Boundless: Artists in the Archives Featuring Trisha Gene Brady

Knoxville native and nationally recognized Americana artist Trisha Gene Brady will premiere new original compositions inspired by the Fifty Years in Cades Cove Collection, preserved in the University of Tennessee Libraries’ digital archives. The debut performance will take place at the Knoxville Museum of Art on Wednesday, March 25, with a public reception at 6 p.m. followed by the performance at 7 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.

The performance, in partnership with the 2026 Big Ears Festival, is part of the UT Libraries’ unique series Boundless: Artists in the Archives. The Boundless program invites artists to engage with archival materials and create new works inspired by UT Libraries’ unique primary sources. For this project, Brady explored materials in UT’s Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives documenting the history and families of Cades Cove, Tennessee. The collection, assembled by John W. Oliver and later used by Durwood C. Dunn in Cades Cove: The Life and Death of a Southern Appalachian Community, 1818–1937, served as the foundation for her compositions.

A gifted vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, Brady has been featured in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Billboard, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Garden & Gun, and NPR’s Mountain Stage. She has performed at the Grand Ole Opry more than thirty times and appeared at major festivals including Bonnaroo, SXSW, AmericanaFest, MerleFest, and Pickathon.