GOLD HILL - Christina “Redd” Daugherty focused on open mics for a large part of her performing history, but stopped performing as frequently during her approximately decade-long position as a high school English teacher at L&N STEM Academy in Knoxville, Tennessee. After the COVID-19 pandemic, however, she started performing at open mics again.
At these open mics, she met and became friends with Katie Adams and Colleen d’Alelio, who had moved to Knoxville together after the pandemic and after performing in a group called Quality Code Names. A mutual friend, bassist Will Ross, introduced Daugherty to Gavin Gregg. Ross ultimately performed with both in a trio formation called Redd the Band, but Ross and Daugherty have stopped performing together due to creative differences.
Soon after this new group of four met, though, they collectively realized they had similar musical goals and started playing together almost instantly.
Daugherty had already started focusing on music full-time. After taking a music marketing class taught by Adam Ivy, she worked more closely with him and took much of his advice. Her students submitted on her behalf a video of her performing to the team of American Idol, and Daughterty ultimately received a confidence boost after placing in the Top 40 of Season 19.
She also released various singles under her nickname Redd that she later compiled into the physical release Monsters & Mothers, and by the time of the release of that album, she had quit teaching entirely to pursue music. Now, with a group of people that gelled together quickly, Daugherty (lead singer and rhythm guitarist), Gregg (mandolin player and lead/backup vocalist), Adams (bassist, upright bassist, and backup vocalist), and d’Alelio (cellist and lead/backup vocalist) decided to form the group now known as Redd and the Paper Flowers.
Daugherty grew up listening to Norah Jones, initially leaning toward jazz music. She also grew up on folk rock from the ’60s and ’70s, including Janis Joplin, and bluegrass, including Doc Watson and The Punch Brothers. Gregg grew up playing bluegrass on bass before eventually falling in love with the mandolin, and he’s listened to everything from the Dave Matthews Band and The Avett Brothers to Radiohead and D’Angelo.
Adams initially focused on the classical realm, starting piano lessons at the age of seven before eventually switching to the upright bass and prioritizing it when her family could only afford to pick one instrument for her. She studied bass as an undergraduate at Ithaca College, where she and d’Alelio met. Initially, she aspired to be an orchestra teacher, but now focuses on performing.
D’Alelio grew up with music directors as parents, her dad a band director and her mom teaching elementary school music. Much like Adams, she initially took piano lessons before switching over to her instrument of choice, the cello. However, she is a multi-instrumentalist, choosing to play a wide variety instead of sticking to one completely, and has also focused on songwriting, releasing her own music under the name Stranger May.
Over the last two to three years, the band has not only connected musically but also as close friends. D’Alelio’s biography on the band’s website states that she and Daugherty tend to keep the band together during practice once Adams and Gregg start trading dad jokes between them. They have a band car they’ve named Bertha and a band RV they’ve named Gertha, “Gertie” for short.
Initially, Daugherty served as the primary songwriter but has started trying to split writing duties among the other members as evenly as possible, citing Adams’s strengths in composition and framework and d’Alelio’s unique writing style in particular.
One moment serves as a massive testament as to how quickly the band has connected both musically and emotionally. The backstory leading up to that moment involves 69 years of local history.
In 1955, a man named Bob Rush came to work at the Knoxville location of Cherokee Music, and after three years, he felt confident in his ability to manage his own music store. In 1958, he founded Rush’s Music, which has flourished ever since.
After Rush passed away in November 1977, his wife Willene took over and incorporated Rush’s in 1979 (the store is still a corporation to this day). In June 1998, employee and manager Steve Boyce purchased Rush’s from Willene Rush, and in 2021, Boyce transitioned ownership to employee Jason Cooper.
Cooper had worked at the store since 2002, meeting Daugherty when she started working there in 2011. Ultimately, Daugherty left Rush’s to pursue teaching after earning a master's degree in secondary education. However, she would be pulled back to the store she loved after tragedy struck.
On February 22, 2023, police found Cooper dead in his home. Cooper’s roommate would turn herself in for the crime in May of that year. With no immediate family, Cooper had willed the majority of his possessions, including the house, his dog, and the ownership of Rush’s, to his close friend Daugherty. She embraced the new ownership, with a drive to keep the beloved music store going for herself and the community. But after a while, she felt overwhelmed.
During band practice one day, she broke down, worried about a lack of staff and whether she could keep moving forward with this leadership position. In response, Gregg and Adams quickly quit their jobs in solidarity with their fellow band member and friend, joining the staff at Rush’s to help. Gregg works as an apprentice woodwind repair technician, and Adams works as a sales associate for the West store located in Cedar Bluff (there is now also a South location on Chapman Highway).
The band has grown even closer because of this, as now 75% of the band members can see each other more frequently and the band as a whole can find more time to practice together. Despite times of increased struggle (in a sad coincidence, two ties to Rush’s legacy, Cooper’s dog and previous store owner Willene Rush, both passed away in April of 2024), Daugherty has overall found peace with her grief, and clearly, her bandmates and friends are there for support.
The band has evolved quickly over the last three years, and all of them, in particular Gregg, love creating music together and watching people enjoy what they make. They find it surreal that they get to do what they love every day as a group that has essentially become a close-knit family.
Ultimately, Daugherty hopes that the energy they bring to the audience and themselves as a group is palpable and contagious, and the whole band hopes that people feel loved during their shows and understand that everything they do is for the audience.
You can see Redd and the Paper Flowers performing live at the Gold Hill General Store, located at 531 Main Street in Gold Hill, on Thursday, October 24, 2024, starting at 7 p.m. The band has released three singles in 2024, “Regrets of Mine,” “Heavy Weight,” and “Ijams,” and are gearing up to release their debut album Appalachian Belljar by spring of 2025.
Be sure to check out the band’s music on various platforms, learn more about them and find each member’s individual social media by going to reddandthepaperflowers.com; follow their Instagram @redd.music, as well as their Facebook and YouTube as Redd & The Paper Flowers; and learn more about Rush’s Music by visiting rushsmusic.com.
