The Daily Times

The dinner special on Friday night at Southland Books is the Cuban sandwich — more appetizing, no doubt, than the all-you-can-eat buffet at Shoney’s on Alcoa Highway.

Local musicians Todd Steed and Bob Deck will drive by that Shoney’s on their way to Friday night’s Southland performance. And while they probably have no interest in stopping off for a bite, Steed may just pull into the parking lot for the sake of his Maryville memories.

“The last time I played downtown Maryville was 1980, if you can believe that,” Steed recently told The Daily Times. “We played the Maryville High Prom breakfast in a theater on the main street. I was in a band called ETC. that played a wide range of covers ranging from Toto, The Doobie Brothers and Skynyrd to Frank Zappa, The Cars and Devo. It was a democratic band so everybody got to choose their favorites, hence the setlist. We even had a manager, Glenn Reynolds, who is now the artist known as Instapundit, the world’s most read blogger. He and a couple of the guys (Steve Profitt and Danny Cartlidge) in the band were from Maryville.

“We also had a cupful of original songs that were almost digestible to the teen audiences of the day. We actually had two gigs that night, the first being at Bearden Junior High for some sort of sock-hop type of affair. We rocked those middle schoolers and quickly packed our gear, then we drove out Alcoa Highway and had a quick dinner at the airport Shoneys. I remember thinking at the time, sitting around with a bunch of guys talking about music at the Shoney’s: ‘I am living the life I have been dreaming of. This is it!’”

Whatever his younger self dreamed of sitting in that Shoney’s, it’s doubtful those youthful visions match the reality that Steed’s life has become. Not long after that show, he became a regular in the local music scene, building a reputation for the unusual and entertaining. Starting with Smokin’ Dave and the Premo Dopes, he’s done more for the Knoxville rock scene than just about anyone else still playing locally these days. Through such bands as Apelife and the Suns of Phere — his most recent collection of motley musicians — he’s penned songs from the quirky to the serious to the bittersweet.

Last year, he took a detour away from more straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll for an ambient audiobook titled “Unmind,” a project that belonged to Deck as much as it did Steed. Inspired by self-help books that provided solace — and hilarity for their mostly maudlin sentiments — during some troubling times in Steed’s own life, the record features Deck as “Dr. Manfred Minsk,” a self-help guru who ruminates philosophically over Steed’s instrumental guitar work.

“You’ve heard the term ‘WTF’? That was the response from several people,” Steed said with a chuckle. “They just didn’t get it, but that’s OK — I didn’t expect a lot of people to get that one. It was just one of those projects that said, ‘This is what I want to be,’ and my job was to say, ‘Yes sir, Muse. Whatever you say, Muse.’

“On the other hand, it seems to go over really well live. It works when you pull out three or four minutes and stick it in the set as a brain-flossing exercise. People seem to really like it when they see Bob do it with the white coat and that stern look of passion on his face. And he really is quite a brilliant actor in his own right. As long as we don’t do too much of it, people can hang.”

They’ll pull out one or two “Unmind” selections on Friday, he added, along with any number of material that spans “various eras — or errors, as the case may be,” Steed said.

“I hope people come, because we’re actually going to practice! A setlist has been drawn up — we’re not messing around here,” he said.

And with any luck, the crowd will leave as pleased as they did in the wee hours of the morning following that post-prom breakfast his band played all those years ago.

“Much happiness was had, people fell in love and broke up to the sounds of ‘Color My World’ — and we played as well as we could, whatever level that might have been,” he said. “I remember getting and home and being so tired I fell asleep wearing my Chuck Taylors. So I am very pumped about returning the scene of my teenage near-triumph. No ‘Color My World’ this time, though.”

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