10 Sounds of a Tennessee Summer Locals Can Name in Seconds

A pickup truck idles outside a gas station on the edge of Franklin, windows down, engine off.

The driver doesn’t bother reaching for the radio.

There’s already plenty to listen to.

These are the sounds of a Tennessee summer locals can place before the first note even finishes.

1. Katydids After Dark

Step onto a porch after sundown anywhere from the Cumberland Plateau to a Smokies foothill, and the katydids take over fast.

The call sounds almost like words: “Katy did… Katy didn’t.”

A male katydid makes that sound by rubbing his wings together, not his mouth, and he keeps at it until a female answers.

No mouth involved.

East Tennessee mountain folklore claims the first frost lands about 90 days after the season’s first “Katy did,” a rough clock nobody needs a calendar to read.

By August, the chorus runs from dusk until the porch light finally clicks off.

2. Cicadas in the Heat

Long before the katydids take over, Tennessee’s annual cicadas run the show.

The dog-day cicadas start droning in the trees by early July, and they call loudest once the afternoon heat sets in, not when the sun is highest.

It peaks.

Unlike the rare periodical broods that surface once every 13 or 17 years, these are the same-every-summer cicadas, the kind a kid in Knoxville or a shopper in Chattanooga hears without a second thought.

Males vibrate a pair of ribbed membranes on their abdomens to build that drone, and a big chorus can drown out a lawn mower two yards over.

Then, as the sun drops, the whole chorus cuts off at once.

3. Whip-Poor-Wills at Dusk

Cades Cove and the ridges above 2,000 feet in East Tennessee still carry a call fewer visitors get to hear these days.

A whip-poor-will repeats its own name over and over right at dusk, accenting the first and last syllable of “whip-poor-will.”

Never a pause.

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency notes the bird favors heavily forested parts of the state and calls loudest on moonlit nights from late spring into early summer.

Miss that window, and the woods stay just woods until next year.

Nobody who’s camped a June night in the Smokies forgets it.

4. Afternoon Storm Rolling In

There’s no slow buildup to a Tennessee summer storm.

Clouds can build from a hazy blue sky to a wall of thunder in under an hour during a Tennessee July or August, typical for the state’s humid subtropical climate.

That first boom lands close.

A federal climate summary counts severe thunderstorms among Tennessee’s most frequent extreme weather events, with summer rainfall averaging 12.6 inches across the season.

Dogs head for under the bed, and a whole neighborhood loses power for exactly as long as it takes to find the candles.

The sun returns within the hour, and humidity readings rise right back to where they were.

5. Broadway Honky-Tonks

Walk down Lower Broadway in Nashville on a June evening, and live music pours out of every open door in a row.

Every honky-tonk on the strip props its doors wide open in the heat, so a steel guitar from one bar bleeds into a drum kit from the next.

One long song.

Visitors picture the Grand Ole Opry stage, but locals know the real soundtrack lives in these open-door bars, stacked three and four deep with bands most nights of the week.

A tour bus idles outside with the engine running, and somebody’s bachelorette party sings along anyway.

6. First Pitch at First Horizon

A wood bat cracks different than anything metal, and Nashville Sounds fans at First Horizon Park hear it most summer nights.

The Sounds run a full home schedule into September, so the ballpark stays loud clear through the hottest stretch of the year.

Vendors call out down the aisles, and a foul ball pings off the concourse roof while a couple hundred kids scramble for it at once.

Between innings, walk-up music blares from the outfield speakers loud enough to hear from the parking lot.

Nobody needs a scoreboard.

7. Blues on Beale Street

Memphis musicians take the party outdoors once summer hits.

Beale Street stays open 365 days a year with a steady run of live music, and bands play louder and longer in June and July, when the free Kix on Beale concert series fills Handy Park most Thursdays.

Guitar and horns spill past the open club doors.

A tourist stops mid-step to listen, and a Memphian just keeps walking because this is what a Tuesday sounds like downtown.

Just another Tuesday.

8. Dollywood Express Whistle

A steam whistle cuts through the foothills above Pigeon Forge several times a day once Dollywood opens for the summer season.

The Dollywood Express runs on a genuine 110-ton steam locomotive, hauling riders on a five-mile loop through the Smokies foothills.

Right on cue.

Families waiting in line hear the whistle before they ever spot the smoke over the tree line.

Riders heard that same whistle decades ago, back when trains were the only way in or out of these mountains.

9. Rapids on the Ocoee

Head toward the Cherokee National Forest outside Chattanooga, and the roar starts before the river ever comes into view.

The Ocoee River hosted the 1996 Olympics whitewater slalom, and the Tennessee Valley Authority still schedules dam releases on the same stretch of river for rafters today.

Without a release, the riverbed sits mostly dry rock.

Open the gates, and thousands of gallons a minute turn the gorge into a wall of noise, screaming rafters included.

Guides shout instructions that nobody two feet away can hear.

Nobody hears them.

10. Bonnaroo's Distant Bass

Manchester's population multiplies several times over every June when Bonnaroo campers arrive on Coffee County farmland.

The multi-day festival draws tens of thousands of campers, and the bass from the main stage carries for miles once the sun goes down.

Neighbors two farms over feel it before they hear it.

No confusion there.