The Big Ears Festival returns to Knoxville on Thursday for four days of music and art at venues throughout Downtown, from the Civic Auditorium to the historic theaters on Gay Street to the Mill & Mine, and points in between.

Capps said Big Ears guests should just dive into the experience to see where it leads.

Festival founder Ashely Capps has once again curated an eclectic mix of performers, films and experiences that defy classification and invite exploration.

“To me, the whole spirit of the festival is just diving into the experience,” he said. “There may be one or two must-see shows for everybody. Maybe there's 12 or 14 must-see shows for a lot of people, but just diving into the experience and seeing where it leads is what the festival is all about.”

This year’s festival features jazz legend Herbie Hancock; award-winning composer, singer and songwriter Jon Batiste; artist, musician and filmmaker Laurie Anderson; rapper-turned-flutist André 3000; Big Ears regulars such as Marc Ribot, Rhiannon Giddens, and Kronos Quartet; and a host of other musical performers, including a series celebrating Black electronic music. Films, poets, and even an artist painting live in the streets will add to the mix. 

“For almost everybody who comes to the festival, I will say this: Whatever they come for, they leave with an experience that they'll never forget that they had no expectation of having before they arrived,” Capps said. “And that to me is really the secret sauce. That's what the festival is all about.”

Capps welcomed Compass to his Downtown office for an extended conversation about this year’s festival. (Disclosure: Compass co-founder Jesse Fox Mayshark’s wife works for Big Ears.) What follows is a transcript of the conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Compass: Every iteration of Big Ears is unique. How would you describe this year’s festival?

Capps: Well, recently I found myself describing it kind of as a reflection of the melting pot that's American music. I've always conceived of Big Ears as a music festival, not as a particular type of music festival. And this year, from Jon Batiste to Rhiannon Giddens to jazz artists like Jason Moran and Henry Threadgill, Charles Lloyd, to one of the great young singer-songwriters of our day in Adrianne Lenker from Big Thief, I think of it as what's vital and happening right this moment as part of just this incredible cultural melting pot.

In a nutshell, that's it to me. Big Ears is a reflection of the cultural melting pot that comes together to make American music, and it's a melting pot that is very much alive and constantly changing.

Compass: One of the things about Big Ears is that because there are so many acts in so many different genres, it almost runs counter to the idea of headline acts. But Herbie Hancock, Rhiannon Giddens and several others, and some mainstays like Marc Ribot who are almost always here, are performing. How important is it to have those acts that are more familiar to your average person?

Capps: Obviously, Herbie Hancock's a big name, Jon Batiste is a big name, Rhiannon (Giddens) is a big name — I mean, she won the Pulitzer Prize in 2023. But to me, it's just a continual evolution. I had the opportunity of working with Batiste at Bonnaroo — he came to Bonnaroo on several occasions, and he's just an amazing, amazing artist, and it's great to see all of these artists getting the accolades that they do. But I don't really think of it so much in terms of headliners as much as seizing unfolding opportunities.

People respond to what they know. The good thing about artists who have more name recognition because of what they've accomplished in their careers is that it gives people an entry point into the festival experience as a whole. These artists are not only great artists in their own right, but they are also very influential artists whose influence  is felt in so many different ways across the festival.

Compass: Big Ears always brings in new artists that a lot of people might not be familiar with, and you bring them in from all over the world. Who are some of the artists that might fly under the radar for a lot of people that you're excited to showcase?

Capps: There are so many. When it comes to flying under the radar, I find myself asking, “Whose radar?” Because that's different for different people attending the festival. But there are some really fun highlights this year. 

Molly Lewis, who is a whistler — in fact, she contributed the whistling to the Barbie film, but she's also released this new record. She's a virtuoso whistler, she's extraordinary, and it’s almost like one of the wonders of the world to hear her perform. 

Big Ears founder Ashley Capps

We've got this wild band Tredici Bacci that captures the spirit of the Italian soundtrack orchestras in the 60s or 70s. They're inspired by the music from Fellini films, but there's a touch of kitsch to the whole thing. They're a really great band that not too many people know, but anybody that comes to their shows can be blown away by them. 

I think I mentioned Adrianne Lenker and her band Big Thief is becoming quite a big deal, and justifiably so. She's just releasing her second (solo) album. To me, she's just one of the great songwriters of her generation. She's like a major, major, major, influential figure that we're going to hear great things from, not only now but in the future.

There are a lot of just great artists under the radar, and my hope is that people pick up the program and look through it and read the short descriptions of what's going on and find their curiosity fired up and go out and discover.

Compass: Blacktronika is kind of a festival-within-the-festival. Talk a little bit about that and what people should expect. 

Capps: This is an example of how things evolve over the course of time. I first met King Britt a little over 10 years ago, and over the years we've had some back and forth conversations but none of them actually materialized until last year. He presented a really special program, a composition that he had created with cello and bassoon and electronics. He teaches a course on the Black influence on electronic music, which has been considerable,, from Detroit techno and Chicago house music. There's certainly those roots in dance music, but it's far more extensive than that, going into hip-hop and other things.

We started this conversation about him curating something, so this deep dive into the rich diversity of Black electronic music that's being created right now is the result of those conversations. And there's one really special part of it is we're going to have a full-on Detroit techno Chicago house party at the Mill & Mine on Friday night. That's gonna be fun — Carl Craig's playing, DJ Heather — it's gonna be a blast.

Compass: The film series this year appears to be expanded. What should people expect and what went into the process of selecting the films that will be screened?

Capps: I met a woman named Lily Keber who's a very successful documentary filmmaker from New Orleans. She's won several awards for her films. I met Lily on a trip to Cuba, where she was also filming, and from those conversations, she curated our film program last year. This year, she dug in very deep. We've been very interested in expanding the film programming for Big Ears for a while, but how to do it in the context of the festival has been a challenge at times. The obvious thing to do is music films, and we've got some really great music films this year. There's a restored version of Laurie Anderson's classic from the 1980s called Home of the Brave, and Laurie is going to be talking about that after the screening. 

We also wanted to use the film programming to explore the melting pot, so to speak, of Southern culture. There are some really fascinating documentaries that are more related to the ethos of the South. There's a great film about the carpet industry in Dalton, Ga. (Carpet Cowboys), which is a really, really fascinating documentary. Lily and her cohorts have really taken the film programming under their wing and I'm looking forward to seeing this blossom not just this year, but in future years.

Compass: One hallmark of the festival is you always add new experiences for people, and this year, Steve Keene and the Knoxville poets laureate are going to be performing. What do these types of experiences bring for festival guests?

Capps: As with the film programming, we've been very interested in a literary component to the festival for a while. We had Nikki Giovanni and Hanif Abdurraqib, who's coming back this year, in 2022. This year Ross Gay, who is quite an extraordinary poet, is joining us as well as Hanif. Both of them, interestingly enough, will be reading works about basketball. 

And Knoxville established this poet laureate program, which really celebrates the fascinating literary tradition that we have right here in Knoxville and in the region and, of course, throughout the South. I sat down with Black Atticus (Joseph Woods, the city’ current poet laureate) and he came up with this pretty exciting program that incorporates Rhea (“Sunshine” Carmon) and RB (Morris) and Marilyn Kallet. So all of our poet laureates today in Knoxville, but also reaching out to the Black poets laureate throughout the country for some programs. I’m so very excited about that because to me, poetry and music are always intertwined with one another. 

I first visited Steve Keene back in 2007 or 2008 at his studio in Brooklyn. My idea originally was for him to come down and paint all day, at Bonnaroo, and for whatever reason, and I don't even remember what the reason was, it just never came to be. But sometime in the past year, I got a call out of the blue from a friend (publisher) J.C. Gabel, and he's like, “Man, I just put out this really beautiful art book of Steve Keene's work, and we're wondering if you'd be interested in Steve coming to Big Ears,” and I was like, “Hell yes.”

Steve will be here during the festival and painting 40, 50 or 60 paintings a day. It's a trip to watch, but also, it embodies this aesthetic of openness and accessibility. It’s this whole aesthetic of creating affordable art for the masses.

Compass: What does Knoxville bring to the festival, and what does the festival bring to Knoxville?

Capps: I think about that a lot. And I do think Knoxville is the perfect setting for the festival and in many ways responsible for the festival’s profile internationally. A lot of it has to do with the walkability of the city. 

I think the fact that the city, the downtown has retained so much of its historic character and our venues — the Tennessee Theatre, the Bijou Theatre, the Mill & Mine, the Standard, the churches — the assortment of venues that we have is pretty extraordinary for for a city of this size and especially for all being within walking distance of one another. That allows us to present the music indoors in settings that are really conducive to what the music experience is all about, but also to retain the experience of people coming together for a common purpose. Everybody is together. They see each other on the street, they go into the shows together, they meet one another, they share their enthusiasm, and that social experience is a lot of what the festival is all about. Knoxville is the perfect setting to help nurture that type of experience. 

I also think that Knoxville, being in the Southeast, is a really important aspect of this. We all know the South is sometimes kind of dismissed, but in truth, the South is the melting pot. It's the birthplace of American popular music. It starts in the Caribbean, comes through New Orleans, goes up the Mississippi Delta, goes to Memphis, comes over to Nashville, comes to Knoxville, goes up to Bristol. It also went up to Chicago. You've got the complete birthplace of American jazz, blues, rock and roll, bluegrass, in the South. And then the influence of Southern culture through its great writers and artists is something that has always been there but I think a lot of the world is really discovering now and exploring. 

Bringing all of these artists from all over the world together in Knoxville is a beautiful thing because it creates that connection to culture throughout the world. It's especially valuable at this time in our history. I like to say we bring the world to Knoxville, but we showcase Knoxville to the world. And, you know, that's true, not only of the artists, but also the audience. Seventy to 75 percent of our audience is coming from all 50 states and 24 countries, so it creates its own little melting pot for the weekend.