Do they find fame and fortune or lose their souls in the Music City?
by Joe Tarr
It happens almost every time Brian Waldschlager comes home. He'll be out somewhere drinking a beer and an old acquaintance or fan will approach him. After a few pleasantries, a certain loaded question usually rears its head.
"When I come home to Knoxville I'll be drinking at the Longbranch or somewhere and some one will come up to me and say, 'So, you still like it down there?' It's like they're setting me up. They want me to say it sucks. I can't do that.," Waldschlager says.
"There seems like there's this perception of Nashville from Knoxvillians that [Nashville] is the big steal-your-soul, kill-your-spirit kind of city. I guess it could do that to you."
Knoxville music fans' resentment toward Nashville is certainly understandable. After all, this old rival seems to frequently lure (steal?) some of Knoxville's best talents away. We're not just talking about Roy Acuff and Chet Atkins—in recent years it has also claimed local icons like Waldschlager, John Paul Keith (formerly of the Viceroys and Nevers, currently with Stateside), Tom Pappas (formerly of Superdrag, now fronting Flesh Vehicle), Dave Jenkins and Paul Noe (both of the first incarnation of the Judybats and the Nevers), and the Cheeksters.
While it's not impossible to get by as musician in Knoxville, Nashville obviously has more to offer in the way of clubs, industry buzz and hope for a major label deal. We caught up with a few of them to find out how the Music City has treated them, what they miss about Knoxville and whether they've sold their souls.
Mark and Shannon Casson say the Cheeksters weren't looking to move to Nashville when they left Knoxville in '95. "What we really wanted to do was move to London, but we just couldn't afford it," Shannon says. "We wanted to be in a bigger city."
"We had a good run in Knoxville, but there were only so many places you could play in town," adds Mark. So the couple settled on Nashville. They've since recently moved again, to Asheville. While they have mixed feelings about Nashville, they don't regret their time there.
"Living in Nashville, pursuing your music in Nashville, you're thrown into a different league. It forces you to be better, as a musician," Mark says. "The competition is a lot stronger. It forces you to be a better player."
Paul Noe moved to Nashville in '96 for lack of a better plan, after the disintegration of the Judybats. He was quite comfortable and happy in Knoxville, but says, "I couldn't come up with a reason not to move."
Noe played in the short-lived Doubters Club before forming the Nevers with fellow Knoxvillians Dave Jenkins and John Paul Keith. That band broke up in late 1999 because their label, Sire Records, wouldn't release the group's debut album. Noe is not currently in a band, but he and Jenkins run the indie label Disgraceland Records, which has released CDs of several Knoxville-connected acts, including Brian Waldschlager, Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes, Jag Star, the Ghosts, the Cheeksters, the French Broads and Stateside.
"Everybody in town plays something. Everyone's a singer-songwriter. How do you get a Nashville singer off the porch? Give him five bucks for the pizza. It's that bad. Everyone came here to be a musician," Noe says.
Waldschlager moved to Music City because he felt like there was little left to do in Knoxville. "I'd felt like I'd done my time in Knoxville. It was like I'd reached a plateau or a peak in Knoxville. Nashville could have been L.A. for all that goes," he says. "I just felt like if stayed in Knoxville I'd stop playing music."
But it was a move he'd come to doubt for a year or so, cut off from his support network in a city where it seemed like everyone was trying to prove themselves.
"It was pretty damn tough. I'd already played in Nashville a number of times, but I didn't have a good concept of it. Just coming down and playing a club show every now and then is not a good impression [of what it's like]. I felt like I was pretty popular in Knoxville, and it was like starting all over again.
"There was a lot of soul searching for a year, forcing myself to go out," he says. "There was a period where I had to go out and play by myself, which is not something I'm used to doing. In Knoxville I was always a singer that sang everyone else's songs. You get out there in that singer-songwriter in-the-round crap and you're like, 'Oh, shit, I'm all alone.' It turned into stress and neurosis. I think it helped me in the long run."
Waldschlager now plays with his own band and in the Brooklyn Cowboys. The Cowboys will probably play Knoxville sometime this spring.
Despite its reputation as a music city, none of the musicians say playing live in Nashville is all that much fun. The audiences are too jaded and spoiled from seeing good music all the time. "The shows are not as fun as in Knoxville," Noe says. "Too stuffy, too many people trying to make contacts and be seen rather than just get drunk and have fun. In Knoxville, people weren't there to try to prove how cool they were. There's always a coolness factor, but nothing like Nashville. In Nashville, half your crowd is label people or musicians saying, 'Oh, I could do that better.'"
Even if the shows go over well, it can be tough to get people to keep coming back, Waldschlager says, because the crowds are always looking for something new. And while the musicianship may be top-notch in Nashville, the pay isn't.
"I made a lot more money on live gigs in Knoxville. You could make enough money to pay $100 a man on weekends. Here, it varies. I haven't made money in so long on a gig. Usually, I hope I can pay my band. To me, I look at it as promotion," he adds. "There are guys that try to string together $30-gigs every night just to make a living."
Of course, the Cheeksters, Noe and Waldschlager don't move in the same music circles that most people imagine when they think of Nashville music. "If a country music star rear-ended me with their car, I wouldn't know who they were," Noe says. "I've probably seen a lot of country stars and I didn't who they were. They probably have hang-outs, but I don't know where they are." (He did see Steve Earle once at a Waffle House.)
Waldschlager has had more contact with the big-time music industry. He dated Lucinda Williams for a spell, which got him into a lot of music-biz parties. Later on, he scored a publishing deal. "It was probably my only real scrape with the Music Row crowd," he says. "I didn't really thrive in that. I went into it with best of intentions, thinking I'd make a living writing some songs. I felt like I was forced into writing radio-friendly country stuff. I'm oversimplifying. But I didn't want to be a part of the problem and I don't like country radio."
Despite their complaints, the Knox ex-pats say Nashville really isn't all that bad. The Cheeksters eventually quit it because they wanted to be closer to Shannon's family and the mountains, and they're expecting a newborn Cheekster. "Everybody who goes to Nashville, after about three or four or five years, you tend to get burned out on it. I'd be a liar to say we didn't get burned out," Mark says. Still, they made some good friends, including their current producer.
Noe married recently and now has a full-time day job. Waldschlager is starting to feel more comfortable there and loves the bands he's working with.
"Nashville's really not that big, but it's got a lot of stuff going on. I don't go out that much these days, but on any given night you're seeing world-class stuff that nobody ever hears about," Waldschlager says. "Whatever's really your cup of tea is here....Everybody's conception of Nashville is overshadowed by country music schlock city. You're often very surprised to walk into some club and say, 'Holy shit, that's amazing—why didn't I hear about that?'"
Heck, it might even be a Knoxvillian up there on stage.
January 31, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 5
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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