Dark as midnight and mean as a rattlesnake, A Pretty Good Guy perfectly captures the undercurrent of menace in rural American and it’s hair-trigger nobodies. For example, the title-cut character tries to persuade himself that he isn’t so bad, as doest the redneck loser-turned-murderer of “Becky’s Bible”. A fistfight is as good a diversion as any in “Oil Patch Town,” and a brother’s vengeance...
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01/01/2000
He’s the next Steve Earle. No, make that John Prine. Bob Dylan? John Hiatt?
In no other genre than singer-songwriter are comparisons so routinely made about new kids on the block. So it is upon the arrival of Chris Knight, a Kentucky-bred hillbilly rocker with a poetic streak and a penchant for gritty tales from the battlefields of everyday life.
Until the hype and luster wear off...
01/01/2000
As Flannery O’Conner immortalized the natives of Milledgeville, Georgia, in her short stories, so singer-songwriter Chris Knight brought to life the denizens of Slaughters, Kentucky, on his visceral 1998 debut. He picks up the thread on that album’s excellent follow-up, A Pretty Good Guy. Knight’s no-frills, meat-and-potatoes vocals paint a vivid picture of local badasses, desperate stick-up...
04/26/1998
WHEN Chris Knight writes a song, something thing bad happens. It could be a broken heart or a destructive fire or a wife abandoning two kids and a good hus- band. A lot of times, it's death. Most of the songs on "Chris Knight," ' the most striking, confident debut to come out of Nashville in years, show lovers embittered by distance or loss. A rare happy relationship arises In "Love and a.45...
03/19/1998
Don't be surprised if someday one of Chris Knight's songs is transformed into a movie script or a best-selling novel.
The 37-year-old singer-songwriter, whose self-titled debut album showcases his weathered voice and penchant for sobering storytelling, wants people to enjoy his music like a "book that they like to read."
"I'm not trying to make anybody see anything different or...
02/22/1998
“It Ain’t Easy Being Me,” the opening cut on this Kentucky native’s debut album, bust through the swinging doors like a brash fanfare for a new roots-rock hero. Knight gives this loser’s anthem, which he co-wrote with Craig Wiseman, a rugged, Steve Earle attack and a self-deprecating twang that’s pure John Prine.
“There ought to be a town somewhere Named for how I feel. Yeah I could be...
02/13/1998
The most striking new country song you might not hear on bigtime country radio in the coming months is "Framed," Chris Knight's gritty saga of an ex-truck driver and prison inmate who admits he shot the man who stole his wife but argues that the victim, not he, was the real guilty party.
Knight, the writer and singer of this anti-ditty, is currently generating a large buzz in Nashville...
