Archive for the ‘Sunspot’ tag
Jon Worley’s comin’!
Lock up the chickens and send your daughters to Aunt Bertha’s house — Jon Worley is coming back to East Tennessee.
Former leader of the Cornbred Blues Band, Worley was a fixture on the local music scene for several years — playing shows, couch-surfing and getting into all manner of trouble, usually with a good story to tell. But then, around 2008, he dropped off the radar.
“I played 600-plus shows in 2.5 years, and I woke up homeless in the back of my van with my tooth falling out and arthritis in my leg,” Worley told me this afternoon. “I had to reevaluate and take a little time off. I got with a real good woman, and she straightened my ass out.”
Worley is calling from Akron, Pa., with news of an East Tennessee bombing run — a June 4 date at Sunspot in Knoxville and a June 5 date at “The Shed” at Smoky Mountain Harley-Davidson in Maryville, where he’ll open for Hayes Carll. He’ll be traveling in style, he said — driving a 23-foot 1977 Apache RV on a Chevy G30 van frame.
“I’m gonna convert the damn thing over to propane and rock on down the road,” he said. “Here I’m going all green in my old age.”
First things first — he’ll be in town by the weekend to play the Boombutywah Festival (see the next post), and on May 30, he’s gonna rock the Farragut Building at 530 S. Gay St. (the corner of Clinch and Gay) at a shindig being put on to commemorate the late local moonshining legend “Popcorn” Sutton.
“We’re gonna call it the ‘Popcorn’ Sutton Memorial Jam,” he said. “We’ll have a full sound man, a couple of kegs from Woodruff’s and I’m gonna make up a batch of Jon Worley’s Purple Jesus.”
Worley’s planning on putting together an impromptu member of Cornbred; in addition, local Celtic rockers Cutthroat Shamrock will perform. An unedited version of a “Popcorn” Sutton documentary will also be shown, he added.
“It’s all in there — all the cussin’, all the Johnny Knoxville getting (messed) up and retarded and puking — that’s all in the film,” he said.
Doors open at 7 p.m.; cost is $7 and the show is open to the public. (”Unless you’re a cop,” Worley added.)