Metro Pulse

A couple of years ago, right after his former band Whiskey Scars broke up, Jonathan Sexton took a break from music—a long break. He moved into a lonely, isolated spot in South Knoxville and went back to graduate school. Full story »

I’ve done band performances, and while it’s fun, my schedule really prohibits me from being able to set aside practice time. I can, however, huddle around my laptop at 2 a.m. imagining I’m a rock star and put things together that I force a roomful of people to listen to later. Full story »

The Hackensaw Boys, a six-piece band from Charlottesville, Va., that plays ramped-up old-time string music on traditional instruments, will be pulling double duty in Knoxville on New Year’s Eve. Full story »

Over the past 29 years, Todd Steed has played as a member of seven different Knoxville bands, not to mention solo under such non de plumes as Todzilla and Johnny Stank. He has released 10 albums, three cassettes, and one single. He’s driven thousands upon thousands of miles to perform over 600 dates in at least 100 cities, and has played abroad in five other countries. He typically permits himself only one beer per set; thus, at a minimum of, say, two sets per show, that’s at least 1,200 beers consumed in the line of duty playing rock ’n’ roll onstage. Full story »

House music—that bass-heavy dance music engineered specifically to make you restless, capable of being overheard through brick walls and over great distances—is actually rich in subtle nuances and subliminal pleasures. It’s also rich in history. One of the form’s progenitors, San Francisco DJ Mark Farina, makes an appearance in the booth this weekend at World Grotto. Farina talks to Chris Barrett about what you can expect and why.

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“Local Singer/Songwriter Throws Self to Wolves, Is Eaten Alive.” That could’ve been the title of my 2005 interview with Christa DeCicco, a shy songstress who’d recently been dipping her toes in the shark-infested waters of local open-mic nights. Her voice—a precocious, velveteen purr—was pretty, no doubt. But was it a worthy opponent for the cruel, cold world? Full story »

How Knoxville's biggest hole-in-the-wall music and arts nightclub got started. Full story »

Combining sweat equity with just plain sweat, Jason Boardman has cultivated a thriving arts and music scene centered around the scruffy former storefront now called Pilot Light. The barkeeps pour for tips and some bands play in exchange for a recording of their set from the board. Not only do they all keep coming back, they bring friends and pimp the place nationally, online and by word of mouth. Matthew Everett talks with Boardman and some of his club’s high-profile fans. Full story »

There are easier things to do than keep a death-metal band together. Like, almost anything. Take the long-running Florida band Hate Eternal. In a little more than a decade, only founding guitarist and vocalist Erik Rutan has appeared on all four Hate Eternal records. Rutan has gone through nine supporting members for recording and even more to play live shows. And that track record got even more turbulent in the months leading up to this year’s Fury and Flames. Full story »

The Misfits are the biggest horror-punk group of all time. That may not be saying much, considering that they’re the only one, ever, as far as most people are concerned. But no other band has ever been able to capture the same brutal heaviness, self-referential wit, masterful songwriting, and sense of high camp that marked the band’s earliest iteration, from 1977 to 1983. Full story »

Practitioners of Groove Therapy, musicians Kenneth and Keith Brown play with and against the looming reputation of their famous father, pianist Donald Brown. Having grown up in a house full of talent that teemed with a jazz giant A-list of dinner guests, the younger Browns stand poised for a musical career that may take them beyond Knoxville’s jazz clubs. Mike Gibson swings along. Full story »

Katie Herzig is not an intimidating woman. She has the sisterly charm of a camp counselor and sings songs that turn into transitional segments on Grey’s Anatomy. Nonetheless, there is something that separates Herzig from the ever-growing flock of fair-haired folk-pop songbirds out there—something that has helped her find her niche among elite Music City competition. Katie Herzig might not be intimidating, but she’s not intimidated, either. Full story »

If Jeff Heiskell is looking to wipe the slate clean, then his first solo album under the name Heiskell will do the job and then some. His new self-released album, Clip-on Nose Ring, is a blistering account of relationships, cynicism, and regret, fueled by some of the catchiest melodies of his 20-year career. Full story »

A vibrant local underground arts-and-music community has been churning along in downtown Los Angeles for almost 10 years, and its biggest ambassadors, guitarist Randy Randall and drummer/vocalist Dean Allen Spunt of the noisy pop duo No Age, are set to make the city a rock capital for the ’00s in the way that Athens, Ga., and Seattle were in the 1980s and ’90s. Full story »

When chamber music ventured beyond the drawing rooms and libraries of its origins and into larger concert halls and theaters, it suffered a predictable fate. Subtlety and nuance, defining characteristics of the personality of a small ensemble, were invariably lost in larger spaces. Fortunately, though, there is no finer theater-sized hall—in Knoxville, at least—suited to chamber music than the Bijou Theatre. Full story »