Knoxville520.com

The concept was simple: Any opportunity to do a show where the musicians participating are coming together for the sake of solidarity and to celebrate our shared musical heritage and scene is a good idea.

The name was a little harder to nail down.

It was on a Thursday night at the New Knoxville Brewing company, when Michael Davis, Matt Foster, and I were trying to come up with a name for the show. Names were kicked around pints were consumed. After about fifteen minutes or so of banter, Michael Davis of MBRC (Medford’s Black Record Collection) fame, got a glassy look in his eyes as if he were remembering a story his Pap told him when he was three, and said, “What about the Americana Jug Train?”. Matt Foster and I kind of looked at each other a little funny, nodded our heads, and it would have been up for debate if Michael hadn’t began to tell us a story he read on the Patrick Sullivan’s website.

On a hot Autumn night in late October of 1907, Knoxville held it’s breath as a sweeping election brought an end to the frontier saloon spirit. During this period of Knoxville past, the corner of Central and Jackson was infamously known as a place where proper and gentile ladies and gentlemen dare not tread. Back then, the central street area was called the Bowery and famous throughout the south as one of the seediest and quickest places to acquire anything of ill repute. The liquor flowed freely and according to K-town folk lore, the women apparently did too. By the eve of the election, the corner of Central & Jackson had become the South’s Mecca for the roaming troubadours and pre-vaudevillian acts that coalesced to any geographic location that included whiskey, women, and the free exchange of money for a good time. Seizing their last opportunity to “legally” get their drunk on, the musicians, ladies of the night, all of the liquor a within a hundred miles of Knox county, and a good percentage of the population of 1907 K-town gathered in the bowery and lined Central Avenue to have their last grand party and participate in the lost art of the Jug Train.

As the streets began to line with onlookers and partiers alike, barrels of beer and jugs of whiskey began to be passed around. All of the musicians began to play, and a city united for the sole purpose of communal mourning for their lost saloons. The party that ensued will forever be seared into the Knoxville subconscious as the measuring stick against which all block parties must be compared. The next day was one of the worst city wide hangovers the South had ever seen.

While gathered for a rehearsal of the top secret song the six of us are going to do as the grand finally of the Friday night show, we all sat and talked about our place within the cultural tapestry of Knoxville’s Musical tradition. John Puckett responded, “ We all just need to play together more if it’s two of us or six. Originals are the key--having the courage to play your own tunes in the face of your average straggler who wants you to play a Sublime song or a Charlie Daniels cover and giving them your original material instead. If they like it they’ll buy a CD. That’s when music becomes fulfilling and profitable.”.


John Puckett

When asked about how it feel to be a part of the K-town music scene, Roman Reese replied, “I feel privileged that’s about the it.”. He laughed for a few moments before saying, “I enjoy getting out and playing music that people can somewhat identify with. That’s the goal. I just feel privileged to be out in Knoxville and east Tennessee and be able to play. It’s a hard scene and being able to stay in there with it gives me a lot of pride.”.

Brendon James Wright piped in saying, “ The really cool thing about this show is that I know all of you from really different places and different styles. There always seems to be a musical current running through it that connects us all together. Let’s face it. Everybody in this room is someone I respect as a musician and song writer, and there aren’t many out there that I do respect.”

Michael and Matt of MBRC are to blame on this one. They are the original conspirators that concocted this once in a lifetime collaboration. I myself feel extremely privileged to be a part of one of the most unique shows that the Old City has seen in a while. So come on down and be a part of history in the making this Friday at Patrick Sullivan’s in the upstairs ballroom, and remember, if a bomb went off at Pat Sullies Friday night, three quarters of the working folk musicians in Knoxville would go down.

Brendon James Wright

Jon Worley