A Knight to Remember

Eleven years ago, singer-songwriter Chris Knight, armed with only an acoustic guitar and a copious amount of alcohol, recorded a batch of songs in his Kentucky trailer. For years, alt-country fans have swapped copies of what became known as the “trailer tapes.” Last week, The Trailer Tapes joined Knight’s four albums as an official release. “I remember drinking a lot and having a pretty good time when I made them,” he says.

On last year’s terrific Enough Rope, Knight (who still lives in Kentucky) checked in with a raspy, twangy, and socially conscious take on modern-day Americana. It sorta fused Steve Earle’s badass outlaw-country with John Mellencamp’s working-man blues. The Trailer Tapes is a more solemn outing, reflective of Knight’s emotional state at the time. “If I were to rewrite some of the songs,” he says, “I’d change probably 40 percent of them.” A few of the tracks (like “Something Changed” and “If I Were You”) showed up on other albums. But Knight says most of the decade-old cuts remain a hazy part of his past. “A lot of the stuff is pretty rough,” he admits. “But they’ve always been in the back of my mind.”
Thu., April 12, 8 p.m.