Before the Strip vanished, one voice turned Monday nights into legend.
By Terry Adams | Photograph by Kenneth Cieslak
Appeared in Cityview Magazine, Vol. 42, Issue 2 (March/April 2026)
Once upon a time in Knoxville, there was a place called “The Strip.” It was a magical place where legends were made. On that strip, there was a place called “The Library.” On Monday nights, there lived a giant. He went by the name of Tall Paul.
I first saw him in 1989. I can’t remember how long I waited to get in that night, long enough to freeze alongside students, fans, and faithful shifting foot-to-foot like pilgrims outside a holy temple that served beer by the pitcher. Upon entering, the bones thawed. Inside it was hot and sweaty. On the stage: a Ray-Ban-bespectacled, acoustic guitar-wielding goliath, singing of werewolves and desperados.
In the days before the shadows, there was sun on the Cumberland Avenue Strip. Now it’s January again, and the ghost of Tennessee winter is back. I am in my office. Tall Paul is at home, looking out at the same gray sky. The Library is gone, paved over by progress, but the moment he starts talking, the Strip rises, vivid as the morning’s hangover, the crowd howls, and everybody sings along.
You can hear him smiling through the phone; we are both waiting for the ice apocalypse. It’s the kind of conversation better had over a bottle of Tears of Llorona Extra Añejo—Tall Paul loves good tequila.
We reminisced about what used to be. The Strip was once a ragamuffin array of college bars in all manner of disrepair. A place where college kids had their first true tastes of freedom. There was the low hum of trouble that never quite got out of hand. It was a place where you learned who you were going to be.
Photograph by Kenneth Cieslak
The Library was alive in a way that can’t be reconstructed by developers or commemorated with plaques. What used to feel electric has been sanded down into something efficient and disposable. But back then, before the shadows fell, there was sun on the Strip. And inside The Library, there was a man with an acoustic guitar holding hundreds of people in the palm of his hand.
Tall Paul didn’t just play there. He happened there. People didn’t say they were going to The Library; they said they were going to see Tall Paul. It was in that room that Tall Paul met his wife, Kristie. “Desperado,” became the song they would sing and somewhere in that song, between the loneliness and the hope, two lives changed course. That’s the kind of place The Library was. People didn’t just meet there. They became there.
Tall Paul was becoming a legend in the way Davy Crockett and Paul Bunyan became legends, through tall tales. Before I really got to know him, I heard wild tales of getting high behind the Library and naked eggs. Literally, stories made up by folks who just wanted to be associated with him.
But like days of old, many of the legends are true. Peyton Manning has said his decision to attend the University of Tennessee came after Tall Paul pulled him onstage to sing “Rocky Top” during a recruiting visit.
When Kenny Chesney wrote about his life in music, he points to Tall Paul, among other luminaries, as one of his early influences. Kenny says he’s “a really good musician.” Chesney is far from alone. When Tall Paul released his second studio record, “Fast Beneath My Feet” in 2001, he was accompanied by Nashville musicians who are legendary in their own right including Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush, John Cowan, Kim Ritchie, and produced by Grammy Award-winning producer Brent Truitt. (With lines like “nothing says goodbye like a ticket in your hand,” how could they resist).
Tall Paul opened for Jimmy Buffett, became close friends with members of the Coral Reefer Band, and found himself woven into the fabric of that world, not as a hanger-on, but as family. He played for the troops on a Navy battleship because the ship’s captain had been a fan back in college. The stories that he has could fill volumes.
Think members of a hot-rod club showing up at a show on the Strip and urging Paul to let their buddy play his guitar. It was Andy Wood, who had already carved out a place for himself as one of the best guitarists on the planet. They would eventually collaborate with the band Hot Trio as well on each other’s projects.
But ask him what he is most proud of and he will tell you it didn’t happen on Cumberland Avenue or a battleship or a Buffett stage. It happened quietly, later, when the noise fell away and the story turned inward. He fell in love, not just with a person, but with a partner.
Today, Tall Paul and Kristie Bobal write songs together. They tour together across the country and the world. When Tall Paul talks about music now, the resume fades. He says the favorite thing he has ever done is writing with Kristie and watching those songs become fan favorites.
Songwriting is one of the ultimate acts of creation. You start with nothing. No chorus, no crowd, no line out the door. And when you’re done, you’ve made something that might live forever. Tall Paul understands that better than most.
He was one of my biggest influences. He told me about seeing T-Bone Burnett open for NRBQ after Burnett’s band missed their flight. T-Bone walked onstage alone, with nothing but an acoustic guitar, and changed the room. For Tall Paul, it was a revelation. For me, Tall Paul was that revelation. Growing up in Nashville, if you were in a room, you had a band. Everyone played. But the first time I saw Tall Paul, he stood alone on that stage with an acoustic guitar and commanded hundreds of people. No tricks. No safety net. Just songs and stories.
I put myself through college playing bars with nothing but a guitar. I never would have done that without seeing him first, without knowing it was possible to be enough on your own.
And now, as this story comes full circle, Tall Paul and Kristie are on the road again. They’re heading to Florida for a big dinner with close friends and to play for a Parrothead club, songs, laughter, history behind them, and the future ahead.
Music and love shared between two people who figured out that the greatest encore isn’t louder, it’s truer. The Strip is gone. The Library is gone. But some things don’t disappear.
They just change keys and keep playing.
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