Interview: Chris Knight

http://www.americanaroots.com/
10.23.2008 -- Written by: C. Eric Banister

Chris Knight recently released his fifth album, Heart of Stone. It is filled with the kind of thought provoking observations of rural life in modern America that Knight has become known for. Dogged since the beginning by comparisons to Steve Earle and John Mellencamp, Knight has carved out a niche of his own with stories of characters doing what they need to do to survive, whether that action is right or wrong. In “Hell Ain’t Half Full” Knight talks of people assembling meth labs in their basement justifying it by the hard economic times. He confronts the greed of our times in “Another Dollar” and longs for a better place in “Go On Home.” The story songs Knight has become known for are still around in “Danville” and “Crooked Road” and they are classic Chris Knight placing you in the shoes of the people he is singing about.

We recently had the opportunity to talk with Knight about songwriting, playing live and what’s next.

Americana Roots: Aside from “Crooked Road,” which you’ve been playing for a while, had you been playing any of the new songs live before you recorded the album?

Chris Knight: Not with the band. I play “Miles To Memphis” and “My Old Cars” occasionally, but not very often.

AR: Do you have a preference of playing the band gigs or the solo shows?

CK: Well, right now I’m likin’ the band shows, but I’ve got a string of acoustic shows coming up. Me and Chris Clark are going out doing those starting next week.

AR: The songs that ended up on the album, did you have all of those written or did you write any in the studio?

CK: No, I had a list of songs. We cut about 15 songs and picked 12. It’s always struck me as kind of strange, making a record before you have the songs done.

AR: A lot of the reviews for this record mention that the content of these songs aren’t maybe as dark as some of your early songs. Do you feel like people, especially critics, tend to forget about the middle albums and focus too much on the first album?

CK: I don’t know. I never thought my first album was dark. I don’t think any of them are that dark. I mean, people that like to read, I write songs like I would write books if I was a novelist. It’s never been something that is that big a deal to me to write a story song with something real happening in it, but everybody got off on all this dark business.

AR: It seems like the people that talk about that pick out a song or two on the album and disregard the rest as far as themes go.

CK: The only ones I can think of are “Framed,” and “Framed” is not really dark. There’s “William” and the rest of them are just songs. Nothing too bad happens in them, I don’t think.

AR: Another theme that seemed to pop out at me was there seemed to be a little more of a spiritual light to a couple of the songs, like “Go On Home” and “Hell Ain’t Half Full.” Is that something that comes from your upbringing or was it a conscious decision to work that in? Even going back to “Saved By Love” from Enough Rope.

CK: Yeah, I guess it goes back to my upbringing. I guess “Hell Ain’t Half Full” and Go On Home”… well, you go back to Pretty Good Guy it’s got “The Lord’s Highway” on it and “Send A Boat.” It’s just easy for me to put a little religion into what I write. It’s part of life. “Hell Ain’t Half Full” is kind of like a sermon put to music. That’s what I think. It’s a preacher just hammering on it. Basically if you went into a Pentecostal church you’d probably hear the same thing. Or a Southern Baptist church, that’s what you’d be hearing. It’s another one of those things I think about, so I put it in a song.

AR: I had read before the album came out that you said that the topics on this album were directed a little more inward…

CK: Yeah, I guess I did, especially on “Go On Home” and “Hell Ain’t Half Full.”

AR: Was that a conscious decision to move away from the story songs a little bit into a more topical area?

CK: Yeah, a little bit. Also, I had been writing some songs and got them together and looked at them and said this is the best 12 songs I’ve got, right here. I went into the studio and recorded them with the same spirit in mind and come out with a cohesive record.

AR: Do you ever run into a problem of people associating you and the characters in a song a little too closely?

CK: It’s not really a problem. Some people tend to believe that I’ve done everything in my songs. I don’t care, let ‘em believe.

AR: I had wondered because, and this is kind of the opposite case, but I’ve heard people that didn’t care for “Home Sick Gypsy” because in it the character says he has a different girl in every town and that didn’t fit with the image that those fans had of you as a person.

CK: That’s the character in the song, that’s the “Homesick Gypsy.” That’s the cliché of being on the road. If you’re going to write a road song, why don’t you write that? Why don’t you write the cliché of the rock star being on the road? And I’ve written lots of road songs.

AR: You co-wrote a couple of the songs with Dan Baird?

CK: Yeah, “Heart of Stone…” and going back to our previous thing, our Daddy didn’t leave us either, like “Heart of Stone.” I ain’t never been in jail, except for five hours one time, so “Maria’s” not true either. The records just a bunch of lies, I guess.

AR: Well, I wouldn’t say lies. When I listen to your stuff I think of the quote by Merle Haggard where he said to him good songwriting is just good reporting. That to me is what you do.

CK: There’s just all kinds of stuff that you write about. You don’t write about every single thing you do or every single thing you think. Sometimes you write about what somebody else thinks, what you think somebody else thinks or what you’ve seen somebody do or heard about somebody doing or something you thought about doing but never did or you think you could do it in the right circumstance. You write about that.

AR: You also co-wrote one of the songs on Dan Baird’s new album (“Well Enough Alone” from Baird’s recently released Dan Baird & Homemade Sin). Did that come out of a writing session or your time in the studio?

CK: It was right before Dan went in to cut his record and right after we wrote “Heart of Stone.” He had a title and we wrote about a verse of it then he told me to take it home and finish it. I went home and wrote two or three more verses to it and a chorus and he liked it, took it in and recorded it.

AR: When you go out on the road solo, do you work up different arrangements for some of the songs?

CK: Yeah, some of them I’ll finger-pick instead of strumming or whatever. It just depends on what I think. Songs like “Devil Behind the Wheel” or “Old Man,” a lot of times I’ll just fingerpick those songs just to break up the monotony. Sometimes I’ll play a song half time. Chris Clarke is going out with me and he’ll be playing mandolin and accordion, acoustic guitar, so I’m looking forward to that.

AR: Does that take a little more time to arrange or…

CK: Naa, we’re not arrangin’ nothing, we’ll just get out there and play. He plays the same stuff full-band, too. He’ll grab his accordion and play, and he plays mandolin on a few songs.

AR: Last year you released Trailer Tapes. Were you surprised at the response you got to that?

CK: Yeah, I guess. I just never thought much about those recordings being that big a deal, myself. But I’m glad people liked them. I can see why they did. I’d be all over something John Prine or Steve Earle did back before they put out an album. Like a live show or something they recorded before their first album; that would be real interesting to me.

AR: Do you think you’ll ever record a live album?

CK: I’ve been thinking about it. Hopefully in a year, year and a half I’ll be going into the studio for a new album, but I’m also thinking about the live thing. I wouldn’t mind to have someone out recording here and there to possibly get some real good full-band stuff, to have some stuff to pick and choose from.

AR: Since you’ve been on your own does it feel easier than when you were on Dualtone?

CK: Yeah, I guess it has. I mean, Dualtone was pretty easy, too. They were pretty laidback and wanted me to go do whatever it was that I wanted to do. Same thing here. We just leased those records to Dualtone so we have those all back. Me and my manager own those records, but after the two records we decided that we could do anything an independent label can do, so we kind of cut out the record company. We cut out the third party ‘cause we had access to everything – publicity, distribution, everything. There was really no reason to go on a smaller label whenever we could do it ourselves.
AR: And you’re still getting cuts by mainstream country artists…

CK: I’m still getting a few. I think the last one I had was Blake Shelton, “It Ain’t Easy Being Me.” There might be some more in the works out there, I don’t know.

AR: What did you think of Blake’s version?

CK: I thought it sounded good. Didn’t sound like a hit, didn’t sound like a radio song, but I liked it, it sounded good.