Trisha Gene Brady

Trisha Gene Brady presented the University of Tennessee Libraries’ eighth episode of Boundless: Artists in the Archives on March 25, 2026, at the Knoxville Museum of Art. Once again, the Boundless event was presented in partnership with the Big Ears music festival.

Brady is a roots musician with an impressive resume of performances — from Bristol’s Rhythm and Roots Festival to South-by-Southwest, from Outlaw Country cruises to over forty appearances at the Grand Old Opry. A Knoxville, Tennessee, native, she is well known locally for her seven-year run as the vocalist and instrumentalist (guitar, mandolin, percussion) for the Black Lillies.

At Boundless, Brady debuted three new songs inspired by a UT Libraries collection titled Fifty Years in Cades Cove. That collection comprises a series of memoirs by John W. Oliver, the great-grandson of John and Lucretia Oliver, the first white settlers to make a home in Cades Cove. 

Brady chose to explore the Cades Cove collection because of her love of the Great Smoky Mountains and because of her own Cherokee ancestry. Inspired by the Fifty Years in Cades Cove Collection, she wrote tributes to those courageous pioneers, John and Lucretia Oliver, and to the Cherokee, the original inhabitants of the Smokies.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Cades Cove was a small, close-knit community of white settlers on the Tennessee side of the Great Smoky Mountains. The cove reached its peak population of about 671 people in 1850 [Durwood Dunn, Cades Cove: The Life and Death of a Southern Appalachian Community, 1818–1937 (University of Tennessee Press, 1988), 42.]  

We had 700 at the peak of time
Living in Heaven near the Tennessee line

(“Family Home,” by Trisha Gene Brady, 2026)

Cades Cove is now a popular destination in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. 

John and Lucretia Oliver arrived in the Cove in 1818. They were ill-prepared for their first winter there. The Cherokee, who were the original inhabitants of the Cove, saved them from starvation. 

The Cherokees who made their home in the Cove were forcibly removed in the 1830s during the ethnic cleansing known as the Trail of Tears. The white Cove community lived there from 1818 until the late 1930s when the land was seized through eminent domain to become part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Up to Spence field and over Kuwohi
You’ll end up in Qualla territory
A place to hide when white men took their land
The Olivers lost theirs to a different hand

(“Hills of Tennessee,” by Trisha Gene Brady, 2026)

View an excerpt from her performance: