Vol. 3, Issue 6 Mar. 16, 2017

BONUS SECTION

Our Guide to Creative Home Design BACK TO THE WEEKLY GRIND

March 16, 2017 knoxmercury.com V.

3/ N.6

Knoxville’s stages are buzzing with more independent companies than ever before • BY TRACY JONES

RIVER & RAIL THEATRE

TVA’s Resistance to Net Metering Holds Back Home Solar

Day and Age Expands the Boundaries of Local Punk

The Dawn of Fun: St. Patrick’s Day Returns

The Village Mercantile’s Affordable Groceries

2 knoxville mercury March 16, 2017

March 16, 2017 | Volume 03: Issue 06 | knoxmercury.com “If you’re looking for morals in politics, you’re looking for bananas in the cheese department.” —Harry Shearer

6

HOWDY Local Life

8

OPINION Scruffy Citizen

TIGER LILY THEATRE

by Marissa Highfill

Jack Neely recalls when St. Patrick’s Day was a big deal in Knoxville—and it might be again.

9 Small Planet

Patrice Cole describes the advantages of net metering for household solar power, and why TVA doesn’t foster its use.

A&E

18 Program Notes

A new record store is set to open on Magnolia Avenue. Plus: Four Leaf Peat.

19 Music

Carey Hodges checks in with Knoxville punk quartet Day and Age.

20 Art

Denise Stewart-Sanabria ventures to Gatlinburg to view Un//known, Arrowmont’s annual artist-inresidence exhibition.

22 COVER STORY

12 Theater of the New The Knoxville theater scene is seeing an influx of new independent companies

PRESS FORWARD 10 The Village Mercantile

Monica Lauber’s small grocery in North Knoxville specializes in affordable, non-perishable food for lower-income shoppers—many of whom don’t have cars. Carol Z. Shane reports.

that are creating a theatrical renaissance.

CALENDAR Spotlights KSO Concertmaster Gabriel Lefkowitz, the Saint Patrick’s Day Pub Crawl, the Reverend Horton Heat, and more.

’BYE 30 At This Point

by Stephanie Piper

30 Spirit of the Staircase

by Matthew Foltz-Gray

31 Crooked Street Crossword

by Ian Blackburn and Jack Neely

Combined with other performing-arts mainstays here, they are betting that Knoxville has an audience for drama.

Tracy Jones hits the boards with Knoxville’s scrappy thespians.

SPECIAL INSERT

Abode Our magazine of creative home design features a mod house by architect Chad Boetger, a new mixed-use building for downtown, and a shopping expedition for midcentury decor.

March 16, 2017 knoxville mercury 3

FINDING HOPE We are writing to you to say thank you.

In your Nov. 10 issue, you published an article entitled “Unchained: Inside the Struggle Against Sex Trafficking in Knoxville,” in which you provided an in-depth look at human trafficking in the Knoxville community. [cover story by S. Heather Duncan] You included information about the work of our organization, and in particular, you shared the story of one of the clients we serve: Destiny.

You may have received feedback from various folks in the community telling you how this story affected them. Perhaps they didn’t know that this was happening right here in East Tennessee; or perhaps they did know, but they weren’t sure how the state was responding to this crime.

But we want to tell you the story of one woman in particular who was greatly affected by your story. We want to share with you how your story helped one woman in our community feel like she wasn’t alone.

One of the other clients we serve heard about Grow Free Tennessee’s feature in your November issue. In fact, she saw the link to the story on our Facebook page. She clicked the link, and she read.

She read the story, and she called us.

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 618 S. Gay St., Suite L2 Knoxville, TN 37902 Send an email to: editor@knoxmercury.com Or message us at: facebook.com/knoxmercury 4 knoxville mercury March 16, 2017

In order for us to tell you why this story so deeply affected her, we must first share with you a little bit about her interaction with law enforcement.

Like almost every survivor of human trafficking who has had contact with the criminal justice system, this survivor in particular had been targeted and harassed by law enforcement officials. She had been treated and categorized as a criminal: a lifetime experience of deaf ears, turned heads, closed hearts.

As we know from your article, and from the stories of many survivors, the nature of “the life” can make it easy to criminalize victims from an outsider’s point of view. Oftentimes, drugs and other criminal offenses are involved, and many law enforcement agents unfortunately may not take the time to try to understand the difference between the criminal and the victim: On the surface, they both look guilty.

At first glance, they both might look like criminals. And it would be easy to look at this survivor—and others—and assume that’s what they are.

From this client’s point of view, because she didn’t know anyone else in the life or have any understanding of the nuances of trafficking or how victims typically interact with law enforcement, she felt like she was the only one who couldn’t seem to catch a break before she came to us. She felt hopeless and alone, like she was the only one who couldn’t get someone to listen to her or offer her the help she needed instead of putting her in jail.

So when she read your article, it gave her hope. It gave her healing, because it helped her realize why life had been so hard for her, that she

wasn’t the only one, and that the way she had been wrongly treated by law enforcement wasn’t her fault.

We want to thank you. Thank you for raising awareness. Thank you for putting much time and effort into unpacking this incredibly complex crime to help educate and equip our community to understand and respond. And thank you for laying bare the many gaps and flaws that still exist in the system so that we can better understand how to fix them. Thank you for illuminating the work that’s being done and the work that needs to be done in order to mitigate this crime.

It’s taking this conversation and awareness that will help us all, as a community, to look at survivors as fellow members of our community that need a listening ear and a helping hand instead of time in a jail cell. And it’s this conversation, and this awareness, that is crucial to showing all survivors they are not alone. They have a community standing behind them, paving the way for them, and supporting their journey toward restoration regardless of the circumstances that led them to the starting line.

Kate B. Trudell, executive director, Grow Free Tennessee, powered by CCAHT Knoxville

KEEP IT SCENIC Many thanks for the excellent article “The Common Good” in the Jan. 17 issue of the Mercury! [Much Ado column by Catherine Landis] You unscrambled a complex issue into an interesting story about the positive influence that thoughtful and constructive regulation can have on a community where “quality of life” is important. I liked your personal approach, citing your own experience as a sensitive student reacting to the actions of one of our great “first ladies” who happened to have an intriguing name, as well as assertive notions of what contributes to our environmental quality. “Lady Bird” did us proud, as did Michelle Obama, and I hope the selfish actions of a billboard owner in West Tennessee do not undo her great accomplishment.

Gene Burr Knoxville

Delivering Fine Journalism Since 2015 EDITORIAL EDITOR Coury Turczyn coury@knoxmercury.com SENIOR EDITOR Matthew Everett matthew@knoxmercury.com CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Jack Neely jack@knoxhistoryproject.org STAFF WRITERS S. Heather Duncan heather@knoxmercury.com Thomas Fraser thomas@knoxmercury.com CONTRIBUTORS Chris Barrett Catherine Landis Ian Blackburn Dennis Perkins Hayley Brundige Stephanie Piper Patrice Cole Ryan Reed Eric Dawson Eleanor Scott George Dodds Alan Sherrod Lee Gardner Nathan Smith Mike Gibson April Snellings Carey Hodges Denise Stewart-Sanabria Nick Huinker Joe Sullivan Donna Johnson Kim Trevathan Tracy Jones Chris Wohlwend Rose Kennedy Angie Vicars Joan Keuper Carol Z. Shane MULTIMEDIA ASSISTANT Jeffrey Chastain DESIGN ART DIRECTOR Tricia Bateman tricia@knoxmercury.com GRAPHIC DESIGNER Charlie Finch CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS David Luttrell Shawn Poynter Justin Fee Tyler Oxendine CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS Matthew Foltz-Gray PHOTOGRAPHY INTERN Marissa Highfill ADVERTISING PUBLISHER & DIRECTOR OF SALES Charlie Vogel charlie@knoxmercury.com SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Scott Hamstead scott@knoxmercury.com ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Michael Tremoulis michael@knoxmercury.com BUSINESS BUSINESS MANAGER Scott Dickey scott.dickey@knoxmercury.com KNOXVILLE MERCURY 618 South Gay St., Suite L2, Knoxville, TN 37902 knoxmercury.com • 865-313-2059 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR & PRESS RELEASES editor@knoxmercury.com CALENDAR SUBMISSIONS calendar@knoxmercury.com SALES QUERIES sales@knoxmercury.com DISTRIBUTION distribution@knoxmercury.com BOARD OF DIRECTORS Robin Easter Tommy Smith Melanie Faizer 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. © 2017 The Knoxville Mercury

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Earth-friendly Plant grasses or shrubs to stabilize bare soil Trees provide shade to keep streams cool and fish happy

Knox County Stormwater ~ Knoxcounty.org/stormwater ~ Stormwater@knoxcounty.org March 16, 2017 knoxville mercury 5

DUMPSTER highlights DIVE Weekly from our blog GROW FREE TENNESSEE A Knoxville nonprofit that provides support to local human trafficking victims has a new name and is at least halfway to its goal of opening a Knoxville safe house for survivors.

Grow Free Tennessee, powered by the Community Coalition Against Human Trafficking, aims to eventually house and support up to 16 women for around six months while they stabilize.

KPD CHIEF SHOWS OFF HIP HOP MOVES Students involved in dance ensembles at Austin-East Magnet High School saw a totally different side of Knoxville police officers when they prepared them for the school’s Black History Month celebration. The highlight was likely the solo dance by Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch.

LOCAL LIFE Photo Series by Marissa Highfill

Dragonfly Aerial Arts Studio in North Knoxville provides circus classes for children, helping them build self-esteem, physical agility, and social skills. Dragonfly has worked with Pond Gap Elementary School, Boys and Girls Club, Emerald Avenue Youth, and the Knox County Public Defender’s Community Law Office. (Last weekend’s Circus Extravaganza raised funds for the program.) The nonprofit performance group and school also offers summer camps in trapezes, unicycles, stilts, juggling, and more. Info: dragonflyaerialartsstudio.com.

CRAFT BEER CONTINUES RAMPAGE The craft-beer invasion is not over yet! Just announced: the Elkmont Exchange in North Knoxville. Brewmaster Alex Violette is partnering with chef Ryan Davenport to open a new microbrewery/restaurant at the old Rentals Rentals building on North Broadway.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS

3/16 SYMPOSIUM: SMOKIES REBUILD THURSDAY

8:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., LMU-Duncan School of Law, Robert H. Watson, Jr. Memorial Courtroom. $35.

This look at the legal issues behind the post-fire rebuilding efforts in Sevier County features just about everyone who’s dealing with them right now: Sevier County Emergency Management Director John Mathews, Sevier County Mayor Larry Waters, GSMNP spokesperson Dana Soehn, and more.

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3/17 ST. PATRICK’S DAY PARADE FRIDAY

7 p.m., Gay Street. Free.

An old Knoxville tradition returns! The last St. Patrick’s Day parade in Knoxville happened in 1986, but they first started in 1869. See Jack Neely’s column for more. (Route: staging occurs on Howard Baker Jr. Blvd.; the parade travels up Church Street and turns right on Gay Street, continues over Summit Hill and turns onto Jackson Avenue.)

3/18 GRAND OPENING: MODERN STUDIO 3/20 MEETING: KNOX COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION SATURDAY

6 p.m., Modern Studio (109 West Anderson Ave.).

Free.

The multi-purpose community space in Happy Holler has been presenting shows for a few weeks, but this is the official grand opening with performances from Circle Modern Dance, Ooh Ooh Revue, Knoxville Theatre Club, Cattywumpus Puppet Council, Einstein Simplified, and more.

MONDAY

3 p.m., Andrew Johnson Building, first floor board room (912 S. Gay St.). Free.

Two men enter, one man leaves. This called meeting of the school board will choose the next superintendent for Knox County Schools, between candidates Bob Thomas and Dale Lynch. See it live on KCS-TV (Comcast 10) or at knoxschools.org/ kcstv.

R EFUGEES M a n y w h o f l e d s e r i o u s p r o b l e m s i n o t h e r pa r t s o f t h e w o r l d h e l p e d c r e at e t h e c i t y a s w e k n o w i t.

and Georgia and the East Tennessee and Virginia, were under construction just as Irish were arriving.

It was difficult, dangerous work, laying steel rails through mountains and across rivers, and Irish took these jobs other Americans avoided. Hundreds of Irish settled in Knoxville and stayed even as the railroad projects were completed. East Tennessee’s first Catholic church, Immaculate Conception, was founded in 1855 to serve the immigrant population, made up mostly of refugees. For decades they maintained a separate community, on the north side of downtown, called Irish Town.

I m m ig ra nt s f leei ng d i f f icu lt or da ngerous circumstances in their home countries have always been part of Knoxville’s history. A few Irish political exiles settled here in the 1790s. Right about 170 years ago, Knoxville began receiving hundreds of refugees. Many of them spoke other languages.

Many professed unfamiliar faiths.

Swiss immigrants began arriving in the late 1840s.

Some Swiss families, members of a protestant fundamentalist group called the Open Brethren, sought more religious liberty than they had at home.

Some spoke German; others spoke French. Several of them disapproved of Knoxville’s morals as they found them, and some preferred to remain apart, thriving in separate communities. Most learned English, but some did not.

St. Patrick’s Day was first celebrated in Knoxville in the 1850s by a population consisting mainly of Irish refugees.

Some immigrants were discriminated against in Knoxville, especially in the 1850s, when a political Meanwhile, another different ethnic group was faction known as the American Party distrusted and fleeing political instability at home. In Germany in Parishioners pose in front of the opposed immigration and foreign ideologies like the 1840s, popular efforts to promote democratic original Immaculate Conception Catholicism. That party didn’t last long. reforms resulted in fierce crackdowns by the ruling Catholic Church, established in the aristocracies. In many cases living conditions were 1850s just as hundreds of Irish worse after the revolutions than they had been Immigrants fought on both sides of the Civil War. refugees of the Great Famine arrived before. In that way the German revolutions were in Knoxville. This photo is from 1886, After that war, discrimination against Catholics was comparable to the recent Arab Spring revolts in the less obvious than it had been before. Christmas, but appears to include some of the M idd le East. The Germans who arr ived in celebrated much more by immigrants than it had original immigrants.

Knoxville were mostly Catholic, Lutheran, or been by American protestants, became broadly Jewish. Knoxville’s first Lutheran church (First popular for the first time. By the 1870s, Knoxvillians Lutheran, which began as a German-language were participating in ethnic festivals like St. Patrick’s church) and first Jewish synagogue (Temple Beth El) were both founded in Day. In 1888, the same year immigrant Patrick Sullivan built his famous response to that wave of German immigration that included many refugees. saloon at the corner of Jackson and Central, Knoxville elected an IrishCatholic mayor, Martin Condon.

After a period of adjustment, they blended in. Successful baker and entrepreneur Peter Kern, who arrived in America as a refugee, was elected Since then, Knoxville has accommodated refugees from dozens of other nations, mayor of Knoxville in 1890. but never in larger numbers, proportionally, than in the 1840s and 1850s.

The largest wave of refugees were the Irish. Hundreds of thousands died in Ireland during the Great Famine, and about one million came to America.

Many stayed in the large eastern cities. But thousands came inland to find work with the new railroads. Knoxville’s first railroads, the East Tennessee

We need your help! To keep the History Page going as a regular feature in the Mercury, please send a donation to the Knoxville History Project at knoxvillehistoryproject.org.

The Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection, Lawson McGhee Library Image courtesy of Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection • cmdc.knoxlib.org

Source

T h e K n ox v i l l e H i s to ry P r o j ec t, a n o n p r o fi t o r g a n iz at i o n d e vot e d to t h e p r o m ot i o n o f a n d ed u c at i o n a b o u t t h e h i s to ry o f K n ox v i l l e , p r e s en t s t h i s pag e e ac h w e e k to r a i s e awa r en e s s o f t h e t h em e s , p er s o n a l i t i e s , a n d s to r i e s o f o u r u n i q u e c i t y.

L e a r n m o r e at

knoxvillehistoryproject.org

o r em a i l

jack@knoxhistoryproject.org

March 16, 2017 knoxville mercury 7

Scruffy Citizen | Small Planet

The Dawn of Fun St. Patrick’s Day returns

BY JACK NEELY

I

t’s Festival Season. That’s a phrase I’m still getting used to, in regard to my home town.

This isn’t the Knoxville I grew up in. To be best of my recollection, Knoxvillians used to hate each other.

To say we were balkanized would be an insult to the actual Balkans.

If you were a Knoxvillian, you were once quite sure that most other Knoxvillians were either snobs, or rednecks, or dirty, or dangerous. We made fun of their trailers just as we made fun of their McMansions. No self-respecting Knoxvillian would be caught consorting with Knoxvillians.

Maybe it went back to the Civil War and its bitter and complicated divisions. Maybe our geography, natural and artificial, played a role.

Knoxville’s a place of rolling meadows and craggy ridges, of blind turns on country roads and 12-lane highways, of places where you can see across a mile-wide lake—or, 30 miles away, the oldest mountains in the world. There are other places where the closeness of hills and trees prevent you from seeing the stranger next door.

The nation has rarely been more sharply divided as it is today, they say, and I believe it. But something different and contrary has happened on the municipal level. As America has split apart, Knoxville, the city, has become more united than it has

8 knoxville mercury March 16, 2017

been in memory.

I don’t mean politically. As the precinct returns showed in November, Knoxville has neighborhoods much bluer than Massachusetts and much redder than Alabama. But we’re now more likely to know and like—or at least not mind—people with different lifestyles in different parts of town.

I heard more resentment of investment in downtown 20 years ago than I do now. How dare politicians spend money downtown without spending an equal amount in Cedar Bluff, they said.

It was about the same time that what people talked about in downtown bars was the essential corruption of the suburban lifestyle, symbolized by people who drive SUVs. There was a bitter edge to it, and it wasn’t just the trendy disdain that comes with tribal cool. There was a real sense that suburban complacency was inhibiting Knoxville from rising to the next level.

From being, for example, a city that could host real street festivals.

In 2017, a lot of people drive SUVs. A lot of people don’t. Each have their reasons. Even suburbanites like downtown. Sometimes, bizarre as it would have seemed, SUVs dominate the downtown parking garages.

And a few of the downtown pioneers of the ’90s are now living in the suburbs.

We’re human. We like variety.

Sometimes it’s fun to live like our former enemies. Now that we have the option of variety for ourselves, we’re happier with each other.

Knoxville does offer variety now.

We’ve got gun and knife shows, sure, and we always will. But we’ve also got Asian festivals, Latino festivals, a surprisingly huge opera festival. And the most famous event that happens in Knoxville, judged by the press it gets in the newspapers of the major cities of the western world, is not a football game, but a multi-ethnic avant-garde music festival called Big Ears.

This weekend, we’ve got St. Patrick’s Day. It’s not an ordinary thing.

Even if it won’t be written up in the international press, this Friday marks what may be the biggest celebration of St. Patrick’s Day in Knoxville in more than 100 years.

It was once a very big deal here.

We celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with parades on Gay Street before we celebrated Halloween or Labor Day or Mother’s Day. In the early 1850s, hundreds of Irish refugees arrived in East Tennessee, to work on the railroad. Some Knoxvillians ridiculed and abused the Irish. Early Irish didn’t much like Knoxvillians, either. In a letter home, one Irishman described Knoxvillians as a “gloomy” people who had very little going on culturally.

The Knoxville they found was a moribund town whose main claim to fame was that, 30 years earlier, this

The Irish and fellow European immigrants brought their own ideas that changed Knoxville.

One, I think, was a general sense of fun..

cluster of rough houses had been capital of a state.

Stranded with unreliable riverboat access, Knoxville didn’t have festivals, or auditoriums, or much music except in the church.

There was little industry. Locals could see the marble, and lumber, and coal, but couldn’t budge it very far.

Irish laborers helped bring railroads, which changed and to some extent reinvented Knoxville. The arrival of Germans and Swiss at about the same time—things were bad all over Europe in those days— did their part to broaden Knoxville’s perspective and potential.

For a generation, the Irish kept to themselves. They abided in Irish Town, a community on the north side of downtown, where they had their own boxing champs, their own rugby teams, their own bakeries, their own parties. Eventually, though, Knoxville got to know the Irish well, because many of them ran saloons.

The Irish and fellow European immigrants brought their own ideas that changed Knoxville. One of them was a taste for good beer. One of them was a previously unfamiliar holiday called Christmas. One, I think, was a general sense of fun.

They also brought a festival, perhaps our first festival of any sort.

St. Patrick’s Day was, by the 1870s, an occasion for all-night dances and parades down Gay Street, welcomed with green bunting unfurled from every building. It became a de facto celebration of the end of winter.

By then, it was a general celebration. The non-Irish, and others so many generations removed from the old country that they’d forgotten they were Irish, had joined the party. It faded in the 20th century. But this Friday, once again, we’ll see a St. Patrick’s Day parade right down Gay Street, just as it was when it was cheered by actual Irish.

Jack Neely is the director of the Knoxville History Project, a nonprofit devoted to exploring, disseminating, and celebrating Knoxville’s cultural heritage. The Scruffy Citizen surveys the city of Knoxville’s life and culture in the context of its history.

Scruffy Citizen | Small Planet

A Tale of Two Meters How TVA’s resistance to net metering creates an obstacle to household solar power

BY PATRICE COLE

T

he beauty of photovoltaic (PV) technology is that it cuts out all the middlemen, the intermediate steps in turning sunlight into electricity.

We don’t have to wait for plants or algae to store the sun’s energy as starch, then convert that starch into coal or oil over millions of years, or ethanol in a matter of days. We don’t even have to wait for the sun’s energy to drive wind and weather, whose energy we can harness with turbines.

Instead, sunlight goes into a PV cell and electricity comes out. This holds great potential for the energy independence of individuals and small businesses, but some energy policy in this region seems to be working against that.

A combination of financial incentives and falling prices has spurred growth in the solar industry in Tennessee as elsewhere. The cost for installing residential and commercial PV systems is now about half what it was just a few years ago. The price of polysilicon, a crucial component of PV panels, fell substantially over the past five to 10 years. Technological advances have improved efficiency, and simplified installation systems go more quickly, reducing cost. The federal

Solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC) stimulated demand by allowing owners of residential and commercial PV systems to deduct 30 percent of the cost from their income taxes.

The Solar Energy Industries Association says there are currently more than 150 solar companies employing 2,200 people throughout the value chain in Tennessee. Most of those are contractors/installers, but many are manufacturers of panels or other components of solar systems.

However, a lot of the financial incentives that kick-started that industry are going away. The ITC is scheduled to be phased out over the next five years. Unlike many other states, Tennessee does not offer tax incentives for private solar generation.

And TVA solar incentive programs have shrunk.

That doesn’t mean TVA isn’t sold

on solar, now that utility-scale PV systems (those that produce more than 5 megawatts) are cost-competitive with non-renewable energy sources, even natural gas. Recent TVA investments in solar farms are an encouraging step toward sustainability, but that bypasses some of solar power’s most appealing benefits.

For a lot of people, the most exciting thing about solar is its potential to be a homegrown, dispersed power supply that doesn’t depend on the grid or centralized utility. Debbie Dooley, an early Tea Party organizer, actually became a solar advocate precisely because it represents energy independence for the homeowner, as well as having the national security benefits of diffuse energy sources being less vulnerable to attacks on the grid.

As long as batteries for a household system cost several thousand dollars, though, grid-tied systems are the most practical option for most people. Being tied to the grid gives you the option of drawing power from it when your PV array can’t keep up with consumption. The ideal arrangement for convenience and cost is to have a grid-tied system with net-metering that allows the system to export to the grid whatever excess electricity is being generated. The meter runs forward when drawing from the grid, backward when sending power to the grid, and presumably moves not at all during times when generation exactly matches consumption.

Net metering is said to create a smoother demand curve and allows utilities to better manage their peak loads. By encouraging generation near the point of consumption, net metering reduces strain on distribution systems and reduces energy losses in long-distance transmission. Net metering is allowed in 36 states. It is not an option for the 9 million people

For a lot of people, the most exciting thing about solar is its potential to be a homegrown, dispersed power supply that doesn’t depend on the grid or centralized utility.

served by TVA. The reason offered by the nation’s largest public power utility is that net metering is not allowed by the law that created TVA. The utility generates electricity and sells it to 155 local power companies (LPCs). The LPCs create and maintain the distribution system and sell the power they bought from TVA to us. The contractual arrangement with TVA is a “buy all, sell all” whereby the LPCs can purchase electricity only from TVA. This effectively forbids net metering, because TVA interprets that as the LPC buying power from the owner of the PV array.

Thus, any grid-tied solar system within the TVA region must have dual metering, one to measure power coming off the grid, another to measure power going to the grid. The arrangement with TVA is likewise “buy all, sell all” in that you have no choice but to sell all the power you generate to TVA, then you buy back whatever you actually consume. If you are able to get in under TVA’s “cap” for its Green Power Providers incentives program, you will be paid the retail rate for the power you generate.

All others are paid the lower wholesale rate. Everyone pays the retail rate for what they consume. So the home or business owner pays for the PV system, and TVA makes money on the power generated by it.

It might be hard to understand how having two meters instead of net metering changes the identity of the party to whom you are selling power, given that’s it’s all traveling down the same wires. What is easy to understand is that it increases the return on investment time for the system’s owner, which can be a disincentive.

It seems inevitable that this bottleneck in solar proliferation will be eliminated by improvements in technology and cost. Hopefully, the young solar industry will be able to hang on in the meanwhile.

Patrice Cole taught biology, ecology, environmental planning, and sustainability at the University of Tennessee and Pellissippi State Community College.

Small Planet examines local issues pertaining to environmental quality and sustainability.

March 16, 2017 knoxville mercury 9

Focus: Business & Innovation

The Village Mercantile

Monica Lauber

owner of The Village Mercantile

This independent grocery in North Knoxville sells affordable, non-perishable food to lower-income shoppers

BY CAROL Z. SHANE

Your first store, Furniture Traders in Fountain City, was very different from The Village Mercantile. How did that start?

I wanted people to have access to quality items. You know, there’s a time in your life when you need good furniture but you can’t afford it, and you don’t want to screw stuff together anymore. That’s how that started. It 10 knoxville mercury March 16, 2017

was to meet the needs of a community with a lot of seniors who were downsizing and a lot of young families coming up who needed to start housekeeping, and how do you connect them? I was trying to connect them.

You started The Village Mercantile in that same space. When and how did the change come about?

In 2011-2012. I noticed a decline in sales—more people wanted to sell than buy. It was skewed. And if people aren’t buying then I’m not eating.

I realized that most people were having to choose between prescriptions, gas, and groceries. I knew I wasn’t going to go to pharmacy school or open a convenience store, so groceries it was.

Why did you choose to concentrate on salvaged, lower-priced goods?

I have a degree in family and consumer science, and I’ve studied food safety. I understand product dating.

Food waste in our country is excessive—about 80 billion pounds wasted in a calendar year. I already had the space, I already had the storefront.

And so we sent everything to auction that wasn’t dear in some way and started over.

It really morphed out of my own need, and the need to feed my family.

It wasn’t just a business decision, right? You went through a very rough time yourself.

I hit a time in my life when I was in a

Photos by Marissa Highfill

E

ntrepreneurship runs in Monica Lauber’s blood—her mother’s maiden name was “Mast,” and her great-uncle Will developed the first Mast General Store in Valle Crucis, N.C. But alongside that talent for building businesses comes a heart for helping those in need, and a desire to foster community bonds.

Lauber owns The Village Mercantile, which provides quality non-perishable groceries to an older, lower-income clientele, most of whom are pedestrians. Her store operates on the same model as United Grocery Outlet, Big Lots, and Bargain Hunt, offering merchandise that, for a variety of reasons, has been removed from the inventory of primary retailers.

Having won second place in First Tennessee Bank’s statewide 2016 “Best of the Best in Customer Service” contest, The Village Mercantile will celebrate its first anniversary in its current location this May. Lauber and her staff, which includes her wife, Amy Perkins, are known for their generosity and their willingness to offer aid wherever it’s needed, one person at a time.

The Village Mercantile food pantry line. I thought, “Wow, is this really where I am?”

You know, sometimes need doesn’t look like need. I rolled up in a minivan that was paid for. I wore nice clothing; I was clean and bathed. No one in my home was hungry. But we had sincere needs; namely, I needed to cook dinner. So I got to the end of the line and I got the same amount of groceries for me, four kids, and my dad—six people in the house—that the single man in front of me received.

And I didn’t have a meal in my hands.

I had parts of a meal: I had some condiments; I had spaghetti but no sauce; I didn’t have any meat or any kind of protein source. So I went home and found all the change in the house—nickels and dimes—and I went and bought the components that I needed.

It was just to get through that day.

I think I was expecting money the next day—it was a stopgap. That was

4503 Walker Blvd.

865-805-3511 facebook.com/thevillagemercantile Programs • The Village Mercantile sells affordable, non-perishable groceries to a lower-income clientele that’s often without transportation.

• It rents out a community room at $15 an hour.

• It offers a Little Free Library that includes large-print books for its senior community.

How You Can Help • Shop there!

• Donate books, including large print books.

• Donate money to help buy insurance for their truck.

the day I realized I needed an additional resource, and if I couldn’t find it, neither could anyone else. That was the turning point.

In 2016 you bought your own building near the rent-assisted Broadway Towers. How are you tied to the community?

A great percentage of people in 37917 are on foot, and there are a lot of multi-generational households. Some are without transportation by choice and some are without it because they can’t afford it. And what that looks like is: not a lot of food choices. It’s not considered a food desert like some areas are, but it’s pretty darn close. And you’re talking about being on foot or where the bus can take you if you can afford a bus pass—some people can’t. So this is just one more alternative.

We also serve small groups in our community room—we rent it for $15 an hour. We’ve had board meetings, classes, vendor events, document signings. And the Little Free Library.

People give us books and we give them away. I started thinking about the seniors and the fact that they need large print books, so we put this shelf in here and it is only large print, bought with money we won from the contest. I bought a truck with it, too, but I can’t afford the insurance yet, so I’m not driving it!

We have a farm stand on Saturdays during the growing season. So far we have one farmer—he grows all manner of vegetables and has bees, so he brings honey too. We’ve had

people drive by and stop. It’s not just for the pedestrians, but it’s giving them a choice—one more option for some locally-grown resources. We’d like to expand that.

People help each other out; sometimes customers will leave their change for someone else. Sometimes a kid will come in and I’ll let him stock shelves or clean gutters and pay him in groceries. Because of my own experience, I’ve learned to listen to need.

We’re not a nonprofit. We just have the heart of a nonprofit.

Know someone doing amazing things for the future of Knoxville?

Submit your story suggestions to: editor@knoxmercury.com Contact us for sponsorship opportunities: charlie@knoxmercury.com CATEGORIES Civic & Humanitarian Arts & Culture Business & Innovation Environmental & Sustainability Health & Food Education

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Knoxville’s stages are buzzing with more independent companies than ever before • BY TRACY JONES

I

t was a low-key place to hide a messiah.

When River & Rail Theatre Company debuted its musical, The Unusual Tale of Mary & Joseph’s Baby, last December, it did so in a rambling, one-story, industrial-born building known as the Fifth Avenue House.

12 knoxville mercury March 16, 2017

Photo courtesy of River & Rail Theatre

Parking signs at the nearby bus station in the center city directed patrons to the show being held at what is most often now a concert venue.

Inside, where folding chairs ringed a staging platform borrowed from the Tennessee Stage Company, patrons put their phones away and stopped

their chatter. The front house manager manually dimmed the freestanding lamps, and the stage lights came up on this reworking of the nativity story.

Four actors played all the parts across a bare-bones set, a few scattered crates in front of a clothesline ringed with garments in monochro-

matic browns, creams, and beiges.

Surely and powerfully, with voice and presence and words and movement, the cast took the audience into the lives of a brave young pregnant woman and her scared husband. By the time the Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph, with the pinned

STARTING FRESH The professional theater company River & Rail is the newest new kid in town. Husband-and-wife co-founders Joshua and Amelia Peterson moved to Knoxville, her hometown, in 2014. The two had worked in professional theater in Texas and New York, and although they thought they would eventually get involved with a theater group, founding a company “was not what we thought we would be doing,” Joshua Peterson says. Still, as they watched performances and got to know the existing players, the question kept at him: “Does Knoxville need something? If so, what would that look like?”

It would look more diverse, he decided. Not just the cast and crew— Unusual Tale’s Joseph was played by a

River & Rail Joshua Peterson (above) co-founded the River & Rail Theatre Company with his wife Amelia after the theater professionals moved to Knoxville in 2014. Their debut production was The Unusual Tale of Mary & Joseph’s Baby (left).

Photos courtesy of River & Rail Theatre

sheets from a clothesline transformed into a fearsome set of wings, the magic in the air was palpable.

The spark of wonder and emotion that passes from a cast to an audience and back is what makes theater addictive, both to those who perform and those who seek it out. The “human scale” of live theater, the way it conjures feelings, makes you look at the world differently, is like no other art form, says local theater impresario Jayne Morgan.

“It haunts you in the most beautiful way,” adds local actress and theater dynamo Carolyn Corley.

The passion that these small, independent troupes are bringing to the local theater scene is creating a new renaissance for the theater in a town where the celebrated music scene has often eclipsed other arts.

Starting a new theater company— or growing an existing one—can be an unwieldy adventure. Locally, talent, experience, and passion are in high supply. The space, time, energy, and funds such ventures require can be frustrating for even the most gung-ho.

But even when they are facing daunting logistical challenges, those who feel called to create and perform for the stage are always looking to connect, with audiences and with the larger community.

Does Knoxville have an appetite for drama? These professionals are betting that it does.

young African-American man, and Mary by a young actress of Iranian heritage—but the audience. How could a company reach audiences who typically didn’t go to the theater?

The answer was “get one, give one.” For every ticket purchased for the company’s inaugural performances, a ticket was given to a local nonprofit agency that serves a sector of the community that doesn’t typically see live theater. Joshua says he was inspired by the corporate models of companies like Warby Parker, where eyeglass purchasers fund eye

exams and glasses for underserved communities. As the shows got underway each night, tickets that weren’t used went back on sale for those on the waiting list. Through this model, every single show but one sold out for Unusual Tale.

The musical was written by friends of the Petersons, and Amelia Peterson directed a version for a theater festival in New York in summer 2016. After bringing the show back for its Knoxville debut, and bolstered by a fundraising campaign that let them mount the ambitious production, the team

worked with casting, set design, and the addition of six new songs.

It was a resounding hit. “The response meant so much to us,” Joshua says. The accolades that the team received from critics and audiences were important, but it was also important to Peterson to capture audience metrics. Surveys revealed that they were reaching a sizable sector of audience who had never been to a show before, and were skewing much younger than the typical theatergoer.

Ideally, River & Rail would like to mount two productions each year. Everyone who works for the company is paid, and so future offerings “are a matter of budget and timing,” Peterson says. Finding ways to reach new audiences is imperative.

“People ask what kind of theater we want to do, and the answer is good theater,” Joshua says. “There is a healthy theater community in Knoxville, but Knoxville isn’t known as a theater city. We want to cut across all the lines that divide a community and make theater that’s relevant.”

DIVERSE APPROACH Theatre Knoxville Downtown has been the torchbearer for creative communiMarch 16, 2017 knoxville mercury 13

Tiger Lily Jennifer Brown started Tiger Lily Theatre in 2011 with a focus on providing more theatrical opportunities for women. Its productions include Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (right) and the annual A Night of Shorts (bottom).

14 knoxville mercury March 16, 2017

Photos courtesy of Tiger Lily Theatre

ty theater for several decades.

Founded in the 1970s with the idea of getting patrons to a dark and usually deserted downtown, the company now finds itself in the center of a city that’s livelier than anyone dreamed.

For the past 12 years the theater has occupied a spot at 319 North Gay St.. Although it’s one of the few theater companies to have its own space, the theater seats only 50, and shows regularly sell out.

The company kicked 2017 off with an ambitious campaign to raise $250,000 to move to a new space that would at least double current seating capacity and provide room for set construction and prop storage.

Theatre Knoxville Downtown is no stranger to crowd-pleasers: Coming shows include a Neil Simon favorite and a Sherlock Holmes mystery play. Earlier this spring, though, the company staged Clybourne Park, a biting comedy-drama about gentrification in a racially diverse community. Staging the Pulitzer Prize-winning play gave the company its first opportunity to do a community “talk back.”

“If ever there was a play needing one, this is it,” says director Ed White.

“Our cast has been incredibly commit-

ted, and extremely eager to engage with the community over issues this play brings up. If anything, such dialogues are more important than ever.”

Getting audiences talking is a specialty of Tiger Lily Theatre, founded specifically as a woman-centric theater company. That doesn’t mean that all roles go to women, only that roles are cast gender-neutral. The actor who does the best reading gets the part, even if that role was thought to be specifically a male one. One of the company’s biggest successes by far was last fall’s Hamlet, which was

staged at the Southern Railway Station downtown for two very successful weekends.

A dynamo of energy, Tiger Lily Theatre founder Jennifer Brown moved to Knoxville in 2010 and founded the theater company in 2011.

A young mom who also has a day job, Brown is supported in this work by an all-female board of directors who are also involved in many of the community’s pop-up, limited-run, and improvisational theater groups.

Historically, Brown says, many plays have more prominent roles for men.

“There’s never been the availability of work for all of the talented women who were available,” Brown says.

Brown and many of her board had worked with Tennessee Stage Company’s Shakespeare in the Square, which was also casting across gender roles, before staging their own Hamlet.

“It definitely increased our fan base,” Brown says. Each spring, Tiger Lily stages A Night of Shorts, a reading series of short plays and monologues.

“It’s a happy day for Tiger Lily when the plays come in,” Brown says. “We try to encourage as many local authors as possible.”

Like other companies, Tiger Lily is often constrained by the lack of space for performance. Brown, who moonlights as a belly-dance instructor for Broadway Academy of Performing Arts, has staged many productions at BAPA’s dance studios. This means swooping in after a Thursday night class to cover the dancers’ mirrors and transform the space into a theater for a Friday night performance.

“It’s surprisingly complicated,” she says of the effort to turn a “found space” into a stage. “We’ve had to build, borrow, or buy for every production.”

It’s frustrating, she says, to know that Knoxville has such a reputation as a music town and know that some of those music venues could have been ideal theater spots, with just a little tweaking. Having stable spaces would go a long way to letting people know how and where to find the kind of theater they could support. Having more monetary support—patrons who were used to giving to theater the way they give to other not-for-profits— would also help.

“I feel like there’s a pretty solid audience” for community and experimental theater, Brown says, “and we’re going to do whatever we can to help that along.

“The differences between us are less than we think they are,” she adds.

“That gets us a long way to understanding each other. We want to make interesting theater that everyone enjoys.”

PUTTING IT TOGETHER There’s such a thing as wearing many hats, and there’s such a thing as juggling many moving parts. Then there is what Carolyn Corley does.

Continued on the following page.

Photos courtesy of Knoxville Children’s Theatre

As an actress, she captivated local audiences with a spectacular performance in Venus in Furs, staged downtown by Flying Anvil Theatre several years ago. She went on to work in development and instruction with Flying Anvil, Tennessee Stage Company, Circle Modern Dance, and many more organizations. She’s helped the female troupe Yellow Rose Productions with its prestigious annual Henley Rose Playwright Competition.

A certified fight choreographer, she has lent her skill to productions throughout the city, including Tennessee Stage Company’s Shakespeare on the Square, Knoxville Children’s Theatre, and more. Most recently, she has been directing a new play by Linda Parsons as part of Tennessee Stage Company’s annual new play festival.

A background in project management (she has a day job in Oak Ridge) gives her a somewhat unique perspective on getting things done. She says it’s critical for arts organizations to build on past successes quickly.

“You really have to show and go in this town,” Corley says. “People who have donated to you want to see results.”

Most recently, Corley founded the Knoxville Performing Arts Exchange (KPAX) to provide a stable performing arts venue for theater groups at Modern Studio. Just recently opened after a successful Kickstarter campaign, Modern Studio is an arts and co-working maker-space arising within the old Colonial Cleaners building in Happy Holler.

Allowing theater groups to have a stable performance space—one where they could do thorough tech checks and have multi-week builds for shows—would make a tremendous difference in helping them connect with audiences and sustain volunteers, Corley says.

“Going in and recreating theaters in found spaces is exhausting,” Corley says. “All of these groups expend a lot of energy and resources to make spaces. We want artists to focus on what they do best instead.”

One of the best things about theater, Corley says, is the way that what has been called “a dying art” for hundreds of years keeps reinventing itself and speaking to new audiences.

Knoxville Children’s Theatre Developing the Next Generation of Thespians—and Audiences

U

nder the direction of Executive Director Zack Allen, with Academy Director Dennis Perkins and other contributors, Knoxville Children’s Theatre produces a year-round slate of theater by and for (but not necessarily about) children.

The 10 productions in 2017 range from the somber Arthur Miller tale The Crucible to a peppy version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Jr. Allen, who co-founded the not-forprofit in 2008, says that in 2016 about 375 children ages 8 to 18 auditioned for 180 roles with the theater. About 100 students attended the academy, which offers acting, voice, and “business of arts” classes to the next generation.

“I absolutely believe every city needs a theatrical outlet for kids,” Allen says. Lots of local theater companies had performed and do perform for children, but when he started the company, it was to create a space where young performers could have a theatrical outlet as often as

possible. The schedule at KCT can be grueling, with back-to-back performances on production weekends and two-hour rehearsals five nights a week leading up to the show.

The theater began its life in the industrial space where Remedy Coffee and Makers Donuts are today, and moved in 2013 to the former TV studio building on the corner of Cherwell and North Central. The move allowed the theater to double its seating capacity to roughly 130, plus provide classroom space and space for the company’s ever-expanding collection of props, costumes and scenery. (Some productions also feature children or former participants as set and costume designers.)

Allen says that what children learn from performing stays with them forever: confidence, self-esteem, teamwork, empathy. It’s a “special perspective on the human condition,” he explains. “The theater is a safe place to explore all aspects, positive and negative, of our lives.”

But it isn’t just the children who participate who gain from experience of theater. The number of children who attend performances at KCT is far larger—audiences totaled about 9,000 in 2016.

“We want them to develop a lifelong love of being entertained by actors telling great stories,” Allen says. “They are crucial to the future of theater in Knoxville. Actors without audiences are irrelevant.”

Allen is an alumni of the Clarence Brown Theatre Company, and he has also directed for Theatre Downtown Knoxville and Tennessee Stage Company’s Shakespeare on the Square. Having worked consistently in theater in the area for almost 30 years, he sees a fresh promise in Knoxville’s theater scene.

“Audiences are more diverse than ever, there’s more theater than ever, in a wide spectrum of genres, and new companies are being born,” he says. “What could be more promising than that?”

—T.J. March 16, 2017 knoxville mercury 15

Drama Town

CARPETBAG THEATRE • carpetbagtheatre.org: This

Knoxville-based company has a history of ambitious productions and workshops with a special spotlight on social justice work.

CLARENCE BROWN THEATER • clarencebrowntheatre.com: The University of Tennessee’s theater company not only produces professional shows, but also generations of theater professionals.

ENCORE THEATRICAL COMPANY • encoretheatricalcompany.com: Morristown’s ambitious community theater company formed in 2006 with a goal to “to improve the quality of life in our community, to produce exciting plays and musicals, and to promote the performing arts in our region.”

FLYING ANVIL THEATRE • flyinganviltheatre.com: This 501(c)(3) nonprofit has a mission to “producing edgy, ambitious emotional theatre you might not ordinarily see here.”

FOOTHILLS COMMUNITY PLAYERS • foothillscommunityplayers.com: The Maryville-based nonprofit company has performed 20-plus works since its debut in 2008, including this spring’s Steel Magnolias.

KNOXVILLE CHILDREN’S THEATRE • knoxvillechildrenstheatre.com: This educational nonprofit trains children in the performing arts, as well as developing them as theatergoers.

KNOXVILLE PERFORMING ARTS EXCHANGE • facebook. com/knxpax: Partnering with Modern Studio in Happy Holler, KPAX aims to provide a stable performing space for local troupes.

LYRIC THEATRE COMPANY • lyrictheatrecompany.org: The Loudon-based community theater produced an ambitious slate of works this year, including Proof.

THE MOVING THEATRE • facebook.com/MovingTheatreKnoxville: This new company specializes in combining theater with other artistic mediums,

Corley herself wasn’t a “theater kid,” but one stop at an acting workshop in Knoxville in 2008 changed that for her. “I’d found my tribe,” she says.

Stable venues, better communication, better coordination of the scene’s many moving parts—these are all things that will allow Knoxville’s theater scene to flourish.

“I’d like to see more collaboration among companies, sharing wisdom, sharing resources,” she says. “We need each other. We have plenty of very talented artists in this town. Let’s put them to work.”

A SENSE OF PLACE Local actress and director Jayne 16 knoxville mercury March 16, 2017

such as painting, photography, music, and more.

OAK RIDGE PLAYHOUSE • orplayhouse.com: Since 1943, the Playhouse has been producing true community productions, and has been operating out of its own 315-seat auditorium on Historic Jackson Square since the late ’50s.

RIVER & RAIL THEATRE COMPANY • riverandrailtheatre.com: River & Rail hopes to be a unifying force for Knoxville, “to not just create professional theatre accessible to all Knoxvillians, but to create theatre true to the stories of Knoxville.”

TENNESSEE STAGE COMPANY • tennesseestage.com: For almost 30 years, TSC has been a giant in local theater, producing a new play festival in the winter/spring and the very popular Shakespeare in the Square.

TENNESSEE VALLEY PLAYERS • tennesseevalleyplayers.org: One of the area’s oldest companies borrows some of the biggest stages—the Bijou, the Clayton Performing Arts Center—for its big crowd-pleasers.

THEATER KNOXVILLE DOWNTOWN • theatreknoxville. com: Touting itself as “the longest continuously-operating, non-academic theater in Knoxville,” the ever-scrappy urban theater troupe is currently raising funds for a move to a new space.

TIGER LILY THEATRE • tigerlilytheatre.org: Tiger Lily performs both classic and contemporary works, with a focus on creating opportunities for women.

WORDPLAYERS • wordplayers.org: This Christian theater arts company keeps a full schedule of faith-based performances; the company debuted its touring show, A Woman Called Truth, in February.

For more information, check out the community resource theatreclub.org.

Morgan has made a living exclusively in the arts since college and is widely regarded by her peers as a goddess of the local theater scene. A co-founder of the Flying Anvil Theatre, she knows the limitations of Knoxville theater as well as anyone and has regularly outsmarted and outworked them. Most recently, she’s been consumed with the need for a physical space for her theater troupe.

“When we talk about theater, we’re usually talking about the process of creating a story on stage.

But theater is also a noun—it’s a place where we gather to bring that story to life,” Morgan says. “The space determines so much of what we do and how we do it.”

Photos courtesy of KPAX

Here’s a tour of the Knoxville area’s wide variety of theatrical companies.

KPAX Actress Carolyn Corley founded Knoxville Performing Arts Exchange (KPAX) to provide a stable performing arts venue for theater groups at Modern Studio. Above, the Tennessee Stage Company kicks off its annual New Play Festival.

Morgan got her start with the University of Tennessee’s theater program and the Clarence Brown Theatre, where she still takes the stage.

She has performed professionally in productions across the country and regularly teaches classes throughout the area. She’s the author of the buzzed-about Forbidden Knoxville comedy revue, and has directed for Tennessee Stage Company, Theater Knoxville Downtown, and other troupes. Most recently she directed Between a Ballad and a Blues for Carpetbag Theatre at Clayton Center for the Performing Arts. She also works as a casting director and film actress (a recent credit includes a role alongside former Dallas actress Charlene Tilton).

In 2011, with friend Staci Swedeen, she co-founded Flying Anvil Theatre, which formally got up-and-running as a nonprofit in 2012. (Although Swedeen is no longer officially involved with the company, she remains a fervent supporter, Morgan says.) From the beginning, Morgan says, the company’s main challenge has not been finding or creating stories or performances, but finding an adequate space in which to do so.

She explains that the need to create performance space in places that are not theaters—conference rooms, dance studios, event spaces,

restaurants—is something that companies have been very willing to do, but it limits how much a theater company can grow.

“Every space is different, the capabilities are different. We rented spaces all over. This is what theater companies have done in this town forever. We’ve had big spaces and tiny spaces. Something in the middle, where you could stretch and grow and develop, that’s what we’ve been missing,” Morgan says.

In May 2013, Flying Anvil took a well-received production of a Staci Swedeen play to Piccolo Spoleto in Charleston, the first Knoxville troupe to stage a play at the internationally famous arts festival. There they saw a production of Venus in Fur, an edgy, sexy, Tony-award-winning piece about a playwright and actress in a battle for dominance. By October of that year, the company was staging its own production of the play, with locals J.D. Sizemore and Corley as the principals, at 525 Gay St. Known as the Jewel Building, it was being renovated at the time, and Continued after Abode insert.

MAR. 2017

creative, unique, local homes

An Architect’s Dream Home DOWNTOWN’S LATEST NEW-FROMTHE-GROUND-UP BUILDING A SHOPPING QUEST FOR MIDCENTURY ARTIFACTS

created and distributed by

3

WELCOME

Photo by Chad Boeteger

table of contents

Photo by Tracy Jones

Welcome to Our Abode!

Abode is a home living and design magazine unlike any other in Knoxville.

It celebrates the area’s most unique houses—whether they’re floating, tiny, or something else entirely.

QUICK IDEAS

4 Locally Grown | Cool housewares and decor from Knoxville designers.

CONSUMER GUIDE

6 Vintage Shopping | Midcentury modern

furniture and decor can still be found in a number of local shops. | BY TRACY JONES

HOUSE TOURS

8 Contemporary Vision | An architect’s new home in Holston Hills demonstrates a fresh modern aesthetic. | BY TRACY JONES

EXTERIORS

Got a cool house Knoxville needs to see? A fascinating preservation project?

New ideas for sustainable living? Drop us a line at editor@knoxmercury.com.

12 A Secret Garden | Here are plants that are

East Tennessee-friendly, relatively low maintenance, and have maximum visual appeal. | BY TRACY JONES

And if you happen to own a home design or real estate-related business that

FOR SALE

needs to reach our audience of discerning consumers, let’s talk!

14 New View | Renovation gurus Kevin and

Melinda Grimac take on their first from-scratch project. | BY SHANNON CAREY

For information about advertising in Abode, contact us at: sales@knoxmercury.com or 865-313-2048.

Cover Photo by Chad Boetger Abode is a publication of the Knoxville Mercury ©2017 618 S. Gay St., Suite L2, Knoxville, Tenn. 37902 865-313-2059, knoxmercury.com

A BODE

MAR. 2017

4

QUICK IDEAS

for the kitchen

Locally Made Goods Photo by Heather Anne Thomas, Beall and Thomas Photography.

Rustic Yet Modern Dinnerware Maryville potter Leanne McQueen snared a runner-up honor in Garden & Gun’s 2016 Made in the South Awards for her speckled dinnerware, which can be seen (and used) at J.C. Holdway downtown. “I strive for the work to be clean, classic, and timeless,” she says on her website.

This five-piece place setting is $190.

INFO: mcqueenpottery.com

Delightful Knoxville Poster Sarah and Ty Pattison create many lovely prints, cards, calendars, and more for sale at their downtown shop the Happy Envelope, but for the proud Knoxvillian there is a clear choice: the “Knoxville, TN” poster (from $40). It’s a veritable word cloud of all the things that make Knoxville a place to remember.

Stunning Handforged Knives John Phillips creates knives that are also works of art, with dazzlingly etched blades and beautiful wood handles. “Hard to believe a week ago this was a pile of scrap metal and some fi re wood…” he writes about one such piece on Instagram. You can fi nd his work online under the handle “sunset.ltd,” which is also the title of a Cormac McCarthy play. (Coincidence?)

INFO: instagram.com/sunset.ltd BUY (SOON): Sign up for his mailing list at grittyblades.com.

INFO: thehappyenvelope.com VISIT: 310 W. Jackson Ave.

Kitschy Dish Towels Julie Belcher’s Pioneer House on Gay Street may be known as Knoxville’s primary outlet for Western wear, but it also continues her tradition of down-home letterpress design. Here’s a dandy dish towel that any Southern cook can appreciate, screen-printed in a variety of colors at $15.

INFO: etsy.com/shop/PioneerHouse VISIT: 413 S. Gay St.

A BODE

MAR. 2017

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A garden center in Bearden offering perennials, herbs, shrubs, trees, houseplants, and garden tools.

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5805 Walden Drive Knoxville, TN 37919 • 865-603-4002

www.WilsonFineGardens.com

Tuesday – Friday: 11:00 – 6:00 • Saturday: 10:00 – 6:00

6

CONSUMER GUIDE

vintage shopping

Scouting for Mid-Century Modern Decor

BY TRACY JONES

T

“flea markets” make this a happening spot year-round, and the store maintains a waiting list for those looking for that piece from memory or dreams.

he yen for all things midcentury modern shows no signs of abating. Still fun and fresh, with sleek lines and bursts of color, it’s a style that unites everyone from Baby Boomers to Millennials. A wealth of choices at shops locally allow you to deck your abode out completely or add one or two conversation pieces to get the party started. We ventured from the streets of Bearden to the avenues of Happy Holler, from South Knoxville to Solway, to survey what midcentury modern treasures are on offer.

VINTAGE TREASURES

NOSTALGIA

5214 Homberg Dr., 865.584.0832 nostalgiamarket.com Entering Nostalgia at Homberg, you’re greeted by an Alice in Wonderland mannequin plopped onto an overstuffed 1970s couch; her friend the White Rabbit, in an adjoining room, is presiding over a sumptuous display of table- and glassware. The store’s cream-and-orange cat, Oscar, snoozes in a chair beside her. Treasures to be found on this day included a stunning period starburst clock, piles and heaps of colorful vintage kitchenware, and “vintique” (as Nostalgia describes itself) art in throwback colors.

Nostalgia is housed in a very roomy redbrick building by the train tracks in Bearden, off Homberg. (An East Knoxville outpost at 1401 McCalla was recently sold to new owners who’ve renamed it Red Brick Market.) Dozens of vendors house their wares here, but there is a definite aesthetic at work, and although the place is packed, it never feels cluttered or overwhelmed. Allow plenty of time for browsing and watch the shop’s Facebook and Instagram for sale updates. And don’t expect the cat to get up for you.

FOUR SEASONS VINTAGE

VINTAGE TREASURES

FOUR SEASONS VINTAGE

5710 Kingston Pike, Suite C, 865.247.4467 fourseasonsknoxville.com A pair of vintage tulip chairs reupholstered in Lily Pulitzer fabric beckon from the windows at Four Seasons’ prime location on Kingston Pike. It’s a wonder they don’t stop traffic. Inside the shop, where 40 dealers house their stuff, there are rambling corridors of vintage textiles, period jewelry, and curated ephemera A BODE

BARGAIN HUNTERS alongside unique art pieces, retro and novelty lighting, picturesque architectural salvage and much more. Gently worn or never-worn vintage clothing is a would-be Cinderella’s dream.

A sleek wood Drexel sideboard from the late 1950s was loaded down with pretty and delicate china (matching china cabinet available), while nearby shelves were stacked with functional novelty 1960s tableware in bright colors. Prices are nationally and locally competitive. Regular events and parking lot MAR. 2017

5710 Kingston Pike, Suite A, 865.247.5690 The immediate appeal of online shopping sites like eBay and Etsy was to reunite us with those forgotten treasures of our childhood. Although we still hit such sites (and almost all vintique vendors have an online presence), there is something about seeing a remembered piece in person that makes it irresistible.

For boomers in particular, the childhood nostalgia is strong here—on one chrome bar cart alone, Mom’s signature colorful Pyrex bowls nestled next to mugs representing TV cowboy Hopalong Cassidy (way before our time) and the Esso Tiger (same). Smaller than its neighboring store (Four Seasons, above), Vintage Treasures is absolutely packed with, well, treasures, including a Formica-topped occasional table in absolutely perfect condition, a working antique Westinghouse fan (priced a little out of budget), and a working 1960s candy bar machine (priced under market value).

Bookworms will also note carefully curated books arranged by subject matter (no small thing), with a deep selection of local history, including several titles by our own Jack Neely.

RETROSPECT

1112 N. Central St., 865.522.3511 When the wooden floors creak upon your entrance into Retrospect, and the employees greet you like you are family (after all, even if you don’t know them, you’re probably less

7

CONSUMER GUIDE

RETRO SALVAGE

MID-MOD COLLECTIVE

MID-MOD COLLECTIVE than one degree of separation from someone they do know), you’ll feel more as though you are in someone’s home than in a retail store. That said, the thrill of the hunt is strong, and if you are a lover of beautiful and/or quirky things, this is the hangout for you. Space is maximized to allow different booths and vignettes with various themes, including racks of gorgeous vintage clothes and a “1950s” corner. We bravely ignored the siren call of a collection of 1970s and 1980s lunch boxes before a striking Chromecraft oval table, surrounded by swiveled, buttery chairs, absolutely floored us.

Other furniture finds that day included a pristine mid-mod table in flawless wood, with beautifully reupholstered fabric chairs, expandable to 8 feet and priced to sell.

Merchandise moves in and out quickly, and the shop has a passionate following on Facebook, so when you see something, grab it! It won’t be there long.

1621 N. Central St., 865.337.5575 midmodcollective.com If mid-mod had a local place of worship, this would be it. On what used to be the edge of Happy Holler, now in the middle of Hipster Central, a repurposed garage has been transformed into the area’s largest midcentury modern showroom. The dealer collective that runs the shop scores estate pieces from the area’s most prestigious personalities and addresses: A recent show-stopper was a custom sofa with built-in cabinetry, designed by a prominent late granddaddy of modern architecture, for his own home. Danish modern pieces sit comfortably beside space-age ’70s furniture that wouldn’t be out of place in a Roger Corman film. All pieces are in absolute top-notch condition, with a workshop on site. Besides the eye-catching big ticket items, there is a unique selection of Atomic Ranch-style knickknacks, limited-edition prints, funky glassware, and a wondrous bookstore, run by our friends at the Book Eddy, right in the middle of the action. Prepare to spend hours wandering this destination spot.

BARGAIN HUNTERS

4006 Chapman Highway, 865.240.4757 bargainhunterstn.com One of a chain of antique and flea markets across the state, Bargain Hunters holds 300 booths in the old Big Lots building at the corner of

Moody Avenue and Chapman Highway. Be aware that the vibe here is more shabby chic than industrial sleek, and although we did spy a beautiful piece of blond Heywood Wakefield shelving at a pretty good price, this is more the spot for accent pieces, including some fun 1970s department-store art and a nice selection of 1960s-era Pyrex and kitchenware. Those whose tastes run to the rustic will find booths with older selections of vintage farm equipment and antique kitchen implements. There’s also a selection of collectibles, including sports cards and science-fiction geek specials.

RETRO SALVAGE

8905 Oak Ridge Hwy, 865.250.1207 retrosalvage.com What you see in the cozy public showroom of Retro Salvage is just a portion of the inventory available—a glimpse through the window at the adjoining storefront shows many more statement pieces,

and a perusal through the shop’s website and social media posts reveals even more. The shop, in Solway (yes, Solway), is open only on Saturday and Sunday and by appointment, a unique way to separate the browsers from the serious buyers who know what they want or are looking to fill a home out completely. In the showroom, plastic tulip chairs sat next to 1950s bench sofas, while a trio of barstools labeled simply “really cool chairs” shone next to the window. A coveted starburst clock (it’s our thing, besides lunch boxes) reigned over a slim-lined Danish modern chest.

The inventory has been chosen with love and a discerning eye, and if Solway isn’t on your usual weekend outings, make it so. Leave time to stop next door to visit the mancave-friendly Junk Drunk, where prices are outrageously reasonable and the merchandise cheerfully displayed, and the newly opened Rustic Squirrel, home to all things home-welded and farmhouse chic. n

8

HOUSE TOURS

modern

Modern Passion

Chad Boetger, director of design for BarberMcMurry Architects, builds his own dream house

BY TRACY JONES

C Photos by Chad Boetger

A BODE

had Boetger has star power.

A graduate of the University of Tennessee’s College of Architecture, class of 1997, he is the vice president, director of design at the 101-year-old BarberMcMurry Architects in Knoxville. In the last decade, he’s piled up numerous plaudits from the American Institute of Architects for his commercial and residential work. Now he has put his award-winning skills into practice on his family’s own new Holston Hills home.

“It’s every architect’s dream,” he says of designing his own family space.

The result is a two-story modernist gem on the Holston River.

The exterior is a statement in steel, glass, and cypress. Inside, the home features expansive views from each

MAR. 2017

of the living and guest spaces, with an open floor plan in the main living and dining area, an open-concept on the second floor, with the den and other rooms clustered around the open stairwell, and a complete orientation to the riverfront terrain. Built-ins and custom fi xtures make smart use of the home’s 2,800 square feet and carry its personality throughout.

Boetger says that his love for modernist architecture has become a passion/obsession. It began when he studied Frank Lloyd Wright in college and deepened as he learned more about the architects who influenced and were influenced by Wright. His wife, Carolyn, who is a graphic designer, is a more recent convert. Boetger teases that when they started dating, 15 years ago, her

HOUSE TOURS

9

idea of a dream home was something sprawling and Italianate.

“Now she’s 100 percent on board and loving it,” he says.

Until recently, the two lived with their 6-year-old son in downtown Knoxville. They chose the 90-year-old Holston Hills neighborhood, just east of downtown on the Holston River, because it’s convenient to everything while still having a suburban, almost rural feel, with mature trees, large lots, and hills towering up over the community golf course or rolling down to the riverfront.

The neighborhood is rich in history, with a club house that was actually designed by Charles Barber, the founding architect of Boetger’s own firm. The neighborhood is also home to one of Knoxville’s most architecturally significant residences, a house built in 1943 by husbandand-wife architects Alfred and Jane

The Boetgers chose the 90-year-old Holston Hills neighborhood, just east of downtown on the Holston River, because it’s convenient to everything while still having a suburban, almost rural feel.

Clauss, who are also known for a modern enclave called “Little Switzerland” in South Knoxville.

Pointing out the stone and wood and glass structure, visible from the lawn of his own home, Boetger says, “It looks just as contemporary today as it did then.”

His love for the older homes in the area actually delayed his own building process for a bit. He and his wife had asked friends who lived there to keep an eye for a property that had both lawn and riverfront and was suitable for tear-down. A couple of places came open, but Boetger liked the houses too much to consign them to rubble. When A BODE

MAR. 2017

10

HOUSE TOURS

In the great room, drawers and cabinets for an entertainment center recess into a roomy storage space under the stairwell. Pockets installed in the ceiling keep blinds up and out of the way.

A BODE

they found one that they didn’t grow attached to, they rented it out for a few years before doing demolishing it and starting construction on their own home about three years ago.

Johnson & Galyon, which he has worked with regularly, served as contractor. Boetger says he and Carolyn went through three designs for the home before their design matched their budget.

Their first decision was one of siting. Most of the neighborhood’s houses are uniformly closer to the road than the one the Boetgers have built. Although they wanted to place their own house closer to the river, Boetger says, “We wanted to respect that line established by the houses.”

His solution? A brick wall was constructed where the previous house sat, with a line of arborvitae behind it, each of which will grow to about 20 feet. Along the side of the property, landscaper Earthadelic MAR. 2017

has planted a line of young laurel trees. Eventually, Boetger says, the canopying effect of the privacy border will be such that the front lawn will be perceived as the first room of the house, with the idea of making the lines between inside and outside blend.

Inside the bright front entrance to the home, a gleaming white corridor—complemented by terrazzo flooring—leads to the open-plan living and kitchen area, where a floor-to-ceiling window frames a breathtaking view of the sheltering trees in the backyard and the grassy hillside down to the river.

Then there’s the picture-worthy body of water itself. All rooms for the immediate family are oriented with a view to the Holston—the master suite, which is off another downstairs corridor, the upstairs den/playroom and their son’s room.

Even when the family is driving into

11

the carport, an exterior wall that might have blocked the river view has been foregone in favor of openness, so that there is a sort of “disappearing edge” effect toward the water.

The two guest rooms, off the second floor’s open stairwell, face the front lawn, where the views are also framed expertly. In every corridor, and at the top of the stairs, the journey terminates in a window.

“I pay attention to what you are seeing when you go down a hallway.

You don’t want to look at a wall,” Boetger says.

He’s created this eye to the outside even when a wall at the end of the corridor would have left more space in the adjacent room. That makes the smart use of space in the rooms themselves even more important.

“We’ve tried to maximize every nook and cranny,” Boetger says.

HOUSE TOURS

In the great room, drawers and cabinets for an entertainment center recess into a roomy storage space under the stairwell. Pockets installed in the ceiling keep blinds up and out of the way. Built-ins in the family room and their son’s room help corral clutter, as does a room-sized walk-in closet in the middle of the home. (In one of the home’s many nods to energy efficiency, the light shuts off when the closet door is closed.)

There are numerous custom touches throughout. Superior Kitchens created the cabinets and countertops, including a custom-made slot-style sink in the bath and his-and-hers slot style sinks in the master bath.

No detail is too small for Boetger’s professional eye: At the concrete base along the workroom/ bike storage area off of the carport, the lengths of the concrete planks A BODE

exactly echo the lengths of the planks in the cypress siding.

“It’s the kind of detail no one else will ever notice,” Boetger says.

“But I’ll know.” n MAR. 2017

All rooms for the immediate family are oriented with a view to the Holston— the master suite, which is off another downstairs corridor, the upstairs den/ playroom and their son’s room.

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EXTERIORS

landscaping

A Secret Garden

BY TRACY JONES

W

ith enough effort and constant vigilance, anyone can have a perfect emerald lawn. But how much more fun would it be to have a secret garden? As a teenager Frances Hodgson Burnett, the author of the beloved children’s book The Secret Garden, went from a city life that featured one tree on a sooty street to the wild and abundant flora of East Tennessee. What she found here was magic: “Then the green things began to show buds and the buds began to unfurl and show color, every shade of blue, every shade of purple, every tint and hue of crimson.”

So what would we put in our own secret garden? Looking for plants that are East Tennessee-friendly, relatively low maintenance, and with maximum visual appeal, here are a few of our picks.

Visit your locally owned landscape and garden supply store, or take a trip to the University of Tennessee’s incredible demonstration gardens for more ideas.

A FAMILIAR BEAUTY In colors that befit the sweetest of Crayon boxes, numerous species of iris grow ridiculously well in East Tennessee, so much so that any

A SHOWSTOPPER Roses, of course, are the Queen Bee of the floral world. While our unpredictable climate (put that mildly) and sometimes-challenging soil conditions mean that roses aren’t the first choice for the novice gardener, Stanley’s Greenhouse—a hometown favorite since 1955—is a particularly good resource for locally appropriate roses and the gardening knowledge that goes with them. Varieties of the pretty peony, celebrated flower of art and legend, can also be cultivated in your East Tennessee garden—just make sure you pay close attention to notes about ideal temperature and sunlight exposure.

thinkstock

AT LEAST ONE SPECTACULAR FLOWERING TREE Like our favorite dogwood, the eastern redbud, with its showy pink blossoms, is a breathtaking harbinger of early spring, and different cultivars have different sizes to fit in a variety of landscapes. In its “best of” 2015 plant report, the University of Tennessee Extension office spotlights a newer crape myrtle, the Red Rooster, with fire-red blooms that unfurl a little later than most of our flowering trees.

good companion plant to other choices for your garden. The East Tennessee Hosta Society sponsors meetings, garden tours and a plant sale each year to introduce you to these lovelies; visit easttnhostasociety.com for info.

gardener friend who has them almost certainly has some she can dig out and share with you. Oakes Daylilies in Corryton sponsors a festival each June to introduce established gardeners and newbies to the hundreds of varieties of the A BODE

daylily, another sweet Southern blossom.

A PERENNIAL FAVORITE If you’re looking for a shade-tolerant plant, consider the hosta, a favorite of East Tennessee gardeners and a MAR. 2017

A FRIEND TO OTHER CREATURES Let’s talk birds, bees, and butterflies: Some of our most beautiful— and easily cultivated—plants are also important food sources for the above. Swamp milkweed, easily established in local gardens, is a vital plant for the monarch butterfly. The state’s official wildflower, the maypop (or passion flower), hosts other butterfly species, as does the quirky, colorful echinacea.

Trumpet honeysuckle, a gorgeous riot of red and pink, is a favorite of hummingbirds. n A secret garden needs exotic visitors.

The state’s official wildflower, the maypop (or passion flower), hosts butterfly species, as does the quirky, colorful echinacea.

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FOR SALE

downtown

New View Renovation gurus Melinda and Kevin Grimac take on their first from-scratch project: a mixed-use building for downtown

BY SHA NNON CAREY

K

cool.

In the 1990s, they bought and renovated 135 South Gay St., the current home of Sugar Mama’s Bakery. Other renovation projects followed, including the Arcade Building where they have made their home since 2013.

But now they’re branching out of their comfort zone with a new project, this time building from scratch on a parking lot at 107 Commerce Avenue, on the north side of Marble Alley. All new construction, this four-story mixed-use building will have a modern look and feel tailor-made for a selective clientele.

“It was basically me listening to my high-end clients and building their wish list,” Melinda says.

“There are several very nice properties available downtown, but to get all the wish list in one, that is why we decided to do this project.”

That wish list includes features like on-site parking, on-site climate-controlled storage, gas cooking, tall ceilings, expansive windows in every room, a private elevator and plenty of private outdoor space. Plans aren’t fi nalized yet, but the Grimacs are looking at high-end fi nishes like heated floors and Touch20 kitchen fi xtures.

“We are going for a fresh, sleek, contemporary look,” Melinda says.

“We are in a pre-sale format, and it’s buzzing already. At this point, if (the buyers) are early enough, they’ll have a lot of leeway for some customization. In my mind, I envision working with each individual client.”

The location is fairly central to all downtown Knoxville has to offer.

Renderings by ForK Design

evin and Melinda Grimac were investing in downtown Knoxville long before it was

It’s convenient to the dog park, Gay Street and Market Square, and interstate access is close by.

The building will have commercial space on the ground floor and residential space above. Melinda A BODE

says they already have a potential commercial tenant interested in the fi rst two floors, but she declined to say who at this time.

As for the residential units, Melinda says she’s not catering to an MAR. 2017

Located across from Marble Alley at 107 Commerce Ave., Melinda and Kevin Grimac’s new multi-use building will occupy what’s currently a parking lot.

15

age-based demographic, but a client with specific tastes.

“Ironically, the age range of who I think will buy, it’s probably got a 40-year range in there,” she says. “They have the means to buy something nice, and this is what it will be. These buyers are not in a hurry to come downtown, and they’re going to wait until they get what they want.”

The project’s architect is Forrest Kirkpatrick of forK design, a one-man operation who recently designed Tennessee Valley Bicycles on Magnolia. The Grimacs chose to go with him after seeing his work on a Keller Building (106 West Summit Hill Dr.) unit that Melinda said was “ahead of its time.”

“He did the design and woodworking,” Melinda says. “It was his craftsmanship, I was really impressed with that, and a fresh design. He’s been a real pleasure to work with.”

Building new instead of renovating has its own blessings

and curses. While the Grimacs haven’t broken ground at 107 Commerce Ave. yet, and are still gathering bids for the construction, Melinda can already identify some differences in the process.

“Each type of project is going to have its own set of suprises,” she says. “I think the cost of building from scratch has been our fi rst surprise. I think the new construction building costs are actually borderline prohibitive downtown.”

But, building from the ground up gives the opportunity to do things right.

“We can design this property to where every room has a window.

That’s nice. We can design it to have fiber in it right off the bat, and we don’t have to retrofit. It’s all wellplanned and clean, and you know where it is. You can do all of your security systems before they close up the walls. Everything is right there and how you need it,” Melinda says.

There’s another force driving

FOR SALE

the Grimacs’ choices, too. They want to be good neighbors and build for the betterment of downtown Knoxville. They made sure the building would be parking-neutral and wouldn’t encroach on the back of the nearby Keller Building.

“By code we could have built it corner to corner,” Melinda says. “But we don’t want to do that to Knoxville. We don’t want to build it and make money and run. We want to build something that fits in and helps the neighborhood. It will be nice for our tenants and nice for the Keller Building. It needs to be a win-win.”

The property is owned by the Grimacs through their company La Corona Fine Properties and exclusively marketed by Melinda Grimac through Alliance Sotheby’s International Realty. For information, visit melindagrimac.alliancesothebysrealty.com.

Ed. Note: The Mercury’s office is located in the Arcade Building, one of the Grimacs’ properties. ■

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Oak Ridge Playhouse Knoxville’s Neighbor Has a Long Tradition of Theater

T

his year marks the 75th anniversary of the Oak Ridge Playhouse. Since 1957, the community troupe has produced shows out of a landmark building in Jackson Square, the town’s de facto city center. Although the building itself underwent a half-million-dollar renovation a few years ago, with new seating and a restored modernist jewel of a lobby, the ambitious house is always just on the verge of running out of space.

“As we outgrow, we’re outgrowing the building,” says artistic director Reggie Law, who has headed up the playhouse for the past 17 years. An alumni of the Clarence Brown Theatre Company and other local troupes, he came to Knoxville in college and has worked continually in area theater since.

When Law took the helm of the playhouse, “It was a closed shop, an Oak Ridge audience.” Immediately he began marketing efforts to reach out to theatergoers in surrounding areas. (“We’re not as far away as you think,” Law says.) Just a 20-minute drive from West Knoxville (and with ample free parking), the theater now draws its audience from six or seven counties. The season’s shows regularly have a 97 to 98-percent ticket sell-through, and last summer’s Fiddler on the Roof sold 100 percent of its tickets.

All of this—and the company’s Junior Playhouse—are run by two full-time employees (including Law), one part-time employee, and an army of 200-plus volunteers, ranging in age from 12 to 80-something. They build stages, design wardrobes, run tech, and wrangle the 60 years’ worth of props and costumes that the theater has accumulated.

“Without our volunteers, we are nothing. They are the lifeblood of this theater,” Law says. He credits a strong tradition in Oak Ridge for arts and culture, one that was instilled in the very DNA of the “Secret City,” when theater, art leagues, and book discussion groups were established at its founding.

Within the Oak Ridge audience, loyalty and patronage for the playhouse are fierce. While the theater produces its share of crowd-pleasing productions, growing the audience and the playhouse’s reputation allows Law and his community to experiment with shows that aren’t as familiar to local audiences.

“The arts in general aren’t given their due,” Law says. “People have the misconception that it has to be Broadway to be good. There’s lots of affordable theater. Theater gives life to life. It can open up worlds you didn’t realize were there.”

—T.J.

Photos courtesy of Oak Ridge Playhouse

Morgan and her board had very high hopes about permanently occupying the space. The pop-up theater they created was a wonder—and audiences filled it. Then Knoxville’s shifting real estate fortunes took the area surrounding the building from neglected to developed practically during the run of the show.

“We just missed the opportunity to rent it,” Morgan says. Although the loss was painful, with the support of her board, she kept looking for a spot.

“I don’t know that there’s a building in town that we haven’t peeked into the windows of.”

Last fall she was talking to a developer about a spot in South Knoxville, where a theater would have anchored a mixed-use development.

Having this dream almost realized “made it hard to sleep some nights,” Morgan jokes. But plans for the spot, which would have seated about 250, fell through, and Morgan and her board picked themselves back up and started all over again. Just recently, she and her board were set to sign a lease on a venue in the Rocky Hill neighborhood, in West Knoxville.

Wearing a business manager’s hat, and becoming as ensconced in the details of nonprofit work as she is in acting process, has been a change for Morgan. It’s one she has welcomed.

“My world right now is all learning fundraising,” she says.

“When we hit the ground running, we have to hit the ground running.”

Morgan agrees with those who say Knoxville has always been more of a music town. “That’s a wonderful calling card,” she says, but she thinks it’s time that theater was supported in the same way. “It hasn’t had a visionary patron or patroness to make it happen.”

Once Flying Anvil has a stable venue, future dreams include turning it into a paying company.

“We really want to be able to give actors and designers an opportunity to earn money at their craft,” Morgan says, adding that “the simple dignity of being paid for one’s work” is huge in staving off discouragement for those dedicated to the craft. “We want to be a professional company that Knoxville can be proud of. We believe in what we’re doing. Now we get the opportunity to show what we can do.”

March 16, 2017 knoxville mercury 17

Program Notes | Music | Art

Good Vibrations Magnolia Records set to open north of downtown in time for Big Ears

L

18 knoxville mercury March 16, 2017

through Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and noon-6 p.m. on Sunday, with extended hours during Mill and Mine concerts.

“People are still buying records, going to shows, making music part of their life and personal identity,” says Greene. “When I go to a new city I search out where the record store is.

They are often found in the city’s cultural epicenter. They are great sources for finding out what is happening in a community—not just musically speaking, either.”

All three of the Magnolia partners bring distinct professional experience to the enterprise: Balch is a recording and mastering engineer at Wild Chorus studio who plays drums in local thrash combo Warband;

FIVE PICKS

Four Leaf Peat’s Jason Herrera “In the Irish music world, everybody’s a plebeian,” says Jason Herrera of the local Irish-music band Four Leaf Peat. “You go to the village to a session, you dance. And it doesn’t matter if you have to get up in the morning to milk the cows—you dance until three or four in the morning, knowing you’re going to suffer for this.”

Four Leaf Peat plays at the Bijou Theatre on Friday, March 17, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $21.50.

Visit knoxbijou.com or fourleafpeat.com.

“JOHNNY JUMP-UP” It’s a jig. I like it because it’s a postcard. It gives you colloquial slang, it gives you location, it gives you culture.

“THE JOLLY BEGGAR” A parable. He’s a handsome beggar. He begs a place to sleep for the night; the farmer’s daughter catches his eye and he beds her.

She says, “You must be a nobleman.” Nope, just a beggar.

“THE GREEN FIELDS OF FRANCE” Being an Oak Ridger, it means a lot to me because it’s about World War I—the Great War that started the phrase “Never forget.” After the atomic bomb was used in World War II and its destruction, along with the horrors of the Holocaust, was revealed, the scientific and surviving Jewish community adopted the motto. I grew up in a town of “Never forget.”

“WHEN A MAN’S IN LOVE” A Sean-nós song, which means “the old way.”

It’s a highly ornamental song for solo voice. And it’s the song that I used to propose to my wife.

Photo by Chad Pelton

ast summer, when the South Knoxville CD and vinyl warhorse the Disc Exchange went out of business, some of Knoxville’s more obsessive music enthusiasts felt like the natural order of things had been upset.

For them, the loss of Knoxville’s last independent full-service new music store wasn’t just another reflection of an industry in decline; it made Knoxville a less interesting place to be.

But a handful of aspiring entrepreneurs have been plotting all along to restore the balance. Later this month, a trio of ex-Disc Exchange employees will open Magnolia Records, a new venture just north of downtown that will offer a hand-picked selection of thousands of new and used CDs and LPs, from new indie-rock releases and boutique reissues to obscure avant-garde imports and collectibles.

“There will always be folks out there who believe in themselves or their friends enough to put out a record, tape, or whatever,” says Carey Balch, one of the store’s owners. “The model has changed, the demand has changed, but the middleman aspect works about the same.”

Magnolia Records will be located at 214 W. Magnolia Ave., in the space recently vacated by Tennessee Valley Bicycles. (TVB moved to a bigger storefront on the same block.) Balch and his partners, Stephen Greene and Paxton Sellers, expect to be open on March 23 for the start of Big Ears.

They’ll be running the store themselves, with the help of a couple of part-time employees. Store hours are expected to be 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday

Greene is vice president of booking at AC Entertainment; and Sellers played bass in the V-Roys in the late 1990s and is now a senior global forwarding exports agent at C.H. Robinson Worldwide. They also have different but overlapping taste—vintage soul and funk, punk, metal, electronic music, Afrobeat, jazz, and the Grateful Dead—that will be reflected in the store’s inventory.

“Hopefully by open date we can have around 3,000-4,000 new and used records and around 500-800 CDs,” Sellers says. “Most of the vinyl will be new unique stuff. I doubt you will see an Adele record, but you will find plenty of Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, plenty of Matador, Merge, Light in the Attic releases. We are also importing different records out of Europe. I have been trying to get a network of distributors out of Europe to get some cool reissues you just don’t see in the U.S. The main groups we would like to focus on are jazz, indie, funk/soul, metal, and generally just cool stuff you won’t find anywhere else in town.”

—Matthew Everett

LEFT TO RIGHT: PAXTON SELLERS. CAREY BALCH, STEPHEN GREENE

“ST. BRENDAN’S FAIR ISLE” St. Brendan was an Irish monk who got some other monks to help him build a boat of leather and they sailed across the North Atlantic to America.

—Carol Z. Shane

Program Notes | Music | Art

Photo by Errick Easterday

Collage Rock Knoxville quartet Day and Age expands the boundaries of local punk

BY CAREY HODGES

D

epending on the day, Day and Age could be could be pegged as everything from post-punk to hardcore to indie rock, but for the Knoxville band, that’s beside the point.

“We could sit here and hash out our influences, but the problem with that is that we’re four pretty different people who happen to have some common interests,” says guitarist/ vocalist Jeremy Melton. “We all listen to a lot of metal and indie, and we all listen to mid-’80s and early ’90s punk stuff. But at the end of the day, we’re friends who have been through a

bunch of weird shit together and do what we want to do—and that’s what we sound like. Sometimes, that means a lot of stuff out of left field.”

Day and Age’s members—Melton, vocalist C.C. McBride, bassist Mike Kerr, and drummer Tim Lewis—all boast deep roots in the local music community. Combined, their current and past projects span well into the double digits, including Headface, Guide, and Sprocket Gobbler, just to name a few. Each brings his or her own experience to the band, and they spend more time gathering sonic

material to throw into the mix than they do putting all the pieces together.

“We try to fuse as many influences as possible, no matter what,” Lewis says.

“It’s like collaging different sounds and sections in everything and trying to make something unique out of it.”

Formed in 2014, Day and Age started a side project for Melton and Lewis. Melton, who is originally from Knoxville, had recently moved backed to town after an extended stint in Murfreesboro and immediately hit it off with Lewis. Eventually, the pair reached out to Kerr to play bass.

Kerr’s past metal projects had played at Longbranch Saloon when Lewis worked at the Cumberland Avenue punk haven.

Vocals were a serendipitous addition. The trio of Melton, Lewis, and Kerr had been practicing at McBride’s house for a few months, which led to her spontaneously penning lyrics to their songs. “I heard them a million times and one day I just started writing words for them,” she says. “I always joked that I should audition or something, then I just did it.”

“We had a show coming up and hadn’t written any lyrics or anything,” Melton says. “And, obviously, C.C. was around and we knew that she had a good voice and was an awesome lyricist. We were like, well, we have two weeks before we have a show.

Let’s give it a shot.”

The band’s first show as a foursome was at the now-defunct DIY venue the Poison Lawn. After just a few days of practice with the full lineup, they quickly generated buzz in the punk community. Equal parts unapologetically aggressive and wistfully melodic, the group’s music moves at a careening velocity.

McBride’s vocals hit with conviction through the breakneck riffs and drum fills, but each song brings its own approach. The only common factor is a commitment to no-frills songwriting.

But despite the immediate praise, McBride had a hard time getting used to fronting the band without an instrument.

“It made me incredibly nervous, because I wasn’t used to not having something in my hands to do,” she says. “So it was really weird and I had to break through all of these mental

walls just to get to the point where I could do it.”

With McBride on board, the band started working on a demo recording, Looking for a Light On, in late 2014.

After some initial trial and error, they eventually settled on an open, collaborative creative process, with Melton bringing a rough skeleton of a song to the group to flesh out a unit.

“If we get a riff or an idea, we pretty much just start layering over it as we’re figuring out songs,” Lewis says. “Whatever guitar or bass riffs are coming in, C.C.’s sitting there listening to it and she’ll be pouring out lyrics all over the ground.”

The demo was recorded live with fellow local musician and Pilot Light soundman Josh Wright at his Rusty Bird Farms studio.

“He’s been our sound guy a million times, so he really knows every detail of what we’re recording,” McBride says.

A little over two years later, the group is currently recording a full album with Wright, splitting time in the studio with playing plenty of shows.

They’re always more focused on creating, rather than the end result.

“The point of this band is expression,” Melton says. “And the point where that isn’t fun anymore is the point where we won’t do it anymore.”

WHO Lung with Day and Age and Dr. Terror WHERE Pilot Light (106 E. Jackson Ave.) WHEN Sunday, March 19, at 9 p.m.

HOW MUCH $5 INFO thepilotlight.com

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Program Notes | Music | Art

Photo by Denise Stewart-Sanabria

After the Fire Arrowmont’s artists in residence show off in an impressive group exhibit

BY DENISE STEWART-SANABRIA

T

he coveted artist-in-residence program at Arrowmont, founded in 1991, offers young artists an immersive place where they can live and produce new work. For 11 months, they get a studio and living space on the Gatlinburg campus and a materials stipend. Five artists, specializing in various media, are chosen each year; this year’s artists—Austin Biddle, Grant Benoit, Richard W. James, Maia Leppo, and Emily Schubert—will show their work from this period at Un//known, Arrowmont’s annual artist-in-residence exhibition, opening this week.

Schubert works with various media to produce narrative figuration through complex costumes that redefine human archetypes. Her latest series concentrates on how females are categorized. Her depictions of Virgin, Bitch, and Crone render positive empowerment to these categorizations. The costumes, constructed in an endless array of media, are installed on wire manne-

20 knoxville mercury March 16, 2017

quins or are worn by the artist and others for theatrical performances.

Virgin, made of fabric, leather, reed, buckram, wire, fishing line, copper, and papier-mâché, includes a long gown constructed of white lace and crochet overlaid with cut silver leather. A Venetian-style silver mask appears both futuristic and mythological. The entire upper portion is a tall, woven reed collar that supports an overhead flock of birds. In flight, they seem both protective and aggressive.

The woven reeds wind down over the torso into a nest, which holds an external heart made of embroidered satin and velvet.

Bitch is a kind of cross between a Jean Cocteau fantasy character and Las Vegas stage performer. Crone is an elegant, gold-masked character who seems to have sprung from a Goya etching. The black and white dress, with a skirt constructed like a three-layer wedding cake, has insets of the Indonesian-style shadow box animations

Schubert has produced as individual works. The black and white silhouette strips are brought further to life by an interior lighting system that is used during receptions and performance.

James’ breathtaking skill with ceramic portraiture, fiber art, and found objects allows him to create rough and powerful human and semihuman characters. The ceramic sections of the full-body pieces include only the extremities and head, similar to pre-20th-century doll construction.

The clothing and body padding are attached over connecting armature.

Albert V1 is a dystopian portrait of a humanoid creature, equal parts Planet of the Apes and Mad Max. Its handsewn space suit contains charred, backpack-mounted tanks and what appear to be metal oxygen tube attachments in the front. (The metal objects were scavenged from the Arrowmont storage shed, which burned during the Gatlinburg fires in November.) In Lineage of a Pig Farmer, James mounted the upper section of a nude bald man onto an apparatus that connects a tank with rebar struts and coils of rope. The man holds an oil can in one hand and in the other a pulley that directs the rope from the base to where it punctures the man through his heart—he is literally embedded into the work tools he used for survival. The matt clay used for his flesh is streaked like a sweating mix of grease and blood.

Benoit uses construction debris to reflect the way memory and time soak their way into our surroundings.

He has constructed several interior installations of walls, chair, and floor.

The colors are mostly monochromatic, with the patina of fading and damage.

In Fragment: piece by piece, he has sanded down original wallpaper until just a trace of pattern remains and then silkscreened a new design, not just over the original wall section but also over the chair set before it. High on the wall is a section of wood molding, with long loops of cording fed through chunks of all the materials of the installation: linoleum, molding, and wallpapered sheetrock.

Some of these fragments are connected with lines of gold-leafed adhesive in the mending tradition of Japanese kintsugi, which celebrates repair rather than hiding it.

Biddle and Leppo design functional art. Biddle’s ceramic dishware and a vintage Formica table broadcast the optimism of midcentury style.

Pastel colors and sleek, simple curves are used in a variety of tableware.

Close examination of the details—the color lines of the interior of a vessel and the contouring of an edge—reveals the subtlety of hand production over factory mass-production.

Lappo’s delicate use of industrial materials in a limited palette of red, white, and black creates starkly dynamic jewelry. Stacked and strung laser-cut steel forms, end-capped with silicone tubes, feel both mechanical and botanical. The shapes, designed to look like petals, also resemble guitar picks. Lappo also departs from the usual curved drape of a necklace, favoring 45-degree angles and rigid vertical and horizontal lines. The modular and repeated systems she uses are suggestive of design found in everything from handbags to architecture.

Artist residency exhibits are generally fascinating to see, since they are the end result of an indulgent period of experimentation, research, and refinement by artists who are there thanks to an intensely selective process. The unusually long length of the Arrowmont residency is even more conducive to this. Viewers won’t be disappointed.

WHAT Un//known WHERE Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (Gatlinburg) WHEN March 10-May 6, with a reception on Friday, April 7, from 6-8p.m.

HOW MUCH Free INFO arrowmont.org

March 16, 2017 knoxville mercury 21

EARTH, WIND, AND FIRE

Thursday, March 16 — Sunday, March 26 26 Marble City Opera: La Traviata

MUSIC Thursday, March 16 DAVID G. SMITH WITH IAN THOMAS AND THE BAND OF DRIFTERS • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate

Special, a six-days-a-week live-broadcast lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE ZACK MILES • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 6PM • The WDVX 6 O’Clock Swerve is weekly musical trip with talented regional artists featuring live performances and insightful interviews in a living room atmosphere.

• FREE SCHOOL OF ROCK MIDSEASON SHOWCASE • The Open Chord • 6PM • Students from Knoxville’s School of Rock pay tribute to the British Invasion and Southern rock to benefit the Ovation Music Fund scholarship program.

THE DARRELL WEBB BAND • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM OLD SALT UNION WITH JENNI LYNN • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Old Salt Union is known for playing music by their own set of rules. While the men who make up the group are not complete rebels, they are certainly focused on exposing people to a purer, more exciting, and more original form of music. • FREE SOUL MECHANIC WITH VOODOO VISIONARY • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

Friday, March 17 FOUR LEAF PEAT WITH STOLEN RHODES • WDVX • 12PM •

Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week live-broadcast lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE • See Program Notes on page 18.

STOLEN RHODES • The Shed at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson (Maryville) • 8PM • $5 FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • FREE DENNIS STROUGHMATT ET L’ESPRIT CREOLE • Laurel Theater • 8PM • I• $15 JAMES SEATON • Last Days of Autumn Brewery • 8PM SORDID ST. PATRICK’S DAY • The Open Chord • 8:30PM • With Rat Punch, Genki Genki Panic, White Stag, and Summoner’s Circle. Presented by Night Owl Music. All ages. • $10 KAMINANDA WITH LIVING LIGHT, DRUMSPYDER, AND SIRIUS COLORS • The Concourse • 9PM • 18 and up. •

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INSECT TO MONARCH WITH DIVIDED WE STAND • Barley’s

Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 9PM THE COVERALLS • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM • THE JAYSTORM PROJECT • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM MOJO: FLOW • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 9PM SAME AS IT EVER WAS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Knoxville’s best—and only—Talking Heads tribute band. • $5 STRUNG LIKE A HORSE WITH STEPPIN’ STONES • Preservation Pub • 10PM • MEOB WITH GROUNDHOG AND SPADES COOLEY • Pilot Light • 10PM • 18 and up. • $5 FOUR LEAF PEAT • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • Four Leaf Peat is East Tennessee’s premier traditional Irish Band and has been performing locally and regionally since 2004. • $21.50 • See Program Notes on page 18.

DARA TUCKER • Red Piano Lounge • 9PM • From opening for Grammy Award-winning vocalist Gregory Porter to making her debut national appearance as a guest on the Tavis Smiley Show on PBS , Dara is making her mark with a blend of soul, Americana, Gospel and Jazz that is uniquely her own. • $5 ROSS DAFAREYE • Bar Marley • 10PM • Celtic psychedelic trance rock for St. Patrick’s Day. • FREE-$5

Thursday, March 16

KSO MASTERWORKS: LEFKOWITZ PLAYS BRAHMS

Friday, March 17

Modern Studio • 5:30 p.m. • Free • North Knox’s new collaborative creative space has already been in operation for a few weeks. On Saturday, local artists and performing arts groups—including Circle Modern Dance, the Ooh Ooh Revue, Cattywampus Puppet Council, Black Atticus, and Einstein Simplified—will officially commemorate its opening. There’s a big announcement scheduled for 6 p.m.

SAINT PATRICK’S DAY PUB CRAWL

Sunday, March 19

Tennessee Theatre • 7:30PM • $13-$83 • KSO Concertmaster Gabriel Lefkowitz, who’s leaving at the end of this season for the Louisville Orchestra, performs his final Masterworks solo in Brahms’ Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major. • $13-$83

The Old City • 6 p.m. • $10 • Celebrate the patron saint of Ireland with a boozing tour of Knoxville’s nightlife district—one wristband provides access to seven Old City clubs and bars for the evening.

KNOXVILLE SAINT PATRICK’S DAY PARADE

Saturday, March 18

Downtown Knoxville • 7 p.m. • Free • It’s the first Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in Knoxville since 1986. • FREE

DENNIS STROUGHMATT ET L’ESPRIT CREOLE WITH PONY BONES • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate

Saturday, March 18

Special, a six-days-a-week live-broadcast lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE THE WOODY PINES • Sugarlands Distilling Co. (Gatlinburg) • 7PM • FREE MIKE MCGILL AND JAY CLARK • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM THE BLUE EYED BETTYS • Preservation Pub • 8PM • 21 and up. • FREE SUN-DRIED VIBES WITH PERMAGROOVE • Scruffy City Hall • 9PM SHORT TERM MEMORY • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM HILLBILLY JEDI • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 9PM SWINGBOOTY • Red Piano Lounge • 9PM • Local gypsy jazz. 21 and up. • $5 KUKULY AND THE GYPSY FUEGO • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM ANCIENT WARFARE • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Ancient Warfare’s live show ebbs and flows from hushed harmony vocals to austere, tube-driven

MODERN STUDIO GRAND OPENING CELEBRATION

KNOXVILLE COMMUNITY DARKROOM CYANOTYPE WORKSHOP Knoxville Community Darkroom • 10 a.m. • $50 • Visit Bearden’s new photography darkroom co-op for an introduction to a 19th-century photo printing technique.

POULENC TRIO Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church • 7:30 p.m. • $25 • This acclaimed New York/ Baltimore piano and wind instrument chamber music ensemble takes its name from the 20th-century French composer Francis Poulenc, who is best known for his Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano. The group will perform that piece and music by Glinka, Shostakovich, Schnittke, Rossini, and Cuong.

THE JON WHITLOCK TRIO Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8 p.m. • Free • The local pop-folk-jazz trio is releasing its new CD—head down to the Old City to find out more.

Monday, March 20

ROBERT EARL KEEN Bijou Theatre • 8 p.m. • $32 • The road goes on forever for the popular Texas singer-songwriter. Dave Kennedy and Russ Torbett from local Americana band Kelsey’s Woods open.

Tuesday, March 21

THE REVEREND HORTON HEAT The Concourse • 8 p.m. • $22-$25 • 18 and up • The good reverend has been delivering psychobilly sermons for more than 30 years.

With Unknown Hinson, Goddamn Gallows, and Nashville hipster-country provocateurs Birdcloud.

EARTH, WIND, AND FIRE Tennessee Theatre • 8 p.m. • $89.50-$125 • Consider this tour a tribute to Maurice White, the psychedelic funk visionary and principal architect of Earth, Wind, and Fire’s celestial grooves, who died in 2016.

Mar. 16 – Mar. 26

waves of sound. • FREE

Tuesday, March 21

IAN THOMAS AND THE BAND OF DRIFTERS • Preservation

JAIME WYATT WITH SAM MORROW • WDVX • 12PM • Part

Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week live-broadcast lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE

FOLK KILLER WITH WHITE GREGG AND BURNING ITCH • Pilot

Light • 10PM • The music of White Gregg sounds like it takes a lot of thought, a lot of effort, and a lot of arguing to compose and execute. Antecedents might be Captain Beefheart, U.S. Maple, This Heat, and The Flowers of Romance-era P.I.L. 18 and up. • $5 ROCK AGAINST DEMENTIA • The Square Room • 1PM • Purple Cities Alliance is raising dementia awareness with a performance by the Blair Xperience, a local R&B, funk and pop group. In addition to the free concert, the family-friendly event includes face painting, balloon animals and a silent auction. Event proceeds from sponsors and donations at the event will go to the Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s Tennessee and the Pat Summitt Foundation. • FREE THE POP ROX • Wild Wing Cafe • 10PM

Sunday, March 19 SHIFFLETT’S JAZZ BENEDICT • The Bistro at the Bijou •

12PM • Live jazz. • FREE SUNDAY JAZZ BRUNCH • Downtown Grill and Brewery • 11AM • Knoxville’s coolest jazz artists perform every Sunday. • FREE THE JON WHITLOCK TRIO • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM • Jon Whitlock, Meade Armstrong and Jessica Watson make music that is loud and soft, high and low, fast and slow by picking, bowing, strumming and plucking strings together and apart and each with their own voice they sing words that sometimes rhyme… and sometimes do not. They’re celebrating the release of a new CD. • FREE WAYLAND • The Open Chord • 8PM • Wayland is a four piece rock n’ roll band consisting of Mitch Arnold on vocals, Phillip Vilenski on guitar, Dean Pizzazz on bass, and Nigel Dupree on drums. All four members have deep roots in the midwest, and the band is named after Phillip Vilenskis hometown of Wayland, MI. All ages. • $10-$15 DAY AND AGE WITH LUNG • Pilot Light • 9PM • 18 and up.

• $5 • See preview on page 19.

BASHFUL YOUNGENS • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

Monday, March 20 THE URBAN PIONEERS WITH RENN • WDVX • 12PM • Part

of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week live-broadcast lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE ROBERT EARL KEEN • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • Mention the name Robert Earl Keen, and several descriptive terms spring to mind – Texas singer-songwriter, career artist, brilliant storyteller, sardonic humorist, poet of the strange and familiar. And now with the release of his latest album, Happy Prisoner, there is what may seem a surprising addition to that list – bluegrass singer. • $32 PALE ROOT • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • FREE

THE REVEREND HORTON HEAT WITH UNKNOWN HINSON, GODDAMN GALLOWS, AND BIRDCLOUD • The Concourse •

8PM • Formed in 1985, the Reverend Horton Heat exploded on the scene by playing gigs around their hometown of Dallas, Texas, mixing elements of surf, country, punk, big band and rockabilly to create a genre that took the world by storm. 18 and up. Visit internationalknox.com. • $22-$25 EARTH, WIND, AND FIRE • Tennessee Theatre • 8PM • With a signature sound beyond categories and a groove as deep as the soul of the planet, the band’s legendary journey has set the standard for music of all genres. • $89.50-$125 THE URBAN PIONEERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Traveling near and far, The Urban Pioneers are a trio of road warriors that spend their lives playing music to please anyone anywhere. • FREE

Wednesday, March 22 CLAIRE SANDIVER WITH TOMMY WOMACK • WDVX • 12PM

• Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week live-broadcast 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 • FREE GRUBBY LITTLE HANDS WITH RADIO BIRDS • Preservation Pub • 10PM • 21 and up.

Thursday, March 23 BIG EARS 2017 • Downtown Knoxville • The 2017

version of Big Ears, Knoxville’s internationally acclaimed annual festival of out-there music, has announced its biggest and broadest lineup yet.

There’s lots of indie and alt-rock—notably Wilco, Blonde Redhead, Tortoise, Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields, and Deerhoof. The roster includes some imposing names, artists and composers of enormous talent and influence and intimidating, almost frightful reputations, most of them in the late stages of their careers: the pianist and composer Carla Bley; Gavin Bryars, an English composer and bassist whose 50-year career has ranged from chamber music, opera, vocal music, to pieces that defy categorization; jazz bassist and composer Henry Grimes; Meredith Monk, an experimental singer, composer, filmmaker, and artist whose wide-ranging career stretches back to the early 1960s; Musica Electronica Viva, the legendary Italian improv group featuring Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski, and Richard Teitelbaum; and the prolific and eloquent jazz saxophonist and bandleader Henry Threadgill. Visit bigearsfestival.com. • $165-$550 FUNNY EARS FRINGE FESTIVAL 2017 • Preservation Pub March 16, 2017 knoxville mercury 23

Mar. 16 – Mar. 26

and Scruffy City Hall • 6PM • Four nights, two venues, 40 bands, including Bliss on Tap, Boxset, Dams, Dank, Ex-Gold, Far Far Away. Faux Ferocious, Grandpa’s Stash, GlazzWvrks, Ghost Cab, Just Say Maybe, Kukuly and the Romani Fuego, Mare Vita, the New Romantics, the Tom Pappas Collection, Red Is Blood, the Royal Buzz, Sang Sarah, Senryu, Sidecar Symposium, Stryplepop, Wes Uck, and Yak Strangler.

Visit Facebook for more info.

SAMI JO WITH CRYSTAL BRIGHT AND THE SILVER HANDS • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week live-broadcast lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE THE LONETONES • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 6PM • The WDVX 6 O’Clock Swerve is weekly musical trip with talented regional artists featuring live performances and insightful interviews in a living room atmosphere. • FREE THOMAS RHETT WITH KELSEA BALLERINI, RYAN HURD, AND RUSSELL DICKERSON • Knoxville Civic Coliseum • 7PM •

Thomas Rhett solidifies his move “from a promised next big thing to actually being it” with his platinum certified sophomore release Tangled Up (The Valory Music Co.). • $36.50-$78 Y’UNS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 8PM CALVIN LOVE WITH HEAT • The Open Chord • 8PM • Only once in every blue moon comes an artist that seems

so familiar yet out of space as Calvin Love. Like a stranded space captain locked in his cockpit recording his final thoughts. All ages. • $8 FREDERICK THE YOUNGER • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Frederick the Younger, a high energy band out of Louisville, KY, has no shortage of guitar hooks, ambient washes and bombastic drumming. • FREE

Friday, March 24 BIG EARS 2017 • Downtown Knoxville • The 2017 version

of Big Ears, Knoxville’s internationally acclaimed annual festival of out-there music, has announced its biggest and broadest lineup yet. Visit bigearsfestival. com. • $165-$550 FUNNY EARS FRINGE FESTIVAL 2017 • Preservation Pub and Scruffy City Hall • 6PM • Visit Facebook for more info.

THE PLATE SCRAPERS WITH THE JAKE QUILLIN BAND • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week live-broadcast lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE JAMES MCCARTNEY WITH THE HOLIFIELDS • The Open Chord • 8PM • Following the release of his second album The Blackberry Train in 2016, critically acclaimed singer-songwriter James McCartney is set to tour the US in 2017. James has remained fiercely dedicated to his musical vision of melding smart hooks and feral alt-rock with the grandeur and

spiritually centeredness of psychedelic music. All ages. • $15-$20 FROG AND TOAD’S DIXIE QUARTET • The Crown and Goose • 8PM • FREE THE GREEN DAY XPERIENCE WITH COVALENCE AND JIMMY AND THE JAWBONES • The Concourse • 8PM • A tribute to

the ‘90s pop-punk band turned ‘00s arena-rock stars.

All ages. • $5-$10 THE T. MICHAEL BRANNER CONCEPTET • Red Piano Lounge • 9PM • $5 JACOB JOHNSON • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria (Maryville) • 9PM SOULFINGER • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM BLACKSTONE MOUNTAIN BAND • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 9PM SARAH SHOOK AND THE DISARMERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Sarah Shook and The Disarmers is a country band with a sneer, a bite, and no apologies. • FREE ANGELA PERLEY AND THE HOWLIN’ MOONS • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 10PM • FREE

Saturday, March 25 BIG EARS 2017 • Downtown Knoxville • The 2017 version

of Big Ears, Knoxville’s internationally acclaimed annual festival of out-there music, has announced its biggest and broadest lineup yet. Visit bigearsfestival. com. • $165-$550

FUNNY EARS FRINGE FESTIVAL 2017 • Preservation

Pub and Scruffy City Hall • 6PM • Visit Facebook for more info.

THE FOSSIL CREEK BAND WITH XOXOK • WDVX • 12PM • Part of WDVX’s Blue Plate Special, a six-days-a-week live-broadcast lunchtime concert series featuring local, regional, and national Americana, folk, pop, rock, and everything else. • FREE JOHN CARROLL • Vienna Coffee House (Maryville) • 6PM • FREE MARY FAHL • The Open Chord • 8PM • Sounding like no other singer of her generation, Mary Fahl is an expressive, emotional singer/songwriter who first achieved fame as lead singer and co-founder of the mid-1990s cult band October Project. • $25 LARRY SPARKS • Laurel Theater • 8PM • Larry Sparks began his career at the top of the profession when he worked with the Stanley Brothers and Ralph Stanley during the late 1960s. He formed the Lonesome Ramblers in 1969, and began a recording career that has established him as one of the top names in bluegrass. • $20 SALINA SOLOMON • Sugar Mama’s • 8:30PM MIGHTY BLUE • Brackins Blues Club (Maryville) • 9PM SOUTHBOUND • Two Doors Down (Maryville) • 9PM TWINS • Pilot Light • 10PM • 18 and up. • $5 MCGILL AND THE REFILLS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 10PM • Local Mike McGill and his refills serve up a

Bach or Basie?

Your music, your choice.

Your classical and jazz station.

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9/17/16 5:00 PM

Mar. 16 – Mar. 26

healthy helping of country and McGillbilly. • FREE SPACE JESUS WITH SHLUMP • The Concourse • 10PM • Space Jesus is the mind-spawn of Brooklyn NY based electronic music producer Jasha Tull. Fueled by bass and inspired by the intangible, Space Jesus is ever evolving in search of future beats. 18 and up. • $12 KINCAID • Wild Wing Cafe • 10PM

Sunday, March 26 BIG EARS 2017 • Downtown Knoxville • The 2017 version

of Big Ears, Knoxville’s internationally acclaimed annual festival of out-there music, has announced its biggest and broadest lineup yet. Visit bigearsfestival. com. • $165-$550 FUNNY EARS FRINGE FESTIVAL 2017 • Preservation Pub and Scruffy City Hall • 6PM • Visit Facebook for more info.

SHIFFLETT’S JAZZ BENEDICT • The Bistro at the Bijou • 12PM • Live jazz. • FREE SUNDAY JAZZ BRUNCH • Downtown Grill and Brewery • 11AM • Knoxville’s coolest jazz artists perform every Sunday. • FREE THE BROCKEFELLERS • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM

OPEN MIC AND SONGWRITER NIGHTS Thursday, March 16 IRISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM •

Held on the first and third Thursdays of each month.

Visit jigandreel.com. • FREE

Sunday, March 19 OLD-TIME SLOW JAM • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 4PM • A

monthly old-time music session, held on the third Sunday of each month. Visit jigandreel.com. • FREE

Monday, March 20 MONDAY BLUES • Bar Marley • 8PM • Live every Monday,

blues, jazz, funk, reggae and jam musicians from all over Tennessee meet at a backwater crossroad to sit in and show what the blues are made of. • FREE

Tuesday, March 21

DJ AND DANCE NIGHTS Friday, March 17 OLD CITY PUB CRAWL • The Old City • A single wristband opens the velvet rope to the nightlife district’s most distinguished establishments: Southbound, Carleo’s, Hanna’s, Wagon Wheel, Jig and Reel, Crown and Goose, and Urban Bar.

Saturday, March 18 TEMPLE DANCE NIGHT • The Concourse • 9PM • Knoxville’s long-running alternative once night. 18 and up. Visit facebook.com/templeknoxville. • $5 SOUTHBOUND SATURDAYS • Southbound Bar and Grill • 9PM • With DJ Eric B. RETRO WEEKEND DANCE PARTY • Hanna’s Old City • 9PM • Hanna’s Retro Weekend dance party with DJ Ray Funk is where you will hear all of your favorite 80’s and 90’s dance hits. So get down to Hanna’s in the Old City this weekend to party like it is 1999.

CLASSICAL MUSIC Thursday, March 16 KSO MASTERWORKS: LEFKOWITZ PLAYS BRAHMS • Tennessee Theatre • 7:30PM • Talented KSO Concertmaster Gabriel Lefkowitz returns to the Tennessee Theatre stage bringing life to Brahms’ Concerto for Violin & Orchestra in D Major for the March Masterworks concerts. • $13-$83 MARBLE CITY OPERA: ‘LA TRAVIATA’ • Knox Heritage • 7:30PM • Visit marblecityopera.com. • $25 • See Spotlight.

Friday, March 17 KSO MASTERWORKS: LEFKOWITZ PLAYS BRAHMS • Tennessee Theatre • 7:30PM • Talented KSO Concertmaster Gabriel Lefkowitz returns to the Tennessee Theatre stage bringing life to Brahms’ Concerto for Violin & Orchestra in D Major for the March Masterworks concerts. • $13-$83 MARBLE CITY OPERA: ‘LA TRAVIATA’ • Knox Heritage • 7:30PM • Visit marblecityopera.com. • $25 • See Spotlight.

PRESERVATION PUB SINGER-SONGWRITER NIGHT •

Saturday, March 18

Preservation Pub • 7PM • 21 and up. Visit scruffycity.com.

OLD-TIME JAM SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM • Visit jigandreel.com. • FREE

Room • 7PM • Regular speed old-time/fiddle jam every Wednesday. All instruments and skill levels welcome.

BRACKINS BLUES JAM • Brackins Blues Club • 9PM • A weekly open session hosted by Tommie John. Visit Facebook.com/BrackinsBlues. • FREE

MARBLE CITY OPERA: ‘LA TRAVIATA’ • Knox Heritage • 7:30PM • Visit marblecityopera.com. • $25 • See Spotlight.

POULENC TRIO • Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church • 7:30PM • Founded in 2003, the Poulenc Trio is the most active touring piano-wind chamber music ensemble in the world. The trio will perform music by Glinka, Shostakovich, Schnittke, Rossini, and Cuong, as well as Poulenc’s masterful Trio for Oboe, Bassoon, and Piano. Subscription and individual tickets may be purchased online at www.ORCMA.org or by calling (865) 483-5569. • $25

Thursday, March 23

TRI-COUNTY CHORUS AND ORCHESTRA: SELECTIONS FROM MENDELSSOHN’S ‘ELIJAH’ • First United Methodist Church

Wednesday, March 22 TIME WARP TEA ROOM OLD-TIME JAM • Time Warp Tea

SCOTTISH MUSIC SESSION • Boyd’s Jig and Reel • 7:15PM

• Visit jigandreel.com. • FREE

of Oak Ridge • 5PM • Selections from Mendelssohn’s “Elijah”, an oratorio depicting events in the life of the

Biblical prophet Elijah. This rarely performed piece is a worthy companion to Handel’s “Messiah” and is performed by the Tri-County Chorus and Orchestra directed by Sandy Wells, known for their annual Messiah Sing-Along concerts. For more information, contact Sandy Wells at 865-659-0840. • FREE

Sunday, March 19 TRI-COUNTY CHORUS AND ORCHESTRA: SELECTIONS FROM MENDELSSOHN’S ‘ELIJAH’ • 5PM • Selections from

Mendelssohn’s “Elijah”, an oratorio depicting events in the life of the Biblical prophet Elijah. This rarely performed piece is a worthy companion to Handel’s “Messiah” and is performed by the Tri-County Chorus and Orchestra directed by Sandy Wells, known for their annual Messiah Sing-Along concerts. Two performances: Saturday, March 18 at 5 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church and Sunday, March 19 at 5 p.m. at Norris United Methodist Church, 62 Ridgeway Rd, Norris. For more information, contact Sandy Wells at 865-659-0840. • FREE

ARAM

The

from ERA:BetheThere Beginning!

New Music Director Aram Demirjian will conduct these upcoming concerts at the Tennessee Theatre!

TONIGHT & TOMORROW

Wednesday, March 22 KSO CONCERTMASTER SERIES • Knoxville Museum of Art

• 7:30 p.m. • KSO Concertmaster Gabriel Lefkowitz leads the final installment of this chamber series—he’s leaving KSO at the end of this season—with performances of music by Gershwin, Dvorak, Sibelius, and Chausson. Visit knoxvillesymphony.com.

Thursday, March 23 KSO CONCERTMASTER SERIES • Knoxville Museum of Art

• 7:30 p.m. • KSO Concertmaster Gabriel Lefkowitz leads the final installment of this chamber series—he’s leaving KSO at the end of this season—with performances of music by Gershwin, Dvorak, Sibelius, and Chausson. Visit knoxvillesymphony.com.

Saturday, March 25 DUO AONZO IZQUIERDO • Episcopal Church of the Good

Samaritan • 7PM • Carlo Aonzo, from Savona, Italy, founded and conducts the Italian Mandolin Academy Orchestra and regularly records, performs and tours all over the world. René Izquierdo, from Cuba, is a graduate of Yale University School of Music and a professor of classical guitar at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Visit knoxvilleguitar.org. • $20

THEATER AND DANCE Monday, March 20 THE WORDPLAYERS: ‘JAM JAR SONNETS’ • The Square Room

• 7PM • The WordPlayers of Knoxville presents a concert reading of Jam Jar Sonnets, a musical comedy/drama told through poetry, dialogue, and music. • FREE

Oak Ridge Playhouse orplayhouse.com THE ODD COUPLE Neil Simon’s popular and enduring comedy about mismatched middle-aged roommates Felix Unger and Oscar Madison comes to the Playhouse for the first

LEFKOWITZ PLAYS BRAHMS March 16 & 17 • 7:30 p.m.

Aram Demirjian, conductor Gabriel Lefkowitz, violin DVORÁK: Scherzo capriccioso SIBELIUS: Spring Song; GRAINGER: Irish Tune from County Derry (“Danny Boy”) MAXWELL-DAVIES: Orkney Wedding with Sunrise; BRAHMS: Violin Concerto Sponsored by Brogan Financial Retirement & Legacy Planning

COMING IN APRIL

GOLKA PLAYS CHOPIN April 20 & 21 • 7:30 p.m.

Aram Demirjian, conductor Adam Golka, piano Sponsored by John H. Daniel

COMING IN MAY

BEETHOVEN’S 5TH May 18 & 19 • 7:30 p.m.

Sponsored by The Trust Company

CLASSICAL TICKETS start at just $15!

CALL: (865) 291-3310 CLICK: knoxvillesymphony.com VISIT: Monday-Friday, 9-5 March 16, 2017 knoxville mercury 25

Mar. 16 – Mar. 26

time in nearly 50 years. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Through March 19. $16-$22.

COMEDY AND SPOKEN WORD Saturday, March 18 JAMES GREGORY • Bijou Theatre • 8PM • For decades, the

unforgettable caricature of veteran comedian James Gregory has stood grinning: his shirt untucked, his arms outstretched, a carefree welcome to a down-home,

hilarious comedy experience. It’s storytelling at its best.

The trademark caricature is the essence of humorist James Gregory’s comedy: rib-tickling reflections on life from the front porch. • $32

Monday, March 20 FRIENDLYTOWN • Pilot Light • 7:30PM • A weekly comedy night named after the former red-light district near the Old City. Visit facebook.com/friendlytownknoxville. 18 and up. • FREE

Tuesday, March 21

OPEN MIC STAND-UP COMEDY • Longbranch Saloon • 8PM • Come laugh until you cry at the Longbranch every Tuesday night. Doors open at 8:30, first comic at 9. No cover charge, all are welcome. Aspiring or experienced comics interested in joining in the fun can email us at longbranch.info@gmail.com to learn more, or simply come to the show a few minutes early. • FREE EINSTEIN SIMPLIFIED • Scruffy City Hall • 8PM • Einstein Simplified Comedy performs live comedy improv at Scruffy City Hall. It’s just like Whose Line Is It Anyway, but you get to make the suggestions. Show starts at 8:15, get there early for the best seats. No cover. Visit einsteinsimplified.com. • FREE

Wednesday, March 22 FULL DISCLOSURE COMEDY • The Open Chord • 8PM • Full

Disclosure Comedy is Knoxville’s long-form improvisational troupe, bringing together community members for laughs and overall general merriment. • FREE

Historic Westwood (3425 Kingston Pike) • Thursday, March 16-Saturday, March 18 • 7:30 p.m. • $25 • marblecityopera.com If I believed in ghosts, I could imagine that the spirit of Adelia Armstrong Lutz would appreciate the prospect of Marble City Opera’s upcoming production, which will take place this weekend in her former home, the 1890s Knoxville mansion we now know as Historic Westwood. In fact, it’s possible that Lutz, an artist who spent time in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., New York, and Europe before her marriage, in 1886, had seen a production of Giuseppe Verdi’s 1853 masterpiece La Traviata.

La Traviata and Westwood, now lovingly restored and the current home of Knox Heritage, seem like the perfect match for Marble City Opera, which has made its reputation over the last four years with performances of chamber operas in nontraditional venues. Although there is nothing chamber-sized about La Traviata, its 19th-century settings are ideally suited for an actual 19th-century location.

Five areas on the first floor of Westwood—the stairs and foyer, the fresco parlor, the west parlor, the painting studio, and the dining room—will host the opera’s action. While the orchestra will remain stationary, the singers and audience will move throughout the house. In the party scenes, the singers will engage the audience as if they are guests in the production. In other moments, the singers will guide the audience to the location of the next scene.

Marble City Opera continues its practice of casting notable local singers and guest artists, with the company’s artistic director, Kathryn Frady, in the role of Violetta and tenor Brandon Evans in the role of Violetta’s lover, Alfredo. (Alan Sherrod)

TENNESSEE VALLEY CAT FANCIERS CAT SHOW • Chilhowee

Park • 9AM • For more information to purruse head here www.tennesseevalleycatfanciersinc.com.

FILM SCREENINGS Saturday, March 18 NEWTOWN • The Birdhouse • 8PM • Newtown uses deeply personal testimonies to tell the story of the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, the deadliest mass shooting of schoolchildren in American history. • FREE

Tuesday, March 21

Friday, March 17

7PM • A college basketball coach is forced to break the rules in order to get the players he needs to stay competitive. • FREE

festive music, inflatable bouce houses, slides and an obstacle course, carousel for the little ones, face painting, games and activities, popcorn, cotton candy, vendors and other fun activities for kids of all ages. • FREE KNOXVILLE ST. PATRICK’S DAY PARADE • Downtown Knoxville • 7PM • Celebrating East Tennessee’s rich Irish heritage and acknowledging the role Irish immigrants and Americans of Scots-Irish descent have played in the history of Knoxville, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade comes back to Knoxville. Followed by live music by Sneaky Pete on Market Square at 8 p.m. • FREE ROMANCING THE SMOKIES • 7PM • Romancing the Smokies will bring several romance authors to the Knoxville Airport Hilton, in Alcoa. • $65

Saturday, March 18

NOKNO CINEMATEQUE: ‘BLUE CHIPS’ • Central Collective •

ART Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts arrowmont.org FEB. 15-APRIL 8: Back to Work, mixed-media sculpture by Jackson Martin. MARCH 10-MAY 6: Un//known, new works

by Arrowmont artists in residence. A reception will be held on Friday, April 7, from 6-8 p.m. See review on page 20.

Art Market Gallery artmarketgallery.net FEB. 28-MARCH 31: Art Market Gallery members’ Group Show.

Central Collective thecentralcollective.com

IRISH FESTIVAL • Market Square • 10AM • We will have festive music, inflatable bouce houses, slides and an obstacle course, carousel for the little ones, face painting, games and activities, popcorn, cotton candy, vendors and other fun activities for kids of all ages. • FREE ROMANCING THE SMOKIES • 12PM • Romancing the Smokies will bring several romance authors to the Knoxville Airport Hilton, in Alcoa. • $65 MODERN STUDIO GRAND OPENING CELEBRATION • Modern Studio • 5:30PM • Modern Studio is a unique multi-purpose space in the Happy Holler district of Knoxville. The grand opening will showcase a variety of performances, plus feature local food and beverages and kicks off with a special announcement detailing future plans for the space at 6pm. For more information, visit www.modernstudio.org. • FREE

MARCH 3-27: Wood/Metal/Clay/Cloth, an exhibit by Heather Ashworth, Katie Dirnbauer, Ellis Greer and Amanda Humphreys.

Saturday, March 25

NOV. 19-APRIL 30: Rock of Ages: East Tennessee’s Marble Industry.

TENNESSEE VALLEY CAT FANCIERS CAT SHOW • Chilhowee 26 knoxville mercury March 16, 2017

Sunday, March 26

FESTIVALS IRISH FESTIVAL • Market Square • 3PM • We will have

Marble City Opera: La Traviata

Park • 10AM • You do not have to be a fat cat to attend the Tennessee Valley Cat Fanciers 40th Anniversary Cat Show. Come learn about all breeds of cats at the show. For more information to purruse head here www.tennesseevalleycatfanciersinc.com.

Clayton Center for the Arts (Maryville) claytonartscenter.com MARCH 6-24: Dogwood Arts Synergy Student Art Exhibition and Dogwood Arts Synergy Art Educator Exhibition.

Downtown Gallery downtown.utk.edu MARCH 3-31: Film and video art by Kevin Jerome Everson.

East Tennessee History Center easttnhistory.org

Mar. 16 – Mar. 26

Emporium Center for Arts and Culture knoxalliance.com MARCH 3-31: Abingdon Arts Depot Juried Members Exhibition; The Art of Surrealism by Jose Roberto; artwork

by Coral Grace Turner; Vintage Reinventions: Steampunk Creations by Eric Holstine, Jason Lambert, and Jason Edwards; and art by Joe Bracco.

Ewing Gallery ewing-gallery.utk.edu FEB. 27-MARCH 19: 70th Annual Student Art Competition Exhibit.

Fountain City Art Center fountaincityartcenter.com THROUGH APRIL 6: Paintings by Aleex Connor. March 10-April 6: Southern Appalachian Nature Photography Society Exhibition and Knoxville Book Arts Guild Exhibition. An opening reception will be held on Friday, March 10, from 6:30-8 p.m.

Gallery 1010 art.utk.edu/gallery1010/ MARCH 16-18: Everything Bends to the Bloom, prints by Gabrielle Buuck. A reception will be held on Friday, March 17, from 6-9 p.m.

Knoxville Museum of Art knoxart.org JAN. 27-APRIL 16: Outside In, new paintings by Jered

Sprecher. Feb. 3-April 16: Virtual Views: Digital Art From the Thoma Foundation. 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 mcclungmuseum.utk.edu FEB. 3-MAY 7: Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt.

Ongoing: The Flora and Fauna of Catesby, Mason, and Audubon and Life on the Roman Frontier.

Oak Ridge Chamber of Commerce oakridgechamber.org FEB. 23-MARCH 23: Atomic Integration, photographs by Ed Westcott of the African-American experience during the Manhattan Project.

Old City Java oldcityjava.com MARCH 3-31: New Schema, paintings by Van Walker.

RALA shoprala.com MARCH 3-31: Paintings by Sarah Moore.

Westminster Presbyterian Church wpcknox.org

MARCH 5-APRIL 30: Paintings by Shirley Wittman and Lauren Lazarus and blown glass by Johnny Glass.

FAMILY AND KIDS’ EVENTS Thursday, March 16 CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY TEEN NIGHT • Cancer

Support Community • 6PM • A monthly networking group for teens ages 13-18 who have a family member with cancer. 865-546-4661. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer. • FREE KIDS IN THE ARTS SPRING CAMP • The Birdhouse • 9AM • An art camp for kids, ideally from ages 9-12, interested in yoga, dance, art, improv, hooping, gardening, and music. The classes will be taught by local artists: Aaron Campbell (improv); Alex Pulsipher (music); Courtney Davis (dance); Jen Sauer (art and gardening); Cynthia Baglin (art); Daniel Kroemer (art); Ajeet Khalsa (yoga); Amber Goodson (art); and Andi Glytch (hoop dance). • $200 LEGO ROBOTICS GROUP • Blount County Public Library • 6:30PM • For kids 7-11. Call (865) 982-0981 to register. • FREE

Friday, March 17 KIDS IN THE ARTS SPRING CAMP • The Birdhouse • 9AM • An art camp for kids, ideally from ages 9-12, interested in yoga, dance, art, improv, hooping, gardening, and music. The classes will be taught by local artists: Aaron Campbell (improv); Alex Pulsipher (music); Courtney Davis (dance); Jen Sauer (art and gardening); Cynthia Baglin (art); Daniel Kroemer (art); Ajeet Khalsa (yoga); Amber Goodson (art); and Andi Glytch (hoop dance). • $200 S.T.E.A.M. KIDS • Blount County Public Library • 4PM • For grades K-5. • FREE

Saturday, March 18 KNOX LIT EXCHANGE • Central Collective • 11:30AM • The Knoxville Literary Exchange is a free, monthly poetry and prose writing workshop open to high school age students. The workshop will focus on giving students the opportunity to engage in writing, share their writing, and receive encouraging feedback--all in a supportive, safe space. The Knoxville Literary Exchange meets every third Saturday in the fall (September, November, and December—the October meeting is on Oct. 22) and spring (February, March, April, May). For further information, please contact organizer Liam Hysjulien at KnoxLitExchange@gmail.com. • FREE BLOUNT COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY NERD GROUP • Blount County Public Library • 3PM • FREE BLOUNT COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY CHESS GROUP • Blount County Public Library • 10AM • For middle- and high-school students. • FREE

Tuesday, March 21

BLOUNT COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY LITTLE LEARNERS GROUP

• Blount County Public Library • 10AM • Recommended for ages 3-5. • FREE BLOUNT COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY LEGO CLUB • Blount County Public Library • 4PM • For grades K-5. • FREE BLOUNT COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS GROUP • Blount County Public Library •

5:30PM • All ages are welcome but the game is recommended for ages 10 and up. Join in the fun of this tabletop role-playing game by learning about the game and sharing your love of fantasy. • FREE

Wednesday, March 22

UP NEXT!

BLOUNT COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY BABY AND ME GROUP • Blount County Public Library • 10AM • Recommended for ages 2 and under. • FREE

LECTURES, READINGS, AND BOOK SIGNINGS Friday, March 17 KNOX HERITAGE LOST AND FOUND LUNCH • Knox Heritage •

11:30AM • Knox Heritage continues its series of educational lunches. A free lunch buffet will be served beginning at 11:30 a.m. and the program will begin at 12:00 p.m. Reservations for lunch are required. Call Hollie Cook at 865-523-8008 or email her at hcook@ knoxheritage.org to make a reservation. • FREE

Sunday, March 19 JULIE ALBRIGHT: CAT BEHAVIOR • McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture • 2PM • The lecture is part of exhibition-related programming for Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt. • FREE

Monday, March 20 UT WRITERS IN THE LIBRARY SERIES • University of Tennessee • 7PM • The University of Tennessee’s annual Writers in the Library series features novelists, poets, and nonfiction writers from around the region and visiting writers at UT, reading from and discussing their work in the auditorium of the John C. Hodges Library. Visit lib.utk.edu/writers/. • FREE

Tuesday, March 21 SAM KEAN: ‘THE DISAPPEARING SPOON’ • University of Tennessee • 5:30PM • New York Times best-selling author Sam Kean will visit the University of Tennessee to talk about his book “The Disappearing Spoon.” The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held in Room 307 of the Science and Engineering Research Facility. • FREE UT HUMANITIES CENTER CONVERSATIONS AND COCKTAILS SERIES • Holly’s Gourmets Market and Cafe • 6PM •

Conversations and Cocktails talks include: Daniel Magilow, associate professor of German, discussing “Using and Abusing the Memory of the Holocaust” (March 21); Luke Harlow, associate professor of history, discussing “Religion and the Meaning of Civil War

KNOXBIJOU.COM TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE TENNESSEE

THEATRE BOX OFFICE, TICKETMASTER.COM, AND BY PHONE AT 800-745-3000

March 16, 2017 knoxville mercury 27

Mar. 16 – Mar. 26

Emancipation” (April 11); and Rachelle Scott, associate professor and associate head of religious studies, discussing “Buddhism, Capitalism, and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Thailand” (May 9). • FREE

Thursday, March 23 AN EVENING WITH AMY GREENE • East Tennessee History

Center • 7PM • Amy Greene will present the 2017 Wilma Dykeman Stokely Memorial Lecture. Bloodroot, Greene’s first novel, was a national bestseller. Her second novel, Long Man, is the story of people who were forced to relocate when the Tennessee Valley Authority decided to flood their town. Greene is currently working on her third novel. • FREE

CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS Thursday, March 16 AARP DRIVER SAFETY SMART DRIVER COURSE • Karns

Community Center • 11:30AM • Call (865) 382-5822.

KNOXVILLE CAPOEIRA CLASS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 6PM • Visit capoeiraknoxville.org. • $10 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Balanced You Studios • 12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@ gmail.com. Donations accepted.

KNOXVILLE PERSONAL TRAINING PILATES • Beaver Creek

Cumberland Presbyterian Church • 6:30PM • Every Tuesday and Thursday. First class is free. Call (865) 622-3103 or visit knoxvillepersonaltraining.com. • $4 BEGINNER ACROYOGA CLASS • Breezeway Yoga Studio • 7:30PM • Each class explores the foundations of the AcroYoga practice. We work closely with spotters, providing a safe and supported environment for newcomers to immerse themselves in the practice.

Come and learn what it means to trust, to let go, to fly, and to play. No partner needed. • $15

Saturday, March 18 CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY: MINDFULNESS IN EVERYDAY LIFE • Cancer Support Community • 10AM •

Call 865-546-4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer.

BIRDHOUSE ACROYOGA WORKSHOP • The Birdhouse • 10:30AM • AcroYoga is a dynamic partner practice that blends the wisdom of yoga, the dynamic power of acrobatics, and the loving kindness of healing arts. • FREE KNOXVILLE COMMUNITY DARKROOM CYANOTYPE WORKSHOP • Knoxville Community Darkroom • 10AM •

Learn one of the oldest printing processes from the 1800s and make blue prints using the sun. Bring found objects, plant materials or negatives. Prints from this workshop will be in KCD’s April First Friday exhibit.

Workshop is limited to 12 students. To sign up online go to theknoxvillecommunitydarkroom.org, email news@knoxdarkroom.org, or call (865) 742-2578. • $50

Sunday, March 19 CANDLE-MAKING PARTY • Central Collective • 4PM • Make your own scented (or not) soy candles. Cost includes supplies and a mason jar for one candle, but feel free to bring spare tea cups, glasses, or other vessels for extras. • $15 CIRCLE MODERN DANCE BALLET BARRE CLASS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 1PM • Visit circlemoderndance.com. • $10 CIRCLE MODERN DANCE: MODERN DANCE FOUNDATIONS CLASS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 2PM •

Visit circlemoderndance.com. • $10

Creek Cumberland Presbyterian Church • 6:30PM • First class is free. Call (865) 622-3103 or visit knoxvillepersonaltraining.com. • $15 MONDAY NIGHT YOGA • Church Street United Methodist Church • 7PM • Cost is $5, with first class free. Bring a mat and strap. In the class we stretch, bend and relax with low light and music. It is suitable for beginners and all levels. No advance registration required.

Contact Micarooni@aol.com with questions. • $5 SPRING SALUTATIONS YOGA • The Central Collective • 5:30PM • Welcome spring by practicing Sun Salutations. In the yogic tradition, Sun Salutations are performed on the first day of each season and equinoxes to give thanks and to set intentions for the season ahead. • $12

Tuesday, March 21

Monday, March 20

KMA CLAY AND FAUNA WORKSHOP • Knoxville Museum of

KNOX COUNTY MASTER GARDENERS: THE ABCS OF BLUEBERRIES • Davis Family YMCA • 1PM • Join Marsha

Lehman to learn what it takes to successfully grow blueberries: choosing the right varieties, getting the soil pH correct, and of course, how to prune them. Call 865-777-9622. • FREE GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Balanced You Studios • 6PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@gmail. com. Donations accepted.

KNOXVILLE PERSONAL TRAINING BOOT CAMP • Beaver

Art • 10AM • Jump into spring with clay creations such as floral wall hangings, garden animals or vessels.

Learn clay hand-building and sculpture basics while you create wall reliefs or garden animals. Marvel at how fun and easy it is to bring clay to life. This workshop is tailored to all skill levels, just bring your imagination. All sculptures are fired and completed with Patina finishes. Materials, tools, firing included.

March 14-April 11. Visit knoxart.org. • $150 GENTLE YOGA AND MEDITATION • Balanced You Studios •

www.bonnaroo.com

Stay tuned

to WutK and our social media

st!

for chances to be one of our 90 final qualifiers to

win a pair of Guest Access passes to Bonnaroo 2017!

Listen on air for the Bonnaroo shout out!

Or register at these locations through May 3rd:

CentraL FLats & taps, 1204 Central street, Happy Holler A West HiLLs FLats & taps, 7403 Kingston pike, west Knoxville!

A

The WINNER will be announced in a reverse drawing on May 9 at 6 pm at Central Flats & Taps!

BREWFEST IS BACK! SATURDAY JUNE 17, 2017

4-8 PM

DOWNTOWN KNOXVILLE* ALL NET PROCEEDS BENEFIT

CURE DUCHENNE

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12PM • Call 865-577-2021 or email yogaway249@ gmail.com. Donations accepted.

KNOXVILLE CAPOEIRA CLASS • Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 6PM • Visit capoeiraknoxville.org. • $10

FAMILIES • The Birdhouse • 6PM • Contact Laura at 706-621-2238 or lamohendricksll@gmail.com for more information or visit the international ACA website at adultchildren.org. • FREE

SHEBOOM!: A WEEKLY DROP-IN DANCE CLASS FOR ALL BODIES • Broadway Academy of Performing Arts • 6PM

Saturday, March 18

• We focus on getting de-stressed and mindful on the moment at hand. Wear work-out clothes or comfortable clothing to move in. Every body deserves to feel pumped, powerful, positive and passionate about the way they move, groove and who they are.

Each week we do something different from jazz to funk to hip hop to lyrical. • $10 KNOXVILLE PERSONAL TRAINING PILATES • Beaver Creek Cumberland Presbyterian Church • 6:30PM • Every Tuesday and Thursday. First class is free. Call (865) 622-3103 or visit knoxvillepersonaltraining.com. • $4 LADY PARTS: KNOXVILLE’S FEMALE BICYCLE MAINTENANCE CLASS • DreamBikes • 7PM • Lady Parts is an all female

and femme bicycle maintenance class. It is a safe and inclusive space for women to learn about how to fix their bikes. In our second season of courses we are collaborating with DreamBikes Knoxville to teach our classes at their non-profit bike shop. • FREE

Wednesday, March 22 CIRCLE MODERN DANCE OPEN LEVEL BALLET CLASS •

Emporium Center for Arts and Culture • 6:30PM • Visit circlemoderndance.com. • $10 BICYCLE COMMUTING BASICS • REI • 6PM • Bike commuting means different things to everyone, and before you start, it’s important to understand why you ride. This will impact where you ride, how frequently you ride, and what gear you may need. • FREE

MEETINGS Thursday, March 16 TIP JAM ARTIST MEET-AND-CREATE • Emporium Center

for Arts and Culture • 10AM • International creative-process community The Iteration Project will be hosting bimonthly artist meet-and-create hours. Tip Jam is a time for creators in any discipline to get together and create inspired by a common theme.

Creation, exploration, and discussion are at the heart of the hour-long meeting. • FREE AL-ANON • Faith Lutheran Church • 11AM • Visit farragutalanon.org or email FindHope@Farragutalanon.org. • FREE CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY FAMILY BEREAVEMENT GROUP • Cancer Support Community • 6PM • 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 LEUKEMIA, LYMPHOMA, AND MYELOMA NETWORKER • Cancer Support

Community • 6PM • Call 865-546-4661 for more info.

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

AL-ANON • Faith Lutheran Church • 11AM • Visit

farragutalanon.org or email FindHope@Farragutalanon.org. • FREE CANCER SUPPORT COMMUNITY WOMEN WITH ADVANCED CANCER NETWORKER • Cancer Support Community •

1:30PM • Call 865-546- 4661 for more info. All Cancer Support Community programs are offered at no cost to individuals affected by cancer.

Sunday, March 19 RATIONALISTS OF EAST TENNESSEE • Pellissippi State

Community College • 10:30AM • Visit rationalists.org. • FREE THE SONS OF UNION VETERANS OF THE CIVIL WAR • East Tennessee History Center • 2PM • Call 574-210-9267. • FREE AL-ANON • Faith Lutheran Church • 11AM • Visit farragutalanon.org or email FindHope@Farragutalanon.org. • FREE

Monday, March 20 COMMUNITY DEFENSE WEEKLY MEETING • Tabernacle Baptist Church • 6PM • Community Defense of East Tennessee is a grassroots organization of community members who provide support for families and individuals facing charges in the criminal justice system. Contact us at communitydefenseET@gmail. com or (865) 214-6546. • FREE

Tuesday, March 21 AL-ANON • Faith Lutheran Church • 11AM • Visit

farragutalanon.org or email FindHope@Farragutalanon.org. • FREE ATHEISTS SOCIETY OF KNOXVILLE • West Hills Flats and Taps • 5:30PM • Weekly atheists meetup and happy hour. Come join us for food, drink and great conversation. Everyone welcome. Visit meetup.com/ KnoxvilleAtheists. • FREE THREE RIVERS! EARTH FIRST! • Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria • 8PM • Call (865) 257-4029 for more information. • FREE

ETC. Saturday, March 18 HENNA AND CHAI NIGHT • The Central Collective • 5PM • Enjoy a cup of authentic handmade chai. Then select one of our featured designs for a henna tattoo done in the traditional style on your hand. We will have a “Bollywood” feature playing as we enjoy the rich culture of India. • $30

Thursday, March 23 PINTS FOR A PURPOSE • Little River Trading Co.

(Maryville) • 5PM • Pints for a Purpose will be held every fourth Thursday of the month. It’s a win-win event—good company, a chance to win awesome prizes, and of course enjoyment of delicious New Belgium Brewing beer all in efforts to help out a wonderful community organization. • FREE

Saturday, March 25 KEEP KNOXVILLE BEAUTIFUL SOUTH KNOX CLEANUP • Sam

Duff Memorial Park • 9AM • Keep Knoxville Beautiful will be hosting the community-wide South Knoxville Cleanup. The event will kick off at Sam Duff Memorial Park. We are looking for individuals, neighborhood groups, businesses, and more to participate. • FREE CRYSTALLINE LIGHT EXPO • Rothchild Conference and Catering Center • 9:30AM • Practitioners will be offering their time and talents to deliver a day of amazing services and informative lectures. Lectures featured all day are included in the admission price.

Visit a number of gifted healers offering mini sessions for massage, energy healing, sound healing, aura photography, intuitive readings and much more. • $7 NOURISH KNOXVILLE WINTER FARMERS’ MARKET • Central United Methodist Church • 10AM • Visit nourishknoxville.org. • FREE KNOXVILLE ALTERNATIVE FASHION WALK • World’s Fair Park • 1PM • The idea is to dress in your favorite styles ie. Steampunk, Goth or Cosplay your favorite characters and show off our creativity. • FREE SEND YOUR EVENTS TO CALENDAR@KNOXMERCURY.COM

Wednesday, March 22 AL-ANON • Faith Lutheran Church • 11AM • Visit

farragutalanon.org or email FindHope@Farragutalanon.org. • FREE KNOXVILLE WRITERS’ GROUP • Naples Italian Restaurant • 11AM • Guest speakers read from and discuss their work.

All-inclusive lunch is $12.00. RSVP to 865-983-3740.

KNOX HERITAGE PRESERVATION AND LIBATIONS • The Crown and Goose • 5:30PM • Visit knoxheritage.org. • FREE LESBIAN SOCIAL GROUP OF KNOXVILLE • Kristtopher’s • 6:30PM • Just a casual gathering of women to socialize and plan activities. Meetings are the second and fourth Wednesday of the month. • FREE

ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS/DYSFUNCTIONAL March 16, 2017 knoxville mercury 29

At This Point | Cartoon | Puzzle

Point of Return Sifting the ashes

BY STEPHANIE PIPER

I

’m sitting in a coffee shop eating my noontime cottage cheese when a woman approaches me. She peers at my face, then touches her forehead.

“You have something there,” she says, offering a packet of Kleenex.

I spent my pre-Knoxville life in New York and Chicago, big cities where Ash Wednesday was another unremarkable feature of the multicultural landscape. No one looked twice at people walking around with blurry black crosses on their foreheads on a late winter day. At work, the standard comment was Oh, you went. I meant to go.

Newly arrived in East Tennessee, I worked up a 30-second sermonette to explain my apparent lapse in personal grooming. I covered all the bases: penance, detachment from worldly things, Old Testament

precedents. It wasn’t a hit. Mostly, people’s eyes glazed over. Now, I just shrug and smile. Lent, I say.

When I lived in New York, I sometimes went to Ash Wednesday services at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. In the long line for ashes were tourists with cameras and midtown office workers on their lunch breaks. There were chic Park Avenue ladies in designer suits and doctors in scrubs and cops in uniform. Once I even saw a fireman in his heavy black slicker and boots, helmet in hand. Mothers juggled babies and toddlers; an elderly woman approached the altar on a walker.

The hard-liners joke about A and P churchgoers who only show up for ashes and palms. There is something appealing about the anonymity of a big urban cathedral, a place where no one knows or cares how often you

BY MATTHEW FOLTZ-GRAY www.thespiritofthestaircase.com

30 knoxville mercury March 16, 2017

come, or what you do in between visits. The world was there in that vaulted, echoing place, queued up for a black smudge on their foreheads and a reminder of mortality. Standing in line, I felt a certain kinship with the people around me. Our records of attendance, our personal histories, the burdens we carried seemed irrelevant. For a few minutes on a cold March morning, we were all headed in the same direction.

Back when I was young and clueless, I disliked the words that accompany the imposition of ashes: Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return. I get it, I thought. No one here gets out alive.

But that’s a long way off, and why dwell on it?

Now, though, the words have acquired a certain resonance. I know something about dust, the carefully made plans that go up in smoke, the powdery embers of failure and loss. I have chosen an urn for my father’s ashes, stood at the graves of my mother and grandmother and a host of family and beloved friends. In a world that prizes youth and denies old

age and shuns death, I have learned to find comfort in an ancient ritual that invokes the beginning and the end.

By late afternoon, the cross on my forehead has faded to a gray blur. I draw a few curious looks in the office corridors, a sideways glance in the supermarket. No one else comments on my grimy face or offers me a Kleenex. I go home and make tuna casserole, the Lenten fare of my childhood, and experiment with the thought of giving up Facebook and manicures for the next 40 days.

I think about dust, how lightly it floats on the air, how easily it is brushed from a table or shelf, only to dance in a shaft of light and settle again somewhere else. I turn over the day in my mind, and reflect that there is something to be said for a prayer that mentions dust and ends with the word return.

Stephanie Piper’s At This Point examines the mystery, absurdity, and persistent beauty of daily life. She has been a newspaper reporter, editor, and award-winning columnist for more than 30 years.

Standing in line, I felt a certain kinship with the people around me. Our records of attendance, our personal histories, the burdens we carried seemed irrelevant.

At This Point | Cartoon | Puzzle

CROOKED STREET CROSSWORD

BY IAN BLACKBURN AND JACK NEELY

CLASSIFIEDS

Place your ad at store.knoxmercury.com

Support the Knoxville Mercury and sell your stuff by purchasing an ad in our classifieds section.

HOUSING

ENVIRONMENTAL ECOLOGY CENTER LAND TRUST SITE NOW AVAILABLE FOR LEASE. Country land adjoining Narrow Ridge Center offers secluded home site for the ecoconscious. Access to Norris Lake. Remote place that is buildable; provides quiet haven.

Protective conservation easements. Paths through 108-acres of shared dense community woods. Old shared community tobacco barn. 1-time payment - $19,750. 3.9 acres. 865 525-8877 blackfoxlandtrust.com narrowridgecenter.org PLACE YOUR AD AT STORE.KNOXMERCURY.COM

COMMUNITY

UNIQUE, OLD CITY LOFT FOR LEASE! This Fire Street loft includes parking, W/D in unit, large bathroom, walk in closet, water, and additional storage! $1425/mo. Call/text 307-413-5443 if interested.

CAN YOU DRAW A RACCON? New Wildlife Rehabilitation Nonprofit Organization in Knoxville is in need for a Logo.

Donate your drawing -please contact Susana at Wildliferehab@ raccoonkingdom.org

NOLIE - is a fuzzy, gorgeous, green-eyed, 8-year-old domestic long haired / mix ready to go home today. He enjoys being the center of attention, and is very chatty. Visit Young-Williams Animal Center / call 865-215-6599 for more information.

LUCY - is a 9-year-old, affectionate Beagle / mix who’s ready to go home today. She’s a little on the chunky side, but we say there’s only more to love Visit Young-Williams Animal Center / call 865-215-6599 for more information.

POMPEII -is a one year old America Pit Bull Terrier / mix. She is learning her manners, and enjoys staying active!

She is learning to play with other doggies and would bring joy to a new family. Visit Young-Williams Animal Center / call 865-215-6599 for more information.

ADOPTION COUPLE HOPING TO ADOPT: We are a loving, professional couple eager to grow our happy family.

Our warm, nurturing home is waiting to welcome and cherish your baby!

Expenses paid. Anne & Colin. 1-877-246-6780. http://www.facebook. com/AnneandColinAdopt/

www.sweetpbbq.com

DISTRIBUTION LOCATIONS Is your location out of the Mercury? We’re constantly in the process of adding more locations, so if the distribution point closest to you is all out, check our map for another place nearby. If you’ve got location suggestions, let us know. knoxmercury.com/find-us

SongwriterS in the Soul House Series 2017 SeaSon opener!

Wednesday, March 22

6pm a Free a Featuring...

Tommy Womack pluS Tim & SuSan lee

sponsored by Lost & Found records

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Soul House on the Water

3725 Maryville Pike, Knoxville (865) 247-7748

Catering

(865) 306-2727 orders@sweetpbbq.com

Downtown Dive

410 W. Jackson Ave., Knoxville (865) 281-1738

March 16, 2017 knoxville mercury 31