Photo by Timothy Schmidt via davyknowles.com
Davy Knowles
Davy Knowles
A little more than a month away from turning 37 years old, Davy Knowles remains awestruck by the blues and the lessons it imparts. An Isle of Man native and current Chicago resident, Knowles has strived to use the limitless possibilities of the blues (and many other styles of music) to grow as a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist (most notably on electric guitar).
“What I’ve always loved about the blues is its emotiveness and its flexibility to individual interpretation,” says Knowles. “Could be the same few chords, but they sound so dramatically different when Son House plays them, versus someone like B.B. King or Otis Rush, or Peter Green.”
“It’s a tremendous vehicle to express yourself in. It’s obviously an incredible foundation too - understanding musically what is going on in the blues opens the door to so many different styles of music.”
Knowles started performing with blues rock band Back Door Slam and has shifted to performing as a solo artist in the past decade. His sophomore album Coming Up for Air was produced by Peter Frampton, who (along with many other veteran musicians) raved about his talent. As with most things in life, a little experience has gone a long way in helping him understand and perform the blues. While he stresses the fact that he has “never experienced the awful oppression that blues music was born from,” he nonetheless has tapped into the blues in his own way.
“I will never be able to understand that on the necessary level to perform that style with the heart that the masters of the genre could. I can, however, relate and respond to the raw, emotive side of the music and apply my own life experiences to it—use the huge influence that particular style has had on me and interpret it in my own way, mixed with all of the other stuff I’ve listened to,” he says.
“I’m not a traditional blues artist, I couldn’t be if I tried. I absolutely adore traditional blues, but I believe the most sincere and authentic thing anyone can do is to write their own music, rather than attempt to copy what has come before verbatim. Reference, respect and be inspired by, but not copy. That’s the goal anyway!”
Prior to his performance March 21 at Shank Hall, the Shepherd Express caught up with Knowles to find out about performing in the Midwest, his in-the-works electric blues rock album, last year’s folk detour with his album If I Should Wander, and why it’s important to have an eclectic range of influences.
You've been based in Chicago for about 15 years or so. What's it been like living in the Midwest and playing music around this area?
It's got an amazing music scene and it's nice being central and I love living here.
What are some of the things you've enjoyed the most living in Chicago and the Midwest?
Oh gosh, the Midwest as a whole is a really friendly part of the country. I think the pace of life is great. You've got hustle and bustle if you need it, but things are more calm. I used to live in Los Angeles before this and that was a bit too hectic for me. And musically, there are just so many great musicians. I find that if you’re not in a major kind of industry hub like Nashville or Los Angeles or New York or something like that, I feel like the competitiveness isn’t there. It’s not so cutthroat, it’s more inclusive. So, the scenes tend to be friendlier, and I feel like you get to meet musicians that way and that way it’s more of a community than it is a rat race. I like it.
How has that impacted your view of music and being a musician?
I think a lot of my tastes and habits were maybe formed before moving here, but I certainly think that some of that has gone to amplify parts of it.
Over the years, you've become more proficient in playing a few different instruments. In addition to acoustic and electric guitar, you’ve also played mandolin. How has that given you more flexibility in what you can do musically?
Well, first of all, I like being a student. I like learning things. I like that feeling of figuring stuff out. And when you are writing songs, sometimes you might imagine it in a way that you can't really get to on one instrument, and so being able to turn to a different one is really useful. The song itself might say, “Hey, I'm more of a mandolin thing,” and so going to play mandolin on that, you're serving the song. I like the feeling. I might not always play multiple instruments live when I come to Shank Hall, it's going to be an electric show with the band, but little bits kind of drip in every now and then.
You released a folk-leaning album last year called If I Should Wander. Will you be performing any songs from that album?
No. Well, I might throw a couple of those ones in. Generally, I’ve been going out and doing acoustic tours and doing that bunch. And then for the band stuff, we went to the studio at the end of February to record a brand-new album. So, when we go up to Shank Hall, there’ll be a lot of new stuff from an upcoming electric guitar album. It's going to be a little bit more the blues rock electric guitar thing.
What can you tell me about the new album? What should people expect?
I think if folks like the kind of sixties, seventies, classic rock heavy on the guitar thing, blues rock kind of stuff, I think that’ll feel fairly familiar to them in that respect. I feel like it's showing a lot of my early guitar influencers, folks like Rory Gallagher, Eric Clapton, Peter Green, and the band Free with Paul Kossoff. I think a lot of those influencers are going to come through on this one.
Is the band you're touring with the one on that album?
Yeah. The next album will be with these guys, Mike Hansen on drums and Tod Bowers on bass. We've been together for a good while. We went in at the end of February with a whole batch of new songs. We're excited to play them live.
What do you like most about playing with these guys?
They’re fabulous musicians and so there's this wonderful kind of feeling on stage of wherever you might go if you're improvising, that they are going to go there with you. They're a good relationship, everyone’s listening, and it's a lot of fun. They're just good human beings and great players.
Were there songs that really had a significant impact on the direction of the album?
Yeah. Normally I find I might write odd songs for an album, and then you kind of pick three or four, which seem like the core …You start to see a common trait between a few of those that belong together. And you start to look at things as a whole rather than individual songs, and there's a common theme lyrically through this, or there's a common theme musically through this that makes sense together. And that's when I feel like you've got something, a really good album to go in and go do. I still think in those kinds of terms rather than singles or downloads, a body of work as a whole.
Did you record in Chicago somewhere?
Yeah, at Shirk Studios.
What did you like about recording there?
It is kind of a home away from home really, and it's just a wonderful vibe, great feeling studio, great sounding studio. Sometimes studios can feel clinical. This one just feels like you're in a living room and I love that the more relaxed you are, the better you record.
Do you think your experience writing the songs for the album last year had an impact on how you wrote songs for this new one?
Oh, for sure. Yeah. I think from a personal point of view, writing those songs from If I Should Wander, from the last acoustic album, it was very revealing to me that I think when I write best, it's writing about personal experience rather than sometimes previously I’ve written more putting myself in someone else’s shoes. I think it's really after that album now I feel like it’s much better for me to really write from a personal experience and the sound of that music may differ, but ultimately the kind of content is similar. It's got to be autobiographical.
You’ve described If I Should Wander as more of a diary than an album. Why do you think so? What do you think led to this influx of songwriting?
Well, they were very personal songs and songs that I didn't really initially want to share with anyone. They were things kind of just for me, songs that maybe were addressing things that I'd struggled with and were still struggling with and ongoing kind of issues. It felt like a thing that was very personal to me, and it was only really after spending time with it that I thought maybe this has a home outside of my home. I'm glad I did.
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It's done me the world of good to go out and play some of these songs. And as far as what caused that, I would say being grounded during the pandemic, and I’m sure this is a familiar story to a lot of folks, that it brought things to a head, maybe things that had been bubbling under for a long time, and that was the catalyst that brought everything else up to the surface. So, I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands and a lot of thinking time, I guess, and that's what popped out.
It sounds like it was kind of a stream of conscious style of writing.
For sure. It absolutely was. I mean, in that vein, it came out very, very quickly too. It was in the space of a month or so.
I found it interesting that you wrote the songs in the order that they are on the album.
Yeah, it was strange, and I’ve never done that before. It felt like I’d finished one and then the next one would already be started, and it would feel like it was flowing on. It felt like it belonged next. As I dealt with one thing, it kind of said “Hey, here’s another thing you’ve been going through, here's another thing that's in your head.” So, it felt like I was unloading a load of things. Yeah.
What was it like seeing that folk direction come about with those songs?
Well, I always grew up around folk music. Where I grew up was right next to Ireland. The Isle of Man is only 30 or 40 miles off the coast of Ireland, and so had a lot of folk music growing up. My dad was a very big fan of English folk music, so it was an influence I'd always had. And I think maybe part of the whole pandemic experience, I was looking back a lot and maybe that's why it popped out that it kind of said, “Hey, these are sounds from your childhood.” I think maybe that was one of the reasons why it took on that kind of sound.
You took a break after writing the songs to assess the situation. Can you talk about how that helped give you clarity to move forward?
I kind of sat back and I sat on it for a while thinking “I don’t know if I have the confidence to execute this in the way that I want.” I thought the songs were really meaningful to me. I thought they were really strong songs. I felt like this is something I really want to do, but maybe I had lost a lot of confidence in myself at this point and really was also wondering, “well, this is quite different from what I've done previously, and so maybe folks might not want it.”
And then after sitting on this for a long time, I felt actually, it’s not really for anyone really. Selfishly, I thought, this is mine. These are my songs. This is for me. And strangely the more I kind of felt ownership of that, the more confident I became with it. I think maybe other people might feel similarly about some of these things, and so maybe I should put this out. And also, this is a kind of music that I’ve loved my whole life, and it's a chance to show that to people who maybe followed the more electric guitar side of things of what I’ve been doing and “hey, this is also part of me. This is also something that has been with me since day one.” So, it was a steady kind of buildup of confidence.
What were some of the biggest surprises making it?
Well, I made the album at home. I again felt quite possessive over it at the time, so I don't want to really bring this into a studio, have any other hands on it. I kind of just want to quietly get this done myself, and then I can draw a line, complete the circle, and I don't know if there were an enormous amount of surprises. It was really just trying to follow my original vision, which was this is really kind of raw stuff, and I don't want to embellish it with a load of pretty things musically. I just want to play and sing the songs because I feel like that's how they're going to be best. And so that was really the mission with it.
You've played mainly blues rock but also have dabbled in other, different styles. What do you like about having that flexibility to dabble in different areas like that?
I think it’s just how my head works. I like all sorts of different music, so I like to play all sorts of different bits of music. It’s like eating one flavor of ice cream your whole life. I don’t know if I want to do that. I like the idea of trying lots of things and pushing yourself. Like I said earlier, I like being a student. It’s this idea of, “man, I adore this stuff.” Take someone like B.B. King who we identify with so much as blues and good Lord. He ran the whole gamut of things, and one of his big influences was Django Reinhardt, [who was a Belgian-French musician who played hot club jazz]. So, I think the idea of trying a little bit of everything, of trying to push yourself and trying to maybe assimilate lots of different styles into the playing, I think it's just an exciting thing to do. It's a rewarding thing to do.
You’re one of the first artists to perform live for the International Space Station. What was it like getting to play for that audience?
Very surreal. And it was all very fast, so it didn't really linger too much, but I’ve been very lucky like that. It was a huge honor and just amazing to be in that room and to be speaking to people who are floating around in space above us. It's magical.
You’ve had a lot of veteran musicians like Peter Frampton that have helped you and inspired you. Now that you've been playing for a while, have younger musicians come to you for advice?
I've had a few folks from the younger, next generation ask me things, and I don't know if I am in the position to really give advice, but more encouragement I think is my stance. I would hate to tell someone how to go out and do their art, but I could certainly offer encouragement because I think the more people going out and doing this the better. It's a beautiful thing.
What are some of your favorite memories of playing Milwaukee?
I played Summerfest with Buddy Guy in 2009. That was great. And I played the Pabst Theater with Jeff Beck. That was really memorable. I've had some lovely shows there.
Have you played Shank Hall before?
It's been a few years, but yes, I have. Yeah, we've had some good nights there too.
What are you most looking forward to in the year ahead?
I'm really looking forward to getting the new music out there and to hit the road with the band and solo to get a good balance between playing a bunch of these brand-new electric songs and some of these new acoustic songs and trying to keep busy doing what I really love. It’s fun to try and keep that variety of things.
