April 2010 Archives

Last week the Rossini Festival street fair and productions by both Knoxville Opera and UT Opera Theatre made for a busy weekend. There's just as much to do this weekend.

• Walking With the Dinosaurs at Thompson-Boling Arena on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday--as close as your going to get to seeing real-life dinosaurs anytime soon

• Indie-folk singer Josephine Foster (above) at Pilot Light tonight at 10 p.m. On her most recent album, Graphic as a Star, Foster has set several Emily Dickinson poems to music.

• UT's annual spring concert, Volapalooza, moves from Fraternity Row to World's Fair Park this year with electro-pop group Passion Pit, Celtic rockers Flogging Molly, and novelty rapper Asher Roth. The concert starts at 7 p.m. tonight. Tickets are free for UT students, $15 for everybody else.

• Mitch Easter, the guy who produced the first two R.E.M. albums with Don Dixon and fronted the classic North Carolina college rock band Let's Active for most of the 1980s, is playing at Barley's Taproom on Saturday night. The Tim Lee 3 and Angela Faye Martin, whose new album Pictures From Home was one of the last projects Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous worked on before committing suicide in March, are opening.

• Self-deprecating TV comedian Kathy Griffin is performing two shows at the Tennessee Theatre on Saturday. The first show, at 7 p.m., is already sold out, but tickets are still available for the 9 p.m. set. The performances are being recorded for an upcoming special on Bravo. 

It didn't take long for the organizers of the Rhythm N' Blooms festival to reschedule cellist/singer/songwriter Ben Sollee, whose scheduled appearance at the festival a couple of weeks ago was canceled by volcanic ash.

According to this post from Knox Blab, Sollee will play at the Knoxville Botanical Garden on Sunday, May 9, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $26.50-$75 (there's a special VIP package available), but Rhythm N' Blooms passholders get a discount--$12.50 general admission, $35 for the VIP pass.

• Rossini opera returns to the Rossini Festival with Knoxville Opera's The Barber of Seville, starring Knoxville native and Metropolitan Opera veteran Kevin Burdette, on Friday and Sunday at the Tennessee Theatre.



• It's been a hard year so far for the San Francisco black metal band Ludicra--a national tour was canceled and guitarist John Cobbett had a really bad case of appendicitis. But they're back on the road in support of their majestic new album, The Tenant, and play at Pilot Light with Argentinum Astrum tonight.


 
• Get your BBQ on at Pork Knox Q-Fest at World's Fair Park on Friday evening and all day Saturday.
 
• Rossini Festival Street Fair: Knoxville's biggest street fair, with everything from funnel cakes and corn dogs to opera.
 
• UT Opera pitches in for the Rossini weekend with two short opera productions at the Bijou Theatre on Saturday and Sunday: Puccini's Gianni Schicchi and Stephen Paulus' The Village Singer.
 
• The organizers of the Knoxville Jazz Festival, scheduled for Aug. 26-28, are releasing a compilation of local jazz music, Tenors and Satin, this weekend. You can pick up a copy for $15 at the release party at the S&W Grand on Sunday afternoon (it starts at 5 p.m.). You can read more about the recordings here and here.   

This flyer announcing a local appearance by country singer John Rich, who used to seem like the reasonable half of Big & Rich, arrived this afternoon. Rich, who had a hit with the politically obtuse single "Shuttin' Down Detroit" last year, is appearing at the Tin Roof on Cumberland Avenue on tomorrow in support of Zach Wamp's gubernatorial campaign. There aren't a lot of details--doors at 9 p.m., it's free, 18 and up, and it's being hosted by Wamp's two children, but it's unclear whether Rich will be singing or just stumping. Whatever he's up to, though, he's calling all UT conservatives.

One of the final projects from Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous, a collaboration with Danger Mouse, David Lynch, and an all-star lineup of special guests titled Dark Night of the Soul, will finally get an official release, according to Pitchfork.

Linkous, who was in the process of moving to Knoxville when he committed suicide in March, wrote and recorded the 13 songs for Dark Night with Danger Mouse and released it as a limited-edition CD-R and book set last year. Now Pitchfork reports that the album will be released on Capitol on June 13.

John Myers, the local singer and songwriter who achieved some minor success as a soul singer in the 1960s and early '70s, is releasing his first ever solo album and one of just a few records he's made since the Hearts of Stone's 1970 Motown disc Stop the World.



Jack Neely chronicled Myers' career, which started at Green Elementary School and continued through the East Knoxville club scene with Clifford Curry to a mid-'60s appearance on The Merve Griffin Show and Motown, in 2007.

Myers' new album, I Ain't Goin' Nowhere, will be available at the Knoxville Museum of Art's Alive After Five series on Friday, May 7. Myers will perform with the musicians from the disc--Sean McCullough on keyboards, Chris Durman on acoustic guitar and harmonica, Steve White on mandolin, Maria Williams on bass, Steve Corrigan on drums, and Kevin Abernathy on electric guitar.

It's a free show, and starts at 6 p.m. 

The Daily Times' Steve Wildsmith uncovered details about the Hold Steady's upcoming show at the Square Room with the Whigs. Tickets go on sale Friday, April 23, so the show's not officially been announced, but it is on the Square Room's TicketWeb page.

Both bands have played at the Bijou Theatre in the last few years (though the Whigs drew a pretty skeletal crowd), so the much-smaller-capacity Square Room should be intense.

The Whigs released their latest album, In the Dark, last month. The Hold Steady's Heaven Is Forever is due out on May 4.

Emmylou Harris, one of the great voices of the last 40 years, is coming to the Bijou Theatre in June as the headliner for the theater's annual summer celebration/fund-raiser.

Harris will perform on Saturday, June 26, at 8 p.m. as part of Jubilee! 2010. The first Bijou Jubilee celebration was held last year to mark the theater's 100th anniversary. Since it's a fund-raiser, tickets are pricey--$58.50, with VIP packages available at $251.50. Additional events for the Jubilee! are expected to be announced.

The 63-year-old Harris has released several notable solo albums over her career--she had two #1 country albums in the 1970s, and continued to place on the country charts through the early 1990s--but she's probably best known for her collaborations, especially with Gram Parsons in the early '70s and the Trio album with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt in 1987. She's also won 12 Grammy Awards.

Nate Chinen reviews Backatown, the new album by Trombone Shorty, in The New York Times. "[I]t's an album more polished and less thrilling than Trombone Shorty's live shows, but it's firm in its purpose with swagger to spare," Chinen writes.

Trombone Shorty opens this year's Sundown in the City on Market Square on Thursday with a co-headlining set with local hotshots Superdrag.

Everything was going swell during the Drunk Uncles' late-night set at the Bijou Saturday: the band was honky-tonkin' away through a set of classic country gems and classic-sounding originals, the small but free-spirited crowd was whooping it up, and Uncle Mike McGill had just finished his impression of Ralph Stanley singing "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" There was just one problem with the performance, which was booked as a nightcap to Saturday's Rhythm 'N Blooms festival schedule: the band was slated to start at 10:45 p.m., and the Bijou's lobby bar shut down around 11. A Drunk Uncles show without drinking? Eventually, in the between-song banter with the crowd, word of this travesty reached the stage. So Uncle Jeff Barbra and his fellows did the only decent thing: They reached into their own onstage cooler and began tossing cans of PBR and Miller Lite into the outstretched hands of grateful fans. (Before anybody gets all het up, and without putting too fine a point on it, the Uncles' demographic is not one that really requires a close check of IDs.)

The Dogwood Arts Festival's Rhythm N' Blooms Festival is officially underway--it started with the Blue Plate Special at the Square Room this afternoon--but the real kickoff is this evening at Market Square with 18 South and 6 Mile Express, accompanied by shows at Remedy Coffee and the Crown & Goose in the Old City.

Tomorrow and Sunday are the big days, though. The Square Room, the Bijou Theatre, and Barley's Taproom have dozens of performances scheduled from early afternoon until after midnight, and there are also sets at Preservation Pub and back at Remedy. Highlights for tomorrow include Pokey LaFarge, Yarn, Samantha Crain, the Dixie Bee-Liners, the Drunk Uncles, Dawn Landes and the Hounds, Medford's Black Record Collection, Brendon James Wright and the Wrongs, Taylor Brown, Kevin Hyfantis, the Songbirds, and Cutthroat Shamrock.

Sunday's big shows are at the Knoxville Botanical Garden in East Knoxville, with headlining sets by Ben Sollee (below) and Daniel Martin Moore and Carrie Rodriguez. The Black Lillies are also among the bands performing there. You can also catch Sollee at Remedy at 3 p.m. R.B. Morris and Hector Qirko are playing at the University of Tennessee Garden off Neyland Drive at 5 p.m.



 

Weekend passes are available for $40; there are no single-event tickets. Ticket info and a full schedule are available here.

Photo by M.T. Flatley

Way back in 1998, I saw Modest Mouse and Stinking Lizaveta at some long-gone club in Atlanta. At the time it was a brilliant match--MM was touring in support of The Lonesome Crowded West, still their best album, and its rigid grooves and jagged guitar riffs fit well up against SL's tornado of heavy, jazzed-up post-punk.

Since then, Modest Mouse has become a gigantic pop crossover band--"Float On" is a great single, but it doesn't compare favorably to The Lonesome Crowded West--and now a veteran early-'00s legacy act. Stinking Lizaveta are still bruising around the country, playing small clubs to small audiences. Their most recent album, Sacrifice and Bliss, is a minor masterwork of what's been called "doom jazz." Both are coming to town in the next few months: Modest Mouse at the Valarium on July 18 (tickets are $35) and Stinking Lizaveta at Pilot Light (their 15th show there!) on May 11 (admission is $6). 

Superdrag's been added to the Sundown in the City schedule, as co-headliners with Trombone Shorty on Thursday, April 22. That's four local bands in five shows now, all of them worth seeing--Jill Andrews opens for the Eli Young Band on May 6, Aftah Party opens for Tonic on May 20, and the Dirty Guv'nahs open for Blues Traveler on June 3. The Drive-By Truckers, with New York blues guitarist Eli "Paperboy" Reed, close the series on June 17. 

Royal Bangs have been named to the lineup for this year's Lollapalooza, set for Aug. 6-8 in Chicago.

The headliners for the festival are Soundgarden, Green Day, Lady Gaga, Arcade Fire, the Strokes, and Phoenix.

Drive-By Truckers head the lineup of this year's abbreviated Sundown in the City schedule, taking place every other week between April 22 and June 17 on Market Square. The biggest acts are Blues Traveler (June 3, with the Dirty Guv'nahs) and '90s alternarockers Tonic (May 20, with Aftah Party), but DBT appropriately close out the five-concert series on June 17 (with New York-blues guitarist Eli "Paperboy" Reed and True Love).

Also on the schedule: New Orleans funk-rocker Trombone Shorty with an as-yet-unannounced opening act on April 22, Texas country group the Eli Young Band with Jill Andrews on May 6.

It's been a rough year for San Francisco art black-metal band Ludicra, who are scheduled to play with Argentinum Astrum at Pilot Light on Friday, April 23. First, the band's spring tour with Mayhem was canceled just weeks before it was set to start, leaving Ludicra and tour mates Krallice and Tombs scrambling to fill in alternate dates. (That's how Ludicra got booked in Knoxville.)

Then, last weekend, guitarist John Corbett (also of Hammers of Misfortune and the totally great, unheralded Slough Feg) suffered a burst appendix on the second date of the De-Cancellation Tour in Olympia, Wash. He's still there, but the band's continuing as a quartet until Corbett can rejoin them, so it looks like the Knoxville date is still on, at least for now.

You can find information on how to donate to Corbett's medical bills here.

Ludicra's fourth album, The Tenant, has just been released on Profound Lore. 

Ashley Capps hinted last week that a major concert announcement was coming soon, and it looks like he was referring to the news that Neil Young's playing at the Knoxville Civic Auditorium on May 27. Here's the press release from Warner Bros.:

Burbank, CA - Rock icon Neil Young will hit the road for his first solo concerts in many years on the Twisted Road tour, which begins on May 18th and continues through June 8th. As an even rarer treat for fans, Young will play solo in several of the region's classic theaters, offering a program of his classic songs along with the special privilege of hearing brand new, as yet unrecorded songs for the first time. British folk legend Bert Jansch will open the shows.