The folks at WDVX-FM never fail to assemble a righteous collection of area musicians to pay tribute to folk icon Bob Dylan at the annual “Bob Dylan Birthday Bash” — which returns to Market Square on Friday evening — but one of this year’s performers is a home run.
Singer-songwriter Eli Fox, who recently graduated from the Webb School of Knoxville and made his bones as the co-founder of bluegrass band Subtle Clutch, strikes most people who see him perform as a reincarnation of a young Dylan. From his vocal delivery to his staccato work on a harmonica rig while his thumb rolls across the banjo, he’s an ideal choice for the all-star tribute, although any sort of comparison is shrugged off by the young musician in his characteristic aw-shucks fashion.
“That’s really nice to hear,” Fox told The Daily Times this week. “I love Bob Dylan’s music. I didn’t really start listening to him until I was 16, but I’ve gotten into him in the past year or so. The first album I got was ‘Nashville Skyline,’ and it kind of took off from there.”
He’s selected one song from that record — “One More Night” — as part of his set on Friday, along with “Duquesne Whistle” off of “Tempest” and songs from “Empire Burlesque,” and “New Morning,” among others.
“I tried to stay with stuff I thought no one else would do, and some of them just happened to be my favorites,” he said. “Dylan gets a lot of praise for his lyric play, but really, I think he’s quite the vocalist as well.”
Fox is no slouch in that department himself. Although Subtle Clutch broke up in 2015, the band of wunderkinds turned heads when they first formed; at the time, Fox — along with Devin Badgett, Briston Maroney and Jonathan Bailey — were eighth-graders at Episcopal School of Knoxville. On a lark, they decided to busk in Market Square, and they soon turned heads with their mastery of a genre that was older than their combined ages.
They started landing a few gigs around the area — including a couple at Vienna Coffeehouse in downtown Maryville — and high-profile shows such as opening for Johanna Devine at the Knoxville Botanical Garden gave them greater visibility. By 2014, they were one of the featured performers for the annual Rhythm N’ Blooms Festival, and since going their separate ways, Badgett, Maroney and Fox have all launched talented solo careers.
“With a band, it’s easy to get stuck as this thing or that thing, and you don’t want to get out of that,” Fox said. “It’s just harder in a group setting. As myself, I’m not trying to do any one thing, really; I’m just putting out what I’m creating.”
Although he’s still capable of some bluegrass picking, he draws on a broad spectrum of roots traditions for his solo material; last year, he released the debut EP “Nothing to Say,” a rollicking set of country honk, Appalachian blues, Old Time porch picking and tales of grenade-tossing monkeys and more. Fox put it together with a friend who served as the engineer, and once the floodgates of his solo songwriting opened up, they never closed back, he said.
“I was always writing songs, but I never really shared any with the group; maybe a few here and there, but it wasn’t the outlet for it,” he said. “When Subtle Clutch disbanded, I didn’t really have a plan; I just went in and started recording that album.”
He started booking shows as a solo act, put together his own band and went back into the studio recently to cut “Tall Tales,” released last month. A CD release show at Boyd’s Jig and Reel drew a sizable crowd, and he’ll continue to play area shows — including a Saturday gig at Trillium Cove in Townsend for the Appalachian Bear Rescue’s Appalachian Bear Fest. It’s one of a handful of gigs left for him before he picks up stakes in August and heads northeast, to attend college at East Tennessee State University. Higher education aside, he’ll continue to record the songs that flow like water to the deft young musician’s head and hands.
“I’ve got maybe two albums ready to go,” he said. “Songwriting is something I do a lot; I don’t force myself to at all. That’s why I like it. No one’s telling me what to do, when to do it or how to do it; it’s something that just sort of happens, and I have as much freedom as I want.”
- Steve Wildsmith / The Daily Times / May 31, 2017