Former K-town rocker returns with new lineup and solo album to boot

It would be nice if they could save a little space somewhere for Brian Waldschlager on that new Old City mural commemorating Knoxville's music history. The former frontman for bands including Boogie Disease and the Dirt Clods helped create the Old City's first and best original music scene with his Knoxville-bred roots-rocking sound in the '80s and '90s.

Waldschlager will return to his old stomping ground with his Nashville-based backing band Saturday night at Patrick Sullivan's. The show will celebrate the release of Waldschlager's CD, "Down There," on Disgraceland Records.

Waldschlager and I cranked out Ramones covers on the Strip in 1980 when we were both in high school and in the country-punk rocking band 5 Twins. We both sought brighter lights; I headed for New York and he headed to Minneapolis.

By the late '80s, Waldschlager was back in Knoxville hooking up with one of this area's greatest transient guitarists, Preston Rumbaugh, fronting the rockabilly-ish Boogie Disease for half a decade. They soon morphed the band into the Dirt Clods.

Taking a pocketful of Clods with him to Nashville in the summer of '94, Waldschlager continued to influence both the Knoxville and Nashville music scenes. As the other Knoxville boys fell by the wayside, Waldschlager kept going.

"We got a fairly steady lineup but couldn't play a gig," Waldschlager says. "Every time I'd book one, the bass player or drummer couldn't do it ... after three to four gigs I was getting frustrated."

Teaming with Sevierville-area producer and guitarist Richie Owens and some stable musicians in '97, his band recorded a CD as Shinola and soon caught the attention of many Nashville label reps as well as Owens' cousin Dolly Parton.

Parton snagged the entire lineup to record and support her album "Hungry Again," and none of the Shinola boys were starving in Nashville for anything other than gigs of their own.

"This seemed to have two lives, the band Shinola with a little buzz but still on ground level here in Nashville," Waldschlager says, "and when the Dolly thing started happening, it seemed like we started making decisions on who we were going to get to manage us, who we were going to get to book for us, and it seemed like we were running scatterbrained in which direction we wanted to take musically."

Too cool for an indie deal, too rock 'n' roll for Nashville, Shinola changed its name to 5 Bucks, though Waldschlager's slick studio work seemed doomed to remain in the can ... until now.

The looser lineup now includes Shinola guitarist Bob Ocker and Knox-to-Nashville transplant bassist Billy "By Gawd" Mercer, drummer Brad "Iodine" Pemberton and Nashville cat Joe McMahan, and Waldschlager says the time is right to put out the long-awaited CD and get on with business.

"There have got to be people that are going to like this," he says. "We're not inventing the wheel -- this is just rock 'n' roll music with a Southern flavor, and people are going to like it or not, take it or leave it."

Although he's gone solo, he still doesn't intend to go so low as to become what's been known in Nashville as a one-hit "hat."

"It's not that easy with the definitions of country these days," he says. "To me, Springsteen, Neil Young or Tom Petty -- that's great country music."

Shannon Stanfield writes about Knoxville's club scene for the News-Sentinel. Questions may be addressed to Shannon Stanfield, Weekend!, 1909 Schofield, Knoxville, TN 37921, or e-mail him at shannon@shanstan.com.