I'm very much an evangelist of Chris Knight. He's a badass new country type, tells stories with his songs. He's a ****ing genius. His songs aren't this pansy-ass fake country you hear on the radio. Chris Knight is the real thing.

Born and raised in Kentucky. He's lived it, the hard times etc. He's often classified as being of the Texas Country genre, and Texans welcome him.

He's just a real hardass. He sings about hard lives and how **** goes wrong, and he's a goddamn poet while he does it.

Here are 3 great Christ Knight songs:

Down the River: This better give you chills. This is as real as country living gets.



Jack Blue: This is kinda fun, wild kids growing up and having kids of their own.



This is off his latest album, In the Mean Time. It's evocative of life's essences, and perhaps a little apocalyptic!

I guess this could be a new country type of thread if y'all want to talk about similar people to Chris Knight. There's a lot more to good new country than gets played on the ****ty radio.

Loved him on The Brady Bunch.

Used to like him ok, but I saw him live a couple of months ago. We had very good seats in a fairly small club, and my wife and I are both now huge fans. He seems like such a down-to-earth, DGAF guy who tries to connect with his fans without being obsequious.

My CK favorites (in no particular order) according to my Spotify playlist:

Bring the Harvest Home
House and 90 Acres
The Hammer Going Down
Jack Blue
Cry Lonely
Enough Rope
Crooked Road
The Jealous Kind
Nothing On Me
You Can't Trust No One
Hard Edges
Down the River
North Dakota
Old Man

When I found out about Knight a couple of years ago, it reminded me of first learning about Steve Earle when Guitar Town came out in 85 or so, and the country video channel kept playing the title cut. I ran out and bought the album, so great. I'd always kinda sneered at country before then, kinda turned my musical taste in a new direction.

I see from Chris Knight's wikipedia that he started writing songs in 86 after hearing Steve Earle on the radio.

I'd like to think that Knight's career and popularity will approach that of Earle's, but I doubt it does.

I guess this wasn't the great thread idea ever, that's ok. Kind of a niche interest. C'est la vie, as the Frogs say.

There's a pretty good oot thread on new country artists that has a lot of good music in it. Weird title though, I forget what.

I'm a big Chris Knight fan. Would love to see him live, but he never seems to get up here in my neck of the woods. Listening to Chris Knight is like reading Larry Brown.

My wife insists his songs sound far more upbeat (less downbeat?) on his recordings than done live. I didn't notice it as much as she did, and it didn't bother me at all.

Very good performance--just him standing on stage with three guitars. We were talking with one of his crew while waiting to get in, and he said Chris' preference would be just to walk around his audience while doing his show. He did a bit of that when we saw him.

A family of four was waiting with us to get in, and they told us they had been "peeping" through an open doorway while Chris was warming up a couple of hours prior to the show. They said he just waved them on in and told them to have a seat. Probably didn't hurt that one of them was a cute young thang.

A good live performance of North Dakota, one of the songs on Tom's excellent list. Pretty bleak:

Zomg, I'm going to see Chris Knight play live at Luckenbach, Texas in 2 weeks! People have been saying to me. "Kiohsk, you need to get out more, you cranky old hermit." And I never listen to people as a rule, but I'm not dumb enough not to go see the great Chris Knight live. Country singer-songwriters past or present don't get any better than this man, true fact.

Also a shoutout to my 2p2 friend Tom Ames who sent me a pm about going to see CK live awhile back that provided some slow-burn motivation for me to make this happen.

Great! You will really enjoy it.

I got to see him again since I pm'd you. If he comes back to my area, I'm sure I'll go again.

Really like this song. And most of the others posted ITT.

I wouldn't say necessarily similar to Chris Knight, but a few of my favorite "country-ish" bands rights now...

Jbrochu,



I have those first two tracks on my playlist, so I obviously applaud your taste in music!

Gave the third a listen and it sounds like the good ol' classic C&W music. Far, far better than what passes for country music these days.

Try these Jamie Johnson songs as well.

I like Jamey Johnson.

I would be up for that.

My first contribution: This guy's not strictly country but it's a fairly wide genre imo and I think he's brilliant.

I like it.

I can make a contribution more in the line of Chris Knight.

Ryan Bingham

My fellow Aggie the great Robert Earl Keen has an excellent cover of this song. I actually prefer it to Snider's version, but I do know and like Snider. Total original.

Yep, have been a fan of REK for a long time. Jason Isbell does a decent version of the song too.

I will quote this til I die and be the only one who gets it.

Peter was pretty cool for a Brady, no doubt. Pork chops and applesauce ftw. But he was a real pussy on his reality show where he'd morphed into an old boring guy married to a hot young model. I think I heard they got divorced later.

this thread getting bumped inspired me to dig up a previous post from a different thread.
i haven't watched this in quite some time but it still stacks up even though Sturgill is quite a bit more known than he was then.