Minton Sparks’ Open Casket Tour comes to Flying Anvil Theatre
July 13, 2021

The provocative, spoken-word performance artist Minton Sparks will be taking the stage at the Flying Anvil Theatre in Knoxville presenting her Open Casket show for a live audience August 26-29, 2021. The performance will also mark the debut of new material from her album “Where Humans and Birds Begin.”

“I am delighted to be back on the road again and making my debut at the Flying Anvil,” says Minton. “This show is a stew of stories about my rural roots and the characters that shaped me.”

The Open Casket program revolves around the people in Sparks’ life and a review of the characters that make up a rural community. As they say in the south, “we don't hide crazy. We parade it on the front porch and give it a sweet tea.” She invites you to grab a sweet tea, pull up a chair, set a spell and take a listen.

“I’m delighted to be working with Minton Sparks and for Minton to be making her debut in the theatre,” says Art Fegan. “I know that East Tennessee audiences will enjoy her unique spin on life and her look at her rich Southern roots.”

Minton has not only won over audiences with her show but left a lasting impression with media an applauded performers.

“Imagine, if you will, Flannery O’Connor and the ghost of Hank Williams having an affair that results in the birth of an illegitimate child. I have seen Minton Sparks. And if she’s not the ghost child of the woman who wrote Wise Blood and the man who sang ‘I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive,’ then cotton doesn’t grow in a cotton field.” – Marshall Chapman, Garden & Gun Magazine.

“Like a backwoods Lucinda Williams or Gillian Welch, or perhaps more accurately, an existentialist Jo Carol Pierce, Minton Sparks has an eye for detail and a flair for storytelling that marks her as an unmitigated original.” – No Depression

“There’s no one quite like Sparks on the contemporary music scene–no one with her ability to find and describe the haunting rhythms of this world in such precise, unadorned terms.” - Performing Songwriter

“Minton Sparks is the most fully realized writer and performing artist I’ve come across in years” Her work is a beautiful blend of humor, intelligence and compassion. When I grow up I want to be like Minton Sparks.” - Rodney Crowell

“It’s been said that no one has yet found the right term to describe Minton Sparks, but we’re pretty confident in the phrase emblazoned on the T-shirts at her merch table: ‘The best country music singer that doesn’t sing.’ A storyteller of supernatural ability, Sparks … provides an underpinning of her cadence, through which audiences feel earth being tilled, dirty dishes scrubbed, precious things coveted.” - Stephen Trageser, Nashville Scene

“The Nashville poet and storyteller unearthed another set of wondrous vignettes that once again drew an unforgettable picture of life in the South. Sparks has a unique niche that soulfully marries the Southern storytelling tradition with the strains of old-time music for a hybrid that is all her own.” - Mary Houlihan, Chicago Sun Times

“[Sin Sick] is humanity with humidity, all told humorously with humility – and just what the doctor ordered.” - John Prine

To stay updated on Minton, visit mintonsparks.com. To purchase tickets to the show, visit Ticket Link: www.flyinganviltheatre.com/tickets.

Minton Sparks is a wildly original poet, performance artist, novelist, teacher, and essayist born in a Tennessee college town and raised among her Southern family in and around Arkansas. She earned degrees from the University of the South and Vanderbilt University. Her appearances range from the prestigious Jonesborough National Storytelling Festival all the way to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and the American Songbook Series at Lincoln Center in New York City.

Minton’s books, Desperate Ransom and White Lightning, and her writing have received wide acclaim from NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered and BBC’s Bob Harris Show. Her performances have enthralled audiences across the United States and Europe. Her DVD, Open Casket, and three CD’s, which feature blues sensation Keb Mo’, the legendary Waylon Jennings, and the internationally acclaimed Irish songstress Maura O’Connell, are sought after worldwide. She has appeared on stage with Ben Folds, John Prine, Punch Brothers, Jacob Dylan, Rosanne Cash, and country legend Pam Tillis. Minton was also chosen to perform at an exclusive TED.com event on Healthcare and the Arts in Nashville, Tennessee.

In addition to writing and performing, Minton teaches a writing/performance workshop, Create Your Story, at universities and professional organizations across the country. She recently taught at Summer Fishtrap in Enterprise, Oregon, and was selected in 2015 as a Fellow at the Vanderbilt Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy. Throughout her career, she has received the following accolades.

• 2017 Just Plain Folk Music Awards Nominee
• 2016 Nashville Women’s Film Project
• 2015-2016 Vanderbilt Community Fellowship Residency
• 2015-2016 Curb Center for Art Enterprise and Public Policy Community Engagement Fellow
• 2011 Fellowship of Southern Writers Award for Spoken Word
• Leonard Bernstein Fellowship
• Just Plain Folk Music Awards Winner, Spoken Word Song
• Top Five Off the Beaten Path Records of 2003, Chicago Sun Times