Andrew McKnight: Enviro Engineer-turned-Songwriter

Bio:

..

Host an Andrew McKnight concert in your living room! Tired of having to drive to shows? Bring Andrew to your neighborhood, with the help of his how-to article "Bringing the Music Home".

---

If You Hate Clear Channel/WalMart....

Since permanently leaving his corporate environmental engineering career in 1996, the award-winning folk and Americana singer/songwriter and Falling Mountain recording artist’s musical journey has traced nearly half a million miles of blue highways and small towns nationwide, and earned him a wealth of critical acclaim and enthusiastic fan response for his five CDs and captivating performances.

While the Shenandoah Valley-based performer has toured as a solo singer/songwriter and guitarist for the past 15 years, he is a musician first and foremost, in the mold of John Mayer or Darrell Scott. Putting himself through Connecticut College and graduate school at UMass/Amherst by moonlighting in rock and blues trios shaped his musical sensibilities, and his 2008 CD Something Worth Standing For showcases the full maturation of his musical artisanship.

Something is a coherent and compelling musical portrait of contemporary America, heavily inspired by Andrew's recent foray into fatherhood and enriched by musical collaborations with fiddler Chance McCoy, keyboardist Jon Carroll and the harmony vocals of wild carrot's Pamela Temple. Spanning haunting blues, feisty anthems, rustic folk, and a bit of swing while drawing inspiration from music legends like The Carter Family, Robert Johnson and Woody Guthrie, paints many colors with his supple tenor and acoustic and electric guitars.

Andrew's previous CD Beyond Borders was one of five Finalists for the Independent Music Awards' 2005 Americana Album of the Year as well as a Nominee for the Washington Area Music Awards Best Contemporary Folk Recording. The CD includes "Good Things Matter", the winner of the Great American Song Contest (Acoustic/Folk).

In addition to his heavy tour schedule as a solo performer, McKnight also tours several times a year with upright bass virtuoso Sean Kelly (Boulder Philharmonic, Annie Gallup, John William Davis). Around the mid-Atlantic region he performs on larger stages with his band Beyond Borders, blurring the lines between folk, blues, Appalachian and rock with the help of founding Nitty Gritty Dirt Band member Les Thompson, Louisiana singer and songwriter Stephanie Thompson, and WAMMIE-winning drummer and singer/songwriter Lisa Taylor.

Wherever and however Andrew takes the stage, audiences are at once spellbound and relaxed by his entertaining stories delivered with just the right touches of down home humor, causing one concertgoer to label him "equal parts Robert Frost, William Least Heat-Moon and Jeff Foxworthy!" He has shared those attributes in a wide variety of performance settings from festivals to house concerts, including the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, the John F. Kennedy Center in DC, Appalshop Theatre, Mountain Stage NewSong Festival, Chattanooga Riverbend Festival and Baltimore's Artscape Festival. He was one of 10 artists selected from nearly 700 entrants for the 2008 Rocky Mountain Folks Fest Songwriter Showcase, and is a past Kerrville New Folk Finalist and Falcon Ridge Folk Festival New Artist Showcase alumni. Andrew also leads Special Music Services for Unitarian Universalist churches and other progressive spiritual communities nationwide as a regular part of his tour itinerary.

When not on the road, Andrew teaches several guitar students and does small acoustic recording projects for clients at his Mountain Song Studio. As part of his touring and performing schedule he also leads workshops on songwriting, guitar technique, various aspects of the acoustic music industry, and environmental issues. Andrew's poetry and prose have also earned accolades, and his writing has appeared in Americana Rhythm and Blue Ridge Country magazines. Read Andrew's Poetry at his website, including "A Circle of Four Women" for his baby daughter Madeleine Rose.

Andrew enjoys an artist endorsement with Elixir Strings.

---

For more good music you won't hear on the radio...

I hope you'll enjoy listening to some of my Top Friends - I rotate them periodically to give you a chance to enjoy some other great independent music. The first few are some of my labelmates at Falling Mountain Music. These are all people that I know, have done shows with, and/or recorded with, and I really personally enjoy their music a lot - I hope you do too.

Thanks for Reading!

Member Since:

April 18, 2006

Members:

Influences:

Thank you!

Crosby Stills & Nash, James Taylor, Beatles. John Gorka, Shawn Colvin, good singers, lots of odd things from traditional oldtime mountain music, jazz and rock guitar, world music - we're always making gumbo over here from whatever ingredients happen to be fresh :)

Topically speaking - Appalachian culture, rural American history, people and their landscapes, rivers, matters of the spirit and of the heart.

and a very short attention span, which keeps me moving from one style and topic to the next, wildly swinging from bluesy sounds, to contemporary acoustic pop, to oldtimey, to traditional sounds and storytelling.

If this sounds good to you, all of Andrew's CDs are available at the click of a mouse from many places. The best is the CD-quality song or album downloads directly from him via the Bandcamp players embedded below - listen to any and all songs for free, download any song for $1 or the CD for $11 and know that all of your money is going directly to supporting the artist - thank you! Other options include CDBaby.com and the iTunes Store.

For the 99 cent Andrew McKnight iPhone app, here's the direct link (iTunes store)

And the link for Andrew McKnight Ringtones from Thumbplay

---

..

..

..

..

Sounds Like:

May appeal to fans of:

• literate, folk/rock-rooted songcraft of Richard Thompson, Bruce Cockburn & Richard Shindell
• blues-tinged Southern story songs of Darrell Scott & Kate Campbell
• melodic singing of 70s-era troubadours Jim Croce, Kenny Loggins, & Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull)

---

Sign up for the monthly E-Zine and download a free MP3 of "Made by Hand" from the Still Moving Mountains: The Journey Home CD dedicated to ending the destruction of the southern and central Appalachian Mountains. This version (320k MP3) includes Chance McCoy's oldtime fiddle tag not heard on the CD, so it's rare and we're happy to share it with you. That and other free downloads at www.andrewmcknight.net/downloads

Each monthly E-Zine arrives in your email with news of tours, new music & video, as well as a short essay from Andrew. Plain text, no HTML, no picture files, but plenty of info on where to enjoy all the new words and music, photos and videos. We guard your privacy jealously - no spam, no identity theft. We will send you a welcome note to confirm that a real person has manually added your email into the mailing list, and you can easily opt out at any time. Thanks for your support.

Record Label:

Falling Mountain Music www.fallingmountain.com