Both bands are as diverse in sound as they are talented, and it’s been our privilege to have written about them extensively over the years. We interviewed representatives from both bands for the May 1 edition of The Daily Times Weekend entertainment section.

The LoneTones will celebrate the release of their new album, “Canaries,” on Saturday night in Knoxville. Get the lowdown on the show — as well as the marriage of traditional sounds and dissonance on the record — by reading the article.

Download “Gone Again”: Right-click here (choose “Save Target As” or “Save Link As”)

Purchase LoneTones music online: Click here

The young men in 1220 will perform on Friday, May 1, at The Catalyst in Knoxville’s Old City. They’re releasing “Killin’ for a Livin’,” an album that’s leaps and bounds ahead of previous CDs, which were pretty darn rocking in their own right. Find out about the show, and the band’s new power-pop/rock direction, by reading the article.

Download “The Motor Mile”: Right-click here (choose “Save Target As” or “Save Link As”)

Purchase “Killin’ for a Livin’” online: Check the 1220 Myspace site frequently for links

Remember that old “Saturday Night Live” skit, the one where Tom Hanks is the host and, because of the number of times he’s helmed the show, he’s inducted into the prestigious “Five Timers Club,” where Steve Martin and Paul Simon sit around a fire and sip cognac and wear smoking jackets? I joke with Miller that I’m gonna get him a smoking jacket one of these days.

The first Weekend cover I remember him being on was back in June 2001, not long after I started here at the Times. Nothing special; we used the publicity photos Sugar Hill provided for “Thus Always to Tyrants.” Ever since, we’ve tried to shoot our own, and our hats are off to him for being so agreeable to some of my crazy ideas. What a great dude.

Here’s Scott Miller through the years …

Photo shoot for "Upside/Downside"

Photo shoot for "Citation"

"Reconstruction" release, Harley "Shed" concert kick-off

"For Crying Out Loud" CD release, "Shed" show

Should be a rocking package; the photos are already up in our “East Tennessee Bands” photo gallery on our Myspace site. The story will include a kick-ass podcast and, we hope, some video as well.

Something that didn’t make the final cut of the story but I found too good to delete: the story behind his sing-along anthem, “Drunk All Around This Town.”

He wrote it for closing night of his old hangout, Hawkeye’s on the Cumberland Avenue “Strip,” where he found a solo gig shortly after moving to East Tennessee from Virginia.

“I knew when I wrote it that it was gonna be like John Prine’s ‘Dear Abby,’ that I probably shouldn’t ever play it,” he said with a chuckle. “I wrote it specifically for Hawkeye’s, because that place was a mish-mash of everybody – college boys, hard drinkers, rich folks. It’s kind of like looking for your favorite barbecue place; just look for the pickups and Cadillacs in the parking lot, and you know it has a wide swath of clientele.

“I almost put it on ‘Citation,’ but it’s just one of those songs that I knew not to put on a studio album. It ended up on the live record (”Reconstruction”), obviously. And Stephen King loved it. He listed it as one of his Top 10 favorite drinking songs in that column he writes for Entertainment Weekly.

“I sent him a letter thanking him, along with a T-shirt, but I never got a reply,” he added.

For more information on Scott Miller, hit up his website. For a calendar of future shows coming to “The Shed,” visit Smoky Mountain H-D’s “Shed” website.

I never doubted Drew’s ability — the Knoxville singer-songwriter (who, for a time, lived right here in Blount County before getting married and moving to Nashville) proved himself more than capable of artistry on “Washed in Blue,” his last album. But “Passenger Seat” … man, it’s something special. A phenomenal record, if I may be so bold. Here’s a clip from our August 2008 story on the band:

The first track of Holcomb’s new album, “Passenger Seat,” was the benchmark, he added. Other songs were occasionally slow to develop; “Jamie” came out in roughly 15 minutes, and it contained everything he was shooting for.

“It’s just the energy of the whole thing,” he said. “We’ve really enjoyed playing together, and we have a lot of fun on the road and in the studio. That translated well onto the record, and the energy itself of playing with this band has brought a whole new level to me, personally.”

You can check out Drew for yourself at 9 p.m. Friday, April 24, at The Square Room in downtown Knoxville. Tickets are $10 in advance and $12 at the door.

No doubt, some in Saturday night’s audience at The Tennessee Theatre zeroed in on that as further proof that Tweedy, to be quite vulgar, is a dick.

After all, the bumps in Wilco’s career have included some disagreements between Tweedy and various members (ex-drummer Ken Coomer and multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett) that ended in the latter’s ouster. The documentary “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” captured some of that tension, and Tweedy’s well-documented battle with pain pill addiction and split with former Uncle Tupelo bandmate Jay Farrar have cultivated an image of a guy who, when viewed the wrong way, comes across sometimes as petulant or self-centered or, on the far end of that spectrum, an egomaniac.

I contend that he’s none of the above. To be sure, a certain amount of dickishness is a factor in what he does. But it’s not because he’s a jerk, per se. I think it’s because he believes he follows a higher calling, and that friendships, business arrangements, what-have-you … they all come second to the music.

Granted, I have no personal insight into what transpired between Tweedy and Coomer or Tweedy and Bennett. Maybe he woke up one day and decided he’d rather not share his toys anymore. But I think it had more to do with how Jeff Tweedy feels about the music — how he, to be a little cliche about it, is one of the few genuine tortured artists who toil in the public eye; or at least has a high enough profile that his struggles are documented on a national level.

I say that because there was a moment at Saturday night’s concert when I noticed Tweedy standing in the center of the sonic maelstrom of a particular song — “At Least That’s What You Said,” the opening track from “A Ghost Is Born.” It’s a lovely song, one that simmers to a boil before exploding, blowing the lid off the pot as everyone in the band froths and foams and churns into a crescendo.

As the heat began to rise, Tweedy stepped back, and guitarist Nels Cline started to do his thing. Cline, known in jazz circles for some phenomenal guitar work, was on fire all night, rolling with whatever changes were thrown at him and anchoring the Wilco machine with some dazzling fret work. As he bent and swayed into the song’s guitar cascade, Tweedy was staring toward the back of the room.

His fingers did their thing; no telling how many times he’s played this particular song, so he might have been on autopilot. But the look on his face … I interpreted it as satisfaction. In that moment — like so many others that probably occur to him with this particular lineup of the band — everything felt right. Everyone was in place. All present for one purpose — to play the songs Tweedy hears in his head; playing them the way they’re supposed to be played, the way they demand to be played. He may never be 100 percent satisfied with what he hears in the studio or on stage in comparison to how it sounds in his head, but in that moment, it was as good as it gets.

It was one of several moments in a show that ran for more than two hours and featured two encores. No new material was played, despite the fact the band has a new album coming out in June on Nonesuch Records; instead, Tweedy and co. seemed determined to give the old songs the full treatment before the new one drops and they have a whole other addition to their canon that they must promote. During the second encore, when they morphed from the gentled “Red Eyed and Blue” to “End of the Century” (both off of “Being There”), the crowd — which had been on its feet all night — was goo in Tweedy’s hand. They swayed and clapped and shouted and screamed as the jubilant chords bounced off the theater’s pristine decor, and with Cline to his right and bassist John Stirratt and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone to his left, Tweedy smiled. Behind him, drummer Glenn Kotche and keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen plowed through the slurry of feedback, Americana grit and anthemic melodies that anchor the song.

In that moment, whatever demons might still plague him seem banished. He looked like he was having fun, and even if it didn’t sound like what he hears in his head, it didn’t seem to matter. Because the rest of us heard it, and more than that, we felt it — and that’s all a good musician can ask for.

SETLIST

1) “Outta Mind (Outta Sight)” (from “Being There,” disc 2)
2) “Misunderstood” (“Being There,” disc 1)
3) “Hummingbird” (“A Ghost Is Born”)
4) “You Are My Face” (“Sky Blue Sky”)
5) “Company In My Back” (“A Ghost Is Born”)
6) “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” (“Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”)
7) “Kamera” (“Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”)
8 ) “At Least That’s What You Said” (“A Ghost Is Born”)
9) “Ashes of American Flags” (“Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”)
10) “Shouldn’t Be Ashamed” (“A.M.”)
11) “Jesus, Etc.” (“Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”)
12) “Impossible Germany” (“Sky Blue Sky”)
13) “Forget the Flowers” (“Being There,” disc 1)
14) “Box Full of Letters” (“A.M.”)
15) “Heavy Metal Drummer” (“Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”)
16) “A Shot in the Arm” (“Summerteeth”)

ENCORE 1
17) “The Late Greats” (“A Ghost Is Born”)
18) “Hate It Here” (“Sky Blue Sky”)
19) “Walken” (“Sky Blue Sky”)
20) “I’m the Man Who Loves You” (“Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”)

ENCORE 2

21) “California Stars” (“Mermaid Ave., vol. 1″)
22) “Red Eyed and Blue” (“Being There,” disc 1)
23) “I Got You (End of the Century)” (“Being There,” disc 1)
24) “Casino Queen” (“A.M.”)
25) “Outtasite (Outta Mind)” (“Being There,” disc 1)
26) “Hoodoo Voodoo” (“Mermaid Ave., vol. 1″)

Wilco online

YouTube: Wilco performs “Misunderstood” in Texas, May 2008

EDIT: Somebody taped the show! You can download it as a torrent by going here.

For those of you without the luxury of such hook-ups, there’s good news — Wilco won’t be performing there, but according to Pitchfork, the guys will put in an appearance at The Disc Exchange, Knoxville’s most excellent music store, located on Chapman Highway. It’s part of National Record Store Day (which you can read about here), which will feature live music and appearances by all sorts of local and regional acts, all day long. Here’s the lineup:

Van Eaton and Friends at noon (read a recent interview here)

Greg Koons at 1 p.m

The Rockwells at 3:30 p.m.

Wild Sweet Orange at 4:30 p.m.

Tenderhooks at 5:30 p.m. (read last fall’s story on the band here)

John Paul Keith and the One Four Fives at 6:30 p.m. (read today’s interview with JPK here)

Cutthroat Shamrock at 7:30 p.m. (read a recent story here)

For more information about Wilco — including a new album due in late June and featuring guest vocals by Feist — click here.

Read the new Weekend interview with A Hawk and a Hacksaw, opening for Wilco on Saturday night at The Tennessee Theatre, by clicking here.

EDIT on Friday, April 17: Here’s the new story on JPK and the 1-4-5s!

Here’s an interview I did with him back in 2006, which gives a lot of info about his background. I’ll edit this post and include a link to the new story when it goes up. He’s graciously agreed to offer a song off the new album for download … and we think if you dig it, you’ll want to run out and buy the whole thing. It’s a damn fine record, and if you’re headed to The Pilot Light on Saturday, be prepared to dance your ass off.

Here’s the old story …

By Steve Wildsmith
of The Daily Times Staff

The V-Roys certainly weren’t The Beatles, but to the local music scene, they were big enough.

If such an incredibly thin analogy can be made, then John Paul Keith was to the V-Roys was Stuart Sutcliffe was to The Beatles. Sutcliffe quit the Fab Four during their Hamburg club days, deciding to focus on his art career. The Beatles would go on to become one of the biggest bands in popular music.

Like Sutcliffe, Keith stepped away from The V-Roys to concentrate on his own art, and after he did the band went on to minor stardom with Steve Earle’s E-Squared label. Not that Keith, like Sutcliffe, has regretted his decision. He’s gone on take part in several other successful projects, including the Nashville band Stateside, which backed Ryan Adams for a while as the Pink Hearts. But he has found himself, on occasion, wondering, “what if?”

“I was making my exit as Steve Earle was making his entrance with the V-Roys, and I was fine with it,” Keith told The Daily Times this week. “I left to start my own thing. I just don’t think I was ready for that kind of commitment to anything, and I just wasn’t sure I wanted to be in that situation, so I split. We were sort of going in slightly different directions, and I was younger than the other guys and wanted to see what else I could do.

“I didn’t want to be tied down, but sure, when I heard them on the radio at my job somewhere after that, it kind of made me think twice. But when you’re that age, you think you can do anything. I didn’t miss a beat, and I had another band together within six months.”

Born in the East Knox County community of Blaine, Keith played around town with the country group the Filter Kings before meeting Jeff Bills, the V-Roys drummer. Bills was backing a singer-songwriter named Scott Miller down at the defunct Hawkeye’s, and the two were interested in forming a band with another songwriter at the time. Keith knew a bass player – V-Roys bassist Paxton Sellers – so the four joined forces as the Viceroys.

“We all just got together in sort of a marriage of convenience, and it quickly became its own thing,” Keith said. “Real quickly, we had a good response and built up a good crowd, playing in Johnson City and Atlanta and Nashville. We got hooked up with Praxis Records, and they were interested in us, but that’s when I started to get out.

“We had a real interesting chemistry as a band. We were one of those classic bands that fought a lot. It’s like [local musician] Todd Steed says – bands are like guitars; they don’t work without tension, and that was definitely us.”

Keith moved on to Nashville and found himself living and eventually playing with a couple of other Knoxville expatriates, including Paul Noe and Dave Jenkins, formerly of Knoxville band The Judybats. They formed The Nevers, which landed on Sire Records, but corporate politics kept The Nevers major-label debut from ever being released, and eventually The Nevers disbanded. (During that waiting period, Keith cut a handful of his old songs from his Viceroys days as part of a group called the Have Nots, which released an album on local label Disgraceland.)

From there, Keith formed Stateside, cutting a record that included the bulk of his material with the Nevers. Adams came to town, having just quit the alt-country outfit Whiskeytown, and recruited the members of Stateside to play as his backing band, the Pink Hearts.

“All the sudden, Ryan left town and went to LA and made a whole double-record with a bunch of session guys,” Keith said. “He called us up after it came out and wanted us to tour with him, and I told him, ‘Oh, we’re good enough to back you up on the road, but not in the studio?’ He and I were famous around town for not getting along, anyway.”

The other members of Stateside, however, felt differently, and accompanied Adams on the tour for the latter’s album “Gold.” Keith moved from Nashville to New York to Alabama, made another record with a reconstituted Stateside and eventually moved to Memphis, where he lives today. By that point, he had pretty much given up on music, but plugging into the Memphis scene rejuvenated him, and Saturday night, he’ll play a country-anchored set at The Corner Lounge in Knoxville.

“I really didn’t have any intention of playing, but when my sister started introducing me to people around Memphis, I fell in love with the guitar again,” Keith said. “I just got the itch to do it again, and I’m just sort of seeing it from a different perspective – from a pure entertainment level and not the indie rock background I’ve been used to.”

Originally published on June 23, 2006

“Lookin’ for a Thrill,” John Paul Keith and the One Four Fives (right click and choose “Save Target As” or “Save Link As” to download)

Buy “Spills and Thrills,” the new album by JPK and the One Four Fives: On Amazon.com, or on iTunes.

For more information, check him out on Myspace (where you can hear other new songs from the record).

Don’t get me wrong; the whole CD is magnificent. Great songwriting, spot-on instrumental work and some amazing vocals by Cruz, who’s developed this tenor that reminds me of a cross between Dan Tyminski (the member of Union Station who sang “Man of Constant Sorrow”) and country singer Randy Travis. And the songwriting is well done, too.

But song four … song four is something else entirely.

It’s called “Midnight,” and it’s sung from the perspective of a man who’s been crushed by heartbreak. It’s implied he comes home to find his wife in another’s arms; either way, he never recovers.

When I talked to Cruz about it, he told me it was based on the story of Rodney, a homeless man who’s familiar to a lot of people who patronize Market Square and the Old City. I’ve met Rodney a time or two; he’s a gentle little man who isn’t bold or desperate or trying to manipulate you for money. He’ll offer a poem for a cigarette, and he’ll make conversation, dropping little clues here and there about where he’s been in his travels. He doesn’t tarry, and before long he’ll disappear into the night, head down and walking fast.

Cruz struck up a conversation with Rodney during a walk back to his North Knoxville home. At the time, Cruz himself was having a hard go of it; divorced and relocated to Knoxville from Blount County, he was starting over. No record contract, no band, no real prospects of a musical future; he found himself driving a truck and being a single dad and trying to figure out what to do next.

What struck him that night was just how similar his story and Rodney’s are … that but for the grace of God or a Higher Power or whatever you want to call it, it could just as easily been him asking for a little change of Rodney instead of the other way around.

A lot of people has gossiped and rumored about Cruz’s and Robin’s divorce, and because both are such high-profile members of the music community and quasi-celebrities as far as Blount County is concerned, I’ve found myself having to touch on it in stories about both. I don’t pry, and I’ve never asked what happened … because it’s none of my business. Mentioning it is unavoidable; using it as fodder for a story is in bad taste. I say that because I’m in no way implying that Rodney’s heartbreak is a mirror of Cruz’s; only that the two men found a kinship in the way that life had slammed down its fist like the hammer of Thor and shattered everything they knew.

“Midnight” is a song that touches me. Because of my own past as an addict and the darkness and pain that accompanied it, I know men like Rodney. But for a few blessings, some decisions inspired by a divine nudge here and there and the love of friends and family, I could have been a Rodney. Living in a halfway house off of North Central for two years, I met plenty, living among them and walking those same streets that seemed paved with hard luck and pain as much as they are by asphalt.

Cruz felt that pain radiating off of Rodney like a hot fever, and it touched him as well. That’s the other thing about “Midnight” that touches me — Cruz could have easily wallowed in self-pity and written song after song about heartache and loneliness, poor-mouthing his way through an album that would probably be just as good musically but lacking in depth spiritually.

Instead, he rose up, out of his own head and his own pain, and wrote a song about someone else. It won’t set Rodney up in a cushy new life and won’t bring his love back. But it’s a song about two people making a connection, a song that recognizes that the homeless most of us step over or walk around or just plain avoid have a story and a life; they’re human beings moving through the world just like the rest of us, trying to cope with whatever demons plague them.

Most people may never even know it’s about Rodney. But Cruz does. And I do. And now, so do you. And I hope the next time he approaches, you don’t slink away or take a step back.

Don’t pity him. He doesn’t want it or need it. Just recognize him. Acknowledge him, and say a little prayer of thanks that there but for the grace of God, go us all.

Download “Midnight”: Right click here (choose “Save Target As” or “Save Link As”)

Purchase “Whiskey Angel,” by The Black Lillies: Click here

The Black Lillies — Cruz Contreras, Leah Gardner, Tom Pryor, Jamie Cook, Jeff Woods and Billy Contreras — will celebrate the release of “Whiskey Angel” at 9 p.m Saturday, April 11, at The Square Room, located at 4 Market Square in downtown Knoxville. Admission is $7 advance/$10 door. For more information, visit The Black Lillies on Myspace.

On the flip side of venue closings, there’s an opening to announce as well: Southbound Bar and Grill will open May 1 in Knoxville’s Old City with a show by country-rock band Confederate Railroad. I’m not sure where it’s located — couldn’t find an address on the venue’s Myspace site, but it can’t be too hard to figure out, given that it described as having three floors. (Did Club 106 shut its doors?) Here’s what the Myspace site has to say:

Southbound is Knoxville’s newest and largest entertainment venue, located in the heart of the Old City.

Three floors of brilliance.
The bottom floor will feature hits from the 70’s to current chart toppers.
The second floor is a private VIP area, that will be home to some of the biggest stars ever to grace Knoxville with their presence.
The third floor will feature an 80’s & 90’s dance party that would make Bon Jovi himself blush.

We are also booking national concerts. Our calendar will be posted soon, so check back frequently.

Grand Opening is May 1st.

We’ll keep you posted about how it develops.