Late Summer Shows
a photodump of live music from East Tennessee
The live music scene in my area has been really something else this summer. I’ve managed to see 30+ unique bands (not including the two local festivals where I saw 10+ bands a day), and overall it’s been a massive amount of fun. Chronicling the music scene here has been a major hobby of mine for close to 10 years now. Looking back at my personal archive or photos, as well as my Instagram, I credit a late summer house show in 2014 with Split Family being the real start of my documentation.
Before this, I was already going to, as well as playing my own shows, but this was sort of a turning point. I started to realize how special the scene is here, and I wanted to share that with others —both locals who may not know about it and outsiders that would never get to experience it. Bands like Lions and Gamenight are favorites of mine and killer bands in their own right, but they leveraged their friendships with bands from all over the US to bring a staggering number of huge acts to small venues in Knoxville.
As the scene has changed, there were growing pains, sure, and I’d like to talk about that here one day, but right now, it’s a wonderful time to be a part of the music scene in East Tennessee. There’s more shows now than I could possible go to, often multiple really good ones at different venues on the same night, so while I can’t document everything, I’ll continue to capture what I can.
Here’s five shows that I’ve been to lately (and some I’ve played)!
8.15.23 Thus Spoke Zarathustra, YH DEV, The Extinct, Every Promise Kept And Dozibrion At Brickyard
8.19.2023 Good Guy Collective Presents: New Flava
With J Bush, Gray Jackson, EMVN, Caysen Skies, Motorcity Jones, The Productz And Devan That Dude At The Pilot Light
8.26.23 Two Headed Dog Artist Market
With Spoon, Dozibrion, Niche Dealer And Saoirse Finn At The UT Botanical Gardens
9.5.23 East Tennessee Hardcore Presents:
Mugshot, Disarmer, and Melee At Remedy Coffee
9.9.23 Retribution, Age Of Panic, Headknockers, Every Promise Kept At VFW Post 4933
Well, that’s it for this week! I hope you enjoyed the music and photos! If you’re looking for found media, please check out my page on Archive.org for the full list of digitized media. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message right here or drop a comment below. If you haven’t already, please check out the suggested post below! or any of my other previous posts here. Thanks so much for checking out this week’s edition of Diptych!
See you soon!
—Forrest
B̶i̶g̶ ̶E̶a̶r̶s̶ BIG A**ES
Watch now (23 mins) | Knoxville’s favorite counter culture music festival is back after a several-year hiatus, and I got to go! Above, you can see 20+ minutes of camcorder footage from both days, and below you can check out a ton of photos and links to some of the artists I had the pleasure of seeing perform.
The music scene here is all but gone from the event of 2020. This brought me a little hope that things can change here. Thank you.