Twenty Candles for The Pilot Light

Knoxville’s most eclectic and beloved DIY venue celebrates two decades of sounds

May 22nd was an uneventful day for Jason Boardman, the co-founder, operations manager, booking agent, mastermind and a dozen-other-roles-named-as-needs-arise of The Pilot Light.

Down in the Old City, the venue sat empty, its recessed doorway as dark as those of its neighbors on either side, Hanna’s Old City and LAZ Art Gallery. Up and down Jackson Avenue and Central Street, where traffic and crowds are usually bustling into the a.m. hours even on week nights, COVID-19 had cast a pall over business and entertainment alike, and so as the 20th birthday of The Pilot Light came and went, there was no celebration.

No cake. No party. No day-long or weekend-long or month-long acknowledgement of two decades of existence, a monumental feat by the standards of any live music establishment – but almost an unfathomable one by those of a club that was strategically set up in the beginning to only make it a year, Boardman tells BLANK Newspaper during a recent interview.

“The commitment that we had when we opened on May 22, 2000, was to have everything lined up to be ready to survive for one year,” he said, speaking by phone from Striped Light, the letterpress studio and record company of which he’s also a co-founder. “Me and Leigh Shoemaker [his partner in the early days of The Pilot Light] wanted to make sure we had the ability to get out of the lease if we had to, so that even if it was a total disaster, we could pitch in money from our jobs to pay the rent, even if things were really not good.

“And that was really it, to an extent. We kept our expectations low, so that we could force ourselves to take the risk to do it all, which is why we kept everything pretty humble, too, in the way the place looks. It was just a product of what we could do ourselves with the help of our friends, and it eventually became one year … then two years … then five years, then 10. You just keep your head down and keep doing it.”

Boardman pauses, taking time to wash fresh paint from his hands. During the coronavirus downtime, he and friends have been giving The Pilot Light some much-needed TLC, and he’s just returned from dropping off cans of color to volunteers who are working on the exterior of the club.

“The really odd thing about this coronavirus closure is that so much of what keeps you going is just the momentum of, ‘This is what I did yesterday, and this is what I’m going to do tomorrow,’ but when you get time to sit and reflect, you think, ‘Obviously there might be a time when I don’t do this, or that somebody else will do it,’” he says. “You get those times before, but there’s not a lot of time to spend on that because on the heels of it, you remember, ‘There’s a show tomorrow, and I’ve got to get ready for that.’”

For now, however, there are no shows. The last time the club hosted music was on March 8 – a two-show affair that evening that featured improvisations early by Matt Nelson, Adam Lion, Ashlee Booth and Nolan Nevels, and a late-night show featuring Flo Petite, Kelsi Walker and Lizbet. For now, the calendar has been stripped of its usual colorful, quirky and eclectic array of upcoming art that has few other outlets, if any, here in the East Tennessee area, and Boardman has no idea when the doors will re-open, especially with COVID-19 numbers in Knoxville and Knox County continuing to fluctuate.

“There is really no way I can give any kind of definitive answer,” he says. “I feel like I’m not even thinking in those terms because it is such a big question mark and a big unknown. Instead, we’re thinking about what we can do and trying to come up with some creative ideas. We’ve started the process for some online stuff, but it got a little bit stymied, so we’re trying to get that back on the rails so that it’s happening on a very regular basis. For now, the plan is to do [live and recorded] video shoots two nights a week so that we have a constant schedule of stuff coming out online.

“We’re always thinking about interesting ways to have art happening, but just in a safe way. It’s just too depressing because when you think about the question, ‘When is it going to be back to normal?,’ we just don’t know. So right now, we’re working on putting a new coat of paint on the outside and maybe changing up some of the lighting stuff that’s been in need of attention. It’s a good time to do that as much as we can.”

Not that there’s a lot to do, appearance-wise, to improve on The Pilot Light aesthetic. Over the past two decades, the shabby-chic décor has become an intricate part of the venue’s mythos, from the graffitied bathrooms behind the stage to the turntable that sits in a place of honor behind the bar that only serves beer to the bibelots and trinkets and bric-a-brac that hang from the walls and sit on random shelves. In the dim overhead light that casts a pale glow over everything before shows begin or on nights when it’s simply a gathering spot for a crowd of regulars to drink beer and spin vinyl, everything seems perfectly, lovingly placed, and the idea that those things may be removed or, horror of horrors, replaced with standard bar ornamentation is anxiety-inducing.

Not to worry, however. For Boardman and the clan of musical kinsmen and women who consider The Pilot Light a living, breathing art space, those things aren’t at the top of their list of priorities.

“I guess it’s an odd-looking place, and it’s not as flashy, and maybe that’s off-putting, in some ways, to some people, but it’s never been a priority to change that,” Boardman said. “It was never the intent that it was going to look a certain way, and it’s not like I had dreams of there being a big neon sign. I simply don’t care about that part. What’s going on inside, on the stage, is the most important thing, and while some people who are unfamiliar with it may think it’s a sketchy-looking place, the only thing it takes to break that down is to come inside and see a show.

“People have their perceptions of it, but whenever someone comes in there, whether it’s by accident, on purpose or on a whim, they do so, and they have a really good time.”

Algiers at Pilot Light – photo by Bill Foster

That was the primary motivation when Shoemaker and Boardman first began kicking around the idea of their own venue. According to the Striped Light website, Boardman returned to East Tennessee in 1994 after studying physics at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and after briefly pursuing a music composition degree at the University of Tennessee, went to work for McKay Books. It was in 1999, according to archives from the now-defunct Knoxville independent newspaper Metro Pulse, that Boardman and Shoemaker conceived of the idea for The Pilot Light.

“In the beginning days of The Pilot Light, there was a music scene of friends that I was part of who were doing shows and going to shows that were just in basements and the backrooms of restaurants that people worked at, and those places and those people would allow us to do things as a favor,” he said. “A lot of it was rock ‘n’ roll-based at its core, but a lot of it was weird or experimental or going to have a small audience, no matter what. It didn’t matter if only a small group knew about it; if you had told the whole town, only 20 people still would have been there. But there was no established place to do things like that on a small scale. There were places that had bands, but they were also restaurants, and you couldn’t do anything too noisy because it was bad for business.”

Joe Tarr detailed the exploratory phase of The Pilot Light in a 2002 article for Metro Pulse: After finding the space at 106 E. Jackson Ave. in the Old City, they received the list of modifications from city inspectors that would be required to meet building and fire codes, Tarr wrote. “They didn’t have a lot of money, so they did all they could on their own. Some things required professional contractors. Shoemaker and Boardman … would do whatever prep work they could – jackhammering up the floor so a plumber could lay the pipe, or putting up conduit so an electrician could string and connect wire. With their own full-time jobs, they and a few friends worked on nights and weekends.”

They didn’t publicize their new venture because they weren’t sure how successful it would actually be. Obtaining a beer license was the easy part, but even that was a question of, “Do we really want to do this?” Both Boardman and Shoemaker struggled with what they needed to do to keep crowds, and what they wanted to do to make The Pilot Light exist solely around music and art. In the end, they managed to thread the eye of the needle without even realizing they were doing so.

“The idea that you’ve got to sell drinks is an art killer for sure,” Boardman acknowledges. “The idea of The Pilot Light was, we had to figure out a way to keep it open even if we were not a success in terms of retail sales at the bar or lots and lots of tickets because there was simply no way that was going to happen. I feel for places that have to exist that way, and most of them do, so they do have to factor that into their [live music] choices. They have to book a dance party or a cover band because people who come in for pizzas or dinner are still going to end up having a great time.

“But if you’re doing the other thing, it has to be in your mission that it’s what you want to do, or you’re going to constantly be frustrated. We just wanted to find a place we could set up where we had what was necessary for a show, and there wasn’t anybody we had to convince that we weren’t going to run off their dinner crowd. If an artist wanted to turn off the lights and bow a bicycle spoke for 20 minutes, that’s what we were here for. We didn’t have stuff that we wouldn’t do, as long as it fit the ethos of originality.”

And that has been the mission statement behind The Pilot Light from the outset. There exists the perception, Boardman admits, that bluegrass bands, Americana outfits, cover groups and other similarly “popular” forms of music can’t get booked there. That’s not true, of course; Americana maven Tift Merritt played there to a standing-room-only show in 2008, and Southern Culture on the Skids has made regular stops at the venue in recent years. Locally, for example, Guy Marshall – arguably one of the biggest torchbearers of roots music in East Tennessee – has performed there often. But there are plenty of other venues – two of them, Boyd’s Jig and Reel and Barley’s Taproom – within a rock’s throw, and many bands who want the cachet of a Pilot Light performance may not understand what that truly entails, Boardman explains.

“Bands and musicians, locally and from out of town, a lot of times tell me that they really want to get into The Pilot Light, and I’ll level with them: If you’re having some momentum at other places in town, you might want to stick with that,” he says. “Because if you come here, it’s difficult to pull that same crowd down here just for a show. When we first started The Pilot Light, there were already – and still are – a lot of other venues that serve up what people think of as the Knoxville sound – the singer-songwriter, Americana scene. That seemed to be well-served, and we couldn’t really get a crowd for that anyway because they had so many better options and established crowds for it.

“We were going for bands and musicians that seemed to have original ideas and didn’t have to play otherwise – non-economically viable music, as someone called it. It’s music we all think is extremely important, but it’s never going to keep a place open with ticket sales or beverage sales because it’s always going to exist to a smaller crowd. Most of the time, it’s relegated to grant-funded art galleries and concert centers or basements, and the types of bands that do things like that find themselves always shooting for one or the other of those worlds, which can be so selective.”

Even bands that may draw bigger crowds at larger venues, however, often select The Pilot Light as a performance space precisely because of that ethos: Those who attend are there for the show. The beer selection is modest, but there’s no liquor; aside from the occasional potluck where patrons bring dishes (the annual New Year’s Day bash with The Damn Creeps comes to mind), there is no food. The bathrooms are plastered with signatures and bumper stickers, and seating is minimal. A hundred people make the space standing-room only … but everyone there has come to take part in an intimate communion with whoever is on stage.

“There’s no experience like it, and for the right kind of show, the intimacy and the sheer energy that comes out of people being jammed into that space can be quite a remarkable experience,” says Ashley Capps, the founder of AC Entertainment and the curator of the world-renowned Big Ears Festival. In the mid-1980s, Capps co-founded Ella Guru’s, an Old City venue that matched, in many ways, the dedication to craft that makes The Pilot Light so vibrant. That Capps has gone on to build a company with a reputation for putting on monster events like Bonnaroo doesn’t take away from his first love: up-close-and-personal, soul-stirring experiences that are difficult to describe to anyone who wasn’t in attendance.

It’s like art, he points out: Only a painting is a static example that exists long after it’s created. Music, especially the kind that’s played at places like The Pilot Light, is a one-night-only experience that exists in the memories of those who were there and, if fortune favors it, bootleg recordings of the night that still don’t do the actual event justice.

“Last year as part of Big Ears Festival, we had a surprise pop-up show at The Pilot Light by The Comet Is Coming, and that was just a mind-boggling experience to see in that venue,” Capps adds. “It’s just such a legendary venue, driven mostly by Jason’s personal curatorial vision, where there’s just such an immediacy and an urgency to the whole thing. It just has this sheer urgency born of nothing but willpower, and that’s where it packs the punch that it packs. That’s what makes it such a powerful experience to go to a great show there.

“It’s certainly one of the unique venues in the country, no question about it. CBGB’s is a good comparison, but I mostly think of it in terms of venues that don’t exist anymore, like some of the other punk clubs that were in New York in the late ’70s and early ’80s that were home to these avant-garde improv scenes. It really reminds me of those venues, and that makes it all the more remarkable that it’s still active after two decades.”

The unique nature of the noise that rolls out of The Pilot Light’s doors on any given night is what makes it both intriguing to the musically adventurous and off-putting, even unnerving, to those who cross the street on their way to Old City dance venues where Top 40 hip-hop and country are served up as the sounds of the evening. A gentle and diplomatic soul, Boardman doesn’t speak ill of those places or the music that entertains the masses there because he knows that any one of those patrons may wander into The Pilot Light and have a life-changing experience. He’s seen it happen – because music is a living, breathing thing that speaks to souls on a level that transcends anyone’s ability to describe it.

“When I’m asked about The Pilot Light, I usually expound greatly on the experimental part of it, because that’s what I really, really like,” Boardman says. “That was important in the founding of it to me – this wild variance of rock ‘n’ roll-based music that can be established musicians [like Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker, who waxed ecstatic about the venue when she played there during its second year] or young bands that are just figuring it out and figuring out what their voice in that form is, because those are some of the best times to see a band when they’re completely unpolished and writing their own playbook.

“A lot of those bands aren’t hard to like if you’re in the room watching them; they’re just hard to promote because nobody’s heard of them. But I’ve seen people leaving those other places and walk by, and out of that group, one or two might come in and get a beer and be there for the length of time it would take them to drink that beer. And more times than not, they would be into whatever was going on that night and be all about it. Now, are they going to remember the name of that band and go see them the next time? Who knows? But it’s not the type of music that makes it a tough sell. It’s just obscure, and it’s not up in people’s faces.”

Obscurity is the reason The Pilot Light has cultivated a group of regulars who have, in a sense, become family over the years and without whose assistance in doing everything from running sound to selling beer to collecting covers to helping bands load in and out, Boardman and Shoemaker and the board of directors assembled around the venue’s incorporation as a nonprofit in 2016 would have stumbled: Josh Wright, Brad Fowler, Maggie Brannon, Todd Lewis, Kelsey Tanner, Will Fist and Chris Rusk all come to mind, but once he gets started, Boardman is hesitant to give shout outs for fear of leaving anyone out: William, Jake, Steve, Mia, Daje, Ben, Trey … they’ve all had a hand in getting The Pilot Light across the 20-year mark, he says.

“The place simply wouldn’t still exist without people like them, because these are people who have put over 10, sometimes as much as 15 years, of their lives into being a part of this thing for several nights a week,” he says. “I’m sitting here on the phone, talking to you right now, but really it could be any one of them. They’re the reason we’re here, 20 years later, because they were willing to believe in it, and it’s the result of what is very much a product of those people and their beliefs.

“We didn’t know what we were doing at all when we started. If we saw a problem, we put our heads together and solved it. If we saw another one, we worked on ways it could be improved. It was built by experience and a group of us, and the list is so long of people who have really poured it out for that place. If we were in trouble, or if we needed a hand, I could call any one of them, and they would throw in and pitch in and help out. I’m humbled and amazed by it all the time, and I’m glad to be on that team.”

For now, the team sits in the metaphorical dugout, in a coronavirus delay, each of them waiting for the shows to start again. On the actual 20-year anniversary, Boardman was working on The Pilot Light’s revamped website, soliciting memories and setting up a fundraising campaign designed to both capitalize on the venue’s birthday and the need for financial assistance in order to stay afloat during these turbulent economic times. The bills still need to be paid, and while the affectionate nickname of The Pilot Light as a “for-loss community center” was charming at one time, it’s taken on more of an urgency when there’s absolutely no income to be had outside of donations.

“I try not to dwell on it too much,” Boardman says. “If we were open, I’m sure a lot of benefit shows and support shows would be happening with everything that’s going on, and we really can’t wait to get back to doing what we were built to do. We’re a performance venue, and there are a lot of artists who want to get their voices out there for the greater good. That’s what we do, and we can’t wait to get back to that.”

Capps feels his pain: Big Ears was canceled at the outset of the pandemic, and after delaying until September, Bonnaroo was recently shuttered for 2020. His job these days, he says, involves maintaining morale under a cloud of uncertainty and laying the groundwork for when live music will start again – whenever that may be. Big Ears still is in the planning stages for 2021, and if the past is any indication, The Pilot Light will have a seat at the table. Boardman, he points out, was an essential collaborator and sounding board for the original Big Ears Festival, and as much as Capps loves performances at all of Knoxville’s AC Entertainment-booked venues, The Pilot Light is still one of his favorite places to see a show.

“The Pilot Light is an institution and a beacon of light as far as what it represents in this community and the impact that it has had on the cultural life of the community,” Capps says. “It’s such a small, intimate space, but the ripples that have emerged from its two-decade-long existence really can’t be overstated. It’s had a remarkable impact on the cultural impact of the region and the perception of the city.”

As the pillar upon whose shoulders The Pilot Light sits, Boardman is uncomfortable accepting that sort of high praise. For him, it’s been a labor of love – a lot of the former, but a great deal of the latter as well. And if there’s any bright spot to the COVID-19 standstill whatsoever, it’s that it’s allowed him to slow down and truly take stock of what The Pilot Light truly means – to him, to his circle of collaborators and friends and to East Tennessee.

“It really is a strange thing to do anything like this for that long,” he says. “I’ve been along for the ride as much as anyone. The one thing that I feel about The Pilot Light – and I get the feeling that this is a shared emotion about it – is that when you’re at a show, it has to be about the programming. We have pretty broad standards in terms of ideas, and we listen to a lot of people and take a lot of unsolicited bookings and just figure out a way to make that work. And that alone is something that’s hard for a lot of places to do where the bottom line is a little more live-or-die.

“But it’s also about the nature of the way the place is and the way it’s run. Whether it’s the staff or the volunteers or the bands or the crowds, it feels like we’re all in a room together, doing a thing together. It feels like everybody has a weird ownership of the night and what’s happening, even if all they did was come in – because that is something. That is part of it, and it could be said that’s everything, in fact. I feel like that when it’s happening right, more often than not everybody in the room feels like we’re all in this together and making it happen, and that connection makes everyone feel protective of it and proud of it in an odd way.

“I love that, and I love that it has projected that idea or feeling for so many people,” he adds. “Certainly, if there’s any way I can do a better job than that, I would like to try because we always want to expand and get broader and weirder and more interesting … because that’s the fun part.”

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