T Strickland

What you've got here is your basic woman-with -acoustic -guitar set-up -- equal parts folk, pop, and rock. But what sets the enigmatically named T. Strickland apart from all those other Indigo wannabes is that she does it pretty darn well. The 10 songs on this local release actually have memorable hooks and stand apart from each other (check out "Lie to Me," "Just Say," and the downbeat closer "Not Here with Me"), mostly avoiding the droning sameness that plagues the genre. As a songwriter, she's concerned with being in love, staying in love, and wondering what went wrong with love; not new ground exactly, but she sidesteps the "fire, desire" clichs in favor of simple straight talk. Her singing is confident, husky, and sincere, and she's no more guilty of occasional over-emoting than, say, Melissa Etheridge. The production is impressively professional, smooth but not slick, and the extra instrumentation on some tracks -- violin, cello, sax -- lends tasteful texture. Strickland has built up a following on the bar-and-coffee-house circuit from here to Chapel Hill, NC. - Zippy McDuff, Metro Pulse May 1998

I just got my hands on T. Strickland's new CD, "Nothing Here to Sell," and I think she could have picked a better title. On her CD, the popular Knoxville singer-songwriter wears her heart on her sleeve, dishing out 10 genuinely gutsy love songs. My faves are the two most up-beat tunes: "Two Sides" and the "Baker Street" saxophone-vibed "Lemming." Here's to local photographer Christian Lange for a great cover photo as well. - Shannon Stanfield, The News-Sentinel

Local bands My Cousin Healy, Floodwater and Jonny Blaze will take the upstairs stage at Boogie's tonight for a party/showcase of local talent. Headliners My Cousin Healy can be seen every Wednesday night at O'Charleys on the strip, and consist of T. Strickland (guitar and vocals), Kristi Kulesz (guitar and vocals), Angel Jennings (guitar, bass and vocals), Jeff Livingston (bass, vocals), and Alan Armstrong (drums). The band took time out before showtime last Wednesday night to answer the Beacon's questions.
Daily Beacon: The press release received about the band described your sound as Dave Matthew's Band meets the Indigo Girls. How would you describe it?
Kulesz: The Dave Mathews aspect is more him (Armstrong), his drumming is very unique and very Carterish (referring to DMB drummer Carter Beauford). It's incredible. Then the Indigo Girls is basically from our harmonies. We have, like, three-part harmonies on a lot of stuff.
Strickland: The original stuff is kind of hard to classify, and then it's not. It's definitely not folksy although it has its roots in folk. Everybody brings in a different influence, but I think that's a really good, accurate description.
DB: Why has your live show been called a party in a box?
Strickland: (laughs) Because that was cleaner than saying a party in your pants, which is what a DJ once said about us. We have a tradition called Wax the Booty, which is an original song Kristi brought to the band, and that gets a little wild. But mainly because our focus is on playing music and feeling good but also to make sure that everybody has a good time.
DB: What's been the biggest event for the band this year?
Kulesz: We played at a frat party down in Atlanta.
Livingston: It was the first chance for the band to break out and play out of town. We went
down and played at Georgia Tech University. It was a good chance just to get out and kind of go
somewhere where you didn't have your friends to rely on, walking in as a complete stranger and standing on the merits of the band.
DB: What do you know about the opening acts Floodwater and Jonny Blaze?
Strickland: I have to give props to Floodwater. The stuff that I've heard from that band has been great. They're going to give a good show; it's going to be to be a great night for original music. Livingston: [Jonny Blaze] is like, a two man acoustic thing, kind of in the veins of Grateful Dead and Ben Harper.
DB: This may sound snobbish, but why should anyone come out and see your show?
Kulesz: I think that we are unique especially in Knoxville. I don't know, I don't want to sound snobbish myself, but I think it's hard to find a band that can be entertaining with a real musical feel; with harmonies and a great bass line and incredible drums.
Strickland: We encourage audience participation, dancing singing; a lot of people know
our original stuff now so they'll join in with that. We're there to have a good time, and we think our
audience has a good time.
Tonight's show will begin at 9 and admission is $5. - The Daily Beacon 8-6-2005

The magic of playing music in East Tennessee doesn’t resonate with possibility like it used to more than a decade ago, but it’s still there.

Just ask Tanya Strickland. She spent the latter part of the 1990s gigging around town as the leader of the T. Strickland Band, and she remembers well how the music scene pulsated with potential.

“It was awesome,” she told The Daily Times this week. “There were so many places to play live music, and you had great opportunities to play with such cool bands. There was a lot of optimism, and you could actually believe that you might get discovered in Knoxville, Tennessee. It was really like a little miniature rock star dream.”

But like most dreams, this one faded — for Strickland, and so many of her contemporaries. She cheers for those who still persevere — singer-songwriters like Dave Landeo — and a part of her waxes nostalgic for those halcyon times. Which makes any opportunity she has in the here and now to return and perform, as she’ll do on Saturday night at Big Fatty’s in West Knoxville, even more special than it was when she was doing it all the time.

“It’s still my job of choice — if I had a choice, I’d be a rock star,” said the senior production manager for Gillette Blades and Razors, who now calls Colorado home. “But here I am with a mortgage and bills to pay, and I’m getting too old to live in a van, as much as I don’t want to admit it.

“But now, when I get to come back in to Knoxville, it’s fantastic to sit down and throw this band together and play and do it for the right reasons — because you love it and you want to make people happy. That’s a whole lot better than making it a job.”

Raised in North Carolina, Strickland went to college in Chapel Hill, N.C., and aside from a year-long stay in Houston remained there until following a relationship to East Tennessee in the mid-1990s. She got a job with WBIR-TV and having tinkered with the singer-songwriter thing since college started playing around town.

Eventually, she picked up other players and formed the T. Strickland Band, a hard-working folk-rock act that Metro Pulse described in 1999 as “like the Indigo Girls but indigenous.” The group quickly became one of the hardest-working local bands on the scene, playing out several times a week at places like O’Charley’s on “The Strip,” Hawkeye’s and the Old City Grill. The more visible the band got locally, however, the more Strickland realized that to go anywhere, it needed to break free of East Tennessee.

“We thought Knoxville was going to compete with Nashville for live music, but then we started to realize we needed to get out of Knoxville,” she said. “But when you find yourself at 30 with a mortgage and needing to have a day job, you can’t fully commit. Everybody had a reason why they couldn’t leave and couldn’t live in a van.

“I thought we had a really unique sound, but we never got out of Knoxville for multiple reasons. I thought we needed to move to Atlanta, but we just weren’t able to do that. It was practical, even for myself at the time.”

Eventually, she pulled what she describes as her “Eddie and the Cruisers” impersonation — leaving town, taking time off from music and relocating to Colorado, where she joined the corporate world. She chides herself, just a little bit, for hanging it up for so long, but she credits her company — specifically it’s annual “Creative Circus” event that allows employees to show off in a company-wide talent show — for getting her back into music.

“Nobody expected somebody from the production department to sing like that,” she said with a chuckle.

She’s returned to East Tennessee periodically, as she’ll do this weekend, picking up shows with old friends and bandmates — and as is the case this weekend, even other musicians who saw her back in the day and know of her reputation, guys like Blount County’s Eric Keeble, who will sit in on guitar Saturday night.

It’s be an even mix of familiar material and some things she’s written in the years since, and — unusual for many music acts — they’ll have a translator for hearing-impaired fans, many of whom have followed her for years. They may not be able to hear the music, but they understand the emotions conveyed in the lyrics, she said.

And that means as much as any of the fans who sing along and make plenty of noise themselves. Gathered in a small bar, finishing up at 2 a.m. — it was a chore once upon a time, but this weekend, it’ll be a sweet reminder of what-might-have-been.

“I miss performing, and I really miss the people I used to play with,” she said. “When I get the chance to come back, I really want to be able to do that, to go out and play and relive the days.” - By Steve Wildsmith The Daily Times