One Dance Left for the Guvs
I’m alright, at least that’s what I’m selling
I still like the late nights after dark
there’s one dance left and I’m willing
two hands that need a second startand you know, you know desperate it ain’t pretty
when you feel just like you’re dying deep inside
there’s one dance left and I’m willing
two hands that need a place to hide… a place to hide- The Dirty Guv’nahs — One Dance Left — 2012
Tonight my favorite band has one dance left.
After creating and performing my kind of music for the past nine years, The Dirty Guv’nahs are saying farewell with one final concert in their hometown, at Knoxville’s historic Tennessee Theatre.
While “Knoxville’s Grand Entertainment Palace” has seen great concerts and unforgettable performances since 1928, I doubt it’s seen something like we’ll see tonight. Friends, family, and fans of the Guvs will mostly stand, sing, and dance through what will be an emotional goodbye to the music industry for local guys who did well.
I fit into the “fans” category of the Guvs. I’ve never met any members of the band, and due to my baseball and basketball schedules have only made it to one live show (Atlanta in Oct. 2014 at the Buckhead Theatre) despite mostly living in Knoxville while the band has performed.
After seeing a lot of Twitter buzz on the Guvs leading up to their 2012 album release for Somewhere Beneath These Southern Skies, I started to give Knoxville’s best band a listen.
I was blown away.
While I didn’t have the biggest music acumen at the time, I was thrilled to find a band that combined my favorite parts of rock, country, R&B, Southern Rock, and Americana into one. You really can’t put them in any one category, they hit it all so well. I’ve always been drawn to music that moves at a quick pace, and it doesn’t get much better than “We’ll Be the Light.”
Then the album came out that summer and served as a soundtrack to my early days working at Carson-Newman and my return to Jacksonville the next spring, where the Guvs were always on as I got ready for a game. It’s a near flawless album, and many of the beginnings for their songs became 10 to 15 second bumpers for my Suns broadcasts on the radio. Fans would always ask what band that was during the pregame show, and I was always proud to say, “The Dirty Guv’nahs, from Knoxville, Tennessee.”
Another advantage of being a Guvs fan? You could mention them to any UT coed and instantly strike up a good conversation. Listen to the scream and look at the faces at the end of “We’ll Be the Light” above. Knoxville’s finest ladies certainly were Guvs fans.
They were also great spokesmen for Knoxville and made you proud of the city. While I’m from Kingsport originally, I’ve lived in or around Knoxville since my college years and usually tell people I’m from Knoxville. From the music videos, to the Vols athletics support, to the Tri-Star drum kit, these guys are Tennessee to the core. They also had Wayne Chism in a music video and Trimble wore a Tobias Harris jersey in another video as well. Clearly VFL.
Again their energy was the main appeal, and that was confirmed when I saw them in person last fall. Watch and listen to their music video for “Morning Light” below. There’s no way you can’t feel energized and ready to take on whatever is ahead of you when getting wrapped up in this music.
Speaking of music videos, while Knoxville is featured in most of the band’s music videos, the city shines brightest in “Fairlane.” Woody Allen used his home New York City as his backdrop for his films, and in 1979 made the stunningly visual Manhattan, which he described as a “love letter to New York.” The same can be said about “Fairlane” to Knoxville.
I was convinced that Somewhere Beneath These Southern Skies would really launch them into superstardom. That’s why I was surprised when a year later they were starting their own label “Summertown Records” instead of joining a larger label and touring more across the entire country instead of the Southeast.
Lead singer James Trimble talked about those that last month with the Charleston City Paper.
“Essentially, if you want to grow your business without the hit song, you really need to go out there and do 180 to 200 dates [a year],” he says. “The reality that sunk in is that 90 percent of our fans are Southeastern and we’ve never had a hit song, a song that suddenly made a thousand people in Portland, Ore. huge fans. It was always this grassroots, word-of-mouth, good live band, but the ways bands really blow up, it comes down to a song because of the amount of time it takes.”
I was part of the Kickstarter effort to get the Guvs started on their label “Summertown Records,” and was very proud to see my name in the liner notes for their 2014 record Hearts on Fire.
The record was another hit with me. From the unescapable energy of “Morning Light” to the relatable ballad “Ever Start to Wonder,” I was so proud of what the band accomplished on their own. I had a blast at the show I went to last October, and was really excited to see what was next for the band.
As it turned out, the “One Dance Left” ending to Somewhere may have been fitting. Because Hearts on Fire was the last full album we’d get, as we learned with this video in May.
I was stunned. I took to Twitter about it quickly.
At the time I was upset mainly because I didn’t want the music to end, and I was upset that record executives in Nashville, New York, or Los Angeles couldn’t understand what I realized back when I first heard them years ago.
The Guvs are made up of special people, and while most rock stars aren’t from your hometown, it’s easy to forget that they are people. They go through the same ups and downs as everyone else, and those ups and downs can get magnified when spending so much time on the road for their tours. As someone that is away from Tennessee for half the year for baseball season and constantly traveling in baseball and basketball season I can certainly relate.
But it’s not just the members of the band, it’s the families as well affected by all the miles on the road.
“We have six guys in the band, and five of them are married, and there are also four children in the equation,” says singer James Trimble. “We love music, but when you get down to it, we love our families more. And it was getting really hard to say this is worth it, being gone all this time.”
When I thought more about the breakup of the Guvs, I kept getting reminded of one of my absolute favorite bands from the past, The Band. After playing as the backing band for Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan, they formed on their own organically and produced some of rock and roll’s best music in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Yet the road lifestyle and as we later learned creative differences led to The Band deciding to stop touring, culminating in one final show at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on November 25, 1976. The concert was called “The Last Waltz,” featuring the best of The Band’s music along with special guests like Dylan, Neil Young, Dr. John, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, and Muddy Waters.
The concert was immortalized in “the best rock and roll film ever made,” as Martin Scorsese’s cameras captured each moment of the wonderful concert, and I usually don’t go a month or so without watching or listening to The Last Waltz.
I’m not the only fan of The Band in East Tennessee, as the Guvs got to record at Band drummer Levon Helm’s studio in Woodstock, New York and even played at one of Levon’s legendary Midnight Rambles.
One of my favorite songs from The Last Waltz is Van Morrison singing “Caravan” and keeping the song’s last few bars going and going “one more time.”
The song is also referenced in the Guvs’ “Ever Start to Wonder” with the lyrics:
The band started playing my favorite song by a man named Morrison
So I made my way to the front of the stage and I sang along
We sang “Nah, nah, nah, nah
Nah, nah, nah, nah ,nah.”.
So it was no surprise to me when the Guvs had a great version of “Caravan” when I saw them in Atlanta last October, and they also covered “It Makes No Difference” which is prominently shown in The Last Waltz.
It’s also no surprise that the Guvs would go out with the same flourish that the original lineup of The Band had in 1976. They’ve played a Farewell Tour since Mid-July, performing shows in: Loudon, Charlotte, Charleston, Atlanta, Birmingham, Athens, Clemson, and finally home in Knoxville. They sold out the Bijou Theatre last Saturday, and now tonight will shift the show up Gay Street two blocks to the Tennessee Theatre.
It’s a similar venue to what The Band played for The Last Waltz, and with friends, family, and fans standing, singing, and dancing through the night, they’ll get the tribute and sendoff they deserve.
I got tickets for the event right as they went on sale, and I’m happy to go with my friend Katie again, after we had a great time seeing the Guvs in Buckhead last October. We’ll sing loudly from the balcony and remember the times that “Baby We Were Young” or we took the “Blue Rose Stroll” across the South or said “Goodnight Chicago.”
Mainly, The Last Waltz is a dance, and tonight The Dirty Guv’nahs have “One Dance Left.”
I’m going to enjoy bit of the show tonight, and hopefully Justin Hoskins will write out a set list that features something fast that rocks for the final song so all can really enjoy that “One Dance Left.”
Thanks Guvs.
