Davy Knowles interview

July 8, 2009 by Beatweek

A few years back, a lanky British teenager named Davy Knowles took the indie stage at Lollapalooza, and with guitar chops reminiscent of Hendrix and a voice closer to B.B, King, he quickly demonstrated to everyone in the crowd – including me – that he was the top young bluesman to come along in some time (we then hastily arranged an interview that ended up taking place in the parking lot of a restaurant on the other side of town, but that’s another story). Since that time others have caught on as well, and he’s gone on to collaborate with Peter Frampton and tour with the likes of Jeff Beck. 

 Just before he headed back out on the road, this time with Sammy Hagar and Joe Satriani, I got to chance to chat with Davy about his new album Coming Up For Air, the changes that have taken place within his band Back Door Slam, and the evolution from a teenage prodigy to a young adult who’s still playing the blues. 

 Before we talk about the new album, I do have to ask you about what happened with your bandmates, Adam and Ross. 

 The whole point in being a musician for me, and for Adam and for Ross, is you just have to gather as much information as you can, absorb as much, you have to grow as much, progress as much, and it just really got to the point where we needed to go off and do different things in order to grow, in order to further ourselves. I’m trying to think of an analogy. I’m not comparing ourselves in any way, just kind of like a smaller version of the situation, but Cream. Cream were amazing musicians, better than all three of us will ever be. But even though they had the creme de la creme, for them to move forward creatively, they just had to play with different people. And to a certain extent that’s the same as what’s happened here, but obviously not on the same scale. 

 You’ve been living in Los Angeles for awhile now, right? 

 Yeah, in between there and where my girlfriend is in Chicago. 

 Is that a culture shock, since you come from a small island? 

 It is, but you know what? I love it. I love the Isle of Man too. But it’s great because it’s exactly the same as with the band. It’s throwing yourself into different situations, and you learn from it and it’s wonderful. I’ve had a great time living there. But as much as I love LA, it‘s nice to get out of it. It’s wonderful to work out there. I like Chicago because it’s got this organic feel to it, it’s really buzzing. 

 What strikes me about Coming Up For Air is that your first album was patently a blues album, and there were a lot of different directions you could have gone in this time. I imagine there are some people whispering in your ear “you know Davy, if you’d just make a pop album you could get on the radio and you could sell a million albums” – and yet Coming Up For Air is another blues record.

 People always think, especially when you’re a young musician, people always think they know best. They always do. I’m lucky to work with people who take me for who I am and they don’t try and mold me, and that’s what I really like about them. But you do get some people saying “you need a hit.” You know what? I’d rather have peace of mind, rather keep my integrity than go chasing after some little thing like that. 

 How did you get involved with Peter Frampton? 

 We have a mutual friend in Nashville who said Peter was up for doing some co-writing. And I was like yeah, absolutely, he’s one of my heroes. We were both out on the road a lot, it was nearly a year in the making. And then he came round to my little cottage in LA and then we just sat down and wrote a song the first day we met. And then we just thought wow, this is a really good writing relationship. 

 We wrong three songs together and two of them got on the album. And with the producing, I said would like to produce the songs that we’ve written. And once we started talking through what we wanted them to sound like, I thought wow, he’s describing what I want my album to sound like. So I ended up roping him into producing the whole thing. 

 He was the life of the party. If the studio was a party, Peter was the head of it. Just so much fun, it was great. And because of this great vibe that he created, it made the performances that much better. It was also pretty terrifying playing guitar in front of him. 

 There are a number of people who’ve said or written that you’re one of the most talented young bluesmen out there, period – I know because I’m one of the people who’s written that. Does that sort of thing put pressure on you, or are you able to brush that kind of thing aside? 

 The only pressure I think it puts on me, I think, is the blues part. The one thing I’m pretty conscious about is I don’t want to be strictly blues. I don’t want to just play twelve bar blues for the rest of my life. I like James Taylor, and I like Joni Mitchell, and I like people like that too. I think that’s the only pressure. On Coming Up For Air there’s an acoustic song called Amber’s Song. The only question is I get nervous if I release something like that, will people like it? That’s the only pressure I find. 

 You’ve been on Facebook for as long as I’ve known you, but you’ve recently taken up Twitter. How’s it treating you so far?

 I really love it. It’s not as much maintenance as Facebook, anything like that. You can just put one line up there from your phone, and it’s a good way to stay in touch. It’s a great way to stir up a bit of a buzz. If you’re really excited about something like the album or rehearsing with different guys or a new guitar you’ve got, it’s a really good way of stirring people up and getting them to have a look. It’s kind of addictive.
Learn more at

DavyKnowles.com