Local Music 2008: Paper Covers Rock (Page 1 of 1)

As a college town in the foothills of mountains that have nourished the unique sounds of Appalachian bluegrass, folk and country tunes, Knoxville is a city deep-rooted in its musical heritage. These cultural legacies live on in today’s local bands that incorporate the genres with Southern sensibility into a blend of Americana, indie, experimental and rock ’n’ roll music.

But Knoxville is also a town with many people that see its heyday as long-gone — the height of the local scene is often celebrated as an era of punk and rock bands that played around the University of Tennessee campus in the early- to mid-’80s — despite a richly diverse cross-section of current bands that perform to enthusiastic crowds, support each other’s efforts and release recordings on both national and homegrown labels, creating a sound that is unique to the city and often breaks new ground.

The release of WUTK’s ReDistilled CD, along with an upcoming concert series to celebrate the compilation of Knoxville bands past and present, provide an opportunity to look back at that much-heralded rock and punk scene of old, while examining how that legacy informs today’s DIY musicians. Similar issues were brought to a roundtable discussion on the local scene among musicians whose experiences and output span the decades, yet still influence and create music today. We came away with the realization that trying to succinctly sum up a “Knoxville music scene” is a bit like blind men describing an elephant, but also with a reinforcement of just how divergent and amazing the pool of local talent really is.

Knoxville Voice staff members also stepped outside our comfort zones this issue, abandoning favorite watering holes to visit local music venues we don’t often frequent. We encourage readers to do the same — in one night, we found a city waiting to be discovered, with surprising experiences around every corner and Knoxvillians across the city enjoying a wide range of musical performances and entertainment options. We also introduced a few random residents to random Knoxville artists with a special edition of Sit n’ Spin, taking the headphones to the streets to get locals’ takes on local music.

A Street Cred on local hero Terry Hill, Rotation reviews of local releases and a Funny Ha Ha remembering the Taoist Cowboys also provide context linking the past with the present, reminders of how a local scene nourishes a regional identity, one that links influences across generations and builds on the best of what has come before to leave an indelible mark on the soundtrack to an ever-evolving city.

NOW  &  THEN
WUTK’s ReDistilled CD offers an aural history lesson on Knoxville’s local music scene

By Eric Dawson

Before the advent of CD-Rs, Myspace and YouTube, local music scenes in more provincial cities (we are talking now of Knoxville) were difficult to document for posterity. Few bands could afford to have LPs pressed, and independent labels weren’t as prevalent 10 or 20 years ago as they are today. The shelf life of cassette tapes is depressingly short (especially if you leave them lying around in a hot car), and recording live performances was often cumbersome, assuming people were interested or sober enough to even try. Artifacts remain, of course, in the form of flyers, photos, oral history, memories and scars, but full audio documentation of what a scene actually sounded like — the ostensible reason anyone cares in the first place — is usually woefully incomplete.

Fortunately, every town is blessed with a few brave, mad souls who fuss or obsess over archiving their scene and preserving memories of the generally short lifespan of local bands. Benny Smith is such a person, and as curator/instigator/executive producer of the new ReDistilled — 25 Years of Knoxville Rock CD, Smith has performed a commendable service to the history of the city’s music scene (or at least the part related to and derived from a whiter shade of rock ‘n’ roll), and perhaps inadvertently raised questions concerning the relationship of the “Now” and “Then” of that scene.