Jacket Required

Bullfrogs in the Old City will soon be home to The Rainbow Club, an upscale adult-oriented dance club, bar, and restaurant. Ed Price and Jeffrey Bishop, who once co-owned a club in Atlantic City called the Wagon Wheel Saloon, are hoping to open their doors during the first week of June. The front half of the club will feature a bar, pool table, and dining area, with a large dance space out back. An unusual decor is planned, featuring antiques and a technicolor laser light show; and the music will be DJ and adult contemporary only. No techno. Specials and promotions, as well as the menu, are still in the planning stages. And you might want to call ahead about a dress code.

Country Bee-bop?

The newest country station in town is at 104.5 on the FM dial, the former home of the big-band station, WQBB. Journal Broadcasting out of Milwaukee recently bought the station from Sequoyah Communications to add to its other holdings in Knoxville, Star 93.1 and Oldies 102. Not to worry, the Dorsey and Miller bands are still swinging in their new home at WQBB1040 AM. At this time, the new country station is on auto-pilot until some new DJs can be acquired, hopefully by the end of May. For the moment, the new channel will share the original call letters but will eventually be named WKIX or some derivative thereof.

Local CD Review

T. Strickland
Nothing Here to Sell (Speedy Rabbit Music)

What you've got here is your basic woman-with-acoustic-guitar set-up—equal parts folk, pop, and rock. But what sets the enigmatically named T. Strickland apart from all those other Indigo wannabes is that she does it pretty darn well. The 10 songs on this local release actually have memorable hooks and stand apart from each other (check out "Lie to Me," "Just Say," and the downbeat closer "Not Here with Me"), mostly avoiding the droning sameness that plagues the genre. As a songwriter, she's concerned with being in love, staying in love, and wondering what went wrong with love; not new ground, exactly, but she sidesteps the "fire, desire" clichés in favor of simple straight talk. Her singing is confident, husky, and sincere, and she's no more guilty of occasional over-emoting than, say, Melissa Etheridge. The production is impressively professional, smooth but not slick, and the extra instrumentation on some tracks—violin, cello, sax—lends tasteful texture. Strickland has built up a following on the bar-and-coffeehouse circuit from here to Chapel Hill, NC.

1,001 More Uses For a Harmonica

Say it with Zippy—music is music. Those lovers of melody who would not be caught dead at the symphony deserve a good knock on their elitist little heads. Harmonica virtuoso (yes, you did read that right) Robert Bonfiglio gave quite a show last weekend when he buzzed and hummed through Villa-Lobos' Concerto for Harmonica with conductor Kirk Trevor and the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. While some of us still aren't quite sold on the idea of a harmonica as a classical instrument, it was an enlightening experience. Also on the bill was a new composition, commissioned by ASCAP to honor a former executive, called Shine by Maryville native Jennifer Higdon. Rounding out the evening was Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, Op. 45, which made you want to run right out the door, conquer something, then spend the winter freezing in a Gulag. And who said classical music wasn't moving?

Nashville meets Knoxville

It was billed by some Nashvillians as "that Knoxville show," and it played at the same time as the sitcom event that marked the end of a television era. Nonetheless, last week's Thursday night Dancing in the District outdoor concert featuring past and present local artists Shinola (with former Knoxville boy Brian Waldschlager), the V-roys, and headliner R.B. Morris was reportedly a big success at Riverfront Park in the heart of downtown Nashville.

Dancing in the District is a free concert series sponsored by the city every week from May to August, and the May 14 bill had the misfortune of coinciding with the much-hyped last episode of Seinfeld. Despite the conflict, more than 6,000 music city residents trekked out to the park on the banks of the Cumberland River to hear some of East Tennessee's finest. To which we can only say: "Yadda, yadda, yadda!"

—Zippy "I Miss Elaine Already" McDuff