Bunch of Clowns

The Brent Thompson Band is a band with dual personalities. Sometimes it's serious, but sometimes it wears clown costumes.

Musical talent mixed with rare creativity is what got Brent Thompson and His Wandering Circus — also known simply as the Brent Thompson Band — onto the Knoxville music scene.

Thompson, who writes all the music for the band, has a rich musical history. Both of his parents are classical opera singers, his sister sings and he himself sang soprano for the Chattanooga Boys Choir.

While in high school, Thompson, who hails from Chattanooga, was in a band that got the opportunity to perform at that city's popular Riverbend music festival. “We thought we had hit the jackpot,” he says.

He started writing music as early as 17 or 18, but while attending school at the University of Tennessee, he set it aside for four or five years as he worked toward a career. “I felt like that was what I was supposed to do… what I learned was that I needed a creative outlet,” he says.

It wasn't until he moved to San Francisco that he picked music back up and really started writing. He sang for a band there that traveled between San Francisco and Los Angeles. “It kind of woke up my curiosity on my creative side,” he says.

Thompson was only planning on staying in San Francisco for a couple of months but instead he stayed for a full year. A business opportunity brought him back to Knoxville, where he is closer to home. Here he got together with Ben Maney, who plays the piano. From there the two found a drummer, a bass player and a guitar player and formed the band Raj and Redwood. After a year or two of playing together, they called it quits.

But in 2006, another opportunity presented itself for Thompson on the music front: He was asked to perform at WDVX's Blue Plate Special. “I decided I needed to make a big splash,” remembers Thompson. “I wanted to do something on a big spectacle scale with a whole mess of people.” And what is more of a spectacle than 15 musicians dressed as clowns?

“I wanted to skip the steps that a band has to go through to get noticed,” he says. By starting out with such a huge bang, they were able to get attention first and work out the details later.

The core band, dubbed the Brent Thompson Band, is made up of Brock Henderson on pedal steel, Vince Ilagan on bass, Ben Maney on the piano, John Nipper on the drums, Mike Seal on guitar, Thompson himself, who sings, plays guitar, writes and plays piano, and his sister Kellye Thompson, who sings backup. When they are Brent Thompson and His Wandering Circus, the stage is filled with about eight more people, and even more instruments, including tuba and trombone.

The performance and style of music depends on the venue. If they are performing as the Wandering Circus, the music tends to be more fun and whimsical. “You can't really perform normal music dressed up as clowns,” Thompson says. But even the style for the regular Brent Thompson Band varies widely. Influenced greatly by Jeff Buckley, each song sounds different. “It doesn't fall into just one feeling,” Thompson explains. He says that Americana is a good loose category in which to place the band, although he also describes them as orchestral and partly jazz improv.

The layers involved in the song “Go Where You Want to Be” are thoughtful and involved, and “High on You” has a slow, emotional pull. “Guilty Hat” offers more of a foot-tapping beat with a swing feel, proving that the band does indeed span across many genres. Thompson says he gets chills every time they perform together, just being able to hear great musicians put together the music he wrote.

The band has had airplay on WDVX, WUTK and WFIV, and they have released a live EP of a Blue Plate Special performance. They were asked to play at the Bijou Theatre for the WDVX 10th birthday performance, which Thompson says was a very exciting step in the band's history. The band isn't necessarily geared toward a bar atmosphere, says Thompson, so it was great to be able to play in such a beautiful venue like the historic Bijou.

Although it's hard to get all the large number of people in the band together at the same time, Thompson says the band never really has to die. Since it contains such a wide variety of people, instruments and sounds, there is always a way for which a missing element can be compensated.

The band is scheduled to perform at Preservation Pub Jan. 26. The show will most likely be sans circus, although the place has certainly been filled with dancing clowns before.