By Mario Tarradell
After 23 years as a recording artist, singer-songwriter Chris Knight remains boldly empowered to make music that delivers the unflinching truth. The Kentucky-born artist uses a simple, direct barometer to regularly check his muse: “If I can’t believe myself, I won’t sing the song.”
That honest, no-frills philosophy fits his Americana-fueled, backwoods-grown merger of folk, country and rock. It’s been at the backbone of nine studio albums, including a 1998 self-titled debut, 2001’s A Pretty Good Guy and 2003’s The Jealous Kind, two demo-styled discs (2007’s The Trailer Tapes and 2009’s Trailer II), and the recent, electric guitar-fortified Almost Daylight.
Knight will hit the highlights of his career in concert on Dec. 2 at Hop Springs Beer Park in Murfreesboro.
Knight’s music has always sat outside of the mainstream, though onstage is where his searing tales of rural characters, fringe survivors and tumultuous small-town existence find a captivated audience—edgy tracks such as “It Ain’t Easy Being Me,” “Carla Came Home,” “I’m William Callahan” and “Everybody’s Lonely Now,” the latter two from Almost Daylight.
Knight writes about what he knows. He was raised in mining country, earned a degree in agriculture from Western Kentucky University and then worked as a mine reclamation inspector and consultant. But eventually his passion for writing songs and playing guitar, both inspired by his musical hero, John Prine, led him to chronicle his surroundings in words and music.
“I came from a big family and grew up in the woods six miles from two small towns, so there were a lot of stories,” he says. “There were always a lot of ideas to write about.”
Those ideas have earned Knight praise from The New York Times (“the last of a dying breed . . . a taciturn loner with an acoustic guitar and a college degree”) and USA Today (“a storyteller in the best traditions of Mellencamp and Springsteen”), to name a few. Like his beloved Prine, with whom Knight duets on Prine’s “Mexican Home,” the cut that closes Almost Daylight, Knight fits comfortably in Texas honky-tonks, downtown Nashville venues, and cool Manhattan rock clubs—or the woods.
Over the years Knight has scraped together a reputation as an uncompromising and respected singer-songwriter, minus fanfare and artifice. The native son of Slaughters, Kentucky (population: 238) only sings songs he believes and only speaks when he has a message.
“If I don’t have something worth saying, I’m not opening my mouth. I haven’t suited everybody, but every time I get a new fan it tells me I’m doing something right,” Knight said.
Chris Knight performs an all-ages show at Hop Springs, 6790 John Bragg Hwy., on Friday, Dec. 2, at 8 p.m. Find tickets, starting at $25, on Ticketweb.
