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Relooking at ‘Louie’
A year after his death at 94, maverick musician Howard Armstrong is getting more exposure than ever. The former Knoxvillian, who spent his childhood in La Follette, is the subject of not one, but two featured films at Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival. One is Louie Bluie, Terry Zwigoff’s irreverent look at a cocky, bawdy, outspoken Armstrong as he was around 1984. It covers the fiddle/mandolin virtuoso’s early exposure on WROL, and the soundtrack includes “Vine Street Drag,” recorded in Knoxville in 1930. The second film is Louie Bluie’s unexpected sequel, Sweet Old Song, by Boston filmmaker Leah Mahan. Completed a year before Armstrong’s death, that gentler film concentrated on the musician’s late-life romance with Barbara Ward, the woman who became his wife. Both films were originally shown nationally on PBS and concern his youth in East Tennessee, but they show diametrically different sides of the colorful and complicated performer. The festival’s finale on Sunday, April 25, will be more or less a tribute to Armstrong, who spent his non-retirement in Boston but returned to Knoxville several times in his last years; one of those trips is documented in Sweet Old Song. The series, shown in the Virginia Theatre in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, were personally chosen by Ebert, an Armstrong fan. Ebert had gotten to know Armstrong during the Martin, Bogan, and Armstrong era of the ‘70s, when the group played regularly in Chicago.
Going My Way?
A recent survey of Knox County employees by the Knoxville Regional Transportation Planning Organization showed that as many as 90 percent drive to work alone in a car. In other words, only about 10 percent of county employees take advantage of carpools, public transit, and other more environmentally friendly transportation alternatives.
The average commute is 24 miles round-trip, and costs the commuter about $2,000 every year, according to IRS mileage allowance rates. “Our challenge is to get people to think about just how much this is affecting them,” says Clark Miller, employer-outreach coordinator of the TPO.
To help change long-standing transportation habits, the TPO is currently offering a carpool ride-matching service at www.carpoolworld.com/knox-smart-trips.html. Online users can enter their addresses, and places of work and receive a list of compatible carpool candidates instantly. “We hope the database will expand to the point where we’ll have thousands participating,” Miller says.
For those who run into problems with their own ride to work, the local Community Action Committee offers a supplementary Guaranteed Ride Home program to a limited number of participants. Residents in either Knox or Blount County can call the CAC at 524-7433 and sign up for a Guaranteed Ride voucher, which entitles the bearer to a free ride in the event of a missed carpool or other emergency. “Our larger plan is to encourage other transportation alternatives,” Miller says. “The Guaranteed Ride is just one more way to increase people’s comfort level. It’s a back-up plan for the new commuter.”
April 15, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 16
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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