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The Big Ticket

First Friday
Celebrate April! Now finish your taxes. Friday, April 2, 5-9 p.m. Market Square. Free.

Scott Miller & the Commonwealth w/ Rob Russell & the Sore Losers
East Tennessee knows how to rock. Friday, April 2, 9 p.m. Blue Cats. $12.

Ashley Cleveland
Christian music star returns to her roots. Friday, April 2, 7 p.m. New City Café. Call 544-0100 for tickets.

Godspell
Inspirational song & dance. Friday, April 2 and Saturday, April 3, 8 p.m. Sunday, April 4, 2 p.m. Bearden High School Auditorium. $10-$12.

Ijams Annual River Rescue
Fight back against litter bugs! Saturday, April 3, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. Ijams Nature Center and spots along the Tennessee River. Call 577- 4717 ext. 15 to sign up.

R.B. Morris & Hector Qirko
Poetry and madness set to music. Saturday, April 3, 8 p.m. Laurel Theater. $10-$12.

Denny Diamond & the Longfellows
An honest-to-goodness tribute to Neil Diamond. Saturday, April 3, 9 p.m. Patrick Sullivan’s. $7, $5 w/ student ID.

Superjoint Ritual w/ Zeke
Intense. Metallic. Hardcore. Sunday, April 4, 8 p.m. Blue Cats. $18 advance, $20 door.

Video Art @ the KMA
What can they do with a video camera? Wednesday, April 7, 6 p.m. Knoxville Museum of Art. Free.

Tony Conrad and NEXUS Symposium
When a friend told me a week ago that Tony Conrad is playing a show in Knoxville, my response was “who?” A violinist and composer, Conrad was a pioneer of experimental minimalist music, who played long pieces of droning, something they called “Eternal Music.” In the mid-’60s he played with Marian Zazeela, Billy Name, LaMonte Young, Angus MacLise and John Cale (pre-Velvet Underground days) in a group called the Dream Syndicate (not to be confused with Steve Wynn’s later project). Conrad’s biography is too long to detail here, but he’s also collaborated with Jim O’Rourke and Faust. This is the sort of show that the Southeast, let alone Knoxville, doesn’t get very often. It’s part of the NEXUS Interdisciplinary Symposium: Reconstructing Theory and Value, which will include a series of lectures and panels to “consider the challenges of defining and creating sustainable aesthetic, political and philosophical values after postmodernity.” Conrad is a speaker. Others include literary critic Daniel O’Hara, technology theorists Dr. Joseph Tabbi and Dr. Trey Strecker, commentators on art and community Brian Reeves (slopart.com), Emily Abendroth (Temple University), Beauvais Lyons (UT), filmmaker Paul Harrill, among others. (Joe Tarr)
NEXUS Interdisciplinary Symposium • April 1 and 2, beginning at 1 p.m. • UT McClung Tower, rooms 1210-1211 • Free
Tony Conrad concert • Friday, April 2, 9 p.m., following Alive After Five • KMA • $10

Knox Word Spoken Word Showcase
Poetry has a certain elegance on the page, a simple intimacy between words and reader. But when it’s performed, poetry gains energy, momentum and a furtive immediacy. The art of the spoken word combines the political and social awareness of rap and the athleticism of a solo sportsman inside a theater space. You won’t be asked to participate in the second Knox Word Spoken Word Showcase, but you will certainly feel engaged with the performers. Knox Word mastermind Daniel Roop has assembled a decorated cast of superstar poets: M. Ayodele Heath, whose seven-year career has included an Emerging Artist of the Year award from the Bureau for Cultural Affairs in Atlanta; UT professor Marilyn Kallet, the author of nine books who holds the Hodges Chair for Distinguished Teaching; Eitan Kadosh, a nine-year spoken word and slam vet who has shared stages with Nikki Giovanni and Dave Eggers; and Jon Goode (pictured), a 2004 alum of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam whose quiet, but no less affecting, style runs counter to the frequent dramatics of spoken word. Those performers have a laundry list of honors, awards and qualities that rank them at the top of the class. Combined, they make a thought-provoking and entertaining night of living, breathing, death-defying poetry. (Paige M. Travis)
Knox Word Spoken Word Showcase • Friday, April 2, and Saturday, April 3, 8 p.m. • Black Box Theatre • $7 • Call 909-9300 for reservations.

Southern Fried Chicks
Leanne Morgan’s comedic style is nothing unique, but she manages to spin her personal experiences into singularly funny anecdotes. Morgan’s status as a stay-at-home mom allows her to put her family first and devote more time developing her humorous material. “Most people are road warriors who sleep out of their cars, but I have three kids,” she told me in a recent interview. “I work as often as I can, but it’s tough being a mama.”
One facet of her routine is her Christian faith, a topic that gives audiences a less blue show than they might find at a local venue. Morgan has attempted to perform stand-up at churches. “There’s not really room for comedy in church. You can’t say, ‘I went to a urologist and peed in a cup,’ without someone telling you that you’re going to hell. Most Christian comedy is very hokey; they sing a song and tell a few jokes. There are children there, so you need puppets or someone who does a Barney Fife impression.”
Morgan’s next local gig is as one-third of the Southern Fried Chicks, along with Etta May and Karen Mills. Each comedienne plays a stereotype: Morgan’s the suburban soccer mom; Mills is an urban woman of the New South; and May is a plain white trash mama from Arkansas. The show, which is being recorded for an upcoming DVD, should serve as the perfect appetizer for a Friday night on the town. (Clint Casey)
Southern Fried Chicks • Friday, April 2, 7:30 p.m. • Bijou Theatre • $25

The Gemtones
Long before the Indigo Girls, back even before the World’s Fair, back when a gentle peanut farmer from Georgia was president of the United States, there was a female duo known as Diamonds In the Rough. Playing cafes and clubs around Cumberland Avenue, sometimes getting on the road as far north as Manhattan (and, once, doing the vocals on a Si Kahn record), they were the dual object of a thousand crushes.
When it was all over, their paths diverged. One member, Rebecca Bryant, retired from performing altogether, got practical, and went into business. The other, Nancy Brennan Strange, stayed in music. She has made a respectable career of it, promiscuously crossing the DMZ between jazz and country, cutting the occasional record, like 1997’s Les Etoiles Mysterieuses with jazz-piano virtuoso Donald Brown. Today, she’s one of Knoxville’s best-known singers.
Well, what do you know. Here it is, 2004, and Nancy and Rebecca are singing together again—but this time in a different package, as half of a harmony-based quartet called the Gemtones. Rounding out the group are a couple of menfolk—George Reynolds on vocals, bass, guitar, and banjo, and Brian Sward on lap steel guitar and mandolin.
The Gemtones performed at various low-key benefits around town last year, but this show at downtown Maryville’s Palace Theater looks like an event. We don’t know what to expect, except that their repertoire leans toward what Nancy calls “old-time country pop,” Patsy Cline and the like. We hear Lonesome Coyote Steve Horton will join them on a few numbers.
Sharing the bill is one of the original Red Clay Ramblers, now keyboard balladeer Mike Craver. (Jack Neely)
A double bill with The Gemtones and Mike Craver • Saturday, April 3, 8 p.m. • Palace Theater • $12.