Chris jumped from someone I hardly knew to the top of the list of singers I need to write about. All three CDs are absolutely great. Not good. Great. Think young Steve Earle, Fred Eaglesmith, with a touch of Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck thrown in for good measure. I mention these just to give you a feel of where he's coming from, but he's doing his own thing and doing it well. The boy is country. Not the rhinestones, fancy cars, fast women, perfumed hair and manicured fingernails kind of country. Country as in tied to the earth and the people that derive a living from it. Country as in honest to a fault. Coal miners. Farmers. Hunters that kill and then eat the meat, who understand that the death of one creature means life for another. Muddy boots, calloused hands, strong arms, unshaved faces, cur dogs, fighting roosters and no money, living in a trailer with a wife and kids on ninety acres kind of country. Chris hails from rural Kentucky. It's his world. He harbors a desire for no other. But he's an intelligent man with a college degree 'a poet' surrounded by hard terrain where things rarely go as they should and suffering is just part of life. He surveys his surroundings, sees and hears what many miss and recounts the stories in songs. He pulls no punches. From Chris you'll learn of desperate hard men, outlaws with families at home, the abused and their abusers. Honor among thieves. People wrestling their own demons while trying like hell to do right. Farmers going broke, watching equipment hauled away to pay debts, some maybe even contemplating robbing or selling drugs to feed their family. Sweet love gone awry, women shielding black eyes. And always a lack of money. A dark place, but also a place where people value the land, family traditions and their dignity more than a dollar in the end, otherwise they would move away. He delivers songs with southern drawl and dialect as comfortable as the skin he wears, not like someone putting it on for show like it so common among Nashville's darlings. Chris Knight may be the best Americana artist you haven't heard of. I've never seen him perform live, but the reviews listed at his site, some of them in very prominent places, give him high marks. Good Lord willing, I'll be there the next time he comes through my part of the world. Buy his CDs. I can virtually guarantee you'll like them, one and all. Visit Chris Knight's website as well as his page over at Lonestarmusic.com that has his CDs and also a good biography