Well I used to run from the past
But the world got to spinnin’ so fast
I run from the future now
I run as fast as I can
Tryin’ to be a simple man
I just want to slow down.
– Chris Knight
Best recording of 2008? I spoke too soon.
When Sean Lilly Wilson asked for a few sentences for the Fullstream Brewery newsletter about the best “album” we purchased in 2008 I took the request seriously. Didn’t want to forget something because our long journey has experiences running together. So I re-listened to my finalists — James McMurtry, Billy Bragg, B.B. King, Randy Newman, Mary Gauthier and company.
What I found was a lot of recordings that I’ll listen to forever, dang good, but not quite great. So I picked “Another Country” from Tift Merritt, in part because her songwriting just keeps getting better and because, by a bit of luck in July, we caught a wonderful free concert in Burlington, Vermont. Or maybe just because she is from North Carolina and Fullstream is in North Carolina. A karma thing.
Not until the day after Christmas did I notice Chris Knight had released “Heart of Stone” a few days before we departed for Germany. Easy given the amount of press coverage he doesn’t receive, although his Amazon sales prove he’s got a bit of a following.
I’ve been listening to it a lot since. If you must drink at least two full servings (six is a better idea) of a beer before you evaluate it then you gotta listen to an album ten or a hundred times. Do the easy-to-listen-to-lyrics get cloying? Do you find something new and rewarding (kind of like the stuff in the background of a Simpson’s episode) each time, maybe as simple as the way he delivers a phrase?
This recording (it’s not an album or a CD; I bought a download) keeps getting better. Knight writes haunting lyrics — usually grim and sometimes violent — about less-than-perfect lives. The music is dense whether acoustic (as the “Basement Tapes”) or with a rocking band in this recording. He’s a wonderful story teller, as opposed to telling stories about wonderful lives. Here’s an example from “Hell Ain’t Half Full”:
Get up in the morning
Fall out of bed
Go down to the basement
Cook up a little meth
All the young folks love it
Coming back for more
Ain’t it good to be working
Got your foot in the door
You’ve got to buy the recording to get the full story, and then maybe the five that came before it to begin understand what life lessons Knight has to offer. He’s a working guy from the blue collar town of Slaughters, Kentucky. You figure he might be a beer drinker, one of us, but even if he isn’t there’s a comparison to be made. Nashville and industrially produced beers on one side of the ledger, artists liked Chris Knight and the beers we drink on the other.
Chris Knight writes and sings songs of conviction.
Tift Merritt! Damn, Stan, you may be cooler than I thought.