Cameron Knowler’s ‘CRK’ Bridges Early American Guitar Styles with a Deeply Personal Touch

At the end of a long day at work, I found out on social media that the husband of a dear friend had died after a sudden stroke. Still in disbelief and struggling to convey my sympathy in a concise Facebook comment, I happened to put on Cameron Knowler’s CRK.

There was something deeply comforting about the gentle acoustic bubbling underneath the opening monologue, but the words seemed to be a scattered collage, randomly reassembled. By the end of “Christmas in Yuma,” even narrator Jack Kilmer seemed a bit weary. But like ice cream with sea salt and olive oil, something about the combination clicked.

Earthy juxtapositions abound on Knowler’s second album. His grainy yet sun-splashed video for “Felicity” conjures a hazy memory of the “desert town gilded by silence”—Yuma, Arizona, pop. 96,000—where Knowler spent the first decade of his life, a sharp contrast to the Houston suburb that’s been his home ever since. An anti-normativism streak pulls him toward outsider artists, but the chops gained from earning an undergraduate degree in jazz guitar performance from the University of Houston occasionally surface. And though you might assume him to be a dusty cowboy, Knowler is a scholar and educator who makes great use of his master’s in archival work. (His self-illustrated book Guitars Have Feelings Too views flatpicking as a continuation of the dance music that became bluegrass, not just virtuosic instrumental music.)

How does all this manifest in Knowler’s music? He has lovingly absorbed an archive’s worth of early American guitar styles, and it shows. The spaciousness in CRK—engineered by Jen Condos, Ian Doerr, Sean Sullivan, and Marshall Vore—isn’t just in the excellent mixing and mastering. The dynamic performances, which evoke words like sensitive, nuanced, restrained, and understated, hint at a disinterest in flash for its own sake. Listen to “Yuma Ferry,” “Farewell, Miss Forbes,” and “Mule at the Wagon” (with Robert Bowlin on guitar) and marvel at the clean technique and 19th-century vibe. Dig the interplay with Jordan Tice’s rhythm guitar on “On a Widow’s Outfit” and how the somber “Mohave Runs the Colorado” delicately, patiently climbs as if it’ll never end—until it does. 

The way guitarist Mark Goldenberg, drummer Jay Bellerose, and pedal steel ace Rich Hinman accompany Knowler on “Last House on Walpi” is sweet perfection. “Secret Water,” with Tice on mandolin, fiddler Rayna Gellert, and Ethan Jodziewicz on bass, features a mid-1920s Oscar Schmidt grand auditorium tuned low. Other prized instruments—an early-1930s Washburn 5238, a ’33 Gibson L-C Century, a ’37 Gibson J-35, and a 1926 Martin 2-17—shine in Knowler’s hands. The last track, “Sun Dust,” has it all: gorgeous playing meticulously recorded and perfectly matched with piano by Bowlin, plus birds in the background as the sun goes down. With that last, epic chord, the circle of life and death is complete.

Perhaps it’s too early to say, but CRK just might have the qualities future listeners will associate with a classic. Knowler is still honing a fine balance of confidence and subtlety, tradition and exploration. Not yet 30, he still bears the imprint of Frantz Casseus’ regional ethos, Bruce Langhorne’s minimalism, and Norman Blake’s right hand. But Knowler seems doggedly attuned to his own inner compass, which, given the copious amounts of magic he has consumed, could yield very rich dividends indeed.