Knoxville Museum of Art

Knoxville's unique live music experience happens on 35 select Fridays in the museum's Great Hall, 6:00-8:30pm. Catered and with 2 cash bars, these non-smoking events are family friendly and great for dates. Admission is $8 for nonmembers, $4 for members and students, except where noted otherwise. Free for 17 years and under.

January 2010

January 8

Soul Connection
$10 General Admission • $6 with Membership or student ID • Free for ages 17 and under

Originally formed in 1966 under the name of Soul Sanction, this group became one of the legendary bands of East Tennessee and still holds the attendance record at Alive After Five. They have opened shows for B.B. King, James Brown, Ray Charles, and Bobby “Blue” Bland. At a special “Rename the Band Party” AA5 in 2006, their name was changed to Soul Connection. Their combination of keyboards, horns, guitars, and drums, blended with a variety of male and female vocals and harmonies and covers a wide musical spectrum of Rhythm & Blues, Soul, and dance music, all done with infectious energy and unmistakable style.
www.dancebandspartybandsusa.com/Soul-Connection

January 15

Wallace Coleman
$9 General Admission • $5 with Membership or student ID • Free for ages 17 and under

A native of Morristown, Wallace Coleman was captivated by blues music as a young boy listening to Nashville’s WLAC. Coleman left Tennessee in 1956 to find work in Cleveland, Ohio, and, to his delight, an active Blues community where Jimmy Reed, Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters, Elmore James, B.B. King and others came to perform. A self-taught musician, Coleman was playing harmonica in Guitar Slim’s band when he caught the ear of Robert Lockwood, Jr., stepson of legendary Bluesman Robert Johnson. He played in Lockwood’s band for ten years and performed on the Grammy nominated CD "I Gotta Find Me A Woman." Then in 1997, Coleman formed his own band and has recorded three acclaimed CDs. Blues Revue magazine calls him "...one of postwar Chicago's most indomitable torchbearers.
www.wallacecoleman.com

January 22

Steve Brown & Friends - CD Release Party for “Within”
$8 General Admission • $4 with Membership or student ID

For 24 years, Steve Brown has been drumming in the Hector Qirko Band, and in recent years, he’s also played drums in the Klezmer band Dor L’Dor. Long-time Knoxville music fans may also remember him playing with RB Morris and the Irregulars, Terry Hill, Crawdaddy, and Bluefish. This show will be the release party for “Within”, an album of his own jazz-oriented, world music, and classical influenced compositions. Joining Steve are Joe Thompson, Rusty Holloway, Mark Boling, and Bill Swann, as well as members of the HQ Band - Hector Qirko, Dirk Weddington, and Jim Williams - and members of Dor L'Dor - Ken and Susan Brown, Daniel Brown, and Jamie Warren.

January 29

Lonesome Coyotes
$10 General Admission • $6 with Membership or student ID • Free for ages 17 and under

The Lonesome Coyotes are Knoxville’s most celebrated band to play in the Texas Swing and country-rock styles. Besides the trademark male-female harmonizing of Maggie Longmire’s powerful alto and Steve Horton’s mellow baritone, the Coyote sound is bolstered by the symbiotic lead and pedal steel guitar attack of Hector Qirko and Brock Henderson, and driven by the rhythm section of drummer Doug Klein and bassist Stan Turner.
www.lonesomecoyotes.com

February 2010

February 5

Will Boyd Project featuring Kelle Jolly
$8 General Admission • $4 with Membership or student ID • Free for ages 17 and under

The combination of Kelle Jolly & The Will Boyd Project bridges the gap between jazz & blues of yesterday and today. These South Carolina natives honed their skills playing with musicians who believed in the blues. Will's soulful, saxophone serenades lead the way for Kelle to expose her 3-octave voice and her charismatic stage presence. These music ambassadors have performed for audiences from Knoxville, TN to Muroran, Japan. Get ready for a show packed full of soulful jazz and rhythm & blues!
www.kellewillandme.com

February 12

“Fat Friday Mardi Gras Masquerade Party” with Josh Garrett & The Bottomline
$10 General Admission • $6 with Membership or student ID • Free for ages 17 and under

Raised in the bayou town of Houma, LA, Josh Garrett has been entertaining audiences all over the country for the last five years with his own style of Louisiana Blues, New Orleans Funk, Zydeco, and Rock ‘n’ Roll. “I’m drawn to all things Louisiana, it’s my culture and I try to embrace it,” says Garrett. “We’ve opened shows for Tab Benoit, Sonny Landreth, Waylon Thibodaux, Chubby Carrier. I’ve had the chance to travel to Brazil with Chubby to play some high-energy Zydeco.” Most of the tracks on Garrett’s debut album, “Changed Man”, were composed during his time deployed with the U.S. Army to Iraq. He had recently released a new double CD, “Live on Printer’s Alley. “Not only is [Josh Garrett] an amazing musician, he's an excellent performer. He's charismatic, fun, and really knows how to work the crowd. If you go to see Josh Garrett and the Bottom Line you will definitely have an amazing time, especially if you love the blues.”-TODAY.COM.
www.myspace.com/joshgarrettandthebottomline
Everyone is encouraged to come in lime green, purple and/or gold masquerade. Laissez les bontemps roulez!

February 19

Philippe LeJeune*
$9 General Admission • $5 with Membership or student ID • Free for ages 17 and under

French pianist Philippe LeJeune is a perfect example of the mixture of jazz and blues which was an especially important strain in the jazz tradition. The young pianist attended a 1968 concert by master boogie-woogie and blues pianist, Memphis Slim, and immediately put an end to his classical efforts and began teaching himself the blues, scouring local record shops for recordings by boogie-woogie greats. In 1980 he cut an album titled "Dialog in Boogie" as a piano duo with Memphis Slim who had been a Parisian citizen since 1962. Philippe LeJeune has released five CD's in the United States and regularly tours here, performing at major music festivals.
www.philippelejeune.com
* Co-presented by Andrew “Jazzman” Smith and Geoff Matthews

February 26

“Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues” with Robin Rogers
$10 General Admission • $6 with Membership or student ID • Free for ages 17 and under

Ida Cox was born on February 25, 1894. She was a friend Bessie Smith, managed her own touring company, “Raisin’ Cain”, was known as “The Uncrowned Queen of the Blues”. She wrote many of the songs she performed and recorded, including “Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues”. She died in 1967 and is buried in New Grey Cemetery in Knoxville. In a tribute to Ida Cox, we present Blind Pig recording artist Robin Rogers from Charlotte, NC. Rogers and here band made it to the finals of the 2004 International Blues Challenge in Memphis, and her album, “Crazy, Cryin’ Blues”, released later that year, won the “Best Self-Produced CD” at the 2005 International Blues Challenge. She signed with Blind Pig Records and released the CD “Treat Me Right” in 2008.

Included on the album is her song, “Color-Blind Angel”, which won 2nd place in the Blues category of the 2007 International Songwriters Competition. In the past year, she was nominated for Best Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year at the 2009 Blues Music Awards.
www.robinrogers.com | www.myspace.com/robinrogers

March 2010

March 12

Satan & Adam
$9 General Admission • $5 with Membership or student ID • Free for ages 17 and under

A more unlikely Blues duo is hard to imagine. The story of how Sterling “Mister Satan” Magee, an African-American from Mississippi and Adam Gussow, a white, Ivy League, New York suburbanite came together has spawned a book, “Mister Satan’s Apprentice”, by Gussow, and a documentary, “Satan and Adam” by award-winning filmmaker V. Scott Balcerek. The two were a fixture on the sidewalks of Harlem in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They released their first album, “Harlem Blues” in 1991 and began touring widely in Europe and the eastern U. S. In 1996 they were the cover story in Living Blues magazine--the first time in that magazine's history that an interracial act had ever been featured on the cover. In recent years, they have added a “third member of the duo”, drummer David Laycock, and the group remains one of the most powerful and unique blues acts to emerge during the 1990s.
www.modernbluesharmonica.com/satan_and_adam.html

Save money by purchasing seasonal series Express Passes for Alive After Five. After 5pm an Express Pass holder may bypass the line at the ticketing desk and enter the Great Hall directly.

For more information or to reserve a table at an Alive After Five show contact Michael Gill, Alive After Five coordinator, at 865-934-2039, or mgill@kmaonline.org.