Metro Pulse

Yee-Haw Industries' Julie Belcher illustrates a Big Star song. Full story »

Singer/songwriter Scott Miller has quietly announced on his website a March release date for his next album, For Crying Out Loud, on his own F.A.Y. label. Full story »

The Bijou Theatre will celebrate its 100th anniversary early next year with the unveiling of a new marquee and vertical sign and a series of concerts and events during the last week of January. Full story »

The Square Room held its grand opening in pretty grand style on Saturday night, with a crowd of just under 200 people—most of whom appeared to be under 30, and few of whom seemed to be the usual suspects who turn out for Knoxville concerts—turning out to see the first performance at the new listening room located near the southeast corner of Market Square. Full story »

News has been bubbling for a few weeks—Metro Pulse teased info here in Eye on the Scene back in November and in last week’s cover story—but it’s now official: The Big Ears Festival will bring legendary American minimalist composer and pianist Philip Glass to Knoxville in February, along with an all-star list of international avant-garde and experimental musicians. Full story »

The never-officially-opened Old City nightclub Barataria and its hypothetical companion tapas restaurant bos lafitte are now in “a holding pattern,” says event coordinator Dustin Basalla. In other words, it’s not happening—yet. The delay comes as a result of some unforeseen cash flow problems. Full story »

It’s been more than 10 years since all four original members of Superdrag recorded an album together. But the original lineup of singer/guitarist John Davis, guitarist Brandon Fisher, bassist Tom Pappas, and drummer Don Coffey Jr. reunited in late 2007 for a successful East Coast club tour and a cover of the 1-900s’ “Now” for the WUTK compilation Re-Distilled: 25 Years of Knoxville Rock. They quietly headed back into a Nashville studio in the spring to start work on what members said then might or not turn into a full-fledged comeback record. Those sessions, as well as more in Knoxville and Los Angeles over the summer and early fall, have resulted in the band’s fifth studio disc, Industry Giants, set for release on March 17. Full story »

That big construction project on the southeast corner of Market Square, the one that’s been underway for about a year, should finally come to an end in a couple of weeks when the Square Room music venue and the adjacent Cafe 4 open for business. The two businesses will be operated by 4MS Entertainment in three heavily refurbished buildings—4, 6, and 8 Market Square—and will include a 450-capacity concert hall and listening room, a full-service restaurant, and a coffee shop and bakery. Full story »

Way back in the dark ages of 1982, in the throes of Reaganomics and New Wave and really big hair, Scott Black was the first voice heard on the University of Tennessee’s freshly birthed student radio station, the venerated broadcasting entity we now know as WUTK FM 90.3. Black can’t remember the first song he played that afternoon. “It may have been Weather Report or the Clash,” he said. “Those were my favorites.” But he recalled other details of that fateful first day at a reunion for WUTK veterans on Nov. 7 at Patrick Sullivan’s, the first such reunion to be held in the station’s nearly 27 years on the air. Full story »

Long time no hear from Actors Co-op, Knoxville’s favorite vagabond theater company. Marat/Sade, the company’s most recent production, drew respectable crowds back in May at Ironwood Studios. Full story »

The Basement Gallery, one of the stops that has expanded the monthly First Friday tour out of downtown proper, will be closed for the foreseeable future during construction in the gallery’s building on Jackson Avenue. Full story »

The Tenderhooks will wrap up a 10-day tour of the East Coast with a CD release show with Virginia band the Wading Girl at Pilot Light on Friday, Oct. 24. The Tenderhooks recorded New Ways to Butcher English, the follow-up to last year’s Vidalia, in a pair of New York studios earlier this year and will have the 11-track album available at the show. Nathan Moses of the Bitter Pills will man the turntable before and after the show. Full story »

One of Knoxville’s unsung heroes has announced the conclusion of the treasured little secret that was the Writer’s Block Live monthly concert series at Knoxville Museum of Art’s intimate, acoustically perfect 170-seat auditorium. Full story »

The Art Gallery of Knoxville will move out of its space at 317 N. Gay St.—the one near the Interstate 40 overpass with the word “COPYSHOP” stenciled in large red letters on the front—at the end of November. That will be the end of the gallery as a physical space, but it won’t be the end of the gallery itself, which proprietor Chris Molinski says will stay active as an arts enterprise. Full story »

For now, the “Internet” part of Cherries Internet Cafe takes precedence over the “Cafe” part. The new high-tech gathering place at 17 Market Square, located under the offices of the Knoxville Chamber, opened on Sept. 25 after several months of delay, but won’t start serving lunch and hot drinks until later this month. Full story »