About 40 people attended the most recent installment of Cre865, a new happy-hour discussion series about Knoxville’s creative community, at Pilot Light in the Old City last week. For some of them—the middle-aged business types in polo shirts and loafers, mostly—it seemed like their first time in the pugnacious rock club.
At the June 1 forum, those newcomers encountered three of Knoxville’s heartiest entrepreneurs, though most people wouldn’t think of them that way. In addition to playing music here and around the region in their bands the Tim Lee 3 and Bark, the husband-and-wife duo of Tim Lee and Susan Bauer Lee are tireless supporters of other people’s projects. Jason Boardman is the owner of Pilot Light, which has served as unofficial headquarters for the more experimental and underground branches of the Knoxville music community for more than 15 years.
For nearly an hour, Boardman and the Lees talked with Steve Wildsmith of The Daily Times in Maryville about the business of supporting the local music scene, the rewards and costs of creative work, and the challenges of getting other people interested.
“It has peaks and valleys, but this is the most consistently exciting and impressive local scene I’ve ever experienced,” Boardman said. “People move away and talk about how much they miss it. Then they move back here and say there’s something about it that really stands out after going to a larger city.”
Wildsmith, who’s also one of the local scene’s most ardent supporters, kept the tone upbeat, but all three panelists agreed that the local creative community depends on people coming out to see shows. If the audience won’t take risks, neither will the artists.
“If there’s one thing that could take this to the next level, it’s more people who go to shows and take chances on something they’ve never heard before,” Tim Lee said. “This stuff matters as much as the symphony or art museum and deserves support. It’s part of the community, not some outlier that just happens even if nobody’s paying attention.”
(Boardman also addressed the phenomenon of “Pilot Light time,” the widespread conviction that Pilot Light shows rarely start on time—it’s part of a cycle, he says. If nobody’s there at the scheduled start time, it’s not fair to make a touring band play to an empty room. “It’s partly well-deserved and partly a misunderstood concept,” he said. “It’s hard to sacrifice a band and make them play for nobody.”)
Senior Editor Matthew Everett manages the Knoxville Mercury's arts & entertainment section, including the comprehensive calendar section—Knoxville’s go-to guide for everything worth doing in the area. You can reach Matthew at matthew@knoxmercury.com.
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