Metro Pulse/Cover/Best of Knoxville 2003

Comment
on this story

Music & Clubs

The 10th Annual Metro Pulse Readers' Poll

Music & Clubs

Bluegrass/Country Band:
Robinella and the CCstringband
Runner-Up: Lonesome Coyotes

Jazz Band:
Donald Brown
Runners-Up: Knoxville Jazz Orchestra,
Streamliners

Rock Band:
Jag Star
Runners-Up: Gran Torino, Matt and Eric

Blues Band:
Hector Qirko
Runners-Up: Slow Blind Hill, Cheryl Renee

Male Vocalist:
Dave Landeo
Runners-Up: Kenny Chesney, Scott Miller

Female Vocalist:
Robin Contreras
Runners-Up: Maggie Longmire, Jodie Manross

Rock Club:
Blue Cats
Runners-Up: Pilot Light, Fiction

Jazz Club:
Baker Peters
Runners-Up: 4620, Lucille's

Gay Club:
Carousel
Runner-Up: Lord Lindsey

Dive:
Toddy's
Runners-Up: The Spot, Opal's

Strip Club:
Mouse's Ear
Runners-Up: Katch One, Last Chance

Brewer:
Calhoun's
Runners-Up: Hopps

Best Neighborhood Pub, Best Jukebox:
Preservation Pub
Tell me if you think this makes sense. You want to open a bar. So you pick a part of town where you've already got a lot of competition, with probably more good bars per acre than anywhere else in East Tennessee. And within that neighborhood, you pick a place with no visible parking at all, free or otherwise. It's also a place that's just on the brink of being torn up by earth-moving equipment for a multi-month construction project, a place you can only get to by walking from a one-way street down a narrow fenced-in sidewalk. And that's where you open your bar.
That's not a formula for business success. But somehow it worked. Soon after they opened at the location of the former Mercury Theatre on Market Square last summer, the place was packed nearly every night. And it draws not only the usual downtown barflies, but a diverse assortment of college students, artists, lawyers, yuppies, librarians, politicians, and big-shot developers who are known to powwow here on a late weekday afternoon. Even the frigid night when snow and ice had shut everything else in Knoxville down, the Prez Pub was hot.
An encyclopedically liberal collection of bottled beer and draft ales is one part of the formula. Free and almost always interesting live music is another; in its short history, the music has ranged from torchy pop to British invasion to bucket-bottom blues sung by a certain youthful Hollywood renegade. The pub's unusual deal with the nearby Tomato Head, which offers delivery to the place, doesn't hurt. But many people just love the handsome staff and equally handsome interior, which, by the late-afternoon sunshine coming in through the Victorian transom, can be beautiful. Wooden booths, wooden tables, and a nice wooden bar, walls covered with interesting historic pictures and quotes about Knoxville specifically and drinking universally, and a jukebox with local favorites and nothing ordinary on it. The worthy cause—the pub donates a big chunk of its profits to preservation—is icing on the cake.
A neighborhood pub, downtown? Preservation Pub is undeniable testament to the fact that downtown is indeed a neighborhood now.
A warning: if our experience is any guide, when you're at Preservation, the hands on your watch may tend to accelerate to alarming speeds. We suspect it's a magnetic phenomenon in the Square.
Runners-up, Neighborhood Pub: Union Jacks, Toddy's
Runners-up, Jukebox: Rooster's, Union Jack's, Long Branch

Concert Venue:
Tennessee Theatre
Runners-Up: Blue Cats, Bijou Theatre

Local Release:
Maggie Longmire, Teachers & Travelers
Runners-Up: Jodie Manross Band, Going Somewhere Soon; Robinella, No Saint No Prize

Pool Table:
Bailey's
Runners-Up: Barley's, Breakers