I’ve been going to a lot of live music lately, seeing both local and national acts. As I swung by the Pilot Light’s 25th anniversary a few weeks back, I began to wonder about how music “gets made” in Knoxville these days. I know some of the older, varied pathways from my college days, seeing bands on the Strip or listening to college radio at UT. At his recent Tennessee Theatre concert, Dwight Yoakum credited UT college radio for getting his early work on the air and elevating his career in the 1980s.
Here’s the question that emerged and drove this article: where are the places and who are the people making local music happen in Knoxville now?
Realizing the full answer to this question is likely encyclopedic, which Leslie told me I couldn’t do, I landed on following a single musician’s experiences. I would love to open a dialogue since there are far too many artists, places and people driving music to be comprehensive. Where do you hear live music in the city and which local singer/songwriters you have discovered? Exposure is critical for local artists, so share your spaces and people in the comments.
Performing Music in Knoxville
I first heard local singer-songwriter Maggie Tharp at the Dogwood Arts Festival and briefly mentioned her set in my article. Tharp and her husband Owen moved to Knoxville from Durham, North Carolina. She studied in New York, then UNC Chapel Hill, eventually working as a journalist for a small weekly paper in North Carolina. Tharp performed with two other musicians in a jazz-influenced pop band, Maggie and the Romantics, where she met Owen. Marrying about a year and a half later, they moved to Denver and formed a gypsy-jazz group, Paper Moonshine. The couple played festivals, farmers markets, and a Boulder coffee shop for tips and drinks before eventually stepping back from music to focus on their day jobs.
In 2017, Denver prices proved to be too high, and they settled in Knoxville, since Owen’s family lived here. Owen worked for the University of Tennessee, and Maggie worked as a remote marketer for a tech company.
Their return to music came through the Tennessee Songwriter Competition just before the pandemic. The top acts play at the Bluebird in Nashville. They competed in the Knoxville regional round, performing the first song she had written in a couple of years, and made it to the Bijou stage, where Adeem the Artist won. Tharp noted “their song was incredible.”
How do musicians get in front of people in Knoxville? Tharp said, “Knoxville has some really great festivals. The Dogwood Arts Festival, Rossini Fest. There’s so many others that I haven’t played yet. I think those are really the times that you see the breadth of how many great artists there are here and in how many different genres. Knoxville is so eclectic in that way. There’s country, but there’s also hip-hop and jazz.” She noted that a lot of musicians play at venues like the Pilot Light and the WDVX Blue Plate Special.
Asked about the music scene in Knoxville, Tharp said, “the amount of driven and passionate and talented artists here feels to me the same as Denver. And Denver is way bigger. You know…every single night of the week, there’s someone playing somewhere (in Knoxville). And someone who’s really good and really cares about their sound and their songwriting.” She added that the closeness of the Knoxville music community differentiates it from her experience in Denver. She connected me with a part of that community, the Knox Music Coalition.
Supporting Music in Knoxville
The Knox Music Coalition (Instagram and Facebook) is a nonprofit created to support musicians like Tharp and other singer-songwriters in Knoxville. Travis Tench, one of the newer board members and a long-time musician himself, said they support artists through meetups, workshops, shows and festival access. He noted that performers “want to play, they want to write their own music, they want to collaborate with people, they want to see bigger, stranger…creative visions.” The coalition wants to make those visions and collaborations reality. We met at Pretentious Beer’s performance space, one of the many stages in Knoxville.
Tench has organized live karaoke with bands playing cover songs and hundreds singing along. The coalition also hosts ambient jam nights for musicians. Some venues contribute from sales for the night with money going back to coalition events, which are free for musicians. He added that several organizations are reaching out to help as Knoxville’s music scene is in a growth stage. He recently had conversations with the Arts and Culture Alliance as well as the Tennessee Entertainment Commission who has built a database to match local musicians across Tennessee to performance opportunities.
Average Knox Music Coalition meetings host 50 performers learning, playing and connecting. The sessions reflect the eclectic nature of musicians in Knoxville with folk, bluegrass, rock and metal, and hip-hop, pop and everything in between. The Coalition wants to continue growing and allowing musicians to feel like they can experiment and express themselves freely. Tench said that “the vision…for the future is to see this music and arts community to continue to just blossom and branch and evolve and just change its colors and shapes. And I keep doing what creativity does when it’s really supported and fed and fertilized. And I want to be a part of that too.”
Asked about venues giving space for performers, Tench said that the majority were in the Old City and downtown. He mentioned the Old City Performing Arts Center as well as River and Rail’s coming facility on Magnolia. The new space will include two stages: one for theater and the other for music.
Just a cursory walk through the Old City reveals so many stages. Boyd’s Jig and Reel offers an Open Mic Singer-Songwriter Night every Wednesday. Signups start at 6 PM with a maximum of 20 acoustic-only performers. Boyd’s provides a piano for performers. And just across the street, the Pilot Light, mentioned by Tharp and Tench, has offered space for 25 years.
Recording Music in Knoxville
Recording is crucial in getting your music heard for today’s musicians but not in the same way it was 30 years ago. In Knoxville, one place artists record is Auralation Studios on Blount Avenue in South Knoxville. From the outside, the building—shared with two other businesses—looks modest, but inside, the recording and mixing space is surprisingly expansive. Tharp recorded some of her music there and referred me to Auralation to learn more about the process.
Drummer Chris Robbins met keyboardist Paul Jones during a gospel album session. Paul had been developing a music library for use in television and advertising. As demand for TV production grew, they began producing hundreds of tracks for shows to choose from. Their earlier studios were too small to accommodate full bands, but the move to Blount Avenue gave them the space to grow and work with more artists, both local and national.
The Knoxville Jazz Orchestra, Johno Clayton, The Haymakers, the UT singers, Jessica Wilson and Alicia Harvey are just a few of the local and regional artists who have recorded there. Pentatonix recently used them to track a new bass singer. “Weird Al” Yankovic stopped by to record a voiceover, and Leanne Morgan recorded her children’s book there. The team noted that Morgan was “so kind. She gave my mom some tickets to go (to her show) because my mom loves me. Everybody’s mom loves her, right?” Auralation partners with Source-Connect to give local voice artists access to a national stage.
I asked about the destination of local singer-songwriter’s music. Many artists in the local area post their music to streaming services like Spotify, but those services aren’t money-makers. The team at Auralation noted, “You put your music on a cassette. You put your cello in your trunk. You’re probably doing better than you would getting a million streams. Right. It’s crazy.” They told me that they “hadn’t printed a CD in forever. I’ve got…almost two million plays with the artist Eric Baker and I wrote a song. And I’ve made about 150 bucks.”
How does that impact singer-songwriters here in Knoxville? Paul at Auralation noted, “Well, it’s going to impact being able to make a living doing it. That’s going to be harder. But it doesn’t seem to curtail people’s need to make art. People still have the desire to do it.”
Social media and streaming like TikTok or Spotify are a conduit for artists to be discovered. “I mean, that’s the thing to get out, play live…you can sell your merch, and you can drive people to your TikTok page, to your Spotify, anything if you have that.” Auralation also mentioned the importance of video in the social media space. Radio interviews and playthrough are how artists are discovered in the modern space.
Auralation wanted Knoxville to know that they are very flexible for artists and can offer services ranging from recording a whole album, to vocal, drum and grand piano tracks or a small choir. They can accommodate a wide range of artists as they make music in Knoxville.
Making (a Living in) Music in Knoxville
Both Tench and Tharp echoed Auralation’s perspective on the current music economy. Tench noted that his music has “thousands and thousands of plays—and it’s thousands and thousands of fractions of cents.” Most revenue now comes from live performances, ticket sales, merchandise, or from venues that offer a guarantee. “It’s very much flipped from the old model,” he said. “You’d play shows…so people will buy the album. That’s where you make your money.” For good or ill, social media is a necessity.
Tharp described a similar reality. “You have to take the work when it’s there,” she said, “so you end up playing in, you know, 10 different bands, 10 different projects, so I don’t want to tie my band specifically to my music, because they play with so many other people.” Tharp performs anywhere from 10 to 15 gigs a month, ranging from church services to Dollywood. Her husband, Owen, auditioned for Dollywood’s resorts, and after inviting her to sing a song during his audition, the pair were offered a duo slot. “I love that resort gig so much,” she said.
Though Tharp works a few days a week at KnoxFill, she made the leap to full-time music after she “hadn’t really gotten any leads for a while on a marketing job. So, I had this amazing musical project…the more I worked on it, the more I wanted to work on it. It’s like it gave me energy…it was like a life-changing experience. It felt like it brought me back from the despair of job loss and not really having a direction for a little while.”
Her latest EP was a collaborative Knoxville effort, with Owen serving as producer. She recorded at Auralation and added vocals at Tench’s studio. A friend from church, Logan, completed the final mix. “It feels like magic,” Tharp said. “I don’t know what he did. But it was a really cool experience to hear that.” The entire process took about six months.
Tharp is considering a limited run of CDs for her latest EP. The album contains her and the band’s favorite songs. I joined Tharp at two events to see how she was promoting and then premiering her music. First, I was able to record her performances at the Knox Brew Stories podcast at Suttree’s High Gravity Tavern. “Highway Love” is one of Tharp’s songs from her EP and my first attempt at capturing live music.
Then, I attended her launch party at Flock Wine and Beer, which served as a soft opening. Flock has now opened to the public, covered by Heather here. Tharp played to a packed house. You find Tharp’s music on Instagram and Spotify.
Make some time to delve into the local singer-songwriters working to make music in Knoxville. Find a live show and go support them. Filled with shows at venues around the city, a great resource for performances is Inside of Knoxville’s Ten Day Planner.
Finally, as I asked at the start, shout out some of your favorite local singer-songwriters in the comments and give them some more exposure.