Chris Knight

The smooth and well-worn handle of an axe or shovel. Dusty cowboys boots, mud-caked and stained with blood. An old farm truck barreling down a county highway. The smell of sweat and leather. Late night empty beds and the uncertainty of family farms. Gasoline and whiskey. Rock n roll and honky tonk. These images make me think of a Sam Shephard�s short stories. They remind me of scenes found in Terrence Malick�s classic film "Badlands". It�s Steve Earle�s "Copperhead Road" and Clint Eastwood in "Unforgiven". And over the past eight years and now four albums, these visions, these smells, these black and white photographs tucked in family Bibles, represent the body of work of one of my favorite singer songwriters:  Chris Knight is the workingman�s poet and his latest album "Enough Rope" may be his finest collection of songs since his self-titled debut album back in 1998. Saddle up and pull the hat down over your eyes, Chris Knight�s brand new album rolls through "A One Hoarse Town".

Chris Knight�s debut album struck a chord back in the late 1990’s. The album, released by MCA�s Decca Records, is a study in country rockers and well-written poignant songs about desperate people living desperate lives that falls somewhere between Steve Earle�s "Guitar Town" and Bruce Springsteen�s "Nebraska". Ask anyone familiar with the album what their favorite cut is and you�ll get a variety of answers as the album is chock full of great tunes. Most folks I�ve talked to mention the more rockin� numbers like "Love and a .45" (co-written with another personal favorite, Fred Eaglesmith), "The Hammer Going Down" or "It Ain�t Easy Being Me". Personally, I�ve always been attracted to Knight�s longer story songs like "The River�s Own" and "William", songs about hard won truth and easily lost hope. The debut record put Chris Knight on the map, maybe not commercially like his pop country counterparts, but definitely in the minds and ears of real music fans and his fellow songwriters. What followed were two consecutive releases on the Nashville-based Americana label Dualtone Records, 2001’s "A Pretty Good Guy" (which features to this day, my all-time favorite Chris Knight tune, the seven minute revenge murder classic"Down the River") and "The Jealous Kind" in 2003. Now three years removed since his last release, Knight is back with "Enough Rope" (Drifter�s Church) and the thirteen tracks contained within are sure to please those fans looking for the signature "red neck" rockers or if you�re like me, the brooding, deeper story songs.

The best of the rockers on "Enough Rope" finds Knight teaming his song writing talents with those of Gary Nicholson, who also most recently had a hand in Delbert McClinton�s splendid album "Cost of Living" in 2005. From the album�s opening cut "Jack Blue" about a young bar brawler and roughneck who comes to find a semblance of peace in his older days to the hard rockin�, full on stomp of "River Road", Knight and Nicholson pin the action on the edge of town, out to those places where the distance between the light poles grows greater with each passing mile, out to that "cinder block juke joint down by the riverside" where the band always plays old rock tunes, the waitresses always catch your eye, and the beer is always "bustling out of the keg like it�s springing a leak". My favorite of the Knight/Nicholson collaboration comes in the album�s second half on the tune "Bridle on a Bull". No fuss, no muss...just straight forward country-blues slide guitars and a pounding back beat.

But of all the songs of "Enough Rope" there are three that really sum up the album�s power and poignancy. The first of the these is "Dirt", a song about losing the family farm to the developer�s plow. "Dirt" conveys an anger that really doesn�t show up anywhere else on the record. You can feel a smoldering rage as Knight almost yells his way through the chorus: "I sit down by the highway / I hear those big Cats growl / Where�s the quail gonna fly to / Where will the rabbits run now /I watch them tear it all to hell / What used to be my church / Tearing up my Grandpa�s land / Treating my Grandpa�s land like dirt". It�s classic Chris Knight. Then there�s the defiant poignancy of "William�s Son", which is the companion piece to the song "William" from Knight�s debut album. Chris strips it all down to a voice and a guitar as we are introduced this time to a son who aims to break the cycle of abuse and drug use that has wrecked his family�s history. "I know it ain�t right to feel this way / But I�m kinda glad my dad got blown away / I know he grew up hard and he grew up mean / But me and my sister was not to blame / We spit in your eye and stand our ground / Just to keep our heads from hanging down / We ain�t gonna hide and we ain�t gonna run / Hell ya�ll know me / I�m William�s son". And finally, the album closes with the best song of the bunch ... the title track "Enough Rope". The thing about Chris Knight�s songs, having grown up and in lived in the country nearly all my life, is that I know the people that inhabit them...they are my neighbors, the people in my hometown, hell some of them are my friends. There�s work to be done, there�s hell to raise, there�s isolation and deep rooted family history...and at the end of the day...despite all the problems and hardships, you just keep fighting, and when you�re done fighting, it�s dying. That�s life friends...and Chris Knight seems to drink from the same bottle as the people I know:

"Well I�m thankful for the things I have / And all the things I don�t / I got dreams that will come true / And I got some that won�t / Most of the time I just walk the line / Wherever it goes / �Cause you can�t hang yourself / If you ain�t got enough rope."

Damn, I wish I had written that.