The race is on
Sometimes to win the race, you have to get hurt a little.
Singer-songwriter/guitarist Christina “Redd” Daugherty and bassist Will Ross sit laughing in the back of Flats & Taps on Central Street, but the brace keeping Daugherty’s leg straight is no joke. It protects her anterior cruciate ligament, better known as the ACL, from incurring further damage suffered as a result of a celebratory run gone wrong. Or, as Daugherty and Ross put it, “We were drunk racing in a parking lot.”
“We had just played a gig at Admiral Pub,” he continues, “and [Daugherty] said, ‘Do you want to race?’ So I said, ‘OK, I’ll race you.’”
“I was all cocky, and I was also dehydrated, and I ran track in college,” says Daugherty. “When you tear your ACL or NCL, your knee just stops working, so the only way I could stop running is I plowed into a truck.”
“It was a devastating hit,” adds Ross.
“Yeah, I got second-degree burns on my back, and I have deep-tissue bruising on my hips. Go big or go home!”
Daugherty recently did both of the latter when she participated on “American Idol.”
Although she and Ross became a musical team in 2020, Daugherty, who is also an English teacher at the Knox County STEM Academy, has spent many years as a solo artist, and she participated solo on “American Idol” in March of this year. She passed the initial auditions and became one of 50 contestants that month. For her first national TV appearance on the show, she sang a folky/funky version of “Hit the Road, Jack,” made popular by Ray Charles, but was eliminated in a duet round with fellow contestant Chayce Beckham.
Appearing on “American Idol,” though, never was Daugherty’s dream.
“My students blackmailed me,” she says. “They were extremely encouraging, but also they refused to turn work in until I emailed everyone a link proving I submitted a video. … They were like, ‘We found your Instagram … Miss Daugherty, you are pretty OK, so you should go do this.’”
Daugherty auditioned on the first day of class in a Zoom call in the school library.
“There were some of my former students literally vibing in the background,” says Daugherty with a laugh. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, guys! Settle down!’”
Auditions for several producers led to the show flying her to San Diego, where she performed in front of Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Ritchie. She performed her original song, “Joy,” which was about her beloved aunt who had passed away, and then the Ben E. King standard “Stand By Me.”
Daugherty’s “Hit the Road, Jack” was a hit with both the judges and the audience, but the duet with Beckham, “July,” made popular by Noah Cyrus, was much better suited for Beckham than Daugherty. Beckham, who had previously made it to No. 9 on the show, moved on. Daugherty did not. An unfortunate parting gift from judge Katy Perry was an on-air insinuation that Daugherty and Beckham were in love.
“All my students were asking if that’s who my boyfriend was, and I was like, ‘No!’” says Daugherty. “It caused so much drama in my life. Both of our social medias blew up with people yelling at us to get together. So we are not a thing. Chase is sweet and kind to me, and we are friends, but that’s as far as it goes.”
“I think ‘American Idol’ was just kind of gunning for that,” says Ross. “They wanted to have a romance story because it plays well.”
Daugherty says participating in the show gave her some validation and confidence, but going much further would have given it control over her career, so getting out when she did was probably for the best.
“Honestly, I never expected to ever do ‘American Idol,’ and I never expected to get past any initial round. And so the fact that I made it into the Top 50 is ridiculous. … It was very humbling, and I’m really thankful for my students for pushing me way out of my comfort zone, which is something I do for them all the time. My social media grew. We got way more gigs from it. I just gotta start forgetting about it because I don’t want to be cornered into being a contestant.
“The coolest thing about the whole situation was I enjoyed spending time with the ‘American Idol’ crew more than maybe the whole experience,” she says. “They were sweet and kind, and, being a journalism teacher, I talked with the camera crew, and they let me take video, and I used some of that stuff in my video. It was really great.”
Daugherty is far more interested in working with Ross as a duo and helping bring Knoxville’s music scene back as the COVID-19 pandemic, hopefully, winds down.
The two first became a team not long after Daugherty’s band “ghosted” her.
“They were getting ready to go out of town, and I said, ‘Well, do you want to play when you get back? Here are the gigs I have set up.’ They said, ‘No, we just don’t feel like doing it right now, but once we get setting up regular practice times … ’ Then they showed up at the same gig as me with a different band.”
Dispirited, Daugherty thought about quitting music, but in February 2020 she participated in the Tennessee Songwriters Week Showcase competition. At the end of the following month, COVID shut down the country. Daugherty put out a song called “Heavyweight” on YouTube and Instagram. Ross decided to make a video of himself playing bass on the track and sent it to Daugherty, whom he hadn’t yet met.
“And you never said a word!,” Ross says to Daugherty.
“I did not know who you were, and you scared me!” says Daugherty with a laugh. “I don’t know why I didn’t put two and two together, and you didn’t tell me it was you until, like, a month or two ago!”
Ross already had a lot of experience in the music scene. His first onstage appearance was with the punk group The Schmucks at an Irish bar.
“We weren’t even on the bill,” says Ross. “We just showed up with our equipment and said we were on the bill. These shows were not very organized, so they said, ‘Well, I guess they’re on the bill!’ So we played, and people spit beer at us. It was an intense show. I wouldn’t say it went great, but it didn’t go bad. It made me want to do more.”
Next came the bands Minute 61, The Scuds and then the popular jam band Art Vandelay (with whom he played Bonnaroo), followed by a longtime stint with locally beloved bluegrass act Big Country’s Empty Bottle.
Then there was a period where he dropped from the scene.
“I was just gonna be a restaurant manager and give up on music,” says Ross.
It was when venues began opening again with pandemic restrictions that he started playing at an open-mic night at Union Place and began getting calls to perform with bands again.
Daugherty saw Ross play at Union Place and was immediately intimidated.
“I did not want to play with him because I didn’t want to let him down!,” she says.
When the two actually met, though, they both knew they wanted to play music together. Ross suggested busking on Market Square.
“We made more money busking than at gigs,” says Daugherty. “Once we got done with it, it was like an adrenaline rush. ‘Can we do that EVERY DAY?’ It was kind of our mode of gigging at first because nobody would book us.”
“Not only were people throwing tons of money at us, they were saying, ‘Thank you. We’ve missed live music so much,’” says Ross.
“Will said a long time ago, people were just hungry for live music,” says Daugherty.
And Ross and Daugherty are anxious to provide it. The two had planned on touring as soon as Ross finished his semester at UT studying bass under Jon Hamer. However, Daugherty’s upcoming ACL surgery and a lack of open venues has delayed that. Instead, the two plan on hunkering down to write their first album as a duo. Money the duo won at a battle of the bands in Harriman will provide the seed money for recording. In addition, Daugherty is finishing up tracks for a solo project at Famous London studio, but now the focus for both of them is the duo.
And Knoxville is the place to start. Bookings have already been taking off.
“After living in Nashville, I never want to go back to that music scene – never, ever,” says Daugherty. “The open-mics were cutthroat, and people were not kind. And coming from a place of love and hugs … ”
“There’s a lot of love and support here,” says Ross. “Everybody is cheering everybody else on.”
And after the shows, the applause will have to be enough. No more races.
“We learned our lesson,” says Ross. “Take some deep breaths when we get off stage and realize that we’re all adrenalined up!”
Daugherty says a big part of the duo’s success is making audiences feel comfortable and relaxed, in addition to people just being excited to hear live music again.
“I don’t know,” says Ross. “There’s a specific vibe that we put out there that I haven’t come across a lot.”
“It’s called GOOFY,” says Daugherty.
“Yeah,” says Ross. “Goofy joy.”
bledsoe@blanknews.com
