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...
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...
“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...
A cult hero on the Americana scene for a full decade now, Chris Knight has drawn favorable comparisons to the likes of Steve Earle, John Prine and Bruce Springsteen. While it's really saying something that Knight has often lived up to those comparisons, he hasn't necessarily been able to put together a complete album with the kind of scope and vision of Springsteen's Nebraska or Earle's I Feel...
Dawn Breaks: Chris Knight finds other ways to tell hard-luck tales of the South.
Death just doesn't hold the same appeal for Chris Knight as it used to.
Not that Knight was a morbid guy -- he's not, and likely never has been, cut from the cloth of death metal or gothic rock or anything similar. He'd look about as natural wearing black eyeliner and painted black fingernails as The...
Move over, Steve Earle: Chris Knight is hands down the best alt-country songwriter out there. On Heart of Stone, his sixth album in ten years, Knight’s lyrics are at their strongest. He’s a twangified mix of Earle, Bruce Springsteen, and John Mellencamp in their prime, i.e. minus their current tendencies toward windbaggy proselytizing. Each song is a self-contained vignette, full of hard luck...
3 1/2 Stars
Being a ramblin’ man has been reduced to something of a cliché ever since Hank Williams expressed his ambivalent attitude about this own proclivities back in the ‘50s. But the feelings behind the concept are timeless as Chris Knight proves on his stirring sixth album. (“I’m a homesick gypsy,” he moans on the opening track and by the closing “Go on Home,” twelve songs and a...
Suffice it to say that Chris Knight knows what Nashville has forgotten, that country music is the original narrative of the common man. It grew out of the Great Depression and forged a transcendent bond with its' fans. Country music turned the struggles of rural America into poetry that helped ease the pain of fans for decades. Knight hasn't forgotten the ability of music to sing to the soul...
Chris Knight - 'Heart Of Stone': The Ramblings review
Once upon a time, hris Knight was supposed to be the next Steve Earle. His self-titled debut was even released on Tony Brown's then-venerable MCA Nashville label. That record smoothed out too many of Knight's rough edges, but it yielded at least one shoulda-been hit "It Ain't Easy Being Me." It probably ain't no picnic being Chris...
The most dramatic pugnacious songwriter thrown down by the Americana scene, Chris Knight's 10-year song stockpile deftly maps an underbelly of poverty, violence, murder and death. On Heart Of Stone, Knight backs off the body count for a (slightly) tempered, sympathetic view of his characters' struggles. "Maria", wherein a repentant ex-con returns home full of hope, a typically shimmers amid...
