Mark Knopfler – Down The Road Wherever (2 LPs)

Ninth studio album on double LP!

First album from the Dire Straits frontman in three years!

Mark Knopfler returns from a three-year hiatus with the release of Down The Road Wherever, his ninth solo album. The album features 13 new songs inspired by a wide range of subjects “including Knopfler’s early days in Deptford with Dire Straits, a stray soccer fan lost in a strange town, the compulsion of a musician hitching home through the snow and a man out of time in his local greasy spoon diner.”

Knopfler produced the record along with former Dire Straits keyboardist Guy Fletcher, who has been one of his primary collaborators since the group disbanded in 1995. They cut it at London’s British Grove Studios with Jim Cox and Fletcher on keyboards, Nigel Hitchcock on saxophone, Tom Walsh on trumpet, John McCusker on fiddle, Mike McGoldrick on whistle and flute, Glenn Worf on bass, Ian ‘Ianto’ Thomas on drums and Danny Cummings on percussion. Richard Bennett and Robbie McIntosh also feature on guitar, Trevor Mires on trombone, and Imelda May, Kris Drever, Lance Ellington, Beverley Skeete and Katie Kissoon all add backing vocals.

Knopfler explains, “‘Down The Road Wherever’ is a line from ‘One Song At A Time.’ I remember my pal Chet Atkins once saying that he picked his way out of poverty ‘one song at a time,’ and it just stuck in my mind. You get to an age where you’ve written quite a few songs. But Down The Road Wherever seems to be appropriate for me just because it’s what I’ve always done. I’ve always tried to make a record and also to keep my own geography happening in the songs.”

Knopfler assembled the same group of top-flight musicians he has worked with for the past few years (plus one or two new faces). He encourages them to put their own stamp on the material without interfering with the essence of the song. All songs are written by Knopfler apart from ‘Just A Boy Away From Home’ on which he shares writing credits with Rodgers and Hammerstein, using a piece of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ to spin the song’s tale of a lone Liverpool F.C. fan wandering the empty streets of Newcastle after midnight.

Knopfler has previously released eight solo albums, as well as Neck And Neck with guitar great Chet Atkins and All The Roadrunning with Emmylou Harris. He has also created film soundtracks for Local Hero, The Princess Bride and Cal. Knopfler was made an Order of the British Empire in 1999 and was given the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award at the Ivor Novellos in 2012.

Format : Vinyl Record

2 Lp