Big Ears Begins + All the FREE Art, Music and More This Week

Leslie Bateman·
Culture
·6 Comments
Big Ears Festival, March 2025
Big Ears Festival, March 2025

It’s Thursday and I’ve just picked up Michael from L.A. from the airport. I don’t know what his last name is — he’s saved in my phone as “Michael from L.A.” — but he’s our friend. 2025 marks his eighth Big Ears festival. 

My husband and I met Michael his first year at the festival, 2016. We were walking in step across the Gay Street viaduct, migrating from one venue to another, and we started chatting. Super nice guy, in the very-L.A. business of supervising music for movie trailers. We invited him to the big Sunday brunch we used to host, and for a few Big Ears to follow we insisted that he crash on our couch. 

I always wonder what people think when they come to Knoxville, Tennessee for Big Ears. This friendly little Southern town with such bangin’ cool taste in music that folks travel from all over the world to hear it. Where you’re welcomed like a guest. Come on in. Here, let me take your coat. Get yourself comfy. Stay a while. 

I don’t know people how act in L.A. but being a Knoxvillian during Big Ears always makes me feel pretty proud.

DARKSIDE, Big Ears, Mill & Mine, March 2025

Last year’s festival drew 32,000 visitors from 49 states and 18 countries. They stayed in our hotels (or on our couches), ate at our restaurants, and sipped pints on patios throughout downtown.  

The 2024 Annual Report has even more fun facts: $69.8 million contributed to the local economy, $24.4 million in labor income paid to local employees as a result of the festival, and $177,525 expended in fees and services to local nonprofits, including including the Tennessee and Bijou theaters, the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, WDVX, Real Good Kitchen and the River & Rail Theatre Company.

Michele Hummel is executive director of the Downtown Knoxville Alliance. “What it brings to our economy is really impressive,” she says. “There are all the anecdotal things you hear. I remember one time Pete from Pete’s Restaurant & Coffee Shop said he cracked more eggs that day for breakfast than during any other event downtown.”

Like Michael from L.A., a lot of visitors have made Big Ears an annual pilgrimage. I like to lurk on the r/BigEarsMusicFestival subreddit to see what visitors are chattering about, what’s got them excited to be here (beyond the music, of course). “You haven’t really arrived in Knoxville until you’ve grabbed a fuss’d up matzoh ball soup and strawberry soda at Potschke.” “Where’s the Stroopwafel guy this weekend?” There are a lot of questions about transportation – “Do I need to rent a car?” – and a lot of reassurances about downtown walkability. 

“I love the vibrancy. I literally get goosebumps,” Michele says. “You can tell a Big Ears attendee so quickly – and I say that as someone who tends to wear black all the time – but you can just tell that they’re here for Big Ears. It’s really and truly an international festival.”

Now I’m sitting in the lobby of the downtown Embassy Suites, where Michael from L.A. is staying, with my laptop. (He got crowded out of our house when we had a baby). People are flowing in off Gay Street, and I can see what Michele is talking about. There are t-shirts for bands I’ve never heard of, lots of horn-rimmed glasses, and so so many black skinny jeans. They all have backpacks or crossbody bags and look very serious, like here we all are, again, ready to embark on this sonic journey together. 

I’m trying to get this story finished so that I can go do festival stuff, too. I think Alan is across the street at the Regal Riviera, watching a documentary about Canadian electroclash. Michael from L.A. is out there somewhere, comparing schedule notes with his other fest-y besties. I just got a surprise happy-to-see-you hug from Zack, a Knox expat friend who now lives in NYC, whose partner is in the Phillip Glass Ensemble. I met James from Athens, Ga., who is carrying around a little traveling troll in memory of a recently departed friend. He says he plans to take photos of it all around the festival, at different shows, and give it to his friend’s widow when he gets home. 

Everybody’s from somewhere. Everybody’s got a story. 

Brian “Geologist” Weitz (Animal Collective), What For?, Pilot Light, March 2025

Whether you’ve got a Big Ears wristband or not, there’s plenty to do downtown this weekend. Coinciding with the festival, Downtown Knoxville Alliance’s “Make. Art. Music.” is a collection of free experiences hosted by downtown merchants and venues.

“Downtown Knoxville’s arts district has earned national recognition for good reason,” Michele says. “Makers, artists and musicians make the city vibrant year-round. As downtown Knoxville welcomes the world, we appreciate the local artists, merchants and venues adding extra energy and excitement to Big Ears weekend.”

Our local arts community simultaneously benefits from the influx of like-minded cultural tourism and seizes the moment to elevate Knoxville’s homegrown talent. Old City nonprofit performance venue the Pilot Light’s What For? festival, which I wrote about yesterday, is a great example of platforming local musicians. Big Ears presents a robust slate of free programming, including performances at the Visit Knoxville Visitors’ Center and the Knoxville Museum of Art, and “Wayne White: Big Words” at the Emporium Center (I wrote about that, too). 

Nobody who’s downtown this week should ever feel like they’re floating in a sea of strangers through a corridor of locked doors. Rather, it’s a chance to feel more at home, more involved, and prouder than ever of our scruffy little scene. 

For information on these and more experiences, visit downtownknoxville.org. I tried my dangedest to compile a comprehensive roundup of FREE music, art, workshops and events taking place today through Sunday:

MUSIC

Friday, March 28

Saturday, March 29

Sunday, March 30

Violins of Hope, Digital Motif, Knoxville, March 2025

ART, WORKSHOPS, EVENTS

Friday, March 28

Saturday, March 29

    • Conversation: Lonnie Holley & Grayson Currin

at Visit Knoxville Visitors Center

Sunday, March 30

ONGOING EXHIBITIONS

Art Market Gallery – This Gay Street marketplace is the hub for 60 juried-in East Tennessee artists to showcase their work. An Artist Meet & Greet on Saturday, March 29 from 2-5 pm including refreshments and music in the lobby. 

Digital Motif – “Violins of Hope: Strings of the Holocaust” – This exhibition tells the stories of the Jewish musicians and their violins that survived the Holocaust. 

Emporium Center – A variety of exhibitions available including “Wayne White: BIG WORDS.” The Chattanooga-born artist shares his word paintings, which feature oversized, three-dimensional text painstakingly integrated into vintage landscape reproductions. 

Knoxville Museum of Art – In addition to free Big Ears programming, enjoy ongoing and current exhibitions such as “States of Becoming” featuring a group of contemporary artists of African descent working in the United States.

RED Gallery – “Pangrok Sulap” –  A community collaboration in the creation of a large scale, community-printed woodcut, accompanied by drumming. 

And with that, out into the mean streets of downtown Knoxville I go! 

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