Jon Worley a vessel for the mystic

Knoxville-based musician Jon Worley

Knoxville-based musician Jon Worley

Knoxville musician Jon Worley

KNOXVILLE — Musician Jon Worley says to get a real appreciation of what he does, you might have to go somewhere else.

“If you take what I do in the context of East Tennessee, it’s one thing. If you take what I do and put it in the context of the Northeast, it’s a total ’nother. They ain’t never seen anything like me!”

Well, let’s be honest: There isn’t anything quite like Jon Worley — anywhere. Worley is a Morristown-raised singer-songwriter multi-instrumentalist who can reference local history, the Bible, Zen Buddhism, Friedrich Nietzsche and who knows what else in answer to a question like “How’s it going?” He’s a combination of peace-loving hippie, disgruntled malcontent and general rabble-rouser. Fellow musicians attest that to play with him can be a mind-and-chops-expanding experience. Currently, his songs last upwards of 12-minutes and may begin as originals but blend in traditional numbers and covers before the piece is over. A recent number combines an original “about excommunicated Mormons on drugs” with Everlast’s “What It’s Like,” Neil Young’s “Ohio” and a version of “Backdoor Man.”

Worley says he is not quite in control when he performs:

“It’s like strapping yourself into the cockpit of a runaway TIE fighter. I have to be so, for lack of better concept to the Western mind, Tathagata. It means feeling one’s feet within one’s own shoes, the sound of one hand clapping. I have to totally shut my mental processes down to play tambourine with my foot, play keyboards, blues harp and sing and be the bandleader and front man. If I think about it, brother, it ain’t happening. So if you see me and I sound good, I’m not there. I’m a husk that’s getting filled with something and I don’t know where it comes from. My job is to just get the bucket and fill it up and bring it back for people. It heals me spiritually and emotionally, and if it does that for me I can only imagine what it does for the people in the audience if they let it.”

The constraints of being a musician playing small clubs and bars, though, can sometimes make the journeys difficult. A recent gig at a Best Western in Johnson City was transcendent somewhat because the musicians were treated and paid well by the hotel, but it’s usually more of a struggle.

“Club owners ain’t paying anybody straight,” says Worley. “This is the worst economic climate to do something. Everybody is willing to play for free.”

Worley, who travels a circuit that ranges from Knoxville to Philadelphia and New York, says he is always “one bad show away from playing for change at the BP” in order to buy gas.

“One bad show and you don’t eat,” he says. “For every dollar I make there’s probably two hours put into it.”

Worley says his prospects up North are a little better, because the quality of local music is not as high.

“The (junk) they put on stage up North wouldn’t make it through an amateur improv night at Preservation Pub here. They’d throw them off stage. You tell people you can play three hours of material and they can’t believe it. Up there kids have maybe 30 minutes.”

Worley has several projects in the works — some are collaborations with social justice and historical themes. He understands that people might not quite “get” him.

“I played Knoxville for six years and sucked for at least two of ’em!” says Worley. “But everything is an evolution. People who want to come see me better see me now. Whether I’m dead in the grave from working so (expletive) hard or whether I make it and call you up and send a limo your way and say, ‘Let’s go smoke some weed in Acapulco,’ I ain’t gonna he here long. I feel an historical weight to the work I’m about to do, and I’m not afraid of it.”

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