{"id":728,"date":"2009-01-05T09:11:52","date_gmt":"2009-01-05T16:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/?p=728"},"modified":"2014-01-18T08:55:29","modified_gmt":"2014-01-18T14:55:29","slug":"off-topic-songs-of-conviction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/off-topic-songs-of-conviction\/","title":{"rendered":"Off topic: Songs of conviction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well I used to run from the past
\nBut the world got to spinnin’ so fast
\nI run from the future now
\nI run as fast as I can
\nTryin’ to be a simple man
\nI just want to slow down.<\/em><\/p>\n

               – Chris Knight<\/b><\/p>\n

\"Heart<\/a>Best recording of 2008? I spoke too soon.<\/p>\n

When Sean Lilly Wilson asked for a few sentences for the Fullstream Brewery<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

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 &#151 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”:<\/p>\n

Get up in the morning
\nFall out of bed
\nGo down to the basement
\nCook up a little meth
\nAll the young folks love it
\nComing back for more
\nAin’t it good to be working
\nGot your foot in the door<\/em> <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Chris Knight writes and sings songs of conviction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beers-of-conviction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wTn-bK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12073,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions\/12073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}