There’s a voice that keeps on calling me

Down the road is where I’ll always be

Every stop I make, I’ll make a new friend

Can’t stay for long, just turn around and I’m gone again.

Maybe tomorrow, I’ll want to settle down,

Until tomorrow, I’ll just keep moving on.

Knechtel loves to amble and ramble. He doesn’t plan an itinerary. He doesn’t call up a travel agent. A GPS unit would be a waste of dashboard space because he prefers getting lost. And not being a big city type guy, you’ll usually find him travelling the blue highways. He is definitely one of those “it’s not the destination it’s the journey” kinda people. At any given moment, he and the wife will jump into their ’88 Dodge camper van named Georgia and just head off. On a recent expedition, they found themselves wandering the southern United States and decided to check out a couple of important music and cultural places of worship.

You can’t be a singer/songwriter without owing some debt to Hank Williams. He wrote maybe a hundred songs before he was 29. Died in the back of a Cadillac. On the way to a show. And they found a lyric he had been working on at the time on his death in the back seat of the Caddy. Legendary. Even if he had just written “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” he would be a giant. So, the Knechtel’s checked out the Hank Williams Museum in Montgomery Alabama to pay their respects.

And then after some time spent making repairs to Georgia in the driveway of new-found friends Dwayne Delmont Jones Jr. and his son Dale Earnhardt Jones….

….they eased on down the road to 3614 Jackson Highway home of Muscle Shoals Studios.

Behind Richard in that unassuming building that once was a coffin factory the Stones cut Wild Horses, The Staple Singers recorded “I’ll Take You There” and Dylan laid down “Gotta Serve Somebody”. And there was Skynyrd and Paul Simon and Rod Stewart and Wilson Pickett and if you want the whole list – go look it up.

Keep your eyes on the road. Your hands upon the wheel.

Knechtel and McLean are now accepting applications for a spring, summer, fall and winter tour. And surprisingly, we still have a few dates available for our Christmas Extravaganza entitled “Two Reindeer Walked Into A Bar”. If you or your organization are interested in having Knechtel and McLean perform in your town at your event at your favourite venue please submit in writing a detailed proposal with all pertinent, practical and petty details that would entice us to make a stop in your city.

                          The K&M Kamper is loaded and we’re ready to hit the road!

(This article has been graciously reprinted with permission from the editors of the November issue of Angst Free Folk Music Times.)

And Then There Were Two.

It is a surprise for most people to learn that before the duo success of Knechtel and McLean there was a trio. No musical group starts out fully developed and in this case when the boys started out on the road to folk fame and fortune it was under the banner of Knechtel, Ampersand, McLean. But this was a volatile mix of personalities. McLean, rather free spirted and willing to take the group to the very edge of the map, out to where the edges are frayed and the legend reads “Here be Dragons” struggled with authority and structure which was countered and balanced by Knechtel’s more steady approach. Knechtel, the author of over a thousand songs and having encyclopedic knowledge of hundreds of folk, jazz and pop standards was as fearless as Mclean when it came to performing on stage and always enjoyed whatever path the show took them on during any given performance.

It was or I should say is, not uncommon for Knechtel to stop the show so that he can perform some sleight of hand card trick, magic being his other passion and most nights the set list was forgotten like an old theatre handbill. This freewheeling approach to their stage show left very little room for Ampersand. Ampersand played hand percussion and occasionally acoustic bass and while he did possess a mellifluous singing voice that blended well with Knechtel and recounted the traditional folk harmonies of days gone past he just didn’t fit. Like a troubled middle child wedged between the favour of the first-born and adorability of the baby, he as a personality in the group felt out-of-place and deep down he knew he only was asked to join the group because he owned a station wagon.

He wallowed in self-pity from being overlooked and floundered in self-loathing over failed attempts of the grandiose. His solo album Ampersand Now failed with both critics and audiences and he fell into depression. While Ampersand was recuperating Knechtel and McLean went back out on the road just to pay the rent and found that splitting the money two ways was a lot more profitable than splitting it three. Upon their arrival back home they summoned the lawyers and legally brought to an end Knechtel, Ampersand, McLean. From now on the group would be formally known as Knechtel and McLean. When Ampersand recovered he turned his back on the music business and became a newspaper music critic.

There has never been even the slightest moment given to the thought that someday that Knechtel, Ampersand, McLean would reunite for it is as if they never existed. And if Ampersand late at night pours over faded and yellowed newspaper clippings of his days with the group we’ll never know – he refused to be interviewed for this piece. But for audiences of today they still have the dynamic duo of Knechtel and McLean to revel in.