Everybody’s Talkin’ ’Bout Honky Tonk Thursdays

Every Thursday night, Barley’s in the Old City dims the lights and Knoxville turns into a small Southern town again.

Honky Tonk Thursday isn’t just an event; it’s a ritual. The kind that makes you forget what year it is until you notice punk rockers spinning with elected officials and college students counting their steps beside a couple who learned to dance on their honeymoon 30 years ago.

The simple version: Once a week at 7 p.m., there’s free two-step instruction, a live honky-tonk band and a dance floor full of people who show up to move together. No cover. No costume requirement. No expectation that you know what you’re doing. Just a warm “hey y’all” and a hand reaching out.

Two-step is a form of social dancing where people move in pairs around the floor in a counterclockwise circle, stepping to a quick-quick, slow-slow rhythm. The circle matters. It’s not just choreography; it’s a decision the room makes together. You move the same direction. You keep going. You don’t get to opt out of the fact that other people exist.

Anne Elyse Kahane showed up alone last summer, on her birthday, without any country dance background at all.

“I believe embarrassment is the defining feeling that dictates how you live your life,” she told me. “You either get embarrassed and bitter and angry and retreat into yourself, or you get humble and realize you have more to learn.”

She paused, then laughed. “You recognize that you can’t know everything. And if you do, you’re in the wrong room. You need to learn from other people.”

That’s Honky Tonk Thursday’s offering: a room where humility isn’t punished. Where being new is nothing new. You can walk in alone and leave a little lighter.

After that first lesson, Anne Elyse kept coming back. And once she felt how quickly the space could hold someone, she started looking out for the people hovering at the edges, the ones standing alone, unsure where to step in.

For years, she said, she hadn’t felt rooted in Knoxville at all. Now, she makes a point to be one of the first people to say hello, to ask someone new to dance, to make sure no one feels invisible in a space that once felt intimidating to her too.

There’s no obligation attached to any of it. Dancing with someone doesn’t mean you owe them a conversation, a phone number or a future date. It’s intimacy without expectation, good, clean fun in the best sense of the words.

I understand why that matters because I remember my own first night.

Mine wasn’t at Barley’s. It was a Wednesday night in a church basement in Old North: fluorescent lights, folding chairs stacked against the wall and a bowl of snacks on the table.

I walked in with my friend Carly with the specific kind of nervous energy that makes you suddenly aware of your limbs. A stranger named Sasha smiled at me like she’d been expecting me and embraced me like an old friend.

That’s the thing people don’t always tell you about belonging: Most of the time, it isn’t a big emotional monologue. It’s a hug. A genuine smile. Someone making room without making it weird.

To understand how a night like this came to exist, you have to go back to when Russell Walker returned to Knoxville after three years in Chicago, where he’d fallen into the city’s honky-tonk scene. When he came back, he carried that rhythm with him.

He didn’t want to just go out and dance at the next live country music show. He wanted to build what he’d experienced firsthand there: a scene that felt like community, rooted in movement, music and mutual care.

Russell wandered into a few country dance lessons hosted by Cowtown Studios, the local dance company founded by Patrick Guzman, where he met Patrick along with dance instructor Jill Taylor. A couple of months later, Russell secured the community space at Fourth Presbyterian Church and began offering free two-step lessons every Wednesday night, with Patrick and Jill occasionally stopping by to help teach or say hello.

What came to be known as the “Two-Step Fellowship” became a standing weekly event. People who barely knew each other made plans to meet wherever live country music was happening in town, using any dance floor they could find to practice together.

Before long, Russell and his band locked down a weekly residency at Suttree’s High Gravity Tavern on Gay Street, and Thursday became the night when dancers, bands and newcomers finally had a floor of their own.

On the night of the inaugural Honky Tonk Thursday, the New Market Trainwrecks played, free dance lessons were woven into band breaks, and something clicked. What had been scattered effort crystallized into a standing ritual: one night a week, every week, where music and movement belonged to everyone in the room.

And people noticed. Not in an “oh, that’s cute” way, but in a “this is a real thing” way.

Will Allison of Wild Bill and the Bruisers, a staple in Nashville’s honky-tonk scene, first played Honky Tonk Thursday at Suttree’s when it was only a couple of months old. With a history as both a performer and a social dancer at Nashville’s renowned Honky Tonk Tuesday, he expected something looser. Maybe even tentative.

Instead, he was struck by how intentional the Knoxville scene already felt.

“I was surprised how focused the community was on getting out to learn these dance moves,” Will said. “People really were coming out to get together and have fun moving their bodies on a Thursday.”

That intention is the whole point. It’s why the room doesn’t feel like a performance. It feels like a practice, something you return to because you need a refill.

Knoxville City Council member Matthew DeBardelaben experienced that openness from the very first night he attended. In social dancing, partners take on lead and follow roles that aren’t tied to gender, and Matthew dances as a lead.

“Most often the person I’m dancing with is much more experienced than me,” he said. “Even though I’m technically the lead, it’s really my partner who’s teaching me.”

He’s noticed the difference in how people mix there compared with other public spaces.

“There’s no pretense,” he said. “Some nights I’m just there to enjoy the music. Other nights I’m ready to dance and learn. In both cases, I feel welcome.”

What keeps Matthew coming back, he said, is simple: the music, the dancing and the authentic community and conversations. He described Honky Tonk Thursday as “a wonderful movement” taking shape in Knoxville. 

That movement became visible with each passing week at Suttree’s. The circle grew thicker. The energy got louder. And after a year on Gay Street, Honky Tonk Thursday moved to Barley’s in the Old City. Not because the spirit changed, but because the room had to.

When Wild Bill and the Bruisers recently returned to play at the new venue, Will saw a bigger stage and a larger crowd, but the same core energy.

“Some consider Knoxville a secondary market,” Will said, “but folks really turn out and turn up for the bands.”

He’s right. Knoxville shows up when Knoxville cares. And Honky Tonk Thursday has become one of those rare things the city keeps choosing on purpose.

Jill Taylor still teaches the lesson each week. Boots planted. Counts called over the hum of the room. Quick-quick. Slow-slow.

“Almost every week I have a moment where I look out on the floor and think, this is what heaven looks like,” Jill said. “Everyone’s jumping around, smiling and connecting. And oftentimes with complete strangers.”

Jill emphasized the fact that two-step is simple enough that someone can walk in cold and be part of it immediately. But it’s elastic. You can add twirls, dips and flourishes, or strip it back down to the basics and never fall out of step.

Because the dance doesn’t require mastery to participate, the floor stays open. Beginners and regulars mix without ceremony and the distinction between them disappears.

Jacob Balzer, who works as a wildfire firefighter in California and spends his off-seasons moving between cities, has danced in honky-tonk communities across the country.

“Dancing is almost like language,” he said. “You go to a new place and you learn their local slang.”

Jacob landed in Knoxville in the early days at Suttree’s and enjoyed the Knoxville scene enough to return again this year.

“The feelings I had dancing with my favorite partners in Jackson Hole… I feel the same thing here.”

Some people come for the music. Some come because Thursday is the loneliest night of their week. Some come because they’re tired of being a brain in a city and want to be a body in a room.

Somewhere in those early basement lessons, I realized I’d been holding a death grip on my leading partner’s hand. Russell teased me about it, and he wasn’t wrong. It takes time to let someone else guide you when life has taught you to brace for impact.

But that’s the quiet thing this dance teaches you: to follow. To loosen your hold. To trust that the person in front of you isn’t trying to steer you wrong. And if they mess up, you keep moving anyway.

Near the end of a Honky Tonk Thursday night, I gather my purse and camera and head home to my dog, alone but not lonely. The rhythm is still in my body: quick-quick, slow-slow, steady as breath. 

Behind me, inside that room on Jackson Avenue, friends and strangers are still reaching for each other’s hands, stepping into the circle and keeping each other upright. In true Knoxville fashion. One Thursday at a time.