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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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?

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

JC: What made you want to start play­ing the guitar?

CA: My brother. He played the gui­tar, and I liked the loud noise. If I didn’t like play­ing, he’d beat me up. *laughs* No, seri­ously, I looked up to my brother. It just felt fun to play.

JC: Banana pan­cakes or crou­ton salad?

CA: I like ‘em both.

JC: You gotta pick.

CA: OK. Crou­ton salad.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Ver­tigo pro­duces a sound that is dif­fi­cult to define. That’s not a bad thing; it’s actu­ally a plus. Over the years the band has grown in their sonic range. With The Com­ing and the Going, the band adds dense lay­ers of noise and tex­ture that sep­a­rate them from most local rock bands. That said, the core is still firmly rooted in a strong, rhyth­mic rock base. The afore­men­tioned lay­ered tex­tures are a nice addi­tion. Their pre­vi­ous album, …and Miles to Go Before We Sleep, showed glimpses and peeks of the step for­ward that they actu­ally take with The Com­ing and the Going.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Heart Attack, The Amer­i­can Plague’s lat­est album, came with a lot of bag­gage. Would it be a for­ward step from their last album, God Bless The Amer­i­can Plague? Had the guys topped out with GBTAP, and were on the slip­pery slope down­hill? Could they be any­more badass?

Well, the abbre­vi­ated review is: Yes. No. It appears so.

Read the rest of this entry »