The LoneTones: Press/Reviews

...gentle acoustics, sweet harmonies and a soulful, folk-oriented sound...

The relationship between place and music is profound and complicated. Musicians often find a voice that expresses the aspirations, anxieties, and ambiguities of their region and their people. The members of the LoneTones certainly do. Their music rings from the mountains of Appalachia with a reverent, enduring and, at times, conflicted spirit. The band mates shoulder their geography with craft and care. They’re comfortable describing their songs as “fragile little things…kind of like souls” – songs sometimes possessing a quality of “healing.” Their music evokes place, but the LoneTones are anything but complacent. They create light-hearted music for the heavy-hearted, charming music for those charged to act.

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WHO NEEDS "BIG TIME" WITH FANS AND FRIENDS RIGHT HERE?

The Lonetones are anything but lonely.

The folk music quartet is flush with friends and loaded with family. The band's sophomore CD, "Nature Hatin' Blues," is ready for release, and the band members know that, in Knoxville, they'll have local radio support and a waiting audience....

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The LoneTones use a xylophone, and that’s pretty neat. But that’s not the only reason they’re cool. It could also have something to do with the sweet harmonies, and eco-friendly lyrics such as, They say they’ll protect us with technology’s grace/
But these mountains are state of the art. The Tones used to describe their sound as “timeless mountain pop,” but we think they’re better than that. Timeless mountain music is much more descriptive, because there isn’t anything pop-y about this group. They’re hosting a CD release party at Carpe Librum on Nov. 17 at 5:30 p.m. There’s no cover charge, but we recommend you buy a copy of their new album, Nature Hatin’ Blues, while you’re there.

LONETONES HAVE A THING FOR NATURE

....It's more than just a statement about Mother Nature; it's a treatise on human nature as well: "I've got the nature hatin' blues / each time we win we surely lose / the signs and symptoms can be found / disharmony bringing us down / I wanna bring it back, I wanna fit back in / I wanna be a part of nature again ..."

"We spent a lot of time thinking about what we do to the environment and ourselves," Gunnoe told The Daily Times this week. "I just think we kind of hate our own nature, and when we sort of deny ourselves, we deny nature at the same time. It's meant to look at both, because it's hard to separate them."

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Contemporary folk sweetened by Steph Gunnoe's honeyed vocals.

FROM SEATTLE TO DOWN SOUTH, GUNNOE'S LONETONE JOURNEY A HAPPY ONE

But for a few fateful turn of events, Stephanie Gunnoe might be playing electric guitar and screaming into a microphone as part of a riot-grrl group out of the Northwest.

Instead, Gunnoe picks sweet acoustic guitar and sings gently as part of The LoneTones, the band she fronts with her husband, singer-songwriter Sean McCollough (who also fronts the local band Evergreen Street). The band plays gentle acoustic music rooted in Gunnoe's Appalachian heritage ... but hearing her story, it's not a stretch to see how she might have ended up signed to Kill Rock Stars along with the label's star band, Sleater-Kinney.

``I was so happy to discover the riot-grrl scene, and it really, really inspired me,'' Gunnoe said recently of the time she spent in Portland, Ore., Sleater-Kinney's hometown. ``I might very well have ended up in one of those types of bands, but I didn't have the riot-grrl kind of voice and the aggression. I just don't have it, but the whole do-it-yourself attitude inspired me.''

Gunnoe's roundabout path to East Tennessee began in West Virginia, where, growing up, she was immersed in music. Her mother sang opera, and her father played the banjo. At the time, she disliked both styles of music, and when she left for college, she chose a place about as far from the West Virginia mountains as she could get -- Washington State.

``I hated bluegrass music, and opera for that matter, until I went to college out there,'' she said. ``I guess seeing all these young people enjoy it made me realize how much I loved it.''

Eventually, she followed a boyfriend and a best friend to Portland, where she began performing with a fellow singer-songwriter named Little Sue.

``We played just kind of raw harmonies, a Hazel-and-Alice type of music,'' she said.

At the time, the grunge movement had just exploded out of Seattle, and the riot-grrl movement arose from that scene. But Gunnoe drifted toward the emerging Eastside Sound, an acoustic revival led by former members of the Holy Modal Rounders and The Fugs.

``It was sort of an acoustic revival, and those guys sort of grandfathered a whole scene,'' Gunnoe said.

Shortly thereafter, homesickness led her back east -- but she wasn't so overcome with it that she wanted to settle back in West Virginia. She settled on graduate school in Knoxville, based in part on its proximity to the mountains that she loved.

``I heard WDVX when I was coming down here to visit the college, and just driving through the mountains, listening to some of the songs, was powerful,'' she said.

Realizing she'd found a spiritual as well as a geographical connection to her childhood, Gunnoe threw herself into studies at the University of Tennessee and the local roots music scene. Her high, melodic voice seems cut from rough mountain fabric, a thick flannel worn to sweet softness that's warm and comforting at the same time.

A chance encounter at Barley's Taproom altered her life when she was introduced to McCollough.

``We came back to our house -- my roommate was his friend, so we came home and played some music that night, and we've been playing ever since,'' she said.

That was back in 2000, and the two were soon known as Steph Gunnoe and Sean McCollough. Their first public gig was a wedding at The Palace Theater in downtown Maryville, and eventually, the two added Maria Williams on harmony vocals and bass and McCollough's Evergreen Street bandmate, Phil Pollard, on drums.

``We were kind of hoping the bigger sound might help us stand up to the noise in a bar,'' she said with a chuckle. ``But it started with just me and Sean. I thought he had just a deep love and understanding of folk music, and somebody said this about him -- and it made a lot of sense -- they said he's kind of a rock 'n' roller but he sort of channels it all into folk music. To me, that's very valuable in the folk music world.''

McCollough and Gunnoe were married about two years ago, she said, and The LoneTones began work on their debut album -- ``Useful,'' a collection of songs that's full of mirth, gentle energy and excellent musicianship -- about a year ago.

``We started a year ago, and we'd had a baby, so it seemed like a pipe dream at the time to make this record,'' said Gunnoe, whose stepchildren attend school in Alcoa. ``We were pretty deliberate that we wanted to try and keep it true to our sound. It's pretty tempting to make your vocals better and add a bunch of instruments, because Sean can play anything, but we tried to keep it toned down to keep from disappointing people live.''

Their success is self-evident, and anyone who listens will most certainly agree -- Gunnoe sounds much more at home singing and playing Americana than she would have been raging through a raucous set of girl-punk.

An article about a new venue in Maryville called the Backhills Cafe and Pickin Parlor and a LoneTones show there. Click below to read it.