She wrote secrets in invisible ink on her sheet music. She pinned intelligence documents inside her underwear. She walked her cheetah named Chiquita through the streets of Paris and performed in cabarets while Nazi officers sat in the audience, never suspecting a thing. When warned she might get caught, Josephine Baker laughed and said, “Nobody would think I’m a spy.” She was right.
A bar opening this fall on Jackson Avenue is named in her spirit, and once you understand why, the name makes perfect sense.
AJ Tierney grew up in Knoxville, performing with Knoxville Children’s Theatre back when it was in the building that is now Remedy Coffee. She attended Emerson College in Boston and graduated from the first Comedic Arts program in December 2019. The program taught her more about performance, writing and production. She was in Los Angeles by January 2020, ready to pursue her acting dreams. In LA, she went to bartending school and was looking for a day job to pay the bills. But just two months after arriving, COVID shut everything down, and you couldn’t even get a job at a grocery store. So, she packed her Prius and drove home.
Back in Knoxville, she started at Sapphire on Gay Street and worked through its final night on New Year’s Eve 2020. She then followed owners Aaron and Jessica when they opened Brother Wolf, and managed there for three and a half years…