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Chris Knight - Trailer Tapes (CD)

Trailer Tapes
$11.17 - $16.98
5 out of 5.0 stars 1 Rating (1 Review)

Album Details: Trailer Tapes

Release Date:04/03/2007
Label:Thirty Tigers
UPC:822976000224

User Reviews: Trailer Tapes

  • Overall:

    Stunningly powerful first recordings

    By redtunictroll  Apr 7, 2007

    Pros: Powerful, spare, raw performances; previously unreleased songs.

    Cons: Incomplete collection of songs from the sessions.

    Knight's studio recordings quickly established the Kentucky native as an imposing songwriter with a dark streak of honesty. His self-titled 1998 debut for MCA showed off his songwriting prowess, but the Nashville session players didn't have t...he grit to back up the spit in Knight's eye. 2001's "A Pretty Good Guy," produced by the Georgia Satellites' Dan Baird, proved to be a breakthrough. Baird focused the arrangements more like folk songs, with Knight's words as the anvil, and his voice as the hammer. Comparisons to John Price, Steve Earle, Johnny Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen followed as Knight uncorked songs of rural violence and hopelessness that were magnetic in their horror. Two years before his bow on MCA, Knight recorded a series of acoustic demos that plainly illustrated the power and directness that landed a recording contract, and foreshadowed the brilliance to which he'd return on "A Pretty Good Guy." Starkly recorded by Frank Liddell in a single-wide Kentucky trailer, Knight, his original songs, his rustic voice and his acoustic guitar are brutal in their transparency. Think of Springsteen's "Nebraska" without having to shuck off a superstar's career -- this is first-generation rural grit, rather than a studied re-creation. And Knight's discomfort at recording Read more Less

Pro Reviews: Trailer Tapes

  • All Music Guide

    A couple years before releasing his 1998 Decca debut, Chris Knight demoed some of his songs with that disc's eventual coproducer, Frank Liddell. These were the days before computer software made it easy for home recording, so Liddell wound up recording Knight in an old trailer on Knight's Kentucky farm. Ten years down the road, these tapes got cleaned up by ace engineer/producer Ray Kennedy, and the results are quite wonderful. Only three of these 11 tunes ("Something Changed," "House and 90 Acres," and "If I Were You") later appeared on official Knight releases, but there isn't a dropoff in quality with the previously unreleased songs. The Trailer Tapes reveals Knight already to be a mature, gifted songwriter. The territory that he has addressed throughout his career hardliving working men, heartbreak, and stifling smalltown existence is all here in impressive form. The disc is packed with powerful portraits of rural working life. On tracks like "Backwater Blues" and "Here Comes the... Rain," he eloquently uses nature metaphors (the river in the former and farming and rain in the latter) to discuss heartache. With "Hard Edges" and "Move On," he offers vividly detailed studies of smalltown life. The John Prineish "Hard Edges" poignantly profiles a woman who went from a gradeschool ballerina to a bluecollar bar stripper, while "Move On" tackles the cityversuscountry class struggle in the menacing tale of a bar fight. This tune, one of several mentioning pistols, contains a fine example of Knight's "redneck" but sharpedged writing in the couplet "You say you're from college/But you don't seem too bright/You just brung a switchblade/To a pistol fight." Knight also tackles country versus city life in the memorable closing number, "My Only Prayer," where the Kentuckybased Knight finds nothing to love in the big city. This moving lament also spotlights the disc's spare, almost rudimentary sound. Some reviews of his debut album noted that the standard countryrock arrangements distracted from Knight's songs. Here, however, it is just Knight singing to his acoustic guitar, allowing the listener's focus to fall on his ample songwriting talents. While his characterrich tunes and husky country twang reveal the influence of Prine and, more prominently, Steve Earle, Knight demonstrates that he is a natural storyteller and chronicler of the rural life. Although these tracks started out as demos, they are worthy additions to Knight's body of work. - Michael Berick, All Music Guide Read more Less

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Biography

Chris Knight

Chris Knight is a singer/songwriter from the tiny mining town of Slaughters, KY, whose self-titled debut album invited comparisons to Steve Earle and John Prine. Knight started on his musical journey at just three years old when he requested a plastic guitar for Christmas. At 15, he became more serious when he began teaching himself dozens of John Prine songs on his old... Read more