Saving Place: Reflections on Home, Community and the Environment Through Music and Spoken Word On Tuesday, June 5th, the Bonner Center for Service Learning and Civic Engagement at Carson-Newman and the Lindquist Environmental Appalachian Fellowship will host an event entitled “Saving Place: Reflections on Home, Community and the Environment Through Music and Spoken Word.” The event will take place in Thomas Recital Hall on Carson Newman Campus at 6:30 PM. It is free and open to the public. The event will feature performances by some of East Tennessee’s finest songwriters including Sam Quinn (formerly of the Everybodyfields), Jack Herranen, Kevin Abernathy and members of the Lonetones (Steph Gunnoe and Sean McCollough). Also featured will be Knoxville’s inspired spoken-word artist Black Atticus and acclaimed West Virginia poet Chris Green who will moderate the event. Bios of all of the artists are included below. The artists will perform songs and poems that relate to “place” - in particular Appalachia as a complicated place to live in or be from. Issues such as identity, belonging, tradition, change and environmental destruction will be explored as these talented individuals share their art and engage in a give and take about how their art reflects the place they are from. “We initially started out to organize an event to highlight the destructive practice of mountaintop removal coal mining,” says organizer Steph Gunnoe. “And that’s still an important theme. But as we began to assemble these talented individuals, it became clear that it needed to be broader than that. These folks all have so much to add to the important discussion about what it means to be from Appalachia (or anywhere, for that matter.) It should be a fun, inspiring evening.” Kevin Abernathy could coast on his guitar-playing skills alone. Lucky for East TN, he does not. In hearing his songs, you can’t help but marvel and wonder how he understands his characters so well – a meth head bleeding to death on the highway, a 30-something guy cruising high school girls, a fellow who goes from troublemaker to missing con and a crowd of South Knoxvillians whose disagreements turn into a bloody brawl. In high art form, Kevin is gifted in his ability to elicit compassion for the unlikeliest creatures that dot the landscape of his songs. Joseph J. Woods, the artist known as Black Atticus, has been a primary voice of Knoxville's Hip Hop & Spoken Word Poetry scene for the last 10 years. His band, The Theorizt, brings acoustic texture to hip hop. Old school in his concerns, his wordplay reveals a mind at work on issues of race, class and gender. A natural teacher, Atticus combines his passion for self-expression with his infectious down-to-earth-edness. Black Atticus is an intriguing performer made more so by his interest in his audience and curiosity about the world. Jack Herranen was born and raised in Knoxville, TN, but learned perhaps most deeply about where he was from by living in Bolivia for many years. Moved by his own duality and the parallels between Bolivia and southern Appalachia, Jack writes timelessly and universally about issues of human dignity. Deeply influenced by the artists/activists of the south, he is a keen observer of roots and root causes, who writes songs with an uncommon ability to approach the future through the past. Sam Quinn, formerly of the Everybodyfields, is a beloved singer and songwriter from East Tennessee. He is known for his ability to make hip songs about despair, heartbreak and Appalachia. Sam explores modern life’s sorrows and joys while channeling a heavy dose of the region’s landscape, his singing voice offering refuge to our own quirkiest characters. Steph Gunnoe and Sean McCollough are the core members and songwriters of acclaimed Knoxville band, The Lonetones, whose music speaks directly to the aspirations, anxieties, and ambiguities of their region and their people. Their music rings from the mountains of Appalachia with a reverent, enduring and, at times, conflicted spirit. Steph hails from WV and writes songs that are concerned with generational conflicts and the inner struggles of those whose hearts and souls are tied to the mountains but also want to be set free. McCollough lived his early years in Michigan but spent the latter part of his childhood in rural middle Tennessee where he developed a love for the region and the music. He teaches about Appalachian Music at the University of Tennessee and in his programs for young audiences at public schools across the region. Chris Green was born and raised in Lexington, KY, where, in his high school English class, he was taught there were no great writers from Kentucky. Chris cites this as a pivotal moment, which fueled his lifelong dedication to Appalachian literature, writing, and demystifying creativity. Chris is a poet and Professor of English at Marshall University in Huntington, WV. Described as page-turning, Rushlight, his 2009 poetry collection, passionately travels while never straying from the here and now. His book, The Social Life of Poetry won the 2009 Weatherford Award for Best Non-Fiction Book about Appalachia. For More Information: Steph Gunnoe • 865-293-7389 • steph@thelonetones.com