Knoxify

A weekly peek into what makes the Knoxville music scene phe­nom­e­nal. We’ll be bring­ing you album + con­cert reviews from the Knoxville area and inter­views with local musi­cians + peo­ple behind the scenes.

Blue Mother Tupelo is band that’s been on the edge for a while now. Around here, they’re well known and well respected — as they deserve to be. But nation­ally they seem to be on the precipice, one hit song from truly break­ing big. Which… let’s just say it’s odd to say the least. I mean, the three albums that are out in the ether are all chocked full of poten­tial megahits. Why it hasn’t come for them is befud­dling to this very writer.

Say­ing Blue Mother Tupelo is soul­ful would be about like say­ing grass is green, the sky is blue and that birds fly. It’s just a stone cold fact. The hus­band and wife [Ricky and Micol Davis, respec­tively] duo have soul radi­at­ing from deep down in their bones. Take the aptly titled “Wan­der­ing Soul.” On record it’s an astound­ing achieve­ment in lush beauty. In per­son, it’s even bet­ter. The dynamic between Ricky and Micol is breath­tak­ing. Add onto that the fact that he [Ricky] was some­how able to get a steel gui­tar sound out of an acoustic gui­tar and you have some­thing truly amaz­ing. Micol’s piano accom­pa­ni­ment really added to the songs’ make-up. The final fac­tor, their over­lay­ing vocal per­for­mances, echoed of Kim Richey’s “Why Can’t I Say Goodnight.”

But it’s not all somber, sad and for­lorn. “Give It Away” brought to light the oft over­looked use of duel­ing tam­bourines. Its not often you see dual instru­ments with­out either puck­er­ing the ol’ bung­hole* or laugh­ing your bol­locks off**. This go ’round, many in the crowd squirmed, wig­gled and shook their prover­bial asses. That is another aspect that really dri­ves Blue Mother Tupelo, their abil­ity to slip eas­ily between the heart­break­ing and the booty-shaking.

Hav­ing only heard Mindy Smith on CD, I wasn’t really sure what to expect with the live per­for­mance. Her vocals are so par­tic­u­lar, I was curi­ous whether or not she’d be able to repli­cate that per­for­mance live and in per­son. Would she be in tune and on time? Well, let me tell you, it was far from a let down. Her vocals shone like a bea­con in the night. In addi­tion to Smith’s per­for­mance, she had culled together a tremen­dous back­ing band, which included a badass, bearded, bald bassist who attempted to remain stoic, but Mindy made him crack up every once in a blue moon.

That was another great aspect of her live show. Smith was able to take time out between songs and tell sto­ries, some of which had the audi­ence rolling in the aisles [for you young whipper-snappers out there in the never-never, that’d be “LOL”, “ROFL” and “OMGTPISFINPMAITIPAL”]. This is good, because some of her songs are truly sor­row­ful. Her mix­ture of humor of com­ments and pathos of lyrics made the night a won­der­ful, bal­anced evening.

Speak­ing of bal­anced. I typ­i­cally go into con­certs want­ing to hear a short list of songs from that par­tic­u­lar musi­cian. Some­times I leave ecsta­tic, oth­ers dis­ap­pointed — like leav­ing the Smash­ing Pump­kins con­cert wholly dis­ap­pointed. Billy Cor­gan barely per­formed any of the songs that got him to where he is, let alone the few obtuse cuts I wanted to hear. With Mindy Smith my list was but one song, “Ten­nessee.” On record it’s a soft, acoustic song, with min­i­mal back­ing. Live it was per­formed with merely a man­dolin, atmos­pheric gui­tar and steady bass drum. None of those ele­ments took away from her strong vocal pres­ence, in addi­tion to it being a nice change of pace from what appears on the album.

Going back to the pathos part ear­lier, a good exam­ple is the story Mindy told before the title track of her first album, “One Moment More.” As it turns out, the song is a trib­ute to her mom who died of breast can­cer. It was sad, yet happy that she was able to pay trib­ute to what sounded like a won­der­ful human being. For that, I’m sure her mother would be proud.

* see Deliv­er­ance
** see Winger / Poi­son / any 80s hair band that rocked the con­joined gui­tar, yo.
*** oh my god this per­son is so funny I nearly peed myself and I think I pooed a little