Entertainment
The Entertainment line up for the 2012 International Biscuit Festival will be released soon!
Last Year’s Entertainment included:
Cover Your Biscuits with
The Cleverlys & King Super and the Excellents
The Square Room
Nothing captures the vibe of the International Biscuit Festival quite as well as The Cleverlys, who kick off the weekend with their unique mixture of instrumental prowess and tongue in cheek humor. This family bluegrass band lists everyone from Bill Monroe to U2 and Fergie as their musical influences, and they’ve become an internet and club sensation with their inspired reinterpretations of some of the biggest hits in popular music. While it might be easily to classify them as a “stunt” band, anyone who watches them perform immediately sees the talent and serious musicianship that serves as the foundation for the entire experience. You’ll laugh at their humorous take on “Put a Ring On It” one moment and be blown away by a high energy original bluegrass tune the next. One thing’s for sure – you don’t want to miss this rollicking good time!
Tickets: $15
Available at The Square Room, as part of the Biscuit Bundles, or online here.
The Black Lillies with Tift Merritt
U.S. Cellular Stage at the Bijou Theatre
Anyone who attended The Black Lillies’ sold out Bijou debut in January knows that this is a “can’t miss” event. That show confirmed their place at the forefront of the East Tennessee music scene and showed exactly why they’ve made such an impact nationwide. The band’s debut album, Whiskey Angel, topped 2009 best-of lists across the country and was nominated for Best Americana Album in the Independent Music Awards. They’ve performed on National Public Radio’s Mountain Stage and on two episodes of PBS’s Jammin’ at Hippie Jack’s, been featured in publications from Relix Magazine to Parade, and they’ve conquered numerous festivals – Pickathon, the Americana Music Association Festival, Four Corners Folk Fest, Bristol Rhythm and Roots, Bonnaroo … the list goes on.
100 Miles of Wreckage, their sophomore record, is quickly climbing the charts on radio nationwide. It takes what the band built in Whiskey Angel and fortifies it, a rustic sound without name and place, unbeholden to geographic region or easy classification. It isn’t uncommon for listeners to say that the music has taken hold of their soul. It’s earthy and gritty and melancholy in a way old mountain music was a century ago, speaking of pain and love and revenge and revelry with such spirit, such genuine celebration and sorrow, that it seems to be an album carved out of the planks of a backwoods cabin abandoned during the Great Depression.
Opening the show is Tift Merritt, a North Carolina native whose first album landed on Time Magazine’s and New Yorker’s top ten lists and was called the best debut of the year in any genre by the Associated Press. Tambourine, her 2004 record, was a soul-rock throw down, Grammy-nominated for Country Album of the Year and three Americana Music Awards. This led to a tour with Elvis Costello and an acclaimed appearance on Austin City Limits. As the tour was winding down, Tift ran away to Paris looking for her mojo and, without intending to, started writing songs that would become Another Country. Tift’s latest release, See You On The Moon, produced by Tucker Martine, is her most visceral work to date, and finds her doing what she does best more directly – and better – than she ever has.
You’ll leave feeling like you’ve witnessed an old-fashion Southern tent revival. These songs will haunt your thoughts long after the curtain closes, rattling through your head like a crooked screen door slaps against its frame when a storm is coming.
Tickets: $25
Available as part of the Biscuit Bundles, at all Tickets Unlimited Outlets, by phone at 865-656-4444, or online.
