Holbrook remembers a small part he had in the 1965 film “The Fool Killer,” featuring one of the last appearances of actor Henry Hull, and his time spent filming it in East Tennessee. (He remembers it shooting north of town; on the website IMDB, the filming location is listed as Louisville, Tenn., right here in Blount County.)

Wherever it was, Holbrook’s part was that of an old man — a dirty old man, no less.

“I was 30-something years old, and they used that old-fashioned makeup with glue and cotton batting to create a heavy crust on your face, and it shrank,” Holbrook told me this week. “It was horrible! I had the dried egg all over my shirt, fly was half open and this heavy makeup on. And we were working on this farm up there. Well, it was hot, and between takes, I would lay across the woodpile just to rest myself. It was the only available thing away from everybody, and I would just lay on it and rest my bones.

“This old lady who owned the farm — her husband had passed on, and she was pretty old herself — she thought I was the real thing! She started to get interested in me, asking me how my health was and if I was married. And the crew got in on it, encouraging her. And this lady proposed to me! She asked me if I wanted to marry up with her and, according to Bible practice, she would deed the farm over to me.

“For the next 15 or 20 years, every time I did ‘Mark Twain Tonight’ in Knoxville, some of the crew from that film were there, and we’d always talk about that lady and have a good laugh,” Holbrook added.

We caught up with him this week at practice with his new bandmates, Katie Collins and Megan Driscoll, and he told us what he’s been up to.

“I’ve been doing solo sets here and there, and out of a night of hanging out me and Katie and Megan got together and decided to come together musically,” he said. “I was making beats and playing guitar, Katie was playing ukulele and Omnichord and Megan was singing and playing flute. We decided to take it Rachel Jae, who’s a theatrical director, and she, in turn, got her boyfriend involved — Dane Hill. He’s a cool guy and a good musician, and he’s been playing drums and bass.

“We’ve been taking songs I have written, plus some new covers and fleshing the project out.”

On Aug. 25, the band played at The Pilot Light with Katie and the Bass Drums, a show that was originally booked as Arrison Kirby solo.

“By that point, we could do all this, so we decided we might as well put on a show,” Kirby said. “I did about three songs by myself, and then they came out and joined in. We had a good turnout, and we had some theatrics to it — a fog machine, everything we could muster. We try to evolve it every time.”

After struggling through a relationship that he says sucked the life out of him, he feels like he’s back on track musically. El Deth isn’t making money hand over fist, but he did recoup the expenses for putting out “Inkling” by Senryu, and he’s looking forward to what’s ahead.

“The eternal goal always is to erect some massively huge conglomeration type of project, and I feel like I’m back on that path toward that,” he said.

Personally, we feel that’s a good thing — Kirby and his El Deth label add a much-needed dose of avant-garde, quirkiness and experimentalism that every scene sorely needs.

FREE MUSIC!

DOWNLOAD “ALL OF ME ALL OF US,” BY ARRISON KIRBY: Right-click here (choose “Save Link As” or “Save Target As”)

They’re at it again — this time trying to promote Saturday night’s show at Big Daddy’s Scoots and Sports Bar and Grill, 2641 Highway 411 S. in Maryville. Singer Cole Graham and fellow ‘Slinger Blake Rider stopped by The Daily Times the other day, trying to figure out what to do with the more than 500 flyers they had printed for the show — a gift from a friend who works at a print shop who, despite the goodness of his heart, didn’t think about how the guys would distribute them all.

They tried Wal-Mart in Alcoa; the cops were called. They thought about the Maryville College campus, but Rider says he’s “banned for life” over an incident involving a girl. And they did hit another local bar that has declined to book Gun*Slinger — an establishment that shall remain nameless — and did a commando-style papering of all the cars in its parking lot. (Graham even strolled in and handed out flyers to patrons before management blew a gasket and threatened to summon the law.)

Truly, these dudes are some bad boys — but ain’t that what rock ‘n’ roll is all about? Besides, they’re just trying to let everybody know — Saturday’s show takes place at 9 p.m., is free and will feature the first performance of every song from the band’s forthcoming new album, “Dangerous Curves Ahead.” The guys are looking to finance the record by pre-selling copies — which means you make a donation up front, the band pays for studio time and you get a new album when it’s done. It’s a good plan, a good way for struggling bands to get their music recorded and a way for fans to help out up front. Check out the band’s website for info on how to donate.

FREE MUSIC!

DOWNLOAD “PICK UR POISON,” BY GUN*SLINGER: Right-click here (choose “Save Link As” or “Save Target As”)

You get the idea. It’s the annual Labor Day/birthday bash celebration this weekend out at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson, 1820 W. Lamar Alexander Parkway in Maryville, and to commemorate the occasion, owner Scott Maddux and his crack team of motorcycle and music enthusiasts have a full weekend of events planned.

Saturday night, there’s the annual visit by country-rock hooligans the Kentucky Headhunters with opening act The Van Lears; the show starts at 8 p.m., and tickets are $20. On Sunday night, Blount County’s own The Drunk Uncles, with their pal and roots-music ace Larry Cordle, will take the stage at 8 p.m.; tickets to that show are $10. But it’s tonight’s headliner who’s getting a lot of press these days — piano man Leon Russell, he who resembles Gandalf the White and has played with just about everyone on the planet, from the Rolling Stones to George Harrison.

His most recent project is the one getting the most attention these days — “The Union,” a collaborative album with Elton John. The new record, produced by Oscar and multiple-Grammy winning producer T Bone Burnett, marks the first time these iconic artists have worked together since 1970. It was recorded live in the studio with Elton and Leon on dueling pianos, features 14 songs (including ones written by Elton and his lifelong lyricist Bernie Taupin, as well as the combined songwriting team of Leon, Elton, Bernie and T Bone).

According to a recent press release, Leon first met Elton in 1970 when he attended Elton’s first ever U.S. show at the famous Troubadour in Los Angeles. The meeting heralded the beginning of a long friendship and a mutual appreciation between the two artists.  “In the late ’60s and early ’70s, the one piano player and vocalist who influenced me more than anybody else was Leon Russell,” Elton said.  “He was my idol.”  The pair went on to tour together shortly thereafter at New York’s Fillmore East and to this day have held such high admiration for each other’s work.

After years of being out of touch, Elton listened to Leon’s music while on safari in Africa last summer and was inspired to reconnect with his idol.  “Elton called to ask if I would do a duet album with him,’” Russell said.  “I’m very happy that he chose me to do this.”

Russell’s performance takes place at 8 tonight; tickets are $25. Husky Burnette opens the show.

On one of the band’s first visit to the United States (well … a working visit, we mean. Nicholson, after all, grew up here in Blount County.) — back in August 2009 — the guys spent some time in Manhattan, filming a background scene for the romantic comedy. It all started, Nicholson told me on Thursday, when the band performed a Los Angeles show at The Troubadour. As with most Hollywood stories, a friend of a friend ended up knowing someone at New Line Cinema who came to the show and saw some potential in the band.

“It just so happened they happened to have this movie and needed a band in our situation, and we seemed to fit that role pretty well,” Nicholson said. “They gave us a script and passed us along to the director, who was in New York. We played New York a couple of days later and the director came out to see us and it just happened from there. It was a very smooth kind of transaction.”

Filming for the band took place over a couple of different weeks. Compared to the experience of making music videos, having a small role in a big-budget romantic comedy was a bit mind-blowing, Nicholson added.

“They shut down a whole block of New York City and had about 250 crew (members) and 300 extras,” he said. “They have really long days — they start about 7 a.m. — but we didn’t do our thing until 8 p.m. So we were there for 13 hours before we did anything, just sitting around watching it all go on and taking it in.”

The two leads introduced themselves to the band and have since become friendly; they hung out with the band members at the London and Los Angeles premieres and even introduced The Boxer Rebellion at the British V Festival. The band, which appears on stage twice during the film (but have no speaking lines, unfortunately), performs two songs and wrote a third — the new “If You Run” — for the soundtrack.

“It was pretty random and quite surreal,” he added.

If you’ve seen commercials for the film, you’ve heard The Boxer Rebellion — the band’s song “Spitting Fire,” off of the album “Union,” is playing during practically the whole thing. If you’re on the fence for the October 12 performance by the band at the Clayton Center for the Arts on the Maryville College campus, perhaps hearing the music in the film will change your mind. Or, you can download the free .mp3 below.

We’ve told you all about the band numerous times, but in case you’re discovering this blog for the first time on this post, here’s a recap: In January 2009, the band released “Union,” its sophomore album (a follow-up to 2005’s “Exits”) — a self-financed album that was available solely through iTunes. Within 24 hours of its release, “Union” had peaked at No. 4 on the iTunes U.S. Albums Chart, No. 5 on the iTunes UK Albums Chart, and knocking My Morning Jacket off the top-spot to take No. 1 on the iTunes U.S. Alternative Chart. The album was disqualified from entering the Official UK Albums Chart as no physical CD was in stores at the time, but that didn’t stop the band becoming the first unsigned band in history to enter the Billboard Albums Charts at No. 82 on a digital-only release.

Last December, iTunes declared “Union” its Alternative Album of the Year. This summer, the band recently completed work on “The Cold Still,” its forthcoming third album, with acclaimed producer Ethan Johns.

DOWNLOAD “EVACUATE,” by The Boxer Rebellion: Right-click here (choose “Save Link As” or “Save Target As”)

One such group, the hardcore outfit Straight Line Stitch, is getting some national exposure these days, and yesterday I got a press release in ye olde e-mail inbox about two upcoming tours by the Knoxville outfit — opening for 36 Crazyfists and Soulfly. Straight Line Stitch earned a reputation as one of Knoxville’s heaviest bands shortly after forming in 1999, when the members changed the name from Machines of Hate.

Here’s the press release on the tour:

“We are excited and honored to be supporting 36 CRAZY FISTS on their first national headlining run. When we’re out with those boys it feels like home because we know all of them so well and it just makes for a much more fun experience. It’s going to be a party for sure!” says Straight Line Stitch front woman Alexis Brown.

Alexis continues, “We get to tour with SOULFLY too? WOW! That about sums it up. We have been fans of SOULFLY since day one. They have been rockin’ out for a minute, and now that we get to support them just makes everything that much sweeter. We’re really looking forward to sharing the stage with them and hopefully learning a thing or two along the way.”

There’s no Knoxville date on the schedule … yet. Here’s the closest SLS shows:

October 05th Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade (w/ 36 Crazyfists and Taking Dawn)

December 04th Cleveland, OH – House Of Blues (w/ Soulfly and Incite)

The band, incidentally, features Alexis Brown on vocals, Seth Thacker and Pat Pattison on guitar, Jason White on bass, and Kanky Lora on drums. Their latest release on eONe/Raging Nation Records, “When Skies Wash Ashore,” is in stores now.

In e-mail us the music calendar for September, we received this statement:

“Also we will be adding another restaurant that will have live entertainment nightly.  We are opening another Smoky Mountain Brewery in Maryville.  It will be open sometime after Dececember 1st.”

I’ll give more details as I find them out.

Merchant, who first made a name for herself as the front woman for 10,000 Maniacs from 1981-93 before going solo, will perform Tuesday, Aug. 31, at The Tennessee Theatre in downtown Knoxville. I interviewed her for this Friday’s edition of The Daily Times Weekend entertainment section, and while she laughs at the memories, it’s clear her previous performances in our fair area didn’t always go well.

“I have a really clear memory of playing in Knoxville the last time — it was in 1999, I think,” she said. “I remember I asked if anyone had a horse so I could go horseback riding, and someone did, so they took me — and the horse bolted and ran into the forest. I’m not a very experienced rider, so I told them to give me the oldest, most tame mare they could find. They did, and it still bolted.”

The coup de grace as far as Knoxville stories go, however, was a performance previous to that, when 10,000 Maniacs was opening for R.E.M. (From what I can find online, that would have been Oct. 1, 1987, at Stokely Athletic Center on the University of Tennessee campus.) Merchant and R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe have long been friends, but that particular appearance didn’t end well for Merchant.

“The footlights had been trained on Michael’s chest, but they hit me in the face,” she said. “As the warm-up band, you don’t have the luxury of a soundcheck and testing out the stage. I went out on the first song and was completely blinded, got tangled up in a cord, fell off the stage and sprained both knees.”

Wait … it gets better, she added. It was cold outside, and when the crew took her to a local hospital, she didn’t think to grab her coat. Someone else did, however, and as they were pushing her into the hospital, someone draped the jacket around her shoulders.

“They took me to the maternity ward because they thought I was going into labor!” Merchant said with a laugh. “A nurse came over and asked, ‘How close are the contractions?’ I said, ‘I’m not having a baby! I fell off the stage and sprained my knees!’”

On a more serious note, she’s had a baby in the years since — daughter Lucia, born in 2003 — and being a mother in today’s world, especially for a socially conscious artist like Merchant, isn’t always easy, she added.

“Many aspects of the world have become unbearable to me now — the cruelty, the wanton destruction,” she said. “I have this vested interest in the future, and when I hear about ocean temperatures rising and how all the fish in the ocean might be dead in 50 years — that’s in my child’s lifetime. Before, I would have thought, ‘That’s tragic, but I’ll be gone.’ Now I feel it’s my responsibility to care more. I should have cared before, because other people’s children were going to live to see it, but I certainly do now.

“For the first two years of my daughter’s life, I would get physically ill reading the newspaper. I realized everyone who perpetrated a crime, every victim of a crime — whether it was a petty crime on the street or a crime against humanity like what’s happened in Darfur or Kosovo — all those people were infants and completely innocent at one time. What the hell went wrong?

“I keep turning to a lack of love,” she added. “There just isn’t enough love in the world. People spend their entire lives searching for the love they didn’t get from their parents.”

That story is stuck in our archives, unfortunately — which means you have to pay to access it — but to hell with that. Here it is in its entirety, because I just wanted to.

By Steve Wildsmith
stevew@thedailytimes.com

Barry “Byrd” Burton never thought Saturday’s reunion show by 1960s rock band The Loved Ones , one of the first original bands in Knoxville, would cause so much commotion.

But the gathering of Burton , Terry Johnson and Mike Coyner, appearing onstage together for the first time in almost 30 years, is the buzz of the Knoxville music scene — especially for those around during The Loved Ones‘ heyday.

“I can’t say that our status didn’t occur to me, but it certainly wasn’t anything I ever pondered,” Burton said during an interview this week. “It’s just something we did, at the time and place where and when we were. Let’s just say that a lot of things came together all at the same time for us.”

The Loved Ones will perform, along with a handful of other bands, on Saturday on Market Square Mall in downtown Knoxville. It’s the inaugural MetroFest, put together by Metro Pulse to raise money for a proposed park and to pay tribute to East Tennessee’s storied music scene.

The Loved Ones date back to the 1960s, when The Beatles and The Rolling Stones inspired kids to pick up guitars and start their own groups. It was an era of youthful exuberance and freedom, a time when Beat poets and ’60s radicals encouraged independent thought and the shaking free of the shackles of conformity.

And just as the lure of excess took its toll on big-time bands in those days, so it did on The Loved Ones as well. Coyner replaced the late Dorian Rush, who died during the band’s heyday, and while this weekend’s reunion was still in the planning stages, death claimed bassist and founding member Doug Graham as well.

Burton, modest in his assessment of The Loved Ones‘ role in East Tennessee’s rock scene, said the decision to go ahead with Saturday’s show was made for the benefit of the band members as much as it was the public.

“We’re hardly John, Paul, George and Ringo, but Doug’s passing has added another dimension to it for us,” he said. “For us, it is sort of a healing process. The guy who’s going to play bass with us on Saturday was always kind of a fifth Loved One and was a member of the band for a while in the second round.”

Burton, who session work is in high demand in Nashville, said the biggest adjustment, besides being back in the Loved Ones lineup, will be putting his vocal chops to work once again.

“I haven’t sung much in years, and now I’m going to have to sing again,” he said with a chuckle. “From that point of view, it scares me a little. I don’t mind the playing — I play every day. It’s just a matter of playing different songs.

“And without Doug, it’s going to be weird playing these songs. I haven’t played some of them in 30 years, and I’ve never played them without him. Whatever happens, he’ll certainly be there in spirit.”

And so will an outpouring of good will and fellowship, as those who followed in the wake of The Loved Ones ‘ success — from Boogie Disease to R.B. Morris to members of the Lonesome Coyotes — pull up a chair to watch their forebears once again show them how it’s done.

“I’ve been living in a world where every note has to be just right, and on Saturday, I’m going to put aside constant striving for musical perfection and just have fun,” said Burton, who left The Loved Ones and went on to serve as guitarist and producer for the ’70s country-rock outfit the Amazing Rhythm Aces. “If it’s not all right, it won’t matter It won’t matter if someone plays the wrong note or sings flat.

“Because if the four of us can have fun, everybody will have fun.”

Even the spirits of those long and recently departed, which will no doubt linger in the shadows, where the echoes of old rock songs played with renewed vigor settle like late-afternoon rain.

Steve Wildsmith is the Weekend editor. Contact him at steve.wildsmith@thedailytimes.com or at 981-1144