Posted On: Tuesday, Jun 30th, 2009

Click artists for Live Webcast of Chris' show at Love And War In Texas - Plano, TX

Posted On: Friday, Dec 19th, 2008

The Best Americana Music of 2008
PopMatters Picks: The Best Music of 2008

2008 was the year that saw No Depression magazine fold up its tent, an unexpected casualty of a larger magazine purge. Ultimately, the magazine would reemerge with a web presence and a reduced print schedule, but its demise seemingly lent credence to claims that the Americana movement was pretty much dead. True, the Americana tag might seem like a dark little niche, but the sheer fact of No Depression‘s treatment of the term as an umbrella with room for blues, R&B, jazz, country, rock, and anything else they felt like including, stands as proof that the niche argument is a bit of a trap. Americana’s dead only if you think of it in terms of Uncle Tupelo clones, and heck, even those will probably make a resurgence soon.

Besides, with cascading financial crises battering our home pages, 401(k)s, and bottom lines on a daily basis, it sometimes doesn’t seem far-fetched to think we’ll be living like the Joads from The Grapes of Wrath pretty soon. As we load up the family and join the battered old minivan convoy to the next road project or picking se ason, every musical style from crunk to Celtic will become a means of documenting the American experience. Before long, the only person prospering will be John Hodgman, sitting pretty on an empire of canned goods that he’s accumulated in exchange for assigning hobo names to weary travelers.

Or maybe not.

What’s more certain is that 2008 is one of the most difficult years in recent memory, in terms of picking standout releases. There were so many outstanding records, but no one record stood head and shoulders above the rest.

But it did seem—perhaps because of the genre’s traditional real-world concerns—like a lot of the year’s best releases sensed the storm clouds gathering.
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Chris Knight
Heart of Stone

(Drifter's Church; US: 19 Aug 2008; UK: Import)
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It’s easy to imagine many of the songs on Heart of Stone climbing the country charts in the hands of any number of manicured big-name acts. Right now, though, they’re in Chris Knight’s hands—which means they’re dense, literate, often grim, and uniformly excellent. Comparisons to Steve Earle have always made sense because of Knight’s hard-driving style, but with Heart of Stone‘s emphasis on character studies, the John Prine references fit better than ever. Knight now seems less interested in his traditional tales of violence and death, instead concentrating on stories of personal stru ggle that don’t necessarily rack up a body count. Backed by a full band, and with production from the Georgia Satellites’ Dan Baird, Heart of Stone features one great song after another, making a compelling argument that Knight’s the best dang country singer more people should be listening to.

Related articles:

* Review: Chris Knight: Heart of Stone (27.Aug.08)

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Calexico
Carried to Dust

(Touch and Go/Quarterstick; US: 9 Sep 2008; UK: 8 Sep 2008)
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This listener was firmly in the camp that bitched and moaned about the emphasis on conventional songwriting that Calexico brought to 2006’s Garden Ruin. At the time, optimism and the band’s excellent track record fostered speculation that Garden Ruin might seem fallow, but that its ideas would actually take root. Well, it didn’t take long for that ground to provide, because Carried to Dust might be the band’s best record yet. All of the best Calexico elements are here—the horns that evoke desert vistas, the jazz-laced excursions, the ramshackle wanderings—but this time, the focus on tighter songwriting leads the band to build upon some of their themes in layered, complex ways. Carried to Dust dispenses with Calexico’s time-honored method of roaring out of the gates with horns blaring, and seeing where the desert winds take them (in fact, the album’s one nod to the past, “El Gatillo (Trig ger’s Return)”, might be its lone weak spot). On Carried to Dust, they’re taking the Southwestern flavors that have inspired them for years and using them to make something bigger and more satisfying than their regional influences.

Related articles:

* Review: Calexico: Carried to Dust (10.Sep.08)

* The Energy Moving Through the Air: An Interview with Calexico’s Joey Burns (16.Sep.08)

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Alejandro Escovedo
Real Animal

(Back Porch; US: 24 Jun 2008; UK: 24 Jun 2008)
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It’s been a while since we got an honest to goodness rock ‘n’ roll record from Alejandro Escovedo. His last few efforts have been amazing and substantial, but mortality-laced offerings like 2006’s The Boxing Mirror and ambitious examinations of the American Dream like 2002’s By the Hand of the Father haven’t really called for walls of guitars. Maybe it’s the weight of Escovedo’s revelation a few years back that he had Hepatitis C, but his last few years have produced pensive and meditative work. In a way, the same could be said for Real Animal, which finds Escovedo taking a trip down memory lane. But there’s no mistaking the celebratory vibe of songs like “Chelsea Hotel ‘78” (even as it casts a wry eye back at the “scene” at the time). Plus, you’re unlikely to hear cellos rock harder than on “Real as an20Animal”, which Escovedo and Chuck Prophet (who co-wrote all of Real Animal‘s songs with Escovedo) wrote for Iggy Pop.

Related articles:

* Review: Alejandro Escovedo: Real Animal (25.Jun.08)

* The Best Singer-Songwriter Albums of 2008 (10.Dec.08)

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Woven Hand
Ten Stones

(Sounds Familyre; US: 9 Sep 2008; UK: 8 Sep 2008)
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David Eugene Edwards really shouldn’t be considered such an enigma. As the leader of Woven Hand (and onetime leader of Sixteen Horsepower), all he’s done is bare his spirituality for all the world to see. Granted, it’s informed by more fire and brimstone than we’re used to hearing in our megachurches and Sunday School classes, but it’s not like his internal struggle is that much different than anyone else’s. Throughout Ten Stones, Edwards continues to chronicle his efforts to live true to his own ideals, and to present his concept of a God who radiates love, but who also hasn’t forgotten that He wrote the less forgiving parts of the Old Testament. That alone would lend Edwards’ songs much of its “creepiness”, but he also favors a direct, confrontational musical style that sounds like the personification of internal conflict. “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars” is the lightest track on Ten Stones, and it still sounds like it could be the theme to some as-yet-unfilmed Goth romance. As for “K icking Bird”, his warlike adaptation of a Plains Indian chant? If I’d have been on my farm back in the day and heard this rolling over the hills, I’d have wet my breeches.

Related articles:

* Review: Woven Hand: Ten Stones (29.Oct.08)

* Bleary Eyed Duty: The Unflinching Testimony of David Eugene Edwards (17.Nov.08)

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James McMurtry
Just Us Kids

(Lightning Rod; US: 15 Apr 2008; UK: 26 May 2008)
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Heck, the way things are going, James McMurty might need to revisit his 2005 hit “We Can’t Make It Here” and give it a few more stanzas about mortgages, bailouts, and corporate shenanigans. Until then, Just Us Kids closes the door on the Bush years (it’s safe to say McMurtry’s not a fan) with a clear “don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out” snarl. If Kids concerned itself only with songs like “Cheney’s Toy”, we’d have little more than an entertaining screed on our hands. But McMurtry’s long proven himself best when dealing in particulars, so songs like the Katrina-focused “Hurricane Party”, the old-guys-looking-back focus of the title track, and the struggling relationship of “Ruby and Carlos” stand as poignant cross-sections of life. McMurtry knows what he does, and does it well, and maybe the dry humor and misanthropy he’s exhibited before were just prepa ration for the hard task of chronicling what’s ahead.

Related articles:

* James McMurtry (24.Mar.08)

* Review: James McMurtry: Just Us Kids (09.Jun.08)

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Kathleen Edwards
Asking for Flowers

(Zoë/Rounder; US: 4 Mar 2008; UK: Import)
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There’s some excellent rock and wry wit on Asking for Flowers. Songs like “Oil Man’s War” (about a draft dodger heading for the Canadian border) or “The Cheapest Key” (with lines like “A is for all the times I bit my tongue / B is for bullshit and you fed me some") satisfy, but when you get to the album’s more introspective moments, that accomplished loudness fades away. “Run“‘s tale of a woman awaking to the outside world, “Scared at Night“‘s lessons about death, and “Sure as Shit“‘s blunt profession of love, and a host of others show that Edwards is a major songwriting talent.

Related articles:

* Review: Kathleen Edwards: Asking for Flowers (04.Mar.08)

* 5 questions for Canadian singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards (08.Apr.08)

* The Best Albums of 2008 (15.Dec.08)

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Old Crow Medicine Show
Tennessee Pusher

(Nettwerk; US: 23 Sep 2008; UK: 22 Sep 2008)
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It may be unfair to the members of Old Crow Medicine Show, but they’re becoming really well known for their drug songs. Tennessee Pusher (as its title might indicate) won’t change that, but at least a few songs take on the self-reflection and recrimination that has to come after an all-night “Humdinger” fueled by whiskey, women, and “Alabama High Test”. “Methamphetamine” and the title track examine the darker, societal costs of the good times, and that sense of subtlety carries over to the rest of the album. “Motel in Memphis”, about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., sounds like a lost Del McCoury track (about the highest compliment you can bestow on anyone with a foot in the bluegrass world). The group’s telltale youthful exuberance is still here (right down to the joyful double-entendres of “Mary’s Kitchen"), but it sounds like the band might be considering ways to put that energy to a purpose.

Related articles:

* Review: Old Crow Medicine Show: Tennessee Pusher (25.Sep.08)

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Lucinda Williams
Little Honey

(Lost Highway; US: 14 Oct 2008; UK: 13 Oct 2008)
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Lucinda Williams is apparently in love, although, depending on the song, it’s either with a guitar or a man. Whatever. What’s important is that, unlike most artists, she doesn’t get all moon-eyed and insufferable and soft-focus about it. Sensual, sure. Raunchy, definitely. Heck, when Williams is singing about being in love, that achy slur that’s powered so many tales of heartbreak begins to sound like a blissful haze of spent passion. Backed by her band, Buick 66, Williams finds a way to put a tasty guitar solo in even the most sensitive ballad. It’s not all roses and flowers—Williams is practically the poet laureate of country pain, after all—so there are moments of shadow amongst Little Honey‘s exuberance ("Plan to Marry”, after all this talk of Williams’ happiness, doesn’t follow an expected path). But even when Little Honey doesn’t work, it’s always consistent in its off-the-cuff, joyous mood.

Related articles:

* Review: Lucinda Williams: Little Honey (14.Oct.08)

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Joe Ely and Joel Guzman
Live Cactus!

(Rack 'Em; US: 11 Mar 2008; UK: 31 Mar 2008)
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At this point, you’d think Joe Ely’s songs (and Ely himself) are solid and unchanging, like a windswept piece of desert rock. As he showed on albums like 1995’s Letter to Laredo, however, he’s more than willing to change things up. On that album, flamenco guitarist Teye gave Ely’s new songs unexpected delicacy, and in a live setting gave his standards fresh new faces. Flash forward a decade and Live Cactus! finds Ely deferring to accordionist Joel Guzman, who’s played with Ely on a number of occasions, for the same sense of reinvention. These are Ely’ s songs, but Guzman—who may be one of the best accordionists alive today—repeatedly makes a claim for these being the definitive versions of old favorites.

Related articles:

* Review: Joe Ely & Joel Guzman: Live Cactus! (06.May.08)

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The Dexateens
Lost and Found

(Skybucket; US: 11 Mar 2008; UK: 11 Mar 2008)
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The Dexateens offer Lost and Found for free on their website, but it’s hardly a throwaway album. Loud and brash, the disc features snaky, intertwined guitars that recall the Stones at their meanest and most vintage, and the Drive-by Truckers at their loudest. Bathing their songs in an Alabama drawl, the Dexateens make a racket that serves notice: They might just be one of the next great American rock bands.

Related articles:

* Review: The Dexateens: Lost and Found (27.May.08)


Bubbling Under (in alphabetical order):

The Avett Brothers, The Gleam II (Ramseur)
Bonnie Prince Billy, Lie Down in the Light (Drag City)
Hayes Carll, Trouble in Mind (Lost Highway)
Justin Townes Earle, The Good Life (Bloodshot)
Dr. John and the Lower 911, City That Care Forgot (429)
The Felice Brothers, The Felice Brothers (Team Love)
Giant Sand, proVISIONS (Yep Roc)
Otis Gibbs, Grandpa Walked a Picketline (Self-released)
Buddy Guy, Skin Deep (Zomba)
John Mellencamp, Life Death Love and Freedom (Hear20Music)
Randy Newman, Harps & Angels (Nonesuch)
Conor Oberst, Conor Oberst (Merge)
Various Artists, Awake My Soul (Awake)
Watermelon Slim and the Workers, No Paid Holidays (Northern Blues)
--

Posted On: Friday, Nov 21st, 2008

Based out of his tiny, rustic hometown of Slaughters, Ky., songwriter and guitarist Chris Knight writes backwoods poetry with introspection he's clearly gained by living the words he writes. His songs touch on opportunities lost and opportunities that never were, rural drug manufacturing, drinking for distraction, and the weighty questions that haunt those who never make it out of the woods, either by choice or lack thereof.
Knight's latest record, Heart of Stone, was released on the independent label Drifter's Church and produced by former Georgia Satellites singer Dan Baird, who captured Knight with a full band. On this Mountain Stage appearance, Knight performs songs from Heart of Stone, as well as the title cut from his previous record, Enough Rope, his voice accompanied only by his guitar.
The set ends with Julie Adams and the Mountain Stage band peforming a song co-written by Hal Ketchum and Al Anderson, titled "If You Don't Love Me."
SETLIST
- "Rural Route"
- "Danville"
- "Heart of Stone"
- "Enough Rope"
- "Hell Ain't Half Full"
- "If You Don't Love Me" *
* Performed by Julie Adams

Posted On: Monday, Nov 3rd, 2008

The solid roots rock, the ache, anger and empathy and tales of broken lives and hearts, make Knight's sixth album sound like Steve Earle and The Georgia Satellites doing an epilogue to Copperhead Road. Nothing wrong with than when it produces songs as good as "Another Dollar" and brilliant, bare-bones ballad (just voice and guitar) "Crooked Road" --- SS

Posted On: Monday, Nov 3rd, 2008

Chris Knight is the best damn songwriter in Country Music, and I'll stand on Steve Earle's coffee table in my punk rock creepers and say that. In fact, he's been the artist that has ultimately made good on Earle's original promise of a truly literate country music that still travels the rutted dirt road of life as it's lived by everyday folks.
Every song he writes is as real as both the day and night are long, sounding as if they were destined to be even before Knight drew them out of his creative soul. And then he sings them with an unaffected, straightforward backwoods drawl that sounds as natural as the wind through the trees or the lonesome howl of coyote at midnight.
Ever since his self-titled debut a decade ago, Knight has been an artist that from first blush engages not just the listener's ear but heart, mind and soul with songs that course with genuine human blood through their veins. He has a novelist's eye for the seemingly small moments that nonetheless loom large and the true storyteller's gift for finding the dramatic colours and hues in day-to-day life.
Few artists in the roots music realm these days have shown such consistency as Knight throughout everything he has released, so much so that his lat album of early demos recorded in a trailer at his rural home outside the tiny and evocatively named town of Slaughters, Kentucky is a not just worthy but in fact notable addition to his canon.
So to say that Heart Of Stone, his sixth album, is more of the same is anything but a slight, because it is that, yet that at its best. Even Knight, a notoriously modes fellow, believes it's his best work yet. And on his third recording with former Georgia Satellite Dan Baird in the producer's chair, the two have developed a rapport that makes this set sound like the house band for a comfortably woozy night at your favorite barroom to feel a few minutes of joy or drink away your sorrows, maybe both.
The 12 tracks here are something of a song cycle, bowing with the hypnotically haunting march of the Homesick Gypsy who "ain't home till I leave you behind" and wrapping up its musical journey with the swaying gait of a restless soul who finally just wants to Go On Home. Along the way, the disc travels through Danville, a place where everyone hopes to escape it as well as their demons and travails, and steadily but wearily trudges the Miles To Memphis. You meet Maria, the woman who compels a man to hitch a ride back to her, and gaze into a crystal ball that reveals nothing but the cloudy facts of life in the swirling storm of Hell Ain't Half Full.
Knight's world is one where the quest is Something To Keep Me Going and you're forever Almost There. And who but Knight can make a tale of wrecked and stripped down junkers like My Old Cars sound like a loving tribute?
Baird threads the instruments through Knight's songs like a tapestry, with country fiddle adding the tears or sorrow and cries of emotional pain, electric guitars bringing lightning flashes of fate and the churning internal drive of restlessness, and touches of B3 echo the distant songs of angels that keep the struggling folks in these songs on a path towards a redemption that just may never come.
And he has the good sense to just get out of the way and let Knight's voice and a lone guitar mesmerise on the stark John Prine-like lament of Crooked Road.
Musically situated at the very heart of the place in American roots music where folk, rock and rural styles all converge. Heart Of Stone is as perfect as country music can and should be here in 2008. .... Rob Patterson

Posted On: Thursday, Oct 23rd, 2008

GETTING TO THE HEART OF CHRIS KNIGHT'S SONGS

This is all about Chris Knight and why you should listen to his new album, the one called Heart Of Stone, and why it may be the best album he's ever made even if nobody much cares at this point. But it's a long story, and it digresses some.
It begins here: After sixteen months in Los Angeles, I flew to Nashville blind and rented an apartment in Tusculum, at the edge of town, from an old man named Guy P. He had lost his wife to cancer, and so he looked for people to talk to, but he warned me that he heard poorly and I should take care not to creep up behind him because he'd think I was Charley, and he might kill me. He was a big man, a powerful man, even in his 70s.
I lived in one of two apartments above a three-car garage in his back yard. He'd built the garage to work on his RVs and his trucks and whatever else kept him sane, and the original apartment had been meant to house his son and his son's new wife, only the boy had a heart attack and a stroke, and the new wife, a nurse, left.
As we got to know each other a little, I heard a few stories, mostly having to do with his capacity for rage – doors he'd splintered at the Veterans' Administration and his attempts at suicide, which included gnawing through an IV. I never complained when he found it necessary to completely disassemble a pickup truck beneath my bedroom one night, swearing at each bolt as it added another bruise to his hands.
Does this make clear that I liked him, though I knew on a bad day he might do me harm? I did. He tried hard to be a good man, and managed best he could by his lights. Another story: He left his wallet at the bank, and a customer followed him until she got his attention and gave it back. So he bought her dinner, insisted on it, even though, as Guy P. put it, she was colored.
He is, in short, exactly the sort of fellow who dwells in Chris Knight's songs: Angry, conflicted, self-destructive, and unexpectedly self-aware.
Guy P.'s rules for his tenants were simple: No loud parties, no wimmin stayin' overnight. Since I knew nobody, this did not seem to be a problem. Later, when his insurance company had reason to look at the place and told him it could house only one tenant, I managed – as we sometimes tell the story, nearly ten years later – to get married ahead of the eviction notice.
A few days after Maggie was born five and a half years ago, I ran into Guy at Lowe's, but we did not speak; rather, I walked the other way, and did not intrude. He was in a wheelchair, having finally yielded both feet to diabetes, as he had yielded his sanity to two tours in Vietnam. That first stint, he said, involved a detachment to the CIA, who employed him as the first man out of the helicopter door – he'd been a paratrooper, a farm boy from Pennsylvania – when rescuing downed pilots in Cambodia, where the U.S. officially was not dropping bombs.
The second song on Knight's new album, "Hell Ain't Half Full," isn't about that. But it could be.
When Guy P. built his son's apartment, he had apparently forgotten to leave room to run the plumbing. Which was only a problem if one forgot that the living room was a step up so as to accommodate all those pipes. Somehow that step made that space, which was the Nashville office of No Depression for some years, not entirely stable.
And that's how I came to hear Chris Knight, see. One of the publicists I trusted, one of the few freelancers who chose clients on merit not money, had sent me a four-song cassette tape of his demos. Part of what came to be called The Trailer Tapes, part of which finally came out, fixed up some by Ray Kennedy, in 2007.
The tape fell on the floor, or the whole stack of them did, and for whatever reason – because it had the right business card on it, I suppose – I put it in, and went back to work. And then my head spun back, for there was this song: "If I Were You", a sharply written morality play, a short story in song form, a gut-wrenching bit of unflinching social commentary. It was and is an amazing piece of work.
If not a blessing, for it is not entirely clear that Chris Knight has written or will write another song that good. Or, maybe, having heard that, we now expect it of him and are less receptive to anything else, and can no longer be surprised by the eloquent bleakness of his vision.
Anyhow, Knight had played at the Bluebird and had come to the attention of Frank Liddell, who signed him to a publishing deal, and then Liddell came to have an A&R job at Decca, so he signed Knight, which might have been a mistake for all parties because Chris Knight is one hell of a songwriter, but surely to goodness nobody ever thought he'd be a country star.
At least nobody paying attention. Which included Liddell, but there they both were in the belly of the beast taking the best shot they could aim.
So Decca sent out this four-song cassette to acquaint writers with Chris Knight, whose songs split the difference between John Prine and Steve Earle, and then, in 1998, released a self-titled album which Liddell co-produced but which somehow didn't include Knight's best song, "If I Were You." It didn't fit, no matter how they recorded it, Liddell told me, and I believed him. Still do. But.
(But...they should have made an album on which that song fit. Only then it would have been too much John Prine and not enough...whatever was selling that season. Ah, well.)
It isn't a bad album, but it has a jaunty, uptempo beat that is clearly at odds with what the songs are saying, and all the guitars say everything's going to be OK while the words make it pretty clear that's not the case.
Apparently they thought Chris Knight could be a country star. They shot a video for the lead single, "It Ain't Easy Being Me". They saddled him with a band of strangers, and one night I drove down Nolensville Road to the old Jack's Guitar Bar to hear that band walk through a bunch of songs that only Chris cared about, and it was clear he was uncomfortable and even more clear that he hadn't learned yet how to work with a band. Especially a band of strangers.
(I note while fact-checking that Allmusic.com lists a 1994 album, apparently titled Chris Knight And the Midnight Gypsies, on the SPV label, so maybe he had led a band before, maybe he arrived in Nashville a little less rough around the edges than he seemed the day we had lunch at Brown's Diner.)
Which isn't to say Knight hasn't gotten enough country cuts to make it worth keeping a mailbox: Randy Travis, Blake Shelton, Ty Herndon, Montgomery Gentry, and the Great Divide.
Fine.
Knight didn't make any more albums for Decca, which folded back into MCA. He made two for Dualtone (the first one has a version of "If I Were You" on it), and has made three more (counting the The Trailer Tapes, which I guess was technically made for or at least paid for by Decca) for Drifter's Church.
They're all here, sprawled on my desk, along with a couple bootlegs of demos that went around Nashville because I wasn't the only one who thought he was somehow special, that his songs could explode at any good moment.
For a long time I thought Chris Knight was my James Talley, immortalized by Peter Guralnick in his irreplaceable Lost Highway. Talley made some albums for Capitol, came to the attention of Jimmy Carter, and played one of Carter's inaugural balls. I always felt like the Talley piece lodged in Lost Highway was a crumb left behind for those of us stubborn enough to follow it, that it was the one place where Talley would be remembered and rediscovered.
And so when we published the first anthology of stories from ND, I insisted (against no complaint) that Knight be there. Because I want him to be remembered.
All of which is a too-long preface, too much explanation for a website when the whole game here is quickly to get you to listen to his new album, to remind you that Heart Of Stone is in the marketplace and that Chris Knight is still worth listening to. Increasingly worth listening to.
Heart Of Stone pairs Knight again with long-ago Georgia Satellite Dan Baird, who produced (or co-produced) both Dualtone albums. I would have bet Knight would ultimately settle into being an acoustic songwriter, closer to John Prine than a rocker like "Copperhead Road"-era Steve Earle, but as with many things, I was wrong.
His songs are still far too grim for country radio, but for the first time he sounds really comfortable singing in front of the kind of rocking country band which is now the norm. (It is, incidentally, a first-cabin band, with Mike McAdam and Baird on guitars, Michael Grande on drums, Keith Christopher on bass and Tammy Rogers on various strings and backup vocals.) You could hear some of these songs on country radio in other hands, played a little faster with happier guitars chiming in.
Slipped in at the ninth track is a song called "Maria", which goes back to those Trailer Tapes. It hasn't changed a bit – hasn't been revisited, rewritten, reimagined – though it's better played, and fits quite comfortably among his current work.
You'll have to slip past the opening track, a perfunctory bit of brunt bragging about the road warrior's life ("Homesick Gypsy," one of the songs you might imagine as Tim McGraw album cut). "Hell Ain't Half Full," a co-write with Gary Nicholson (who produced the last one, Enough Rope), is exactly the kind of scarred emotional territory Knight draws far too well:
Get up in the morning
Fall out of bed
Go down to the basement
Cook up a little meth
All the young folks love it
Coming back for more
Ain't it good to be working
Got your foot in the door.
Well, now. That seems a pretty solid liberal critique, something the Bottle Rockets might have cut a decade ago.
And then the next stanza:
They chased God and Jesus
Out of our schools
And everybody's living
By their own set of rules
Yeah, they're preaching on the corner
Nothing good to say
Better think of something boy
Come the judgment day.
Hard to know what Knight believes, how much of that is simply a very good character study. Either way, it's a fascinating song. A hell of a song. A hellbound train wreck of a song.
One more lyrical fragment, this from the title track:
Well I got drunk with Daddy just the other night
He said he was glad to see I turned out all right
I hear people saying like father like son
I don't think about it much but I worry about it some.
That last line, more than the broken cars and broken hearts which populate all of Knight's albums...that last line...yeah. I live on the other side of Kentucky from Slaughters, where Knight is from, and I'm still and always will be a foreigner in these parts. But that last line, I know that guy. Most of the men I know have spent their whole adult lives trying not to be that guy, one way or another.
Nah, one more stanza, which might serve as my momentary mantra:
Well I used to run from the past
But the world got to spinning so fast
I run from the future now
I run as fast as I can
Trying to be a simple man
I just want to slow down.
--- Grant Alden

Posted On: Monday, Sep 29th, 2008

Chris Knight's highly anticipated Heart of Stone (Grifter's Church Productions) contains vocals and songwriting that exceed the set's high expectation level. There's not a single forgettable or disposable work among the 12 selections and several like "Homesick Gypsy," "Crooked Road," "Miles to Memphis" and "Go On Home" rank among Knight's best numbers and recorded performances.

The session features two-guitar backing from Mike McAdam and Dan Baird (who doubles as its producer) with the rhythm section of bassist Keith Christoper and drummer Mike Grando framed by everything from strings and organ to trombone, banjo or accordion lines and stylings.

Knight's compositions ably explore issues from anger and alienation to perseverance and inspiration, and his riveting leads are balanced by fleeting, effective acoustic guitar accompaniment. This is a marvelous release whose quality holds up through repeated listening. --- Ron Wynn

Posted On: Monday, Sep 29th, 2008

"I pour into my soul into my song/ Playing for the people all night long/ I work hard for my money and I want it now/ Don't make me have to tear your juke joint down." Thus opens Chris Knight's sixth album, Heart of Stone (released September 2 on Drifter's Church Productions). Singing like a significantly more gnarled, road worn John Mellencamp or Guy Clark, Knight sounds like life has sucked some of the marrow out of him and it's made him a lil' mean, a lil' sharp, a lil' hard. It works well with his tales of homesick gypsies, old cars and battered hearts. If you've ever been really pissed off or busted-ass broke then you're gonna connect with Knight's music. Backed by a muscular, non-flashy roots rock band, Knight turns out one dead good song after another. Ain't nothin' fancy about what he does but it doesn't need sparkle when the punches land with such a satisfying thud. Producer Dan Baird (Georgia Satellites) keeps everything on the straight and narrow, letting things rattle and buck like a horse not quite ready to be broken. When the album does settle, as on the sad, fiddle stroked dust kicker's waltz "Danville," you feel the true weight of living in every line. The weathered skin of this release, the goddamn density of it, well, it's palpable as hell. When so many songwriters today are tissue paper distractions it's a real gift to come across one with the solidity, class and bloodied soul of Chris Knight. Heart of Stone is a damn fine record. Simple as that. --- Dennis Cook

Posted On: Saturday, Sep 13th, 2008

Chris Knight’s 2006 release Enough Rope was a gritty, honest and above all expertly crafted slice of Prine, Earle and Mellencamp influenced Americana. His ability to tap so deeply into the less than pretty truths of blue-collar, middle American life has long been his trump card. Even if the Mellencamp references are well earned and justified — and I almost hate to use the name twice so early in this review — Knight’s delivery often has a road-worn rawness about it that for the most part shakes off any need for comparison.

With Heart Of Stone, Knight’s pervasive scruffiness is in full swing, but the songs themselves reveal more introspection, a need to escape the pains of regret and heartbreak, than the character driven themes of Enough Rope. Not to say that he’s lost any potency in his imagery, and not to assume that all these songs sung in first person are necessarily autobiographical, but out of 12 tracks only a few bear the story oriented writing of his previous album. On all but one of the tracks on Heart Of Stone, Knight is joined by a scrappy band that perfectly straddles the line between tight and comfortably loose. The result? Some of the best earthy, country/rock to come down the pipe this year.

Take the clang and jangle of “Hell Ain’t Half Full,” for example. Crunchy guitars, four on the floor drums and a soaring chorus are hallmarks of this style, but once you dig into the lyrics, it’s clear there’s something else going on — “Little Pink Houses” this is not. Knight’s looking at the world with a keen (and more than a little ticked off) eye, tossing off a verse like “Get up in the morning/Fall out of bed/Go down to the basement/Cook up a little meth/All the young folks love it/Coming back for more...” So even if this is “heartland” rock, there’s obviously something very wrong in the “heartland,” and he’s going to tell you about it in no uncertain terms. “Danville” weaves together a story of alcohol, abuse and small town politics that force a woman to turn her back on the place she once loved, and the song’s bolstered by a loping 6/8 groove and some gorgeous violin work from Tami Rodgers.

How about greed, consumerism and the basic lack of human compassion in the world? That’s taken on head first in “Another Dollar,” another tune endowed with a singalong chorus that just barely keeps it’s loathing from boiling over completely. The liner notes credit “all professional sounding guitar solos” to Mike McAdam and “all teenager sounding guitar solos” to Dan Baird, and the guitar work on “Another Dollar” is surely the work of McAdam. Here he snaps the strings and spits grungy blues licks in all the right places, sneaking in and out of Knight’s churning acoustic guitar and swirling Hammond organ. And if you’re looking for something to inspire one of those classic tear in the beer moments, stop and spend some time with the album’s lone solo track, “Crooked Road.” It’s classic Knight through and through — good people going hell, trying their hardest to keep some kind of hope despite the path their lives have taken. “Damn these hard times/Damn the coal mine/Damn the good dreams gone cold/While I’m at it/Damn this crooked road,” he sings, and it gets you square in the gut.

It’s not all storm clouds and heartbreak, though — redemption and the mending of old wounds fuels the upbeat “Maria,” and “Heart Of Stone” reminds one that holding on to the things that hurt won’t do you any good at all. Broken down cars, playing in bars, black top that stretches on forever and escaping your demons all make strong thematic showings over the course of Heart Of Stone, and Chris Knight milks these ideas for all they’re worth. Alt-country? Not exactly. Contemporary country? Are you kidding? Lyrically and vocally this guy would eat most of those cowboy hat wearing pretty boys for a light snack. Americana? Maybe. Good music that pulls no punches whatsoever while keeping its broken heart prominently displayed on the sleeve? Absolutely. --- Chris Cooper / Smokey Mountain News

Posted On: Monday, Sep 1st, 2008

“My worst nightmare is standing still,” sings Chris Knight on the opening track of his latest release, in a torn voice that leaves no doubt he means it. It’s the road—unforgiving, alluring, limitless yet limiting—that provides the backdrop to his finest album in a decade of sturdy, uncompromising releases.

Longtime friend and cohort Dan Baird fills the producer’s chair, and he brings along fellow Yayhoos bassist Keith Christopher to help slather that old Georgia Satellites mojo over these tough country-rockers. Baird has produced Knight previously, but the results here show the two have bonded over a powerful set of rugged, emotionally trenchant heartland rockers that make anything in the John Mellencamp songbook sound anemic by comparison.

The tunes exude additional gravitas from the producer’s backing accompaniment—billed as “teenager sounding guitar solos”—which feels almost garage-like in its rawness. Knight’s voice is a craggy combination of John Fogerty and Steve Earle as he sings songs that use “My Old Cars” and the “Crooked Road” to express the trials of the bluest of blue-collar working-class heroes.

The stories are simple yet potent: the ex-con coming home to make things right for “Maria,” the woman leaving an abusive relationship in “Danville,” and the yearning for money that won’t likely appear as “Another Dollar” seems further away.

It’s Knight’s connection to, and compassion for, these protagonists that make his characters spring to life with such vivid clarity. That honesty is seldom expressed in contemporary Americana with such conviction, which makes “Heart of Stone” beat with such sincere passion and intensity.
3.5 STARS—Hal Horowitz