All About Big Ears Festival Knoxville 2025 Venues
- Jared Hagemann
- Mar 1
- 6 min read
The 2025 Big Ears music festival in Knoxville is fast approaching, running downtown March 27-30, so here's a look at the venues that'll be featuring music and events.
We're going to break up the venue locations into three areas: Old City, Theater District, and Outliers. The Old City and the Theater District are divided by Summit Hill Drive.
Everything at the festival is walkable, but as far as getting around between all these venues, your best options include walking, rental scooters, and bus shuttles (which run consistently through the day).
Old City
Once known as The Bowery, Knoxville's Old City is an area of the the city's downtown with the railroad cutting through and home to many bars, night clubs, and music venues. Check out the Pilot Light while in town!
Jackson Terminal is a restored railroad freight depot built in the late 1880s, you'll find the festival merch, pass pickup, and Blue Note Records is hosting lounge and store, the Blue Note Lounge.
One door down, you'll run into the venue space (with an entrance on the patio next to the viaduct)
While at Jackson Terminal, stop by Pour Taproom and PostModern Spirits.
Crossing the railroad tracks, one of the larger venues at Big Ears (And home to many headliner shows), the Mill & Mine is a renovated warehouse building on Depot Street.
Today, the Mill & Mine is a state of the art venue, with a 1200 person capacity, and hosts big acts & large events year round. They also sell hot dogs sometimes.
Next door, in the same building, stop by Otsu Dumpling for some tasty handcrafted dumplings and small plates.
One block over from the Mill & Mine you'll find Regas Square - a 4300 square foot modern event space filled with beautiful natural light.
(Regas is the name of a now closed but long beloved Knoxville restaurant)
Next door to Regas Square, there's the Marble City Market, a food court filled with local restaurants, and Potchke Deli, an incredible Jewish deli that you shouldn't miss.
Staying on this side of the tracks one last time, The Point is a church on Fifth Ave that hosts a number of Big Ears shows.
If you get hungry while walking to or from The Point, check out A Dopo, an incredible sourdough pizza restaurant on Williams Street closeby.
Circling back into the Old City proper, we have the Jig & Reel, a Scottish pub with an impressively large collection of Scotch and whiskey, as well as a great menu. (We recommend the Scotch eggs)
The Jig & Reel is small, so be prepared to get in line ahead of time if you plan to see a show there.
On the other end of the block from the Jig & Reel, you'll find the Red Gallery, host to the Pangrok Sulap: Malaysian Printmaking Collective during Big Ears.
Pangrok Sulap, a Malaysian group of artists from Borneo will be collaborating with the University of Tennessee to make a large scale woodcut print, as well as presenting smaller prints.
Tucked away around the corner from the Red Gallery the Old City Performing Arts Center (OCPAC), operated by the River & Rail Theatre Company, hosts plays, music, and other performing arts throughout the year.
Walking down Jackson, we reach the Standard.
Once home to the Standard Wilson Glass Company, The Standard is host to a wide variety of events and performances throughout the year.
Stop by Sweet P's BBQ next door if you're hungry or walk a little further down Jackson to visit Knox Whiskey Works and enjoy some of their tasty liquors.
Back on Gay Street, The Emporium is a diverse artist space and gallery operated by the Arts & Culture Alliance, and was built in 1898 for the Sterchi furniture company.
During Big Ears, The Emporium will host artist Wayne White's BIG WORDS showcase, featuring giant words carefully painted into old prints of landscapes.
On the same block as The Emporium, Digital Motif is a digital marketing and advertising agency hosting Violins of Hope: Strings of the Holocaust.
Violins of Hope showcases the stories of Jewish musicians and their violins that survived the Holocaust.
Theater District
The Theater District is in the heart of Downtown Knoxville, home to tons of restaurants, shops and bars, and the main road is Gay Street.
Crossing over Summit Hill Drive, our first venue is the Knoxville Visitor's Center, home to Visit Knoxville and WDVX, an independent radio station, which hosts nearly daily live music with the Blue Plate Special and other events.
This will be the location of some free events for Big Ears.
The Tennessee Theatre is a historic landmark on Knoxville's Gay Street, built in 1928 and renovated in 2003.
Known for its iconic lit up sign, it is also the Official State Theatre of Tennessee, and has a capacity of more than 1600.
Directly behind the Tennessee Theatre on State Street, you'll find the First Presbyterian Church, Knoxville's first church, organized in 1792 on the same spot.
Not only is this is a new Big Ears venue, they are hosting two performance spaces: the Chapel and the Sanctuary.
Also on Gay Street, the Bijou began life in the 19th Century as the Lamar Hotel before being converted to a vaudeville theater in the early 1900s, and operated for many years as a movie theater (and adult film theater) before being renovated and reopening in 2005.
Today, the Bijou, with a capacity of more than 700, is renowned for it's acoustics and history, and hosts a wide variety of music and performances throughout the year.
Next door is Bistro at the Bijou, one of our favorite Knoxville restaurants. Our advice: whatever is on special, get it. You won't be disappointed.
Located right up Cumberland Ave from the Bijou, St John's Cathedral, home to the oldest Episcopal congregation in East Tennessee, is another beautiful church hosting Big Ears shows.
Yassin's Falafel House is on the other end of the block and is a restaurant we highly recommend checking out.
The last venue in the Theater District is the Regal Riviera Cinema, a movie theater on Gay Street named for an old theater that was once on that location.
The Riviera will host the films presented during Big Ears in two of their theaters.
Outliers
These are the venues right outside the downtown district, but still walking distance. We recommend the shuttle bus if you don't want or cannot walk.
The Knoxville Civic Auditorium and Coliseum, opened in the 1960s, is host to a wide variety of music and other performances, as well as sporting events like the Knoxville Ice Bears hockey team.
Being the largest Big Ears venues, the Auditorium has a capacity of about 2500.
Knoxville's awesome and impressive museum of art, looking over World's Fair Park, is hosting a few Big Ears events, as well as a number of exhibits worth checking out.
Across Henley Street from the Theater District you'll find the Church Street United Methodist Church, with impressive Gothic Revival architecture and stained glass, constructed during the Great Depression, holding its first service in 1931.
There is one additional venue to be announced... We have no idea or knowledge where this will be, but it will exist.