Steve Wildsmith

That storied Knoxville institution — The Longbranch Saloon (1848 Cumberland Ave. — “The Strip” — in Knoxville) — has a couple of holiday activities you might want to be aware of. First up is the annual Christmas gathering coming up on Friday, Dec. 25. It’s nothing set in stone, but regulars traditionally gather there every Christmas, and since many of those are musicians and artists, they’ll be encouraged to jump on stage and rock out. It’s free to get in on Christmas night.

Then, coming up on Dec. 29, it’s the 33rd anniversary show of the Branch, which has hosted live music and provided a home for punk, rock and all manner of other genres when no other East Tennessee venue would have them. On the bill — R.B. Morris, Hector Qirko, Sean DeChant, Jeff Heiskell, the Tim Lee 3, Roger Smith and Drew’s Country Blues. It begins at 9 p.m. and costs $10. Check out the flyer:

Some changes are afoot at the fabled Longbranch Saloon, that institution on “The Strip” that’s been a part of Knoxville’s live music scene for decades.

Out: Coffee Doiel, the guy who booked shows at the club for the past two years, raising the venue’s status as a bastion of edgy rock ‘n’ roll and a place where the area’s punk scene could congregate. According to Doiel, it happened almost two weeks ago — via a note.

“I came in, and there was just a note that basically told me I was fired and that the whole punk rock thing isn’t working out and that they want to do something completely different with it,” Doiel told me this week. “They said the place was getting too trashed. I called them later on that night, and they told me the exact same thing that the note said.”

“They” would be John and Diane Stockman, the venue’s overseers. According to Diane Stockman, Doiel’s services were discontinued because of an overload of punk shows and the destruction left in their wake.

“We were having a little bit of trouble with the punk shows causing damage,” she told me. “We’re still doing kind-of punk, but not necessarily the death-metal punk.”

It wasn’t like the Longbranch — long known as a local dive whose charm can politely be described as “rustic” or “shabby chic” — was being torn apart at the shows, she said; but Doiel and the bands he booked didn’t do such a hot job of cleaning up the joint when the shows were over.

“It was just a combination of things,” she said. “Although he did do a good job and booked a lot of bands, I just felt some of them were a little too much of the skinhead-type of bands. We’re just changing the format a little bit and toning it down a little bit more.”

Now in charge of booking — Jordan Sangid, who’s worked there for about a year and a half. He hopes to make the Longbranch an arena for different types of local music, and he’s committed to honoring the shows that Doiel booked before his termination.

“We’re keeping it a local dive bar, but with a little more pizazz,” he said. “We were having punk rock shows here every night, and when you have shows where people get into it and move around, things get broken. And things were getting broken every night.”

Two shows of note on the Longbranch schedule — both booked by Doiel — the hardcore outfit ANTiSEEN, scheduled for Sept. 19, and The Murder Junkies, the former backing band of the late shock-rocker G.G. Allin led by Allin’s brother, Merle. Sangid also is looking ahead to the first show he’s booked in his new capacity — The Pinstripes and Royal City Riot, a double bill scheduled for January 2010 at the Longbranch.

The fallout from Doiel’s removal, however, remains to be seen. According to him, the punk shows were always well attended, and the bar sold a large amount of beer.

“And it’s not like we were just having punk shows — there were all kinds of shows on the schedule,” he added. “Since I got fired, I’ve had a lot of bands call me, canceling because they don’t want to play. They say if I’m not working there, they don’t want to do the shows.”

While such a statement may sound conceited, local scene legend Christopher Scum hails Doiel’s accomplishments at the Longbranch.

“I see him as like the Rus Harper of the 2000s, because he’s done more for punk rock in this town than anybody since the 1990s,” Scum told me. “He’s sunk his teeth into it and made it his business to have a place for people to go see music. As far as violence goes — I can’t say how many shows I’ve been to since he’s been working there, but I’ve seen one fight that whole time. One fight — and that’s because some college students from Florida wandered in on a football weekend.

“If people were getting slam-dancing mixed up with fighting, that’s a different thing. There was always a little pit, but it was all in fun — you’d knock somebody down and then pick them back up. It was the spirit of 1976, man — a place I was proud, being an older punk myself, to see kids come out and behave and show  spirit in a way I haven’t seen in a long time. I think they made a grave mistake, but that’s their decision to make, obviously.”

For a full schedule of Longbranch shows or to contact Sangid, visit the venue’s new Myspace page.

For some folks, a “reunion” show of a band that’s only been apart for six months, give or take, might seem a little self-serving. We have it on good authority, however — from Cold Hands frontman Henry Gibson himself — that it’s for a good cause. (And really, what other “cause” is there besides dancing your ass off? Seriously. Cold Hands is a smokin’ indie dance-pop outfit.)

We wrote about the band last October (you can read that here), when the group put out the album “Sex. Beats. Romance.,” and shortly thereafter, Gibson joined up with up-and-coming indie rockers The Royal Bangs. The Bangs are signed to Audio Eagle Records, owned by one of the dudes from The Black Keys, and according to Henry, the new Bangs album is due out in September. No word on the name or anything else … but in the meantime, you can check out the Bangs’ Audio Eagle page (where you can download a free mp3), and keep up with the band on Myspace for the latest on the new record.

In the meantime, you can check out Cold Hands — at the reunion show — at 9 p.m. Friday, July 31, at The Longbranch Saloon, 1848 Cumberland Ave. (”The Strip”) in Knoxville. Also on the bill: You Just Don’t, Flak Jaket and Kiss Your Ghost. Admission is $5.

As a bonus … you can download a free Cold Hands mp3 from our site!

Download “Taking a Ride,” by Cold Hands: Right-click here (choose “Save Target As” or “Save Link As”)

Buy “Sex. Beats. Romance.”: Click here

Cold Hands on Myspace: Click here

Got an e-mail from Bryan Baker, formerly of The Unashamed. That band came out of Maryville College and made a bit of a local splash before losing its female vocalist; the members have since parted amicably and gone on to separate projects. (Michael Knouff is now the guitarist for Waste and Regret, part of last weekend’s Maryville Metal Fest, which we profiled here.)

Baker’s new band is Bright Shining Lie, which will perform Saturday at The Longbranch Saloon, 1848 Cumberland Ave. (”The Strip”) in Knoxville. Also on the bill: Local rapper Confadential and Messes of Men, a band from Kentucky. Check out their pages. Here’s the flyer:

A little over four years ago, I interviewed Merle Allin, brother of the late infamous shock rocker G.G. Allin. It was a fascinating interview, and one of the few that earned me a letter to the editor. (The writer, if I remember correctly, was horrified that I would write about a band he considered to be a worthless purveyor of trash.)

The Murder Junkies are coming back to East Tennessee on Saturday night, April 25 — to the Longbranch Saloon on the fabled Cumberland Avenue “Strip” in Knoxville. They’ll be playing with The Dirty Works, Campaign of 1984, Cooter Punch and The Lucky Bastards; showtime is around 8 p.m., and the cover is $10. In memory of G.G. and as a nod to Merle, here’s that interview from December 2004 …

Murder Junkies carry on depraved legacy of G.G. Allin

Published: December 3, 2004

ON THE WEB: www.murderjunkies.com, www.ggallin.com

By Steve Wildsmith
of The Daily Times Staff

To his diehard fans, G.G. Allin was a god. To his detractors — which, prior to his death of a drug overdose in 1993, numbered much larger — he was on a par with the Antichrist.

Perhaps no other person in popular culture has generated as much controversy as Allin, who took rock ‘n’ roll depravity to levels unheard of before and not matched since. From his shocking songs — “Young Little Meat” and “Expose Yourself to Kids” were some of the tamer titles in his repertoire — to his on-stage antics that often ended in bloodshed, riots, death threats and arrests, he forced society to re-think what it meant to defend freedom of speech.

Chances are good he’ll never be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and that his legacy will always focus on his theatrics rather than his music, but his old band, The Murder Junkies, are still going strong. And bandleader and guitarist Merle Allin remembers G.G. as more than just a cyclonic freakshow of a man that he turned into on stage. For Merle, he was his kid brother.

“G.G. was just like you hear me talking to you now,” Allin said in a recent phone interview with The Daily Times. “He loved to talk about music, about politics, about whatever. He was basically as normal as anybody else when he was just hanging out. But he had a need to push buttons.

“People pushed his buttons when he was around people who tried to impress him. There are so many ignorant a–hole people out there in general, it’s enough to irritate me every day, and when you’re like my brother and you have a short fuse, it doesn’t take much to send you over the edge.

“Most of us can tolerate the idiots around us more than some people,” Merle Allin added. “He happened to be one of those who couldn’t tolerate other people’s [crap]. And when people were afraid of him, he sensed that, and he used it.”

One thing’s for certain — G.G. Allin wasn’t a phony. He lived the lifestyle he espoused, blowing any meager earnings from performances and recordings on drugs, hookers, booze and pornography. He started playing rock ‘n’ roll in the late 1970s, and over time, his act grew more and more dangerous and sadistic. He rarely performed for more than 10 to 20 minutes before clubs shut him down, starting off in a jockstrap and winding up in the buff. He beat himself bloody with broken bottles, torn cans and the microphone (which he occasionally used to sodomize himself).

He attacked his audience physically and with his own body fluids, including his excrement, which he would either eat or sling at the crowd. He once attempted to have sex with a dead cat an audience member tossed onto the stage, he corresponded with imprisoned serial killer John Wayne Gacy and he promised to commit suicide on stage during a Halloween show. (The drug overdose took his life before he could take his own.) While he was still alive, Allin appeared on numerous television talk shows, including Gerald Rivera and Jerry Springer, and was the subject of a critically acclaimed documentary, “Hated,” directed by Todd Phillips (the same guy who would go on to direct “Old School,” “Road Trip” and “Starsky and Hutch”).

Despite his vile tendencies, he continues to hold sway over a throng of loyal fans — those on society’s outer fringes who applauded his absolute freedom of expression or couldn’t turn away from what basically amounted to a human train wreck, a force of primal fury that satisfied every degenerate craving of his out-of-control id.

“He was a genius, and a great songwriter,”Merle Allin said. “He wrote great lyrics, and he got more … records out than most artists. I can see people thinking it’s garbage, but anybody that can be that productive and put out that much product with a market for it has something going on.

“And the Murder Junkies were a part of it, you know? I think we were a big part of it toward the end. We did more shows with him, and I think we’re probably known to be one of his better bands, too. We spent 1991 to 1993 touring with him, and we’re not ashamed of our past. It’s part of who we are, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

“We don’t do the same type of things G.G. did when he was alive, but the music is the same and the attitude is the same,” he added. “Our singer does his own thing, but we do play some of the old classics as well as some new stuff and some of the stuff we wrote with G.G. We’re basically just old-school punk, and that’s just our style. Nobody else sounds like us, and 99 percent of the bands we play with suck.”

Merle Allin was along for the ride with G.G., during their troubled childhood and during his final years. (Their father was a rigid fundamentalist conservative who didn’t allow conversation or any sort of light when night fell and allegedly dug the family’s graves in the basement of a two-bedroom log cabin where G.G. and Merle grew up.) He admits that at times it was downright frightening — like certain dates in Texas, when howling protesters chased the band out of town or when mobs would trap the members in their dressing rooms.

“I don’t know how we ended up getting out alive,” Merle Allin said. “He was too far ahead of his time for everybody, and now that he’s dead, it’s cool to be into him. It’s more safe now, especially since he’s become a legend since his death. And I admit, we kind of benefit from that, too. Obviously, we played with him and we enjoyed touring with him, the antics he did and the danger involved.

“It was the most exciting time any of us will ever experience in rock ‘n’ roll. If you went to one of our shows back then, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and we got to enjoy it together. There won’t be anything like it again.”