Wayne Bledsoe

Mac Comer leads a double life. By day, he's known as "Mr. Comer," 1st grade teacher at Beaumont Elementary. On weekends he's "your local hippie guy," leading a band of musicians through a stack of happy songs.

Last week was a rough one for local music. Knoxville lost both Rocky Wynder and Ed Corts.

Eric Church says, lately, it seems as if he's in the middle of a tornado. After six years of merely respectable radio and touring success, Church has jumped to performing in sold-out arenas. Church says it was a recent show ...

Harmonica great Wallace Coleman knows he's on the back end of the blues. Blues clubs are closing and the appreciation for the blues is probably lower than it's ever been.

Saxophonist Edwin "Rocky" Wynder was always chasing a sweet melody. A stalwart performer on the Knoxville music scene for 62 years, Wynder, 83, died in his sleep at home Saturday.

Nothing spurs interest in an album more than when the company contracted to put the album out says the artist contracted to put the album together created something the company doesn't want.

The thing that hits you about a conversation with Scott Biram is just how unlike his image he seems to be. Biram's music is rowdy, gritty and unhinged. He doesn't just sound like a guy on the edge. He sounds ...

Typically, a band's crowd surfer is a lead singer or a lead guitarist. Future Islands bassist William Cashion is happy to report bass players can do it, too.

Modern pop act St. Vincent will perform at 8 p.m. Thursday, May 22, at the Bijou Theatre.

Lana Del Rey has stirred up a storm even before her first physical album is even released.

Every now and then there's a moment that sums up what it's like to be a local musician. For guitarist Chad Volkers, one of those moments came when he played in a quartet with trumpeter Mike Spirko for the second ...

Geoffery Keezer knows that every now and then he needs to get his mind off of music, but it's always going on in his mind.

Guy Clark is what you call a songwriter's songwriter. If he'd only written "Desperados Waiting on a Train" and "L.A. Freeway," he'd probably still be a legend, but his catalog of great songs is vast. More than 30 artists deliver ...

Steep Canyon Rangers guitarist and vocalist Woody Platt says his original influences didn't come from the bluegrass world and it wasn't one particular piece of music that set him on his musical path. "I had a Boxcar Willie tape back ...

When Shelby Lynne decided she wanted to write songs, she wasn't going halfway. "I set the bar pretty high," says Lynne. "I always wanted to write songs like Kris Kristofferson."

Documentary filmmakers may have an even harder time getting their films considered for Academy Award eligibility in 2013. According to a story by Michael Cieply of the New York Times News Service, the Academy is considering adding to the many ...

The song "Knoxville Girl" had been around for a long time when the Louvin Brothers recorded it. But it's Ira and Charlie Louvin's version, from the classic 1956 album "Tragic Songs of Life," that remains iconic. It's fitting that the ...

Drummer Duane Trucks says there's a philosophy to the music of the band Flannel Church:

Erin Zindle has the category of her band the Ragbirds: "World music inspired folk rock," says Zindle. "I just have this love of world culture and the diversity of people. I can see it as a mosaic of this beautiful ...

Ailing Knoxville musician Ed Corts will be honored at the Pinecone Jam 2012 on Jan. 5.

I gave up saying what the "best albums of the year" are a long time ago. No, all I can say is what albums meant something to me during the year. What albums did I go back to and they ...

The sound coming from a warehouse in North Knoxville is unmistakable. It's also something music fans on at least two continents thought they would never hear again. Scott Miller, Mic Harrison, Jeff Bills and Paxton Sellers playing music together again ...

When the Everybodyfields broke up in 2009, nobody said, "We'll never do this again." So when organizers of Bristol's Rhythm and Roots Reunion festival asked Jill Andrews and Sam Quinn if they'd consider reuniting the band to appear at the ...

It's been 30 years since the Oak Ridge Boys first harmonized about a bedeviling beauty named "Elvira," but it seems audiences never tire of it.

It's Christmas time again, and there are plenty of musical presents for Santa to put under the Christmas trees of music fanatics.

When the band Quartjar launched a kickstarter effort to record a new album, the band offered to write songs to donor's specifications.

John Prine would probably laugh at the comparison, but listening to his first recordings on "The Singing Mailman Delivers" is a little like finding Da Vinci's first crack at the Mona Lisa. The performances on Prine's debut album were maybe ...

Delbert McClinton doesn't like doing photo shoots. "There comes a point when enough's enough," says McClinton. "Doing a photo shoot is the most difficult thing for me. Looking back in my career and anybody's career, you look at these album ...

It's that time of year again. Christmas CDs are everywhere. Here's my guide to the good, the bad and the ugly:

Justin Bieber's might have made a better pre-puberty Christmas disc. Marcus Roberts, Chris Standring and Kathrin Shorr are real treats and Dave Koz could put Scrooge back to sleep. Santa has a very mixed bag of Christmas CDs this year.

Colin MacDonald quotes the Dandy Warhols to explain his relationship to rock 'n' roll:

After playing Bonnaroo in 2008, being featured in a Turner South TV promo and performing for thousands before a Nickel Creek Sundown in the City concert, Tennessee Schmaltz has been a little quiet for a while.

The band Beirut does not make Balkan or gypsy music. The pop group that has quietly been gaining a dedicated following since the album "Gulag Orkestar" was released in 2006.

Knoxville rock band The Dirty Guv’nahs will give away the group’s touring van “The Blue Bullet” as part of the group’s Kickstarter campaign to finance a new album.

Maynard James Keenan knows that he has a reputation of being difficult with fans.

"Working in Tennessee," Merle Haggard (Vanguard): Merle Haggard is one of the last real country music legends standing. Not only is he still standing, he's still making great music and he's still writing good songs. Haggard, of course, would have ...

Knowing who Joe Bonamassa is is sort like a secret handshake among music fans. He's never had a hit. He rarely makes the news. Yet, he's able to draw crowds in the thousands to his shows.

Taylor Swift talks about the responsibility of being a role model in an upcoming installment of "60 Minutes." Swift, one of the most popular artists in modern music tell "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Shahl that being a role model is ...

Knoxville group Sunday Drive won Inspirational Country Music Group of the Year in the 17th Annual Faith, Family and Country Awards held in Nashville on Oct. 28.

Early sales for tickets for the 2012 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn., begin at noon on Monday, Nov. 28.

If any era needed another Woody Guthrie it's this one. Ry Cooder obviously recognizes that and draws inspiration from Guthrie and his fellow musical populist rebel rousers for the album "Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down."

When LiL iFFy begins to perform it is as if some malcontent young wizard has conjured urban rap culture inside of Hogwarts.

For years it seems that Jars of Clay have walked between two worlds.

In a time when making it in the music business is harder than ever, country trio Lady Antebellum seems unstoppable.

AC/DC singer Brian Johnson will not perform his “Full-Throttle Evening of Stories and Music” at the Bijou Theatre on Feb. 7. Johnson has canceled his entire tour to undergo surgery on his wrist.

The Pixies are regarded as one of rock's most legendary bands, but when the group first arrived on the scene, they weren't the hippest thing going.

Graham Colton is somewhere between Fort Smith and Little Rock, Ark. Although he's just about to turn 30, he's a road veteran.

Knoxville’s Tara Bowlin is now one of 16 bachelorettes remaining on the CMT reality dating series “Sweet Home Alabama.” With two contestants eliminated from the show’s season two debut and four more ousted on the second show, Bowlin is faring ...

Country legend Loretta Lynn is rescheduling her Knoxville appearance for early 2012. Lynn was originally slated to appear on Thursday, Nov. 3, at the Tennessee Theatre for the theater’s “Stars on Stage” annual fundraiser.

Phil Pollard, a staple of the Knoxville music scene, has died. Pollard was best known for his work in Phil Pollard and his Band of Humans, The Bearded, The Slomski Brothers, The Lonetones and Sara Schwabe and her Yankee Jass ...