Elam McKnight
Elam McKnight: Bio
Elam McKnight
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ELAM McKNIGHT - MAIN MISCHIEF MAKER
“I got exposed to the blues when I was young,” says Elam McKnight. “I had an uncle who used to carry me to Beale Street in Memphis, nothing like it is now, and there was this old cat down there named Alabama Red. He would play guitar in this old gazebo that is now long gone to the tourist trade. He played the really old 'gutbucket' stuff and he would look in my eyes and I sat there transfixed and say ‘I can tell you want to do this just by the look in your eyes.’” I was maybe 15 and it did something to me. It scared me to be exposed to it. That rascal put something on me that I have yet since been able to wash off.”
What is immediately obvious when you hear McKnight is that he did not get this thing “washed off” of him. Heralded by critics as one of the best new artists of the “future primitive” movement, a new crop of artists who abate away from mere copying and clean studio slick-ness to instead tangle themselves in the deep roots of the past, and take a unique spin on the sounds of old and always searching anew for the primal place where all great music stems from. “Cats like me and a bunch of others are in this thing for the right reasons. Most of us are just as happy to be playing in some juke joint or country picnic as any other place. Another unique feature of ‘our little thing’ is that it is almost never about competition, a total pitch in and do your thing. It is very tribal and old world.”
As a youngster McKnight caught the curse of music. “I devoured any blues album I could get my hands on and as I would find one artist like Muddy Waters then I would learn he got some of his from someone like Sonhouse or Charlie Patton. Each artist became like a doorway into another bunch of folks, all the time the sounds just got deeper. And of course the whole time I am also listening to Punk, Rock, Hip Hop and all the things which Blues and ‘Real Folks Music’ influenced. I was astounded by the completeness of American music, like a great long ladder, and still am. I knew one day I wanted to be another rung on that ladder, to contribute in some way, to belong to something that is real.”
McKnight approaches many styles in his playing, from deep Delta by the likes of Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, and Sonhouse to the Western Tennessee musings of Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rachell, and John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson. All the while he keeps a bit of the Punk element in his attack. “Punk is more of an attitude, a way of doing which I have always respected. I mean not just musically but even the whole DIY mentality of ‘we will never stop.’ I try to bring some of that along for the ride, always. “But one style in particular ravaged McKnight when he had all but decided to give up playing entirely.
“I was in a bad place, bad marriage, and bad everything. I was about to give this thing up. You know the whole ‘down on me’ sort of thing. Besides I had pretty much decided, out of sheer ignorance, that there weren’t any Muddy or Howlin' Wolf guys left out there. Then I heard an album someone had left sitting on the sidewalk one day and it literally changed my world!” The album was a tattered copy someone had discarded on the sidewalk, amid a pile of things left in an apparent move, and its title was ASS POCKET of WHISKEY by R.L. Burnside, a living master of North Mississippi Hill Country Blues. McKnight was blown away.
“First off, it scared me, real bad, which is always a sign to me of great music. And then, as I listened deeper, I realized that there were others down there in the Hill Country. It gave me hope and I have not put my guitar down since. ” After escaping some of the “badness” in his life, McKnight took refuge in a one-room apartment with his few belongings and his guitars. “It was basically, no it was exactly, a hovel. It was so bad when my baby brother helped move me in he was scared to leave me there. I worked, came home, and strapped the guitar to me and made up my mind then that ‘Life ain’t worked out so good thus far so it is up to me to change it and this guitar is how I am going to do it. Pretty crazy huh?’”
McKnight wrote constantly, saving meager funds for recording, and finding the right musicians to work with. Then a perchance meeting, in Nashville, with Cedric Burnside (Grandson and drummer for R.L. Burnside) turned things up a few notches. “Cedric and I hit it off immediately and he invited me to come to the Hill Country. I went, chilled, and met his uncle Garry (Junior Kimbrough bassist) and we did a session in a house in Chulahoma, MS. This became the basis of his first album. “I knew then I had three songs I could build something off of. I also got to meet Big Daddy (R.L. Burnside) and that was something I never guessed I would do. It is weird how one small thing can change you irreparably. I mean what if someone else had found that CD on the sidewalk other than me?”
McKnight has released two albums in the last three years. Critics praised his first, BRAID MY HAIR, as a “breath of fresh” air in the sometimes-stale climate that is predictable “bar band” blues. With minimal funding, basically none, McKnight wrote, produced, promoted, recorded, and self released the album on his own Big Black Hand label. The music was enough to get massive airplay all over the globe and media attention not common for a completely unknown artist. “I have to know that it was strictly on the merit of the album because I know for sure I was not like Pip in Great Expectations, there were no benefactors out there, at least not at first.” The album charted number 4 on the U.S. Roots Blues Chart (it has since returned 4 times over the last 3 years, a very uncommon feat.)
His second album was a collaboration between he and UK harmonica master Keith Carter, entitled THE LAST COUNTRY STORE, which also received immediate critical acclaim and massive radio airplay, leading some critics to coin them “the best new acoustic blues duo in America.” The album was a staunch return to what “Sunshine” Sonny Payne, legendary King Biscuit Time radio host, says in reference to the two, as “the real deal.” The album was featured on many blues charts internationally and in America, reaching number 22 on the National Living Blues Chart (Living Blues Magazine) where it sat happily amid albums by many artists with management, publicists, radio promoters, and record label money behind them. The two toured Italy in support of this album in the summer of 2006 and were a resounding success, playing in front of welcoming crowds and making the great country their new favorite place to play. “I cannot say enough about Italia and its people. I will return to Italy anytime that I can. The love was that strong!”
“I just always felt this type of music, roots oriented, real music, was my domain. I was born into this. Our culture here, my culture, is a very rich thing when you get into it.” McKnight grew up in a farming community in the Western region of Tennessee (Gibson Country), which sits on the cusp of the Mississippi Delta and spent time with family in Memphis where Blues and Soul abounded. “This kind of music was all around me growing up. I was also blessed with some cool relatives that let me go places I probably should not have been going. It was basically a no-brainer being that I can now drive 30 minutes or an hour and be sitting where some of the most influential men to ever make music sat and did their thing. This connects you to them in a way and reminds you that there is no faking it. You can’t just copy them note for note and you can never walk in their footsteps. The Blues is not a museum piece! There are those that would have you think this. But it’s not. Of course most of the people, who hold this opinion, don’t know a damn thing about it anyway. They just think they do ‘cause they read some books and saw a couple of films. You have to seek what the old people sought because it will come out right if you are receptive to it.”
McKnight subsequently made many trips to Mississippi and Arkansas making many friends and contacts. “I basically lived down there for a summer and really got a better feel for where I needed to be musically. I played with tons of great musicians I had no idea existed and all the experiences have deepened me and kept me on track. Given me new vision about the things I want to do musically.”
McKnight writes about real experiences, which are obviously personal, and at times down right funny if not for their intensity: bad times, bad relationships, old times, leaving songs, and coming back songs are themes he reaches in very bluesy yet unique ways. “I basically just be me and spit out the things in me. This is just my way of doing.” The new album, entitled SUPA GOOD, will feature a return to the intensity of his debut album and will include performances from legendary Blues drummer Sam Carr. “I just think it is important to include someone like Mr. Sam in this because not only is the man a great drummer he is probably about as true of a link to the past as we have left here with us.” McKnight’s aims are as pure as his understanding of his musical heritage and the new work will step back first and then leap forward. “There are going to be some surprises on this baby. To me it always has to be real and something true. At best an artist can mirror the things around them and at the same time take all there is on the inside: influences, experience, passion, fear, pain, joy, all of it and let it lose. ‘Holding nothing back’ is basically the ethos.”
Elam McKnight
Elam McKnight and Keith Carter just returned from a whirlwind tour of Italy hitting 6 shows in 9 days. They were greeted to crowds of 500 or more and had a wonderful time in this beautiful country and look forward to returning to Europe very soon.
Braid My Hair has climbed back onto the National Roots Blues Chart at Number 8 in the USA.
Keith and Elam will be Memphis radio WEVL on SAT AUGUST 26 and play a Hurricane Katrina Commemoration Show the same night at Otherlands Coffee in Memphis.
ELAM McKNIGHT & KEITH CARTER - THE BEST ACOUSTIC BLUES DUO THERE IS!
Elam McKnight and Keith Carter play a mobile form of blues, which harkens back to the days of itinerant musicians, a pack of clothes and acoustic instruments in tow, who traveled the routes of the Southeastern, US to ply their talents. “Our music travels well and is suited to festivals, concert halls, large to small venues, gas stations, parking lots, front porches, back porches, street corners, brothels, country stores, flat bed trailers, living rooms, fish fries, and goat roasts.”
The two began as many things do, out of sheer desperation. Desperation in that Elam McKnight had released an album, couldn’t afford a band to tour with, and needed someone to go on the road with, and fast.
Enter Keith Carter, virtuoso harmonica player from Great Britain. One might ask how the two crossed paths.
McKnight ran an add in a Nashville magazine for a harmonica player. “A musician friend of mine suggested the addition of a harmonica player, as I was in no position to feed, much less support a band. I said ‘Man that’s a great idea!’ I put the add out and it ran for two weeks. I got calls from drummers, bass players, and one trombone player. Near the end of the add’s run I was still with no harmonica player. So this guy calls me up and asks ‘are you looking for a guitar player?’ and out of frustration I said ‘Heck no! I put an add out for a H-A-R-M-O-N-I-C-A player!’ and he said ‘Oh, well I know one and I will email you his phone number’ and he did which lead me too Keith.” The two met, played two songs, and that was all that was needed. “There was an obvious chemistry from the first notes” Carter states but there was one small snag.
Carter was living in the US on a temporary visa and needed to make more formal arrangements in order for Carter to stay. The two quickly busied themselves, and anyone else they could muster, towards securing a formal wok visa. This led to six months of work securing Carter’s O-1 (individuals with extraordinary skills or talents) visa, three months of, which had Carter out of the country awaiting clearance of the procedure. When word came that Carter was approved he secured his papers in Great Britain, boarded a plane, and returned to Nashville, TN. “The day I landed with the visa in hand was exactly six months to the date we met and to this day we still do not know who originally called Elam about me playing harmonica.”
The two hit the road playing “basically wherever we could” and worked there way into several different festivals, venues, and appearances; including 4 on the King Biscuit Radio Show, Ground Zero Blues Club (owned by actor Morgan Freeman, and during the King Biscuit Festival (Helena, Arkansas) and the Sunflower Blues Festival (Clarksdale, MS.) The two have been very busy over the last year and recorded their first album and filmed a documentary about the location site of the recording, which was an old mercantile store in the rural delta of west Tennessee a few weeks from demolition. “We had talked about recording in the store as it was one of a kind and there are not many left. I love location recording and had done some on the last album in Mississippi with the Burnsides. I mentioned the idea to someone and they said “you better hurry up because they are tearing it down in two weeks.’ So we got it just in time as it was torn down five days after we wrapped up recording and filming.’” The CD and documentary is set for release in the spring/summer of 2005.
This duo has a great deal to look forward to over the coming year and both want to continue making music in the way they love it. “Keith and I want to make the kind of stuff that is real, not contrived or some kind of gimmick, music that has some history behind it. We like it that we can play in front of thousands at a festival, a small crowd at a venue, or on a porch in front of five folks like we did at the Otha Turner picnic and this ‘thing’ we make, this sound never lose anything in the translation.
Elam McKnight’s debut album was played nationally and internationally on radio and charted on the Roots Music Report chart in the month of March 2003.
Four appearances on the nationally syndicated King Biscuit Radio Show with the legendary host “Sunshine” Sonny Payne. This is the longest running radio show in America and Mr. Payne refers to the two as “one of the most up and coming guitar and harmonic
players that will make you sit up and take notice.”
Ground Zero Blues Club, Clarksdale, MS (during the Sunflower Blues Festival)
Delta Cultural Center, Helena, AR as part of their monthly concert series
Otha Turner’s Annual Picnic, Gravel Springs, MS. (Otha Turner was featured in the recently released Martin Scorsesse documentary “The Blues” on PBS.)
Prairie Dog Blues Festival, Prairie Du Chien, WI
West Tennessee Appreciation of the Arts Festival
Hopkinsville Jazz and Blues Festival, Hopkinsville, KY
Appearance on Beale street, Memphis, TN including a live television appearance on the morning talk show “Live at 9” on CBS-WREG.
Elam and Keith have shared the stage or appeared with the following blues and R&B artists: Robert Lockwood Junior * Pinetop Perkins * Bobby Rush * Richard Johnston *The Spinners Bernard Allison * Fat Possum recording artists Robert Belfour, T-Model Ford, and Kenny Brown and Cedric Burnside (RL Burnside) * Sharde Thomas and the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band * J.D. Simo * Nora Jean Brusso * David “Honey Boy” Edwards * Nora Jean Brusso* Big George Brock and the Family Band *Jimbo Mathus * Cedell Davis * Bobby Rutledge * Mr. Tater “the Music Maker” *Terry “Harmonica” Bean
Elam and Keith have appeared at the following venues:
Ground Zero, Clarksdale, MS w/ Richard Johnston
Cathead Records, Clarksdale, MS part of the Sunflower Blues Festival
Hopson Plantation, Clarksdale, MS
Sarah’s Kitchen, Clarksdale, MS with the Burnside Exploration
Frank Frost’s Juke Joint, Helena, AR
Blue Monday Concert Series, Jonesboro, AR event for Arkansas State Memphis Records, Memphis, TN
Beale Street Tap Room, Memphis, TN
Jake’s Roadhouse, Atlanta, GA WRFG Radio Show
Borders Books and Music (Various Locations)
Brackin’s Blues Bar, Maryville, TN
Bourbon Street Boogie Bar, Nashville, TN
It’s All Good Café, Nashville, TN