andmoreagain presents CHRIS KNIGHT w/ Mic Harrison and The High Score at Motorco Music Hall

Name: andmoreagain presents CHRIS KNIGHT w/ Mic Harrison and The High Score at Motorco Music Hall
Start: 2024-10-24T19:00:00-04:00
Location: Motorco

Schedule

Thu Oct 24 2024 at 07:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Motorco | Durham, NC

Chris Knight
w/ Mic Harrison and The High Score
at Motorco Music Hall
Durham, NC
doors 7pm // show 8pm
$25 adv // $30 day of show
On sale at 10am August 30
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CHRIS KNIGHT
After 23 years as a recording artist, singer-songwriter Chris Knight remains boldly empowered to make music that always delivers the unflinching truth. In fact, the man raised in Slaughters, Kentucky uses a simple, direct barometer to regularly check his muse: “If I can’t believe myself, I won’t sing the song.”
That brutally honest, no-frills philosophy fits his Americana-fueled, backwoods-grown merger of folk, country, and rock. It’s been at the backbone of nine studio albums, beginning with 1998’s acclaimed self-titled debut and traveling through scorchers such as the one-two punch of 2001’s A Pretty Good Guy and 2003’s The Jealous Kind, two demo-styled discs (2007’s The Trailer Tapes and 2009’s Trailer II), and the recent, electric guitar-fortified opus, 2019’s Almost Daylight. ��
Because Knight’s music has always sat outside of the mainstream, onstage is where he makes his fans one show at a time. It is exactly where his searing tales of rural characters, fringe survivors, and tumultuous small-town existence find a captivated audience. A few edgy, raw gems that immediately come to mind are “It Ain’t Easy Being Me,” “Carla Came Home,” “I’m William Callahan,” and “Everybody’s Lonely Now,” the latter two from Almost Daylight.
“I’ve written songs about a lot of different things going all the way back to my first record,” he says, “and some folks still think ‘somebody kills somebody’ is all I write about.”
What Knight writes about is what he knows. He was raised in mining country, so it’s no surprise that he would earn a degree in agriculture from Western Kentucky University and then work as a mine reclamation inspector and then miner’s consultant. But eventually his passion for writing songs and playing guitar, both inspired by his musical hero, the late John Prine, led him to chronicle his surroundings in words and music.
“I came from a big family and grew up in the woods six miles from two small towns, so there were a lot of stories,” he says. “There were always a lot of ideas to write about.”��
Those ideas have earned Knight praise from publications such as The New York Times (“the last of a dying breed…a taciturn loner with an acoustic guitar and a college degree”) and USA Today (“a storyteller in the best traditions of Mellencamp and Springsteen”), to name a few. Like his beloved Prine, whom Knight duets with on Prine’s chestnut “Mexican Home,” the cut that closes Almost Daylight, Knight fits comfortably in Texas honky-tonks, downtown Nashville venues, and cool Manhattan rock clubs. ��
It’s no wonder that Knight has single-handedly scraped a reputation as one of America’s most uncompromising and respected singer-songwriters through 23 years and nine studio albums. He’s done this minus fanfare and artifice. The native son of Slaughters, Kentucky (population: 238) only sings songs he believes. He also speaks only when he has a potent message. ��
“If I don’t have something worth saying, I’m not opening my mouth. I haven’t suited everybody, but every time I get a new fan it tells me I’m doing something right. I think all my records have set a precedent, if only for me at the very least. I just want people to think the latest one stands up to everything else I’ve done.”
・Listen: open.spotify.com/artist/2XJzOLYV2mF5K2JfUhJEK0
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MIC HARRISON AND THE HIGH SCORE
I’d rather see Mic Harrison and the High Score perform than just about any band on the planet.
That’s not just because Mic and the guys have a couple of road cases full of great songs or they’re journeyman musicians who’ve been a part of some of the best bands to come out of the South. It’s because every time I go to a Mic Harrison and the High Score show, I know I’m going to walk in and see guys who look like they’re having so much fun on stage that it can’t help but spill out into the audience. I know I’m going to walk out at the end the night feeling better about the world with great rock ‘n’ roll and honky tonk songs playing over and over in my head.
Lead singer and rhythm guitarist Mic Harrison, lead guitarist Robbie Trosper, bassist Vance Hillard, and guitarist Kevin Abernathy have a chemistry that can only come from long-term friendships and shared experiences. Harrison, who started his young adulthood working in a saw mill in Bradford, Tenn., a town so small it barely shows up on the map between Memphis and Jackson. He moved to Knoxville in the 1990s to become co-lead singer-songwriter (with Scott Miller) in The V-Roys, a band that defined “Americana” before it was genre. After that group split, he teamed with Trosper in the short-lived favorites The Faults and, later, teamed with Coffey in the now legendary power pop act Superdrag. When Superdrag ended, Harrison enlisted established Knoxville rock act The High Score to back up a tour and the chemistry was so good that the partnership never ended.
In the past 12 years or so, Mic and the guys have traveled the country, performing at festivals from Bonnaroo to Easyriders Rodeos, headlining bills from concert halls to the stickiest bars, opening shows for everyone from Billy Joe Shaver to Huey Lewis and the News to ZZ Top, and recording a terrific single with classic country singer Con Hunley.
I’ve been lucky enough to experience Mic Harrison and the High Score perform about 50 times. I expect to see them at least 50 more. In the world today, you need something that’s guaranteed to make you feel good that won’t hurt you – aside from a little soreness from swaying and dancing.
I consider Mic Harrison and the High Score mental health food.
– Wayne Bledsoe
・Listen: open.spotify.com/artist/1pAwS9lhM8zrvMC55YhSr2