Cameron Knowler – CRK (Album Review)

The last time Cameron Knowler’s name came up was vicariously through Charles ‘Poppy Bob’ Walker’s wonderful Dirt Bike Vacation album, the tapes of which Cameron discovered and helped release. For CRK, his follow-up to 2021’s Places of Consequence, Cameron seems to have taken up some of the lo-fi character that is present across Dirt Bike, with the guitar playing sounding unfussy and captured in situ. There is also a sense of the wistful running through the set, beginning with Christmas in Yuma, where Jack Kilmer recites an eponymous poem based around Cameron’s thoughts on his hometown of Yuma, Arizona.

This carries on into Felicity, a tune that immediately brings to mind William Tyler’s refrain on Highway Anxiety, from his seminal Modern Country album. That anxiety is less present here, but there is a hint of melancholy alongside the contemplative nature of the music. Jay Bellerose’s hollow-sounding drum beat works nicely with the guitar, its wooden timbre enhancing the questioning side of the song and the shakers picking up on the brightness present. Songs like Farewell, Miss Forbes echo this character, with a sweet guitar played at a slightly altering pace, bringing a sense of hesitation, or resistance, to the music.

Yuma Ferry leans more on brightness, with the playing encapsulating a sense of easy abandon bordering on the whimsical and evoking images of travel and sepia toned photographs. Next song Mohave Runs the Colorado, slows things right down to bring us a beautiful, romantic yet quite sad piece, with sharply picked, close-up notes barely filling the open space. It is a pensive slice of playing and takes us neatly into Secret Water, a real highlight that briefly begins in the same vein as Colorado, before the guitar slips into a more defined melody, backed by Ethan Jodziewicz’s bass and Rayna Gellert’s wonderful, haunting fiddle playing that lurks behind the bass, Cameron’s picked guitar and Jordan Tice’s mandolin.

There are accompanying musicians on many of the twelve songs on CRK, each careful to enhance or embellish, without stealing the show. Robert Bowlin’s second guitar on the fun Mule at the Wagon adds flesh to a quickly picked western number; Rich Hinman’s pedal steel brings a cinematic feel to weary travelling song Last House on Walpi, a minor key number with some lovely dry percussion from Bellerose.

CRK feels like a pivotal album for Cameron. With nods to players like William Tyler, Chuck Johnson and Bruce Langhorne, as well as music that feels timeless and forward-looking, it is an adventurous set, permeated by that underlying sense of sadness and melancholy peppering the songs, giving them a different shade and an interesting character. All of these details result in a fine album, mature and assured in its arrangements and performance.