Manx blues musician Davy Knowles returns to The Ark for a performance on Aug. 4.
Fans of the singer-songwriter should not expect a simple repeat performance, however. His last visit to Ann Arbor saw him performing a stripped down acoustic set in support of his more folksy 2023 album “If I Should Wander.” This time around he is bringing longtime bandmates Mike Hansen and Todd Bowers for a night of high-energy blues rock, according to Knowles.
“All my favorite music really came from the late ‘60s and ‘70s, and what we try to do with the band stuff is that kind of raw blues rock sound from that era,” Knowles said.
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Since his last visit, Knowles also released his fifth album “The Invisible Man,” returning to the classic blues rock sound on which he built his reputation. Drawing on inspirations from Dire Straits to Rory Gallagher, the electric guitar finds its place again at the center of the album’s 11 songs, lending a familiar warmth without ever upstaging the other parts on the record.
“It felt like coming back home a little bit in that we can let loose on this, and the band felt great, like a unit that needed to be recorded like that,” Knowles said of the album. “So it all came together very quickly. The whole thing was done in two weeks, so it was a fun experience.”
Lyrically, Knowles’s latest work continues to explore themes of personal identity. Whether it is questioning the expectations placed on you by other people on “Tell Me What You Want Me to Be” or wondering whether you were born in the wrong generation on “Days Gone By,” it seems apt for a musician working in the long lineage of the blues to muse upon where he fits into the picture.
Although Knowles now lives and works in Chicago, the once home of Mississippi blues greats Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, his introduction to the genre growing up on the Isle of Man came through the British blues artists of the 1960s and 1970s.
“To me, it felt far off and exotic, you know,” Knowles said. “I was raised on a little island that had a fabulous music scene and a lot of traditional music that sounds very similar to Irish, Scottish, Celtic music and so maybe it was a case of the grass is always greener.”
Knowles heard Rory Gallagher on one side of the Irish Sea inflect his blues playing with Celtic elements from traditional Irish music, and on the other side heard John Mayall sing lyrics that reflected British life. He said these influences helped him realize that the blues could be a framework in which there was enough room for his own personal experiences despite growing up an ocean away from the genre’s origins in the American South.
Knowles has had the opportunity to honor the influence of Rory Gallagher on his music by playing in Band of Friends with Gallagher’s bandmates Gerry McAvoy and Brendan O’Neill. However, this past month the three musicians released new, original singles, “Days Gone By” and “Someone Else’s Dream,” under the name MKO.
“The idea [of Band of Friends] was to pay tribute, and I think another way of paying tribute is going, ‘Let’s get some songs that make sense in that world and do an originals album together rather than trying to copy him, which is impossible,’” Knowles said.
A full MKO album is due in October. Additionally, Knowles said he is constantly writing and testing new solo songs, which attendees should expect to hear on the setlist.
“Ultimately that’s what we love most is touring and playing out live and you want to make sure that the stuff you’re writing translates and that’s also where they grow,” Knowles said.
