August Knight

KNIGHT IS A PACKAGE DEAL: WRITER, PERFORMER, DELIVERY AGENT, IT ALL FLOWS FROM THE SAME SPRING AND YOU’RE LOOKING FOR THE SOURCE – IT’S WHAT’S DELIGHTFUL ABOUT SINGER-SONGWRITERS.

Delicately and with some trepidation, August Knight introduces himself to his audience with his dry, sobersided, acoustic guitar tone and opening chords, like all the greats of the genre; the way Dylan or Kristofferson introduced us to so many fables over the years. It’s the way the great bards of the genre like to operate and Knight knows fully well.

His poetic phrasing and delivery on, I Won’t Be There In The Morning is worn, raspy, gruff even, and oh so worthy of your collection. Knight takes you into the inner most sanctum of this 1st person account and lets you sit in as him for the evening. Vocally, the songwriter portrays an inner struggle he’s having – a moment of being the bearer of bad news. Lyrically, he’s more ambiguous than his counterparts of the genre, never telling us his reasoning, some things are better left unwritten.

Knight inserts himself alongside your Steve Earles, Hayes Carlls and early Springsteen tracks you’ve kept around since you don’t know when. It’s honest and forthright songwriting at its finest. August Knight comes to us with his heart on his sleeve from Toronto and his April, 2019 release is a lesson in singer-songwriter prowess.

Knight is a package deal: writer, performer, delivery agent, it all flows from the same spring and you’re looking for the source – it’s what’s delightful about singer-songwriters. - fortheloveofbands.com

His skin is as the stretches of parched, cracked desert spanning the west and crying out as ghosts in the nighttime. When the sky finally does tear itself apart, unleashing buckets of cool summer tears, Toronto’s smokey troubadour August Knight seeks solace, redemption and peace in the downpour. Replenishment moisturizers his shell, but absolute knowledge still might be well beyond his grasp. “Arizona Rain” is a bleak inspection of the world’s calamitous state and his role within such high stakes, a wayward outcast sinking into the darkness. “Peace is an illusion a joker in the deck / I turn my back on the heavens and lie upon the earth,” sings Knight, whose voice is weathered like overused sandpaper from years of hardship and toiling the soil. “An old man told me a story about a man / He could never get to heaven until there was peace on the land,” he later concludes. The rasp strangles and mangles the body, but it’s his sage wisdom that is most captivating. - bsidesbadlands.com