Knoxify

In writ­ing this review my gut is want­ing to swing towards an unhealthy dia­tribe about the sad state of pop music. Not as a dis­missal of what Jag Star does and rep­re­sents, but the fact that they haven’t broke to a num­ber one down­load in the iTunes Store. Yet no tal­ent fools like Katy Perry and Kesha [notice no dol­lar sign] strike it rich.

But instead of focus­ing on the neg­a­tive, let’s move on to the positive.

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David Keith got into act­ing to meet girls. Or so he claims.

Keith explains that he never got involved in the emo­tional side of his career, mean­ing he didn’t buy into the Hol­ly­wood hype that derails so many young actors. Nor does act­ing define his iden­tity. “I got paid to have fun,” he says with his trade­mark crooked grin. So when Brian Salesky, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Knoxville Opera, made Keith “an offer he couldn’t refuse,” he agreed to tackle a very dif­fer­ent kind of role – that of the Pirate King in Gilbert & Sullivan’s beloved operetta, The Pirates of Pen­zance, com­ing to the Ten­nessee The­atre March 12 – 14.

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Photo by: Mr. Good­speed

Ear­lier this week the announce­ment was made that Sun­down in the City will trim its sched­ule from 12 shows to 5.

Are you happy or sad to see to a shorter Sun­down schedule?

Watch­ing bub­bly teenagers morph into dis­ci­plined war­riors is an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence. One minute they’re gig­gling and gos­sip­ing. The next minute they’re per­form­ing water bal­let on dry land – or on a cold hard floor, to be pre­cise. Instruc­tor Laura Raines beats a drum and guides the girls through a series of lat­er­als, lunges, pliés and relevés that are part of the Hor­ton Tech­nique of mod­ern dance designed to develop core strength. It’s just one hour out of the 15 – 20 hours a week the GO! Con­tem­po­rary Dance Works troupe spends in prepa­ra­tion for its upcom­ing per­for­mances at the Bijou The­atre on Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 20 and Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 21.

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You knew it was com­ing and now it’s here. Renaldo Wool­ridge, aka Swiper­boy and UT bas­ket­ball player, is famous for his hoops and his music videos. He just laid a new track, Never Leave You Like Kif­fin, that we hope South­ern Cal­i­for­nia radio sta­tions are play­ing non-stop. Good work Swiperboy.

WDVX’s monthly live broad­cast, Ten­nessee Shines, is now estab­lished as the go-to venue for great, some­times eclec­tic, music. The lat­est install­ment was a con­cert with no real sin­gu­lar high­lights, just per­for­mance after per­for­mance that proved to be con­tin­u­ally lumi­nes­cent, with every musi­cian at the top of their game.

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“Nei­ther snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couri­ers from the swift com­ple­tion of their appointed rounds.” — The Postman’s Creed, 1912

Appar­ently, beer drinkers have a code, too: “Nei­ther rain nor gloom of cloud cov­er­age nor cold nor mud nor coin­cid­ing UT foot­ball game stays these beer drinkers from the swift con­sump­tion of the over-abundance of beer.”

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What do you think of when you hear the term “post-metal”? My best guess is that 99.9999999999% will retort a truly eso­teric “huh? Whuz­zat?” Accord­ing to the bas­tion of truth that is Wikipedia, post-metal is “…broadly char­ac­ter­ized by dis­torted gui­tar, heavy atmos­pher­ics, grad­ual evo­lu­tion of song struc­ture, and a min­i­mal empha­sis on vocals.” Yup, that about fits.

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A scene from the Ten­nessee Stage Company’s pro­duc­tion of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” in which a band of tin­kers dis­cuss a play that they intend to present at the wed­ding of Theaseus and Hippolyta.

Before this sum­mer, I had never attended a pro­duc­tion of the Ten­nessee Stage Com­pany (TSC). This past sum­mer, I attended their pre­sen­ta­tions of Ham­let and A Midsummer’s Night Dream. I am glad I attended. And, if you do, you will be too — next summer.

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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.

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