The Buspit: New Chapter in the Life of the Old Kingsport Bus Station

KINGSPORT, Tenn. – Seen one nightclub, seen them all.
Yet no one who has seen, visited or played in Kingsport’s Buspit would say such a thing.
“We played the Buspit in May,” said Luke Nutting by phone from Charlottesville.
Nutting is lead singer of 6 Day Bender, who are scheduled to return to the Buspit on July 10. “It’s cool. The Buspit, it’s new.”
Well, that’s a good start regarding the live music venue that opened in April.
For another and most distinctly, there’s the name.
“It was originally the Kingsport city bus station; it’s where they worked on the transit buses,” said Katherine Latham, who performs marketing and public relations for the Buspit.
“We flip the garage doors up, and it’s a very open venue,” Latham added.
Garage doors, bus or whatever, the Buspit operates as a good venue for live music, Nutting said.
“It’s a big room with a big stage,” he said. “We had a lot of fun there.”
So it goes with many a rock band. However, Charlottesville-based 6 Day Bender do not qualify as just another rock band.
Mountain rock and roll, that’s 6 Day Bender. They feature loud guitars and drums, but also a banjo on some songs.
“I’ve not come across another band like us,” said Nutting, who plays banjo and guitar in the band.
And since forming in 2006, change from necessity helped shape 6 Day Bender’s current style.
“I got all my guitars stolen,” Nutting said.
He was left with one banjo.
“And so I became a banjo player overnight,” he said.
Then, the band’s fiddler left the band. They scaled from five to four pieces, shed most of their bluegrass leanings and turned up their amps. One bluegrass tendency remains.
“We play bluegrass forms with everyone playing solos,” Nutting said. “But we’re a roots rock band.”
Roots rock band built from a bluegrass base, and yet 6 Day Bender still have quite a ladder to climb. Multitudes of bands encounter difficulties multiplied in quests for even small measures of success.
So bands need something to spark a buzz for that chance to hop on board the bus to success. For many of them like 6 Day Bender, that includes giving away music via free downloads.
“We send out a free song on our e-mail list every month,” Nutting said. “We’ll cut a song and then just send it out.”
Free yes, but also in turn a valuable promotion tool.
“None of us pay for all of our music, so it’s too much to ask for people to pay for a band’s music they haven’t heard before,” Nutting said. “We’re talking about a name-your-own-price thing for our new EP.”
How novel.
And fitting that such a band will play such a unique venue as the Buspit. But just as there’s more to 6 Day Bender’s sound than simply branding them as a roots band, likewise there’s more to the Buspit than the fact that it once served as a bus garage.
Primarily, there’s the bar.
“We have the bar in the bus,” Latham said.
Actually in a bus?
“You order your beer through the bus window,” Latham said. “It’s incredible and it’s really unique.”

TOM NETHERLAND is a freelance writer. He can be reached at .

IF YOU GO
Who: 6 Day Bender
When: July 10, 9 p.m.
Where: The Buspit, 240 E. Main St., Kingsport, Tenn.
Admission: Free
Info: (423) 578-2336
Web and audio: http://www.6daybender.com
And: http://www.thebuspit.com