For three decades, Dave Landeo has turned Knoxville bars, weddings, and tailgates into unforgettable nights
Story By Terry Glen Adams | Photograph by Nathan Sparks
Appeared in Cityview Magazine, Vol. 42, Issue 5 (September/October 2026)
You’ve seen him at bars, tailgates, and private events. You’ve danced and requested your favorite song, he’s played it. But my best guess is you don’t know “Landeo” (rhyme intended). For instance, did you know he is the music director of the Knoxville Marathon since the city first ran the thing in 2005, founder of the Isle of Palms Songwriters Festival, writer and producer of his own Marine Corps rock opera, co-owner of Boogie’s on Cumberland Avenue, leader and founder of the All Vol Band, a United States Marine, a University of Tennessee graduate, a philanthropist, community activist, guitar teacher, father of two, and writer and performer of a dozen or so records of original material? I bet I stumped you on a few of these, even if you know him well.
There was a stretch of years in West Knoxville when Thursday night was Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday-Fun-Day all rolled up into one because of Dave.
It began at Peloncho’s, tacos, a few beers and a man with an acoustic guitar would start playing at a reasonable hour to a reasonable number of people, and every Thursday, it ended at Julio’s Between the Buns until late into the night. Many of Knoxville’s luminaries could be found dancing to “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.” Seven hours some nights, same guy, same guitar and hundreds of songs. To be clear, the crowd followed him from bar to bar on the same night, every Thursday, a thing I have seen exactly one human being make happen. It is the reason why the drummer Vic Illagan long ago named him the Pied Piper of Knoxville.
Dave Landeo is a musical Marvel. If you have a room full of people who want a great time. Dave Landeo is your man. I would argue that there is nobody better solo acoustic, one artist and his instrument, to get the crowd moving and having the time of their lives. Kids, drunks, regulars, strangers, hippies, cowboys, professors, he does not care. I’ve never seen him fail. He has played more weddings, private parties, and tailgates than Carter’s has pills (as my grandmother used to say). I have seen big names solo acoustic, people who sell out stadiums, they can’t do what Dave Landeo does.
Our first real conversation happened at a Fourth of July 5K on Neyland Drive. It was the mid 90’s. I recognized him instantly: long black locks flowing, bouncing along ahead of me. I picked it up, pulled alongside, and said “hey, you’re Dave Landeo.” He said, “yeah man, I know you.” We ran and talked about music, the military, and running.
Yes, the military. Here is what surprises people about the Pied Piper, bearer of joy and melody and rhythm: straight out of high school he joined the United States Marine Corps and served four years in the Reserve. The most fun man in East Tennessee is, underneath the party, a profoundly disciplined animal.
But before any of that, there was a hill in Bordeaux, north Nashville, in the 1970s. The neighborhood was changing block by block, school integration, new sounds, a new world order, and one afternoon a sound came out of a garage that he had never heard playing in the distance.
“I never heard a garage band playing funk,” he told me. “I was like, what the hell is that?”
That is the origin story of Dave’s newest record and it is something that has driven Dave’s musical journey. No matter what Dave plays, there is a rhythm, a bit of soul and funk.
If you know music, you know that the rhythm, the beat, the meter, the timing is the frame that holds up the whole structure. So perhaps it is not a surprise that Dave started on drums. His first band was the aptly named Fragile. They never played out, but the guitarist in the band taught him chords. The first paying gig at sixteen was with his next band, Gold Rush, where they gave him eight bars of a drum solo in “We’re an American Band.” Then off to UT where he would join the Woodies. The bass player in that band took one look at the solo in “My Generation” and said “I don’t think I can do this,” and Landeo said, “I’ll try.” He then sang “Radio Free Europe,” Stipe’s part and Mills’s part, over a wicked bass line, the drummer had become a frontman. Then there were the Sherlock Homeboys and Graffiti Circus.
I never heard a garage band playing funk. I was like, what the hell is that?
In 1994 he quit his a job, and he has not had one since.
Everyone wants to know the secret. The secret is that Dave Landeo is driven and professional. Someone you can absolutely trust to bring the goods. The stage personality is the master of ceremonies, the commissioner of fun, the guy who will not let your wedding reception die. The operating personality is a devil dog. I know this too well, because when we were roommates he was the one who made sure the bills got paid on time, every time.
He built this life, his life, on purpose. “I wanted to give myself options,” he says. “Solo Dave. Duo Dave. Trio Dave. Original band Dave. Rock and roll band. Wedding.” The wedding gig is not a betrayal of the art. The wedding gig “finances” the art. “That enables me to do the recording projects. Or to buy a new guitar.”
And underneath the professional approach is the other thing every performer has to have and almost nobody actually does: an unshakable belief that the thing can be done and that he can do it.
Which brings us to the All Vol Band. Dave came downstairs one afternoon while I was picking around and asked if I wanted to write a song.
Of course, I said.
Cool, he said, it’s about the game this weekend, and Rick Russo has arranged a video, and they’re playing it before kickoff.
“When do we need it?”
“About forty-five minutes.”
By now you should be laughing because you cannot write a song and perform it for television in forty-five minutes. Nobody does that. Nobody would do that. But Dave Landeo was going to do it by himself if he had to, they asked, he said yes, end of story. So we did write the first song in forty-five minutes. Then he said: “do you think we should call Tall Paul?” I said yes, I think we should call Tall Paul. Three of us, one deadline, and forty-five minutes later we were on WVLT singing the first-ever song by the All Vol Band.
There was only one year of the original All Vol Band. We did a video for damn near every game. If you are a Vol fan you already know which year it was, because it was the year Tennessee went 13–0 and brought home the National Championship.
I wanted to give myself options. Solo Dave. Duo Dave. Trio Dave. Original band Dave. Rock and roll band. Wedding.
At 12–0, Landeo decided it just wouldn’t be right for the All Vol Band not to be in Tempe, Arizona for the National Championship. So he called every guy who had drifted into the band along the way, collected commitments, secured a sponsorship, and got us a room.
One room. There were a lot of guys in that band by then. We played the Vols home anyway, all of us, out of a single hotel room in the desert, and it happened for exactly one reason: the Marine Corps mentality never sees anything as impossible.
Dave is always, unfailingly, on the beat. He pushes tempo live because pushing tempo gets people out of chairs. Others can mimic what he does, play the same songs. It is not the same reaction, a different room temperature entirely.
In the age of AI, Pro Tools, and technology everywhere, his new record was built from the floor up. Bass and drums went down first, together, with nothing but a click to hold them, no scratch guitar, no vocal, no lead track to follow, Landeo calling the changes out loud into the room. “Okay, here comes the chorus.” He has played almost everything a musician can play. He had never done that.
“I knew it was gonna be hard. And we did it. And I’m glad, because the pocket was there.”
His producer-avatar is Rick Rubin, whose entire gospel is “take things out.” To keep that inspiration in mind, he took to the internet searching for a Rick Rubin bobblehead. It turns out they don’t sell them. So Landeo went on Amazon and had a custom bobblehead made of Rick Rubin and set it on the console for the final sessions. He would lay down a guitar lick, look over, and the head would wobble: “No. Too much.”
“Simplicity gives space to the other instruments. To the lyrics. It gives space to the song itself.”
The record is called Funktasia – streaming everywhere. It came out August 5th. Nine songs: “Chika Wah Wah,” “Chill,” “Nasty,” “Stacks,” “Everybody,” “Large Time,” “Celebration Train Station,” “A Life of Happiness,” “Say, What?” and every one of them traces back to that garage on the hill in Bordeaux. The lyrics, he says, are “basically written by a teenager,” because that is who was standing there. His daughters, Marena and Maya, animated the video for “Chika Wah Wah.” He made them invoice him like clients. They did.
Of the album itself: “It’s not perfect. It’s perfect for me, the flaws, because that makes it human. I tell myself: just do it. Don’t think about anything else.”
Every fall he comes home on a Friday before a home game, Roger’s on Kingston Pike, a party he founded and has thrown more than a dozen times: the Tailgate for Alzheimer’s Tennessee, this year is Friday, September 18th, 2026. What can you expect to see? A spectacle like no other, there will be funk, there will be rock, there will be country, there will be local celebrities, there will be guest artists, but above all there will be Dave. He’s still the Pied Piper and he still taking us to where we really wanna go, somewhere fun, where the rhythm moves you, where everything is possible.
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