICS • 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 JAZZSPIRATIONS • Market Square • 7PM • Jazzspirations is a soulful, smooth mix of the two most heartfelt styles of music: Gospel and jazz. • FREE MATT HIRES • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • FREE THE ELI YOUNG BAND • Cotton Eyed Joe • 9PM • Eli Young Band continues to evolve musically in fresh and exciting ways, debuting a Country collaboration with Andy Grammer of “Honey, I’m Good.” on The Valory Music Co. With a trio of platinum and multi-platinum #1 hits—“Drunk Last Night,” “Even If It Breaks Your Heart” and “Crazy Girl”—under their belts, their last album 10,000 Towns ranked #1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart, landed a coveted Top 5 spot on the Billboard 200 and claimed the #1 spot on the iTunes Country Albums chart. For tour dates and more, visit EliYoungBand.com. • $10 THE FRITZ • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. • $3 ALMOST DEAD • Scruffy City Hall • 10PM Friday, June 3 PARKER HASTINGS • 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 BOB DYLAN BIRTHDAY BASH • Market Square • 5PM • Free music event to celebrate the birth of a true Americana songwriter. An evening full of Bob Dylan’s music, as sung by local performing artists and in a variety of musical styles and genres. Lineup and more information to come. • FREE JEREMY MOORE • Vienna Coffee House (Maryville) • 7PM • FREE THE TERRAPLANE DRIFTERS • Last Days of Autumn Brewery • 7PM THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • While Dark Bird is The Tallest Man at his most personal and direct, deeper and darker than ever at times, it’s also an album with strokes of whimsy and the scent of new beginnings – which feels fresh for The Tallest Man on Earth, and well timed. Reliably, the melodies and arrangements are sturdy and classic, like old cars &
tightly wound clocks. The lyrics and their delivery are both comforting and alarming, like tall trees & wide hills. • $30 FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • Live jazz featuring a mix of original music, early jazz and more. • FREE JACK’D UP • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 9PM GUY MARSHALL • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Guy Marshall’s full-length debut, The Depression Blues, has an earnest arsenal of songs that touch on themes of whiskey and wallowing. • $5 BADLANDS • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up. Saturday, June 4 KENTUCKY MOUNTAIN TRIO WITH OH, JEREMIAH • 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 SISTER HAZEL • Knoxville Civic Coliseum • 8PM • Sister Hazel is an alternative rock band from Gainesville, Florida, whose style also blends elements of folk rock, pop, classic rock ‘n’ roll and southern rock. • $28.50 FOREVER ABBEY ROAD • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Forever Abbey Road is a group of five professional musicians in Nashville who perform the music of the Beatles with sincere gratitude, heart and accuracy. All ages. • $15 KNOXVILLE GAY MEN’S CHORUS • Knoxville Civic Coliseum • 8PM • The Knoxville Gay Men’s Chorus is excited to announce its new production, Chandelier, an ambitious show full of popular music, from Simon and Garfunkel, to Sia, to Madonna. For concert and ticket information visit www.knoxvilletickets.com. • $20 WOZO ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY BENEFIT • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 9PM • Come celebrate the first year of Knoxville’s newest radio station, 103.9 WOZO. Featuring Mic Harrison and the High Score, Kukuly and the Gypsy Fuego, Bobby Fuego, Black Atticus, and many special guests. • $5 RISING APPALACHIA WITH AROUNA DIARRA • The International • 9PM • Rising Appalachia brings to the stage a collection of sounds, stories, and songs steeped in tradition and a devotion to world culture. Intertwining a deep reverence for folk music and a passion for justice, they have made it their life’s work to sing songs that speak to something ancient yet surging with relevance. Rising Appalachia headlines the International’s second anniversary celebration. 18 and up. Visit internationalknox.com. • $15-$20 ELECTRIC DARLING WITH THREE STAR REVIVAL • Scruffy City Hall • 10PM • The dissolution of long-running local blues-rock outfit the Dirty Guv’nahs boded that a handful of very talented free agents would soon be set loose on the local music scene. And now two of the band’s standout sidemen—guitarist Cozmo Holloway and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Hyfantis—have already debuted a new project, in the form of female-fronted outfit Electric Darling. What is arguably most impressive about the Saturday night performance is that neither Holloway nor Hyfantis was the talk of the show.That honor belonged to 25-year-old newbie frontwoman Yasameen Hoffman-Shahin. With her powerful vocals and an insouciant charisma that belied her youth, Hoffman-Shahin led the band through an hour-long set of groovy neo-soul. SWEETHEARTS OF THE SMOKIES MUSIC FESTIVAL • Dancing Bear Lodge • 4PM • The first ever Sweethearts of the Smokies Music Festival will take place on Saturday, June 4th – rain or shine – at the Dancing Bear Lodge Outdoor May 26, 2016
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 25
CALENDAR
Thursday, May 26 - Sunday, June 5
Pavilion Stage, with a portion of the proceeds benefiting the Appalachian Bear Rescue. This 18 and over, can’t-miss music event will take place at the foothills of the gorgeous Smoky Mountains and will showcase and celebrate bands that are led and co-led by women. The day will be filled with great food, drink, and music, featuring Robinella, The Whiskey Gentry, Shannon Whitworth & Barrett Smith, Cherohala, and Katie Pruitt. Visit dancingbearlodge.com. • $20-$75
THE CHRIS ROBINSON BROTHERHOOD • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • The CRB, led by former Black Crowes frontman Chris Robinson, describes itself as a “farm to table psychedelic rock band.” • $21.50
Sunday, June 5 SHIFFLETT’S JAZZ BENEDICT • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. • FREE SUNDAY JAZZ BRUNCH • Downtown Grill and Brewery • 12:45PM • Knoxville’s coolest jazz artists perform every Sunday. • FREE JAMES MCCARTNEY WITH 3 MILE SMILE • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 7PM • A British singer/songwriter with a heavy melodic bent tempered by slight indie-folk overtones, James McCartney took a little time to launch his career. The son of Paul and Linda McCartney, James was born on September 12, 1977; he certainly grew up with music all around him, spending his earliest years on tour with Wings before settling into a relatively normal schoolboy existence for the bulk of the ‘80s. As his father Paul returned to the road at the close of the decade, James came along, and as the ‘90s progressed, he became more serious about music. He played on his father’s 1997 album Flaming Pie, and not long after, he also appeared on his mother’s posthumous 1998 record Wide Prairie. All ages. • $15-$20
Thursday, May 26 VIENNA COFFEE HOUSE OPEN MIC NIGHT • Vienna Coffee House (Maryville) • 7PM • Visit viennacoffeehouse.net. • FREE SCOTTISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Held on the second and fourth Thursdays of each month. • FREE
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KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 26, 2016
OPEN MIC AND SONGWRITER NIGHTS
Friday, May 27 TIME WARP TEA ROOM OPEN SONGWRITER NIGHT • Time Warp Tea Room • 7PM • Songwriter Night at Time Warp Tea Room runs on the second and fourth Friday of every month. Show up around 7 p.m. with your instrument in tow and sign up to share a couple of original songs with a community of friends down in Happy Holler. • FREE Saturday, May 28 NARROW RIDGE COMMUNITY MUSIC JAM • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 7PM • Guests are invited to share their talents in a forum that provides equal time to all who wish to participate. Our music gatherings are always a great way to get to know our neighbors and to witness
first-hand the amazing talent that exists here in our beautiful valley home. This is a non-alcoholic event that is free and open to all ages. Bring your friends, family, blanket or lawn chair, and good cheer. Contributions to the snack table are appreciated but not required (finger foods only, please). For more information call 865-497-2753 or email community@narrowridge.org. • FREE Tuesday, May 31 PRESERVATION PUB SINGER/SONGWRITER NIGHT • Preservation Pub • 7PM OLD-TIME JAM SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Hosted by Sarah Pickle. • FREE Wednesday, June 1 TIME WARP TEA ROOM OLD-TIME JAM • Time Warp Tea Room • 7PM • Regular speed old-time/fiddle jam every Wednesday. All instruments and skill levels welcome. BRACKINS BLUES JAM • Brackins Blues Club ( Maryville) • 9PM • A weekly open session hosted by Tommie John. • FREE ACOUSTIC OPEN MIC NIGHT • Asia Cafe West • 7PM • Bring an acoustic guitar and a few songs every Wednesday. Sign-up sheet available 30 minutes prior to 7 p.m. start. Three songs or 10 minutes per performer. • FREE OPEN CHORD OPEN MIC NIGHT • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • It’s time once again for open mic night. This time we’re welcoming both solo performers and bands to perform. Come 30 minutes early to sign up for a 15-minute slot. • FREE
Thursday, June 2 VIENNA COFFEE HOUSE OPEN MIC NIGHT • Vienna Coffee House (Maryville) • 7PM • Visit viennacoffeehouse.net. • FREE IRISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Held on the first and third Thursdays of each month. • FREE OPEN CHORD BREWHOUSE BLUES JAM • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Join Robert Higginbotham and the Smoking Section for the Brewhouse Blues Jam. Bring your instrument, sign up, and join the jammers. We supply drums and a full backline of amps. Sign-ups begin at 7 p.m. before the show. • FREE
DJ AND DANCE NIGHTS
Sunday, May 29 LAYOVER SUNDAY BRUNCH • The Concourse • 12PM • Enjoy good eats, refreshing libations, and the most appropriate afternoon tunage in the company of this city’s most dedicated loafers. We’ll be serving our normal brunch in all it’s glory, courtesy of Localmotive. Musical accompaniment by the likes of Slow Nasty, Psychonaut, and a rotating list of special guests. All ages. • FREE Sunday, June 5 LAYOVER SUNDAY BRUNCH • The Concourse • 12PM • Enjoy good eats, refreshing libations, and the most appropriate afternoon tunage in the company of this city’s most
CALENDAR dedicated loafers. We’ll be serving our normal brunch in all it’s glory, courtesy of Localmotive. Musical accompaniment by the likes of Slow Nasty, Psychonaut, and a rotating list of special guests. All ages. • FREE
CLASSICAL MUSIC
Monday, May 30 OAK RIDGE COMMUNITY BAND MEMORIAL DAY CONCERT • Alvin K. Bissell Park • 7PM • The concert program will be dedicated to all veterans and to the men and women currently serving in the United States Armed Forces. Guest performers are the Community Chorus and vocalist Deidre Ford. For more information, visit www.orcb.org or call 865-482-3568. • FREE Sunday, June 5 NIEF-NORF SUMMER FESTIVAL • University of Tennessee • 12AM • The nief-norf Summer Festival (nnSF) is an interdisciplinary summer music festival, bringing together dozens of performers, composers, and scholars to collaborate on the performance, creation, and discussion of contemporary solo and chamber music. The nnSF offers an intensive think-tank environment and presents inspiring and devoted performances of modern music, aiming to encourage both appreciation and support for live music and contemporary art.
THEATER AND DANCE
Friday, June 3 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: ‘LEADING LADIES’ • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • In this hilarious comedy by the author of Lend Me A Tenor and Moon Over Buffalo, two English Shakespearean actors, Jack and Leo, find themselves so down on their luck that they are performing “Scenes from Shakespeare” on the Moose Lodge circuit in the Amish country of Pennsylvania. When they hear that an old lady in York, Pennsylvania, is about to die and leave her fortune to her two long lost English nephews, they resolve to pass themselves off as her beloved relatives and get the cash. June 3-19. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $13-$15 Saturday, June 4 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: ‘LEADING LADIES’ • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 8PM • In this hilarious comedy by the author of Lend Me A Tenor and Moon Over Buffalo, two English Shakespearean actors, Jack and Leo, find themselves so down on their luck that they are performing “Scenes from Shakespeare” on the Moose Lodge circuit in the Amish country of Pennsylvania. When they hear that an old lady in York, Pennsylvania, is about to die and leave her fortune to her two long lost English nephews, they resolve to pass themselves off as her beloved relatives and get the cash. June 3-19. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $13-$15 Sunday, June 5 THEATRE KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN: ‘LEADING LADIES’ • Theatre Knoxville Downtown • 3PM • In this hilarious comedy by the author of Lend Me A Tenor and Moon Over Buffalo, two English Shakespearean actors, Jack and Leo, find themselves so down on their luck that they are performing “Scenes from Shakespeare” on the Moose Lodge circuit in the Amish country of Pennsylvania. When they hear that an old lady in York, Pennsylvania, is about to die and leave her fortune to her two long lost English nephews, they resolve to pass themselves off as her
beloved relatives and get the cash. June 3-19. Visit theatreknoxville.com. • $13-$15
COMEDY AND SPOKEN WORD
Thursday, May 26 SUGAR HIGH! COMEDY SHOW • Sugar Mama’s Bakery • 8PM • A new comedy showcase at the brand new home of Sugar Mama’s on the 100 block. No cover. • FREE FULL DISCLOSURE COMEDY • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • Full Disclosure Comedy is Knoxville’s long-form improvisational troupe, bringing together community members for laughs and overall general merriment. Friday, May 27 SMOKY MOUNTAIN STORYTELLERS • Vienna Coffee House (Maryville) • 7PM • FREE Sunday, May 29 UPSTAIRS UNDERGROUND COMEDY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A weekly comedy open mic. Monday, May 30 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. Free, but donations are accepted.• FREE Tuesday, May 31 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 OPEN MIC STAND-UP COMEDY • Longbranch Saloon • 8PM • Doors open at 8:30, first comic at 9. No cover charge, all are welcome. Aspiring or experienced comics interested in joining in the fun email us at long branch.info@gmail. com to learn more, or simply come to the show a few minutes early. • FREE SPIKE COLLAR COMEDY: KYLE FIELDS • Open Chord Brewhouse and Stage • 8PM • With opening acts Lance Adams, Jeff Danger, Jake James, and J.C. Ratliff. Hosted by William Nalley. 18 and up. • FREE Friday, June 3 FIRST FRIDAY COMEDY • Saw Works Brewing Company • 7PM • A monthly showcase featuring local and touring stand-ups comics. • FREE THE OOH OOH REVUE: NIGHT OF NOIR • Cocoa Moon • 10PM • A variety show celebrating the sexy, sultry and darker side of human nature—femme fatales, dangerous dames, and men of mystery all in our signature blend of burlesque, song, dance and comedy. We are Knoxville’s only classy fringe-arts variety show held each month on First Friday. 18 and up. Visit oohoohrevue.com. • $10 Sunday, June 5 UPSTAIRS UNDERGROUND COMEDY • Preservation Pub • 8PM • A weekly comedy open mic.
FESTIVALS
Saturday, May 28
TENNESSEE MEDIEVAL FAIRE • Tennessee Medieval Faire • 10AM • The festival will come to life on May 14 and run the last three weekends in May, including Memorial Day. This year’s festival is portraying the historical year of 500 after the fall of the Roman Empire. Visitors can cheer on their favorite knight at the live-action jousts, laugh with comedic characters and thrill to warriors’ chess. For more information, please visit www.TMFaire.com or like them on Facebook. • $16.95 MARBLE SPRINGS STATEHOOD DAY CELEBRATION • Marble Springs State Historic Site • 10AM • June 1st, 2016 will be the 220th anniversary of Tennessee’s admission as the 16th state in the year 1796. In conjunction with the Historic Homes of Knoxville, Marble Springs State Historic Site will commemorate this occasion with free site tours on Saturday, May 28th. Along with scheduled guided tours, guests will get to walk through Living History encampments, view open hearth cooking demonstrations, and enjoy some 18th century music. For more information please email info@marblesprings.net, call (865) 573-5508, or visit our website at www. marblesprings.net. • FREE Sunday, May 29 TENNESSEE MEDIEVAL FAIRE • Tennessee Medieval Faire • 10AM • The festival will come to life on May 14 and run the last three weekends in May, including Memorial Day. This year’s festival is portraying the historical year of 500 after the fall of the Roman Empire. Visitors can cheer on their favorite knight at the live-action jousts, laugh with comedic characters and thrill to warriors’ chess. For more information, please visit www.TMFaire.com or like them on Facebook. • $16.95 Monday, May 30 FOUNTAIN CITY DAY FESTIVAL • Fountain City Park • 10AM • Honor Fountain City Day will bring an old-fashioned county fair atmosphere to Fountain City Park. Free face painting, carnival games, train rides, and animal acts are guaranteed to get your kids off their devices. There will be bands, baton twirlers, speeches, barbecue, singers, antique cars, crafts, door prizes, a silent auction, politicians and hot dogs (some categories may overlap).T he theme of this 41st Honor Fountain City Day is “Fountain City: A Community of Volunteers.” Free musical entertainment includes the Tennessee Wind Symphony, Brandywine, Nostalgia and Andy LeGrand. • FREE TENNESSEE MEDIEVAL FAIRE • Tennessee Medieval Faire • 10AM • The festival will come to life on May 14 and run the last three weekends in May, including Memorial Day. This year’s festival is portraying the historical year of 500 after the fall of the Roman Empire. Visitors can cheer on their favorite knight at the live-action jousts, laugh with comedic characters and thrill to warriors’ chess. For more information, please visit www.TMFaire.com or like them on Facebook. • $16.95 Saturday, June 4 LENOIR CITY ARTS AND CRAFTS FESTIVAL • Lenoir City Park • 9AM • TAll funds raised by this event are donated throughout Loudon County and surrounding communities to benefit local organizations and charities. Please come for crafts, food, music and fun. Crafters and food vendors are always welcome to submit applications to the Club for review, as we are always seeking new and unusual handmade crafts and wares, as well as food items. Please visit our website at www.lenoircityartsandcraftsfestival.com for more information or for vendor applications. • FREE SWEETHEARTS OF THE SMOKIES MUSIC FESTIVAL • Dancing May 26, 2016
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 27
CALENDAR Bear Lodge • 4PM • The first ever Sweethearts of the Smokies Music Festival will take place on Saturday, June 4th – rain or shine – at the Dancing Bear Lodge Outdoor Pavilion Stage, with a portion of the proceeds benefiting the Appalachian Bear Rescue. This 18 and over, can’t-miss music event will take place at the foothills of the gorgeous Smoky Mountains and will showcase and celebrate bands that are led and co-led by women. The day will be filled with great food, drink, and music, featuring Robinella, The Whiskey Gentry, Shannon Whitworth & Barrett Smith, Cherohala, and Katie Pruitt. Visit dancingbearlodge.com. • $20-$75 BIKE, BOAT, BREW, AND BARK • Volunteer Landing • Bike, Boat, Brew and Bark celebrates the best of what Knoxville has to offer. Whether you are a local, a tourist, an outdoor adventurer, a dog lover, a craft-beer enthusiast or any combination of the above, you’ll be able to discover something new! The Knoxville Visitor Centers will be open on Gay Street, Volunteer Landing, and at Outdoor Knoxville where staff can help guide you on your next adventure. Returning for the third year in a row, powerboats will be racing up and down the Tennessee river at Volunteer Landing all weekend. Grab your friends and watch the races from the water before you head out for the day. Grab a home-brewed specialty from any of Knoxville’s esteemed breweries. Plan an outing at the river with your four-legged friends. Later on, you can tucker out the kids by taking them to watch the Smoky Mountain Dock Diving Dogs at the riverside. TERRAHOOLIE FESTIVAL • Ijams Nature Center • Join River Sports Outfitters, outdoor recreation industry vendors, and
Thursday, May 26 - Sunday, June 5
Dirty Bird Events for one amazing weekend full of adventure races, paddleboard races, scavenger hunts, trail runs, rock climbing, and a triathlon. Complete with awesome prizes from our sponsor vendors. Visit ijams. org. Sunday, June 5 LENOIR CITY ARTS AND CRAFTS FESTIVAL • Lenoir City Park • 10AM • All funds raised by this event are donated throughout Loudon County and surrounding communities to benefit local organizations and charities. Please come for crafts, food, music and fun. Crafters and food vendors are always welcome to submit applications to the Club for review, as we are always seeking new and unusual handmade crafts and wares, as well as food items. Please visit our website at www.lenoircityartsandcraftsfestival.com for more information or for vendor applications. • FREE BIKE, BOAT, BREW, AND BARK • Volunteer Landing • Bike, Boat, Brew and Bark celebrates the best of what Knoxville has to offer. Whether you are a local, a tourist, an outdoor adventurer, a dog lover, a craft-beer enthusiast or any combination of the above, you’ll be able to discover something new! The Knoxville Visitor Centers will be open on Gay Street, Volunteer Landing, and at Outdoor Knoxville where staff can help guide you on your next adventure. Returning for the third year in a row, powerboats will be racing up and down the Tennessee river at Volunteer Landing all weekend. Grab your friends and watch the races from the water before you head out for the day. Grab a home-brewed specialty from any of
SKEE BALL TOURNEY! FUNDRAISER FOR WUTK!
WITH EMCEES ROB & DEREK FROM THE FUNHOUSE
PRESENTED BY
®
ThurSDAY, June 16 @ SUTREE’S registration 5pm-6pm - Tourney starts at 6
Teams of two - $10 entry fee all proceeds benefit WUTK! Great prizes for Final 4 teams - Raffle prizes for all
Streaming 24.7.365 at WUTKRADIO.COM 28
KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 26, 2016
Knoxville’s esteemed breweries. Plan an outing at the river with your four-legged friends. Later on, you can tucker out the kids by taking them to watch the Smoky Mountain Dock Diving Dogs at the riverside. TERRAHOOLIE FESTIVAL • Ijams Nature Center • Join River Sports Outfitters, outdoor recreation industry vendors, and Dirty Bird Events for one amazing weekend full of adventure races, paddleboard races, scavenger hunts, trail runs, rock climbing, and a triathlon. Complete with awesome prizes from our sponsor vendors. Visit ijams. org.
FILM SCREENINGS
Friday, May 27 TAKE BACK YOUR POWER • The Birdhouse • 7PM • Come learn about KUB’s new smart meter program, starting this July, and the different risks this program poses to our community. This award-winning documentary investigates so-called “smart” utility meters, uncovering shocking evidence of in-home privacy invasions, increased utility bills, health and environmental harm, fires, and unprecedented hacking vulnerability—and lights the path toward solutions. Movie begins at 7 p.m. and will be followed by Q&A about the specifics of the KUB program. • FREE Monday, May 30 THE BIRDHOUSE WALK-IN THEATER • The Birdhouse • 8:15PM • A weekly free movie screening. • FREE
SPORTS AND RECREATION
Thursday, May 26 CYCOLOGY BICYCLES THURSDAY MORNING RIDE • Cycology Bicycles • 10AM • Join Cycology Bicycles every Thursday morning for a road ride with two group options. A Group does a 2 to 3 hour ride at 20+ pace; B group does an intermediate ride at 15/18 mph average. Weather permitting. cycologybicycles.com. • FREE FLEET FEET GROUP RUN/WALK • Fleet Feet Sports Knoxville • 6PM • Join us every Thursday night at our store for a fun group run/walk. We have all levels come out, so no matter what your speed you’ll have someone to keep you company. Our 30 - 60 minute route varies week by week in the various neighborhoods and greenways around the store, so be sure to show up on time so you can join up with the group. All levels welcome. fleetfeetknoxville.com. • FREE NORTH KNOXVILLE BEER RUNNERS • Central Flats and Taps • 6PM • Meet us at Central Flats and Taps every Thursday night for a fun and easy run leading us right through Saw Works for a midway beer. • FREE RIVER SPORTS THURSDAY EVENING GREENWAY BIKE RIDE • River Sports Outfitters • 6PM • Every Thursday night from 6 to 7:30 join River Sports Outfitters on an easy paced, beginner friendly Greenway Ride. Bring your own bike or rent one for $15. Lights are mandatory on your bikes from September through March. After ride join us at the store for $2 pints. riversportsoutfitters.com/events. • FREE
CALENDAR KNOXVILLE BICYCLE COMPANY THURSDAY GRAVEL GRINDER • North Boundary Trails • 6:30PM • Join Knoxville Bicycle Company every Thursday evening for their gravel grinder. Meets at 6:30 pm at North Boundary in Oak Ridge, park at the guard shack. Cross bikes and hardtails are perfect. Bring lights. Regroups as necessary. Call shop for more details. Weather permitting - call the store if weather is questionable. knoxvillebicycleco.com. • CEDAR BLUFF CYCLES THURSDAY GREENWAY RIDE • Cedar Bluff Cycles • 6:30PM • Join us every Thursday evening for a greenway ride at an intermediate pace of 14-15 mph. Must have lights. Weather permitting. cedarbluffcycles.net. • FREE Friday, May 27 RIVER SPORTS FRIDAY NIGHT GREENWAY RUN • River Sports Outfitters • 6PM • Greenway run from the store every Friday evening from 6-7:30 pm. Work up a thirst then join us for $2 pints in the store afterwards. riversportsoutfitters.com. • FREE Saturday, May 28 KTC EXPO 10K AND 5K • Downtown Knoxville • 8AM • The EXPO 10K/5k is more than a race: It is Knoxville’s oldest and most beloved community running event. In its’ 38th year, it is truly a tradition. It is the only race that celebrates the family by having mother/son, mother/ daughter, father/son, father/daughter, wife/husband, and three generations categories. It is the Knoxville Track Club’s event of the year. • $35-$50 SMOKY MOUNTAIN HIKING CLUB: INJUN CREEK, TED’S BRANCH, LITTLE RHODODENDRON CREEK, AND RHODODENDRON CREEK OFF-TRAIL • 8AM • We will begin this hike at the Greenbrier Ranger Station going up Injun Creek to a little past the former school site where we will cross the creek then climb up through the Joe Hollow and over James Ridge to Ted’s Branch. Hike: around 8 miles, rated difficult due to some thick vegetation and steep terrain. Contact the leader for meeting time and place. Leaders: Ed and Pam Fleming, edwrdflm@aol.com. • FREE Sunday, May 29 KNOXVILLE HARDCOURT BIKE POLO • Sam Duff Memorial Park • 1PM • Don’t know how to play? Just bring your bike — we have mallets to share and will teach you the game. • FREE Monday, May 30 KTC GROUP RUN • Mellow Mushroom • 6PM • Visit ktc.org. • FREE BEARDEN BEER MARKET FUN RUN • Bearden Beer Market • 6:30PM • Visit beardenbeermarket.com. • FREE TVB MONDAY NIGHT ROAD RIDE • Tennessee Valley Bikes • 6PM • The soon to be famous Monday night road ride happens every Monday. We usually split into two groups according to speed. Both groups are no-drop groups. The faster group averages over 17mph and the B group averages around 14mph. • FREE Tuesday, May 31 CYCOLOGY BICYCLES TUESDAY MORNING RIDE • Cycology Bicycles • 10:30AM • cycologybicycles.com. • FREE HARD KNOX TUESDAY FUN RUN • Hard Knox Pizzeria • 6:30PM • Join Hard Knox Pizzeria every Tuesday evening (rain or shine) for a 2-3 mile fun run. Burn calories. Devour pizza. Quench thirst. Follow us on Facebook. • FREE CEDAR BLUFF CYCLES TUESDAY GREENWAY RIDE • Cedar Bluff Cycles • 6:30PM • cedarbluffcycles.net. • FREE Wednesday, June 1 KTC GROUP RUN • Runner’s Market • 5:30PM • Visit ktc.org. • FREE
FOUNTAIN CITY PEDALERS SHARPS RIDGE MOUNTAIN BIKE RIDE • Fountain City Pedaler • 6PM • Visit fcpedaler.com. • FREE TVB EASY RIDER MOUNTAIN BIKE RIDE • Ijams Nature Center • 6PM • On Wednesday nights we hit the local trails for an easy-paced mountain bike ride. Riders of all skill levels are welcome, and if you would like to demo a mountain bike from our shop this is a great opportunity to do so. Rides are weather permitting. If the trails are too wet, we do not ride. Check out our Facebook page or give us a call at 865-540-9979 for more info. • FREE
ART
Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts 556 Parkway (Gatlinburg) APRIL 27-JUNE 25: Arrowmont staff exhibit, featuring artwork by Jeda Barr, Nick DeFord, Kelly Sullivan, Vickie Bradshaw, Bill Griffith, Kelly Hider, Jennifer Blackburn, Ernie Schultz, Heather Ashworth, Laura Tuttle, Bob Biddlestone and Jason Burnett. MAY 21-AUG. 20: Arrowmont’s annual instructor exhibit. Art Market Gallery 422 S. Gay St. MAY 3-28: An exhibit by the Tennessee Watercolor Society. MAY 31-JUNE 26: Artwork by Pat Herzog and Diana Dee Sarkar. An opening reception will be held on Friday, June 3, at 5:30 p.m. Bliss Home 24 Market Square MAY 6-31: Artwork for the International Biscuit Festival by Hannah Holder. JUNE 3-30: Photography by Brian Murray. An opening reception will be held on Friday, June 3, from 6-9 p.m. Broadway Studios and Gallery 1127 Broadway MAY 6-31: Body as Art, featuring clay figure work by Annamaria Gundlach. The District Gallery 5113 Kingston Pike APRIL 22-MAY 31: Along the Way, oil paintings by Kathie Odom. Downtown Gallery 106 S. Gay St. MAY 6-28: Artsource 2016, featuring artwork by Knox County art educators. JUNE 3-AUG. 19: Through the Lens of Ed Westcott, an exhibition of photos taken by the official photographer for the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge. An opening reception will be held on Friday, June 3, from 5-9 p.m. East Tennessee History Center 601 S. Gay St. APRIL 16-OCT. 30: Come to Make Records, a selection of artifacts, audio and video recordings, and photographs celebrating Knoxville’s music heritage and the 1929-30 St. James Hotel recording sessions. Emporium Center for Arts and Culture 100 S. Gay St. MAY 6-27: Recessive, photographs by Abigail Malone; photography by Rachel Quammie; and International Latino Art Exhibition. MAY 13-JUNE 27: Tennessee Watercolor Society 35th Biennial Exhibition. JUNE 3-24:
music festival • june 4th
Robinella - The Whiskey Gentry - Shannon Whitworth & Barrett Smith - Cherohala - Katie Pruitt
This intimate, outside performance will be presented FEATURING: on the stage of the beautiful Dancing Bear Lodge. Robinella - The Whiskey Gentry - Shannon Whitworth &
FESTIVAL GROUNDS OPEN AT 3:00PM, MUSIC STARTS AT 4:00PM
Barrett Smith - Cherohala and Katie Pruitt
TICKET PRICES
Tickets are Admission: available for purchase General $20on-line: - $30DancingBearLodge.com | VIP: $75 General Admission: $25 in advance | VIP: $75
ONLY 500 TICKETS AVAILABLE A portion of the proceed will benefit the Appalachian Bear Rescue. AppalachianBearRescue.org
May 26, 2016
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 29
CALENDAR Through Our Eyes, paintings by Kim Emert Gale and Janet Weaver; A Mosaic Journey, glass art by Judy Overholt Weaver; and the fourth annual Knoxville Photo Exhibition. Opening receptions will be held on Friday, June 3, from 5-9 p.m. Fountain City Art Center 213 Hotel Road MAY 20-JUNE 16: Fountain City Art Guild Spring Show and Sale. Knoxville Museum of Art 1050 World’s Fair Park Drive MAY 6-AUG. 7: Full Stop, a large-scale installation by painter Tom Burkhardt, and Contemporary Focus 2016, with artwork by installation/video/sound artist John Douglas Powers. 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. McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture
Thursday, May 26 - Sunday, June 5
1327 Circle Park Drive JUNE 4-AUG. 28: Dinosaur Discoveries: Ancient Fossils, New Ideas. ONGOING: The Flora and Fauna of Catesby, Mason, and Audubon and Life on the Roman Frontier. Westminster Presbyterian Church 6500 S. Northshore Drive THROUGH JUNE 26: Artwork by Donna Conliffe and Ann Dally.
LECTURES, READINGS, AND BOOK SIGNINGS
Thursday, June 2 THE BEAUFORD DELANEY PROJECT • Beck Cultural Exchange Center • 5:30PM • The public is invited to get an inside look at the emerging Beauford Delaney Project and learn more about exciting plans for the hometown celebration of a Knoxville cultural hero. Beck Cultural
DYING FETUS The Concourse (940 Blackstock Ave.) • Friday, May 27 • 7:30 p.m. • $22.50-$25 • 18 and up • internationalknox.com
If God made an ideal death metal band, it might sound a lot like Maryland’s Dying Fetus. Other bands might play faster, heavier, nastier riffs, with more jaw-dropping guitar shredding and more disgusting lyrics, but nobody can match underground lifer and Dying Fetus founder John Gallagher for his bone-deep commitment to death metal as an art form and a way of life. On seven albums, stretching from Purification Through Violence (1996) to Reign Supreme (2012), Gallagher and whatever journeymen he’s playing with at the time have managed to make songs with titles like “Homicidal Retribution” and “Descend Into Depravity” feel positively life-affirming—if you’re a metal fan and you can get through the landmark 2000 death-grind political protest album Destroy the Opposition without at least thinking about cashing in your 401(k) for a denim vest with a Venom back patch and a case of cheap beer, you’re not paying attention. And if you are paying attention, you know that the political philosophy found on Destroy the Opposition—“Wake the fuck up, smell the shit, then you will see/What’s good for them isn’t good for everyone”—applies as much today as when it was written, maybe more. Dying Fetus headlines the Metal Alliance Tour with the Acacia Strain, Jungle Rot, Black Crown Initiate, SystemHouse 33, and the Guild. (Matthew Everett)
30
KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 26, 2016
Exchange Center President Rev. Reneé Kesler and Knoxville Museum of Art Curator Stephen Wicks will talk about Beauford Delaney’s life, art, and significance. Beauford lived his final decades abroad in Paris (he died there in 1979), but maintained close ties to Knoxville and family here throughout his life. His brother Joseph, also a distinguished artist, is perhaps better known locally than Beauford, because Joseph eventually returned to his hometown, where he died in 1991. This event at the Beck Center is free and open to the public. To reserve a seat or for more information, contact ddbubose@knoxart.org or 865-934-2036. • FREE Sunday, June 5 RICK YANCEY: ‘THE LAST STAR’ • Barnes & Noble • 2PM • Rick Yancey is the author of The 5th Wave and The Infinite Sea, the first two books in this bestselling series. His debut young-adult novel, The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp, was a finalist for the Carnegie Medal. In 2010, his novel The Monstrumologist received the Michael L. Printz Honor, and the sequel, The Curse of the Wendigo, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. When he isn’t writing or thinking about writing or traveling the country talking about writing, Rick is hanging out with his family. • FREE JODY SIMS: ‘SOUL PROVIDER’ • Historic Southern Railway Station • 2PM • South Knoxville resident Jody Sims, artist/ author of the award-winning book Soul Provider: Conversations With My Cat, will present at a National Cancer Survivors Day event. Jody presents an extraordinary visual and honest account of her experience with loss, filled with inspiration from someone who forged it for herself. Soul Provider has been described as “both simple and deep; delightful and desperate; clever and beautiful; inviting the reader to share a dynamic tug- of-war between courage and surrender.”Jody grew up in a small farming community in western Illinois. After college, she moved to San Diego, CA and worked for many years for the Girl Scouts. She was their Chief Advancement Officer when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012. In 2014, Jody moved to Knoxville, TN where she is a full time artist and writer. LINDA PARSONS: ‘THIS SHAKY EARTH’ • Union Ave Books • 2PM • Poetry Reading and signing launch with Linda Parsons, author of a new collection of poems, This Shaky Earth. • FREE
CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS
Thursday, May 26 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. BELLY DANCE LEVELS 1 AND 2 • Knox Dance Worx • 8PM • Call (865) 898-2126 or email alexia@alexia-dance.com. • $12 PORTRAIT AND LIFE DRAWING SESSIONS • Historic Candoro Marble Company • 2PM • Portrait and life drawing practice at Candoro Art & Heritage Center. $10. Call Brad Selph for more information (865-573-0709). • $10 KNOXVILLE CAPOEIRA CLASS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 6PM • This class is an hour of student-led training and review of Capoeira skills and exercises. Come prepared to sweat. Visit knoxvillecapoeira.org. • $10 THIRSTY (FOR KNOWLEDGE) THURSDAY • Old City Wine Bar
• 6PM • Join our sommelier, Matt Burke, every Thursday in the cellar of the Old City Wine Bar for our ongoing wine education series. Free to listen and only $20 to partake in the libations. AARP DRIVER SAFETY SMART DRIVER CLASS • John T. O’Connor Senior Center • 12PM • Call (865) 382-5822. KNOX COUNTY MASTER GARDENERS: CELEBRATE SUMMER • Humana Guidance Center • 3:15PM • Join Master Gardner Lynn Carlson to talk about making your outdoor containers a rainbow of color. Design, color balance, proportion—there is no one perfect design, so think outside the pot for this one! Call865-329-8892. • FREE FIND YOUR PARK: SEVEN ISLANDS STATE BIRDING PARK • REI • 6PM • How did this dairy farm become one of Tennessee State Park’s newest additions? What’s to see out there? What can I expect when I visit? What is a ‘birding park’ anyway? Visit rei.com/stores/knoxville. • FREE Saturday, May 28 IMPROV COMEDY CLASS • The Birdhouse • 10:30AM • A weekly improv comedy class. • FREE unday, May 29 S YOGA AT NARROW RIDGE • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 9:30AM • Narrow Ridge invites you to join us every Sunday morning for yoga instruction from Angela Gibson. This class can be tailored to each individual’s ability level. For information call 865-497-2753 or email community@narrowridge.org. • FREE CIRCLE MODERN DANCE BALLET BARRE CLASS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 1PM • This open-level barre class is designed to help students build and maintain strength, flexibility, and coordination for ballet technique. This is a great class for beginning and experienced students alike. • $10 CIRCLE MODERN DANCE OPEN LEVEL MODERN TECHNIQUE CLASS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 2PM • This class is open to all. Teachers cover basic technique and vocabulary for modern and contemporary dance. The class includes floor and standing work to build proficiency in alignment, balance, initiation and articulation of movement, weight shift, elevation and landing, and fall and recovery. Instruction is adjusted to meet the experience and ability of those in attendance. • $10 CIRCLE MODERN DANCE IMPROVISATION CLASS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 3:30PM • Our improv classes offer an introduction to dance improvisation as a movement practice, performance technique, and a tool for creating choreography. Class involves both structured and free improvisations aimed at developing creativity, spontaneous decision-making, freedom of movement, and confidence in performance. No dance experience is necessary—only the desire to move. • $10 ROOFTOP YOGA • Central Collective • 6:30PM • With Jennifer Beyt Coffin. Visit exploreyourcore.co. • $10 Monday, May 30 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 5:30PM • Call 865-5772021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. KNOXVILLE KETTLEBELL CLUB BEGINNERS CHALLENGE: STRENGTH AND STABILITY • Bullman’s Kickboxing and Krav Maga • 9:30AM • Have you been looking for a way to get fitter, happier, and healthier? Do you have any nagging injuries and are looking for a program that will accommodate your current level of fitness and also take
CALENDAR
Tuesday, May 31 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. KNOXVILLE CAPOEIRA CLASS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 6PM • Capoeira originated in Brazil and is a dynamic expression of Afro-Brazilian culture. It is an art form that encompasses martial arts, dance, and acrobatic movements as well as its own philosophy, history, culture, music, and songs. Visit capoeiraknoxville. org. • $10 ACROYOGA • Dragonfly Aerial Arts Studio • 7PM • Fly with us! Each class is beginner friendly, incorporating intermediate options for more experienced fliers. New content is explored each week while reviewing components taught in previous classes, providing a space for students to form strong foundational skills in flying, basing, and spotting. Each session ends with therapeutics or Thai massage. Please bring a mat, close fitting long pants, and water. No partner needed. • $15 Wednesday, June 1 CIRCLE MODERN DANCE INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCED MODERN TECHNIQUE CLASS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 6PM • A rotation of core members and guest artists of Circle Modern Dance teach this class. They present a variety of modern and contemporary styles, including Bartenieff and release-based techniques. This class is primarily designed for students with a basic knowledge of modern dance technique and vocabulary, but is open to any mover who is willing to be challenged. CIRCLE MODERN DANCE OPEN LEVEL BALLET CLASS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 7:30PM • This is a basic ballet class open to students of all levels of experience and ability. Students will learn new steps, build coordination and flexibility, and learn choreography. • $10 KNOXVILLE KETTLEBELL CLUB BEGINNERS CHALLENGE: STRENGTH AND STABILITY • Bullman’s Kickboxing and Krav Maga • 9:30AM • Have you been looking for a way to get fitter, happier, and healthier? Do you have any nagging injuries and are looking for a program that will accommodate your current level of fitness and also take you to the next level of strength and stability? Join us for this six-week series introducing the ancient strength-training kettlebell workout to make modern life feel better. Mondays and Wednesdays, 9:30 a.m.-10:45 a.m., starting May 23. • $180 AARP DRIVER SAFETY SMART DRIVER CLASS • Sequoyah Hills Presbyterian Church • 12PM • Call (865) 382-5822. Thursday, June 2
GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail.com. Donations accepted. BELLY DANCE LEVELS 1 AND 2 • Knox Dance Worx • 8PM • Call (865) 898-2126 or email alexia@alexia-dance.com. • $12 KNOXVILLE CAPOEIRA CLASS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 6PM • This class is an hour of student-led training and review of Capoeira skills and exercises. Come prepared to sweat. Visit knoxvillecapoeira.org. • $10 PORTRAIT AND LIFE DRAWING SESSIONS • Historic Candoro Marble Company • 2PM • Portrait and life drawing practice at Candoro Art & Heritage Center. $10. Call Brad Selph for more information (865-573-0709). • $10 THIRSTY (FOR KNOWLEDGE) THURSDAY • Old City Wine Bar • 6PM • Join our sommelier, Matt Burke, every Thursday in the cellar of the Old City Wine Bar for our ongoing wine education series. Free to listen and only $20 to partake in the libations. AARP DRIVER SAFETY SMART DRIVER CLASS • Sequoyah Hills Presbyterian Church • 12PM • 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. Special attention will be provided to beginners interested in learning how to knit and experience the meditative quality of knitting. Supplies provided. Call 865-546-4661. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer. Saturday, June 4 IMPROV COMEDY CLASS • The Birdhouse • 10:30AM • A weekly improv comedy class. • FREE SMART RESEARCH TACTICS FOR WRITERS • Central United Methodist Church • 10AM • The Knoxville Writers’ Guild will host a research workshop titled Smart Research Tactics for Writers. The workshop will be led by historical novelist Pamela Schoenewaldt and research librarian Jamie Osborne from the Knox County Public Library. Writers of any genre, any age, and any level of experience are welcome. To register for the workshop, visit knoxvillewritersguild.org or send a check to KWG Workshops, P.O. Box 10326, Knoxville, TN, 37939-0326. Cost is $35 for KWG members, $40 for nonmembers, and $15 for students. • $40
Kn
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you to the next level of strength and stability? Join us for this six-week series introducing the ancient strength-training kettlebell workout to make modern life feel better. Mondays and Wednesdays, 9:30 a.m.-10:45 a.m., starting May 23. • $180 SIX-WEEK CREATIVE WRITING INTENSIVE CLASS • The Birdhouse • 6PM • This summer, join journalist and poet Holly Haworth for a six-week creative writing intensive. This very exciting course will focus on establishing a regular practice, honoring the wildness of the entire writing process, writing as discovery, finding your most important stories, making space for your creativity, and sustaining inspiration. Entire course is $250. Participants must sign up for entire six-week course. Pre-registration required. Contact instructor Holly Haworth at olmountaingal@gmail.com or at (865) 801.0806. • $250
Sunday, June 5 YOGA AT NARROW RIDGE • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 9:30AM • For information call 865-497-2753 or email community@narrowridge.org. • FREE CIRCLE MODERN DANCE BALLET BARRE CLASS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 1PM • $10 CIRCLE MODERN DANCE OPEN LEVEL MODERN TECHNIQUE CLASS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 2PM • $10 CIRCLE MODERN DANCE IMPROVISATION CLASS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 3:30PM • $10 I BIKE KNX OPEN HOUSE BIKE CLASSES • Earth Fare (Bearden) • 2PM • Whether you haven’t been on a bike in years, only ride on greenways, or never learned to bike, we have a class for you! Our Open House–style instruction allows you to choose from any of these classes. Bring your kids and your friends —all to the same class. At our Open House sessions, you can choose from: Biking for Beginners, Getting Back on a Bicycle, Learning to Ride: Adults, and Freedom from Training Wheels: Children. Classes will be held on March 6, April 3, May 1, May 15, and June 5.Meet us at Third Creek Greenway trailhead near Earth Fare in Bearden. Adults May 26, 2016
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 31
CALENDAR are $20; kids are $10. (Your kids are welcome to come ride around while you are in class, even if they aren’t taking a class. There is a parking lot behind the shopping center with no traffic.) • $20
MEETINGS
Saturday, May 28 AL-ANON • Faith Lutheran Church • 11AM • Al-Anon’s purpose is to help families and friends of alcoholics recover from the effects of living with the problem drinking of a relative or friend. Visit our local website at farragutalanon.org or email us at FindHope@ Farragutalanon.org. • FREE Sunday, May 29 NARROW RIDGE SILENT MEDITATION GATHERING • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 11AM • Narrow Ridge invites you to join us for our Silent Meditation Gathering on Sundays. The gatherings are intended to be inclusive of people of all faiths as well as those who do not align themselves with a particular religious denomination. For information call 865-497-2753 or email community@ narrowridge.org. • FREE THREE RIVERS! EARTH FIRST! • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 7PM • Three Rivers! Earth First! is the local dirt worshiping, tree hugging, anarchist collective that meets every Sunday night on the second floor of Barley’s in the back room (when its available) to organize against strip mining, counter protest the KKK and Nazis, to clean up Third Creek and to fight evil corporations in general. Open
Thursday, May 26 - Sunday, June 5
meeting, rotating facilitation, collective model. Y’all come. Call (865) 257-4029 for more information. • FREE Monday, May 30 GAY MEN’S DISCUSSION GROUP • Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church • 7:30PM • We hold facilitated discussions on topics and issues relevant to local gay men in a safe and open environment. Visit gaygroupknoxville.org. Tuesday, May 31 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 Thursday, June 2 CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY FAMILY BEREAVEMENT GROUP • Cancer Support Community • 6PM • CSC is committed to providing bereavement services to those who have lost a loved one to cancer. Please contact our clinical staff before attending. Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer. CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY BREAST CANCER NETWORKER • Thompson Cancer Survivor Center West • 6PM • This drop-in group is an opportunity for women who have or have had breast cancer to come together to exchange information, offer support, education and encouragement. Bring your favorite seasonal snack to share. Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to
Enjoy Our Spectacular
Brunch Menu! bistro DOWNTOWN Saturday 11AM – 2PM Sunday 10AM – 2PM
TURKEY CREEK Sunday 11AM – 2PM ■
$3 BLOODY MARYS
■
$3 MIMOSAS
■
Filet and Eggs
½ PRICE SELECT WINE BOTTLES 4PM–10PM
(SUNDAY ONLY)
French Toast Breakfast Sandwich
TURKEY CREEK 11383 Parkside Dr. ■ 865-671-6612 DOWNTOWN 141 S. Gay St. ■ 865-544-1491 www.crubistroandwinebar.com 32
KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 26, 2016
individuals affected by cancer. NAACP • Beck Cultural Exchange Center • 6PM • The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination. Join the fight for freedom by becoming a member of the NAACP. Regular individual annual membership rates vary. KNOXVILLE WRITERS’ GUILD • Central United Methodist Church • 7PM • The Knoxville Writers’ Guild exists to facilitate a broad and inclusive community for area writers, provide a forum for information, support and sharing among writers, help members improve and market their writing skills and promote writing and creativity. A $2 donation is requested. Additional information about KWG can be found at www. KnoxvilleWritersGuild.org. Saturday, June 4 AL-ANON • Faith Lutheran Church • 11AM • Visit our local website at farragutalanon.org or email us at FindHope@ Farragutalanon.org. • FREE GERMAN TREFF • GruJo’s German Restaurant • 2PM • Whether you have lived in Germany and would like to share some memories, would like to explore your roots, practice the language, or if you are just curious and like to meet new people, this monthly meeting, held on the first Saturday of each month, is a great opportunity to have a wonderful time. • FREE Sunday, June 5 NARROW RIDGE SILENT MEDITATION GATHERING • Narrow
Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 11AM • For information call 865-497-2753 or email community@narrowridge.org. • FREE THREE RIVERS! EARTH FIRST! • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 7PM • Call (865) 257-4029 for more information. • FREE
ETC.
Thursday, May 26 SHINE, WINE AND DINE: ARROWMONT ANNUAL ART AND WINE AUCTION • Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (Gatlinburg) • 5:30PM • Benefitting Arrowmont’s educational programs, Shine, Wine and Dine is a fun and exciting event featuring art by top regional and national artists and craftspeople. Take home a glorious painting, exquisite piece of pottery, lovely hand-dyed scarf, or choose a dinner with elegant wines. Other fun auction items include cases of wine, exciting getaways, fun events with Arrowmont artists and many other desirable items. MARBLE SPRINGS SHOPPING AT THE FARM FARMER’S MARKET • All vendors will be selling fresh, locally-produced products, and artisan crafts. This year we will be allowing the addition of antiques vendors. • FREE SMOKY MOUNTAIN ARTS AND CRAFTS FAIR • Rothchild Conference and Catering Center • 10AM • The fair will consist of approximately 20 vendors and will feature locally made arts and crafts created by Etsy sellers, art students, and many other amazingly talented East
Thursday, May 26 - Sunday, June 5
Tennessee residents. Visit smokymountainarts.org. Saturday, May 28 MARKET SQUARE FARMERS’ MARKET • Market Square • 9AM • The MSFM, a project of Nourish Knoxville, is an open-air farmers’ market located on historic Market Square in the heart of downtown Knoxville. Visit marketsquarefarmersmarket.org. • FREE SMOKY MOUNTAIN ARTS AND CRAFTS FAIR • Rothchild Conference and Catering Center • 10AM • The fair will consist of approximately 20 vendors and will feature locally made arts and crafts created by Etsy sellers, art students, and many other amazingly talented East Tennessee residents. Visit smokymountainarts.org. NARROW RIDGE WILDFLOWER SEED-SOWING CEREMONY • Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center • 6PM • Narrow Ridge invites friends and neighbors to join us as we remember loved ones who have died in a wildflower seed sowing ceremony in our Memorial Wildflower Garden. We will meet at 6:00 p.m. at our Mac Smith Resource Center and journey from there to the wildflower garden where participants will have the opportunity to sow wildflower seeds in honor of their own deceased loved ones. For more information call 865-497-2753 or email community@narrowridge.org. • FREE Tuesday, May 31 FARM AND FORAGE POP-UP DINNER • Central Collective • 6:30PM • Featuring food from Lost Creek Farm. BYOB. • $60 Wednesday, June 1
MARKET SQUARE FARMERS’ MARKET • Market Square • 11AM • The MSFM, a project of Nourish Knoxville, is an open-air farmers’ market located on historic Market Square in the heart of downtown Knoxville. Visit marketsquarefarmersmarket.org. • FREE UT FARMERS MARKET • University of Tennessee • 4PM • Since 2010, the UT Farmers Market has provided a venue for area producers to sell healthful, local food to the greater Knoxville area. This year the market is expanding its community offerings. The UT Farmers Market is free and open to the public every Wednesday from 4-7 p.m. in the UT Gardens off Neyland Drive. Market activities will be scheduled through Oct. 19. For more information about the UT Farmers’ Market you can visit the market website: vegetables.tennessee.edu/utfm.html or find it on Facebook. • FREE Thursday, June 2 MARBLE SPRINGS SHOPPING AT THE FARM FARMER’S MARKET • Marble Springs State Historic Site • 3PM • All vendors will be selling fresh, locally-produced products, and artisan crafts. This year we will be allowing the addition of antiques vendors. • FREE Saturday, June 4 MARKET SQUARE FARMERS’ MARKET • Market Square • 9AM • The MSFM, a project of Nourish Knoxville, is an open-air farmers’ market located on historic Market Square in the heart of downtown Knoxville. Visit marketsquarefarmersmarket.org. • FREE 100 BLACK MEN OF GREATER KNOXVILLE 2016 GALA • Holiday Inn (World’s Fair Park) • 7PM •The entire evening
CALENDAR
will be in dedication to The 100 Black Men’s recently dearly departed young brother, Zaevion Dobson, a Fulton High School sophomore who died in 2015 while protecting friends from gunfire. Event proceeds support the primary focus of 100 Black Men of Greater Knoxville Inc. which is to prepare young people who may be at risk for the future by assisting in the enhancement of their academic skills and by increasing their educational opportunities. • $60 SEYMOUR FARMERS MARKET • First Baptist Church Seymour • 8AM • Open from 8 a.m. to noon every Saturday from June to the second Saturday in October. Locally grown fruits, vegetables, eggs, honey, baked goods and crafts sold by the person who produced it. • FREE
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Sunday, June 5 FEAST FOR THE FARMERS • The Old City • 6PM • Join Chef Tim Love will host an outdoor five-course dinner benefitting surrounding farms. Love’s full menu for Feast for the Farmers will be inspired by the seasonal bounty and ingredients from local growers and artisans, boasting bold flavors, wood-fired cooking techniques, and wild game offerings. Tickets cost $200 per person and include a five-course dinner with beverage pairings. Feast for the Farmers will take place on N. Central Street between Jackson and Willow. For an official invitation, please complete the online form here: http://cheftimlove. com/feast/. • $200 SLOW FOOD TN VALLEY SUMMER GARDEN SOIREE • Unnamed Venue • 5PM • Slow Food TN Valley is hosting
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an intimate five-course meal and wine pairing in the beautiful gardens of a private Knoxville residence on Sunday, June 5, from 5-9 p.m. The meal will be prepared by to innovative and artistic “mystery” chefs and will consisit of locally sourced and foraged ingredients. For details, menu, location, and purchasing tickets go to sftvsummersoiree.brownpapertickets.com. Tickets are limited. • $85
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KNOXVILLE MERCURY 33
FOOD
Home Palate
Photos by Dennis Perkins
Umami Revival
T. Ho makes its long-awaited return to North Knoxville BY DENNIS PERKINS
I
’m not sure whether I’m a reliable witness for much of anything that happened in Knoxville during the ’90s. Fresh from college, I was in the midst of an experiential feast that introduced me to the pleasures (and pains) of life’s many indulgences. Still, certain things stand out clearly—especially the salty, sweet funk of my first taste of nuac mam. It was my earliest experience with an authentic Asian flavor—I do not count the endless platters of moo goo gai pan that marked my teenage years—and it came from what may have been Knoxville’s first Vietnamese restaurant, T. Ho. It was an unlikely place to find on Merchant Drive at the time, but that made its closure in 2007 all the more lamentable. But here we are, almost a decade later, and T. Ho Fresh Vietnamese Kitchen has returned with a different look and a pared down menu. And, despite the intervening years, the new T. Ho seems to have recaptured much of its old magic and rekindled old friendships while making new ones, too.
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KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 26, 2016
Brothers Thoai and Thuc Ho revived their father Thanh’s business in March of this year, right next door to its former digs in the same commercial strip where the restaurant operated for 20 years; the original space is still occupied by the Pint House, which the brothers opened after Thanh retired. While they’re certainly involved and often visible at the restaurant, the first face you’re likely to see when you visit belongs to Omar Delgado; he’s a garrulous and friendly manager who’s also making your food right there in front of you. Both the recipes and his training come directly from Thanh, who still makes the sauces that endeared the restaurant to its original fan base; he can sometimes even be found manning the stove, as he was on my very first visit. The new T. Ho has a modern, get-up-and-go appearance that’s reminiscent of a mall food court. One communal table for six is complemented by counters and stools that line the large windows, giving the
place an open and sunny disposition. On several of my visits, other customers have been eager to chat and share memories of the old place, making comparisons to the food of yore. Still, most guests don’t stay too long because the place does a good bit of take-out business—and it shows in the investment in the packaging, all sturdy plastic that I wash and keep; it’s of better quality than most of the grocery-shelf storage stuff that has accumulated in my cabinets. The menu has been cut back to just a handful of items, and the idea behind the T. Ho revival comes from the notion of street food. The casual, quick service idea works within reason, though the proliferation of plastic cutlery distresses the environmentalist in me. And, since all the food is made fresh to order, things can get bogged down but never for very long. The Brothers Ho devised a two-step ordering system: Pick your entrée, then pick your protein. The advantage is that you can personalize your order by choosing your own vegetables (from sprouts to red peppers and more), though I’ve found that just asking for whatever is authentic yields better results than exerting my own ideas about what will or won’t make my meal tastier. Pho, vermicelli noodles, a crepe, and basil rolls are available with a choice of shrimp, beef, tofu, chicken,
T. HO FRESH VIETNAMESE KITCHEN 815 Merchant Drive, 865-688-5815 facebook.com/ THoFreshVietnameseKitchen Hours: Monday–Sunday, 11 a.m.–10 p.m.
or grilled pork. While all the protein choices are just fine—though the tofu is particularly boring (even for tofu)— grilled pork is the tastiest option by far. Ground pork is seasoned, shaped, and grilled in-house and forms the foundation of many fond T. Ho memories. In fact, Delgado says, it is the basil roll (once called the grilled meatball roll) that most people remember and want to eat again. Wrapped in delicate rice paper, the basil roll with grilled pork, when dipped in the accompanying sauce, thrills from the first bite. Think of the light chewy wrapper giving way to crunchy vegetables followed by a nearly unctuous mouthful of well-seasoned pork, all punctuated by little burst of sweetness from tiny shards of pineapple that are mixed into the veggies. The sauce, which Omar just calls fish sauce, is a kind of nuac mam with vinegar and spices that you simply must try. And if you’re afraid of the fish sauce, get over it—for it is the key to happiness itself in this cuisine. It’s not an overly fishy condiment once tempered by the other additions to the sauce, and it features an incredible concentration of umami: the fifth
Home Palate
FOOD
WINE NIGHT EVERY WEDNESDAY 1/2 OFF BOTTLES OF WINE UNTIL 10 PM $2 DRAFT BEERS ON TUESDAY* * high gravity drafts not included
Despite the intervening years,
2200 Cumberland Ave sunspotrestaurant.com 865.637.4663
the new T. Ho seems to have recaptured much of its old magic.
flavor, best described as deliciousness. This sauce, served on the side, is also essential to the crepe—a light and crispy rice-flour concoction stuffed with bean sprouts, mushrooms, and onions. The stuffing itself is unseasoned and the wrapper has a touch of turmeric but not much else. A healthy splash of fish sauce elevates each bite into a savory, nearly addictive mouthful. Vermicelli noodles, too, get a lift from the sauce that binds together the freshness and crunch of the veggies with extra punch and flavor from ground peanuts and chewy bites of fried onion. On occasion, the noodles have been a little gummy, but it’s never a ruinous moment—just pick them up for a quick dunk in the sauce and chew onward. The pho soup is fast and flavorful and includes everything that you might add to it for yourself at other
restaurants in town—there is no accompanying plate of culantro, basil, jalapeño, etc. The only concession to customization is the sriracha bottle that sits on the table and counters— right beside the diner-style napkin dispensers filled with flimsy wipes that are hardly up to the task of keeping messy eaters neat. The pho is good, though I learned the hard way that it’s wise to remove the lime quarters—by the end of my meal the broth had taken on a bitter edge from the citrus peel. Even so, it’s enjoyable and lively—a quality that’s enhanced by a generous addition of fresh jalapeño slices. Although the fast-food atmosphere leaves much to be desired, the freshness and flavor of the cuisine makes this reboot a success. It may be the finest food addition to this part of town since, well, since it opened the first time. ◆
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May 26, 2016
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 35
’BYE
R estless Nat ive
Tommy-toes Recalling an era when heirloom tomatoes were just tomatoes BY CHRIS WOHLWEND
T
he locally sourced salad that accompanied most of the entrées boasted “heirloom” tomatoes, the waitress said. They were, she added, “exquisite, better than any that you have ever tasted.” Several friends and I were at one of Knoxville’s popular new eateries. The waitress, being young enough so that she still knew everything, assumed that I didn’t know what an “heirloom” vegetable was. But I’ve consumed a couple of bushels of tomatoes that might be termed “exquisite in taste,” the most memorable being from my late grandfather’s garden. In the early decades of the last century, Wohlwend Brothers’ Farm, involving my grandfather and two of his siblings, specialized in produce. And they knew what they were doing. My dad, primary delivery boy for the operation in his youth, had a route from the Holston River farm to downtown. He would drive a muledrawn wagon along Ruggles Ferry Pike to downtown, stopping at groceries along the way. Whatever was left would be sold on Market Square. But I decided to humor the waitress and told her that I would try her recommendation. My exquisite salad arrived with small, red, pearshaped tomatoes, the variety that I grew up calling tommy-toes. By the time I came along my grandfather was retired, but he still maintained a large garden. And he specialized in what he and my grandmother favored: several varieties of tomatoes; a half-dozen or so types of
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KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 26, 2016
watermelons, including the especially sweet, dark green “midgets”; strawberries; cantaloupes; okra; Silver Queen corn; rhubarb; cucumbers. And peanuts—I was sick more than once from eating them raw on the way home, unable to wait until they had been roasted in the oven. I would often be recruited to shuck the corn, which meant an extra half-hour picking cornsilk strands off my clothes. If my sister was present, I would terrorize her with the worms that inevitably would be uncovered during the shucking. My mother, expert at cake-baking, never quite mastered pie crust, so she would sometimes pass strawberries and rhubarb to a neighbor who would then bring us a pie filled with that sweet-tart combination. My mother would then reciprocate with a strawberry cake. If we picked the rhubarb ourselves, Grandpa would warn us not to eat the leaves as they were poison. “I don’t want any dead grandchildren around the kitchen table,” he would joke. If there was rhubarb aplenty, the vegetable would be stewed with sugar for a simple dessert. I naturally assumed the dish graced neighborhood tables as well. Later, I discovered that most of the kids I hung out with had never heard of rhubarb. The same was true at the time of another favorite—okra. Years later, when I was living in Louisville, I was having lunch with a co-worker, an Ohio native, when he took a look at the bowl of gumbo I had ordered and
noticed what to him was a mysterious green ring floating on top. “What the hell is that?” he asked. “Okra,” I said. “Never heard of it,” he said. I offered him a taste, but he turned up his nose. “It’s used in soup because it’s slimy,” I explained. “Good reason not to eat it,” he answered. After I had moved to Atlanta, where okra is known and understood, my Ohio friend provided the impetus for a food column that I was writing: I pointed out that the green pod is the only vegetable that contains the minimum daily requirement of both fuzz and slime. My mother’s favored okra preparation was fried in a cast-iron skillet. But she had developed a variation in the breading recipe, substituting corn meal for flour. The
BY IAN BLACKBURN AND JACK NEELY
result was that the breading came apart and the skillet bottom was covered with a lot of crispy bits of corn meal. And that was the best part. In restaurants, I generally avoid the fried okra—it just doesn’t measure up. But the heirloom tomatoes on my salad, if not quite “exquisite,” were excellent, tasting of sunshine, like a tomato should. When the waitress asked how I liked them, I told her that they were spectacular. One of my companions then told her that we were ancient enough to be heirlooms ourselves, and that was reason enough for us to return for more “exquisiteness.” ◆ Chris Wohlwend’s Restless Native addresses the characters and absurdities of Knoxville, as well as the lessons learned pursuing the newspaper trade during the tumult that was the 1960s. He now teaches journalism part-time at the University of Tennessee.
HOLLY DAY! and Broadway.
A vibrant district along Central Street
Visit Downtown North
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MONDAY Central Originals for $5 after 7pm
’ 842 N. Central Ave 851-7854 AVAILABLE FOR PRIVATE PARTIES!
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Happy Hour 3-7pm
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Artist: Doc Cooper
1020 N. Broadway 865-971-3983 www.sainttattoo.com
1723 N. Central St.
Open till 3am Wed-Sat Open till 1am Sun, Mon, & Tue 1204 Central St., Knoxville 865.247.0392 flatsandtaps.com May 26, 2016
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 37
’BYE
Spir it of the Staircase
BY MATTHEW FOLTZ-GRAY
38
KNOXVILLE MERCURY May 26, 2016
www.thespiritofthestaircase.com
CLASSIFIEDS
Place your ad at store.knoxmercury.com
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FOR SALE
FUN AND FESTIVE JEWELRY, local and handmade, unique and modern, repurposed vintage beads, hand-painted geometric necklaces, and more. etsy.com/shop/triciabee
HOUSING
NORTH KNOXVILLE’S PREMIER RENTAL HOMES pittmanproperties.com
$10
SERVICES
DANE KRISTOF, The popular Nashville psychic and clairvoyant that the tabloids call,” the Seer of Music Row,” is accepting appts. for when he is in Knoxville this month. One Nashville paper said, “This guy’s the real deal. He starts by telling you little known things that only you could know not to impress you but to add validation to the reading.” Call (615)4294053 for a Knoxville appt. – www.DaneKristof.com. PLACE YOUR AD AT STORE.KNOXMERCURY.COM
COMMUNITY
BARBIE - an 8 year old Hound/ Mix. She is spayed, up-to-date on vaccinations, and is microchipped. Visit Young-Williams Animal Center / call 865-215-6599 for more information.
COOKIE - is a 3 year old domestic shorthair mix. She is spayed, up-to-date on vaccinations, and is microchipped. Visit Young-Williams Animal Center / call 865-215-6599 for more information.
ALDO - is a 3 month old Bulldog/Mix! He is neutered, up-to-date on vaccinations, and is microchipped. Visit Young-Williams Animal Center / call 865-215-6599 for more information.
KITTY - is a 2 year old domestic shorthair mix. She is spayed, up-to-date on vaccinations, and is microchipped. Visit Young-Williams Animal Center / call 865-215-6599 for more information.
TOTES
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HOODIES
Pearl Jam, Dead & Co., LCD Soundsystem and so much more!
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POSTERS
TO BRITTANY & CATLIN!
OUR 2016 BONNAROO TICKET WINNERS! Thanks to Open Chord, Boyd’s Jig and Reel, Bonnaroo and AC Entertainment for sponsoring the contest.
May 26, 2016
KNOXVILLE MERCURY 39
New and Improved
Downtown FREE Trolley Routes starting May2nd! WW W. K A T B U S . C O M
Now serving many fun and unique destinations including:
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To the Old City
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U.S. Post Office
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History Center
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To the Coliseum
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Downtown Library
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First Tennessee Bank BB&T Bank
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Dwight Kessel Garage
Andrew Johnson Building
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Hampton Inn
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Hilton
To UT and University Commons
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Charles Krutch Park
Elevator access to Worlds Fair Park
Knoxville Convention Center
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Walnut Street Parking Garage
Holiday Inn
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Market Square
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Summit Towers
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Mast General Store
TVA Towers
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Take a look at our map and plan a Park FREE trip with us starting May 2nd.
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Upgraded and extended service hours that include weekday service until 8pm and Friday and Saturday service running until 10pm! Cal
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• The Old City • Worlds Fair Park •The University of Tennessee
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City-County Building
Blount Mansion