Showing posts with label Chris Knight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chris Knight. Show all posts
Sep 28, 2012
Sep 13, 2012
Best Albums of 2012 So Far: September
New to the chart this month: The Pollies, Chris Knight, Uncle Lucius and the John D. Hale Band.
1. Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires - There is a Bomb in Gilead
2. Marty Stuart - Nashville, Vol. 1 Tear The Woodpile Down
3. The Pollies - Where the Lies Begin (Release Date: Oct. 2)
5. Turnpike Troubadours - Goodbye Normal Street
7. Arliss Nancy - Simple Machines
9. Killer Mike - R.A.P. Music
10. Shooter Jennings - Family Man
11. Blackberry Smoke - The Whippoorwill
12. Darrell Scott - Long Ride Home
13. John D. Hale Band - More Than I Can Handle (Release Date: Sept. 25)
14. Jason Eady - AM Country Heaven
15. Kellie Pickler - 100 Proof
Sep 12, 2012
Album Review: Chris Knight - Little Victories
If you're already a Chris Knight fan (and you should be), you've come to expect certain things from one of his albums. Gritty honesty. Earle-meets-Mellencamp country tinged roots-rock. Melodies that stick in your head for weeks. A focus on rural hardship. Lots of murder. Well, Little Victories has all of those things minus one. Going on 15 listens, I don't believe I've noticed more than one loss of life.
Don't worry, Chris is good enough that he doesn't have to let the lead fly every time out to deliver a satisfying collection of songs. While previous releases have seen foiled robberies, abusive jerks gone missing and bodies dumped in the river, the central bloodshed on Little Victories is the steady trickle of dead Presidents from your wallet. The commercial music world is keeping things typically light with trucks and girls and beer, but Knight sets his sights squarely on the difficulties of life in an endless damned recession.
"In the Mean Time" leads off the album with a treatise on self-reliance. Knight warns that as bad as it is, you should prepare for worse. "You might have to go out and shoot something and drag it home" and that might not be the only reason you need a shotgun.
Later, one of my favorites on the album, "Nothing On Me" chronicles the scars of a man and his dog who've already been made ready for hard times by hard living. A sawing fiddle and ringing guitar accompany Knight as he puts a more personal spin on the message of the album opener.
The title track sees Knight trade verses with John Prine in a song that celebrates the small successes that help get a person through struggles. Deer in the freezer and a baloney sandwich for lunch might not sound like much, but sometimes that's all it takes to keep the dark clouds at bay.
"You Can't Trust No One" is the darkly humorous flip-side of so many 60s love and peace anthems. Knight confronts the well-meaning ideals of community with the reality that some people are always ready to take advantage of such trust. "Everybody pack your picnic lunch and everybody pack your gun" is the hard truth he bears.
Little Victories isn't a concept album by any means, so there are plenty of Knight's trademark stories, drifter anthems and lost love laments. "Low Down Ramblin' Blues" is a catchy mid-tempo ode to never letting your hat hang in one place for long. Long-time fans will recognize "Hard Edges" from the Trailer Tapes collection. This time it's a fleshed out, full-band effort that while still more than solid, loses a bit of its raw impact.
So, how does Little Victories rank among Knight's stellar string of releases? Honestly, I don't know. He hasn't put out a single album I'd take a pass on yet, so if this one's in right there in the pack, it's in excellent company. Consistency is one of Chris' strengths and this is an album any Knight fan will love. It's also just as good a place to start as anything else he's put out, if you've never heard his music. Knight is one of America's greatest living singer-songwriters and Little Victories only adds to his legacy …even without the high body-count.
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Little Victories is available on iTunes, Amazon, Lone Star Music and other outlets.
Aug 24, 2012
Aug 21, 2012
Aug 10, 2012
YouTube Gems: Chris Knight - Low Down Ramblin' Blues
From his forthcoming album, Little Victories, due September 11 (but you can already get it from his website), here's Chris Knight with "Low Down Ramblin' Blues."
Jun 22, 2012
Feb 29, 2012
Chris Knight - Hal and Mal's - February 23, 2012
I finally got a chance to see my favorite living (non-legend) songwriter last Thursday night at Hal and Mal's and it more than lived up to expectations.
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| Thomas Jackson |
Thomas Jackson, the frontman for Hattiesburg, MS's Thomas Jackson Orchestra opened the show with a half-hour set of originals. He played a blend of bluesy folk songs interspersed with hilarious self-deprecating banter. Thomas was very entertaining and a master of blues guitar technique.
A few minutes later, Chris Knight walked nearly unnoticed through the crowd to the stage. He was a good deal smaller in person than I'd expected. Grizzled and skinny, Knight was (as a Twitter pal noted) the portrait of a starving artist, though I doubt he actually fits that bill.
He opened the set with my favorite song of his, "Rural Route." Chris must have been getting over a cold because he sounded a bit strained on the higher notes, but he still managed to get the show off to a great start.
Next he introduced a new song called "In the Meantime," that is presumably on his new album due this year. Anyone who wasn't a hardcore fan would be hard pressed to know this though, because he never mentioned a forthcoming release. It was a great song though, that easily stands alongside his other material.
Though his voice pushed through the early show hoarseness and grew stronger with each song, Chris wasn't much for between-song dialogue. Besides introducing a few tunes with their titles or one-sentence introductions, all he said the whole night was for the guys at the board to turn down his monitors because he didn't want to have a loudness competition with the crowd. "I didn't come here to rock n' roll" he put it.
Knight spent the next hour and a half playing all his best known songs, including "It Ain't Easy Bein' Me," "Cry Lonely" and his Montgomery Gentry cut, "She Couldn't Change Me."
The crowd, for its part, was larger than I'd expected. It was also at times, disrespectfully loud. Contrasting this, the audience also shut up and sang along quite a bit… especially on the murder/revenge epic "Down the River."
Towards the middle of his performance, Knight unveiled one other new song, (which seemed to be titled) "Times Are Tough." It was a timely exploration of these financially difficult days and the grit it takes for a man to get by. I thought it was a great, powerful song and judging by the wide-eyed glances between audience members, everyone else seemed to agree.
After a short beer break, Chris gave us a three song encore to close the set, finishing up with another crowd singalong, "Framed."
Chris Knight is a man of few words who lets his art do the talking, and it spoke volumes last Thursday night. It was an excellent, longer than expected collection of songs that left me more than satisfied, and anxious for his new album and future live shows. Don't miss him if he books a show anywhere near you.
Set List
Rural Route
In the Meantime
Enough Rope
Beckys Bible
Heart of Stone
Down the River
Hard Candy
It Ain't Easy Bein' Me
Love and a 45
She Couldn't Change Me
Times Are Tough
Cry Lonely
Pretty Good Guy
North Dakota
If I Were You
Hard Edges
House and 90 Acres
(Encore)
Bangin' Away
Send a Boat
Framed
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