Andrew McKnight

Sept. 12th 2021

I got word late last night that my old friend and past touring partner Sean Kelly passed away in Austin TX on September 4th. I feel shot full of holes for a lot of reasons, not…

Gratitude on this day for Frances Perkins, the women who helped transform the Triangle Shirtwaist tragedy into the modern American social safety net. In honor of the miners who didn't return to the sunlight, and those who survived to…

Today was the first day of high school in our house. I've been thinking about it for awhile, because it's a big transition in so many ways. I know her experience will be a lot different than mine, with different…

My teenage musical education came playing in a bar and wedding band starting when I was 14. There are lots of iconic motifs, riffs and other signatures that became part of my own musical DNA in those years, but the…

My great Aunt Muriel has gone on now to her greater reward. She was the last of her generation; my grandparents' siblings - and just that fact seems astonishing at this point in my life. Born the same year that…

After a week spent largely away from civilization, my ears are finally filling with the sounds of the inimitable Nanci Griffith's beautiful voice singing "Once in a Very Blue Moon." Nanci passed away this week, too soon for all of…

To paraphrase Mr. Zimmerman, it's gotten to be busy time between the studio and the stage! This weekend has already been in one studio mixing the Nor'easter record, the video studio shining up a couple videos from the Treasures in…

First time onstage with a band again since March 6, 2020. At the festival we helped start back in 1994. With people I've known that long, and longer, and many who weren't born for several years yet. The Mountville Folk…

On this Father's Day, I am glad and grateful I can pick up the phone and call mine, that we can still play music together, and that I have a song I wrote that he played on to help mark…

A rehearsal. At the studio. In person - four of us in the room, the core band, getting ready to unleash an acoustic set at the Mountville Folk Festival in just two weeks. I don't have words, and I don't…

As an American on Memorial Day, my mind usually goes to one of two moments; the beaches at Normandy and the desperate assault to dislodge a genocidal fascism from Europe, and the killing fields of nearby Antietam, where we ripped…

Last week I actually left my pod and went out into "the real world." Two weeks after Shot 2 was Tuesday, and by Wednesday night I was 450 miles away at my parents house, the house I grew up in…