| |
Chris Knight
The Jealous Kind
Dualtone
By David Pilot
 Over
the past half decade the swarm of superlatives whirling about
the accolades for each new Chris Knight effort grew to epic proportion.
Uptempo country rockers from "It Ain't Easy Bein' Me"
through "Love and a .45" drew justifiable comparisons
to "Guitartown" icon Steve Earle and fellow legend
John Prine. Fiddle-driven offerings like "Down the River"
from Knight's second record mined the inner workings of the human
soul in all its darkness with an emotional scalpel long thought
reserved for New Jersey's favorite son and perhaps the greatest
songwriting commentator on the human condition since Dylan.
That kind of momentum, hell, that kind of pressure, is enough
to break an artist. Where does one go when the truth has been
told? What's left when the pulsing veins have been left exposed?
When Rolling Stone proclaims a soul-worn work the epitome of
Southern Gothic, invoking by extension the ghosts of Faulkner
and O'Connor, the spirits swirling in the pines take notice.
Their vagaries are potion enough to make or break a man, as
protagonists like Lee and Forrest so painstakingly (and so differently)
learned. So when you're a music man with a guitar and a soul,
waking each day to the burdens of burgeoning legend and vengeful
vestiges of a vital legacy, what exactly do you do? If you're
Chris Knight, you call in some help and you record The Jealous
Kind.
American history, culture and music are simultaneously littered
and blessed with the works of humanists whose driving passion
boiled down to the need to make us think. Where Hawthorne waxed
didactic with a heavy hand, Irving sought to thrill first and
teach by proxy. Later decades birthed muses as strikingly diverse
yet searingly incisive as Ambrose Bierce and Kinky Friedman.
The former's Civil War writings compare in scope to the latter's
largely forgotten musical efforts in the simplest of respects:
they force the reader or the listener to think. Or more accurately,
to contemplate. It's that very quality which made the music
of a young John Cougar resonate in the heartland, and which permeated
the darkness on the edge of town that so fascinated the evolving
Bruce Springsteen. And it's that quality which sets Chris Knight's
music apart in these half-naked Britney times. There's no
game here, no calculated manipulation of the psyche geared toward
the emptying of your wallet. In fact, the opposite is true.
To listen, really listen, to Knight's music requires active
commitment. While the guitars may be pretty, the lyrics are
fraught with the pain that permeates a coal mining region.
Black lung and strong whiskey represent the endpoints of the
living pendulum that makes up Appalachia, and their legacies
shaped a significant portion of our nation's collective history.
Knight's magic is the ability to capture the endless permutations
of both as they manifest themselves in the lives of the men and
women who grow up in their shadow. At that most visceral and
essential of levels, his music is universal, and therein lies
his genius.
The Jealous Kind will do nothing to hinder the growing
legacy. While the more radio-friendly rockers are largely absent
here, the nuts and bolts of the human condition are clear as
ever. The title track will see airplay, of course, as will
the quieter efforts, but there may not be a "hit" in
the bunch. Closest may be "Banging Away," co-written
by Knight and the inimitable Chuck Prophet, and benefiting from
both the production and blazing guitar work of fellow Southern
icon Dan Baird. Think Mellencamp on Scarecrow. But
the song flies by so strongly and so quickly that the power of
its three disparate verses is missed entirely at first or second
listen. "The Border," meanwhile, sounds as if Mellencamp
teamed up with Tom Russell on a journey through the heart of
the TexMex darkness in the Rio Grande Valley. Astounding delivery,
punctuated by Christy Sutherland's haunting harmony vocal, makes
a claim that the Chris Knight we've known thus far is only getting
started. That's validated with striking authority in the stellar
"Staying Up All Night Long," a love gone wrong cheating
song that benefits equally from Tony Harrell's B-3 organ work
and the lyric's pristine honesty which avoids the obvious cliché.
The man v. woman relationship is indicative of much of the
the record's track list, as the title would indicate, but there's
more here than love and desire and pain. Well, more than love
and desire anyway. Pain doesn't come much stronger than it
does in "Hello Old Man."
Hello old man have you time for a wanderer
Running from his checkered past
Not I'm not your favorite son
I never even tied for last
Can there ever be redemption for the battered dreams of a
father unable to accept and unquestioningly love his own flesh
and blood? Do the wounds of the journey heal over with time,
like the storybooks say? Maybe for some. But here, in a refrain
many of us find familiar, Knight illuminates the heartbreak on
both sides of the equation as life catches up with the dichotomy
that is a father and a son.
With pain often comes vengeance, and no Chris Knight record
is complete without a tale of the latter. Here it's "Carla
Came Home." Framed against the twinkling of Christmas
lights, the story of a battered daughter running home to Papa
ends as it would in every case if the world was as it should
be. As Carla hides her bruises and Mama shushes the son, a
young boy realizes both Daddy and his Winchester are gone and
reaches a simple conclusion.
Carla met Tom Walker
Daddy said he ain't no count
He'd grab his gun and go hunting
When she'd bring him to the house
Something tells me Tom Walker
Is out of the picture now
It's in the stories and examinations of the soul that Knight
finds his peace. The results are at times uncomfortable for
us, but ultimately fulfilling if carried out to their logical
conclusion. The question is whether we, as listeners, are ready
to be challenged and willing to be pushed. It's obvious Chris
Knight is unapologetically committed to both endeavors. It's
our gift to realize that his genius is up to the task. From
small town love to vengeful ghosts, the songs on The Jealous
Kind evoke the best and worst in each of us. As with Poe,
it's up to us what we choose to take away. And as with Earle
and Prine and Springsteen and Dylan, if we're willing to partake,
what we'll take away is a better understanding of ourselves.
Maybe that's the reason Nashville chooses not to pay attention.
It takes character to be a Chris Knight fan. Hank really did
do it this way.
www.chrisknight.net
Contact David Pilot at: editor-at-rockzilla.net
|
|
