Michael Knott - A candid interview
interview by Doug Van Pelt
story by Daniel Johnston
photography by Matt Wignall
Not many artists have the interest, enigma and controversy that Michael Knott and his band have swirling around them. It's been about a decade and a half since The Lifesavers emerged within the Southern California soundscape, which then progressed into Lifesavers Underground, or LSU for short. As an artist, the past few years have been somewhat prolific for Michael, if only in the sense that he's been able to release over a dozen albums in that time.
Many fans and critics alike have lamented over the fact that his music hasn't "broken" in a major way out of the smaller Christian market into the vast mainstream. The most valiant and recent attempt at which was the infamous Aunt Bettys. Each new release from Michael is usually snatched up quickly by his loyal fan base, but the rumors never seem to stop. His latest offering, Dogfish Jones, somewhat reflects this experience. "I wanted to do a record that kind of represented my life in a small sense," relates Michael. "Just some feelings that I felt of abandonment or things that I felt that I might have done that had made people feel weren't the right way, and just do a whole record on it. So, that's kind of what it parallels -- my life. It's basically about a sailor that's shipwrecked on an island, questioning why he doesn't feel love from people, why this is happening to him, and in the end, joining back up, and actually being rescued, I guess, from the island." The music on the new album reflects that theme as "sort of a crazy, psycho Beach Boys thing with some rock music. It gets kind of minor-y at times, and it gets kind of happy at times."
The release of this album brought some painful moments as Michael's father attempted to purchase the CD. "My dad wrote and sang a couple songs on it, which kind of sound like Irish folk songs or something. I put his picture in the CD booklet, where my mom dressed him up like a sailor. We went down to Dana Point, and she took pictures of him next to this boat called The Pilgrim, which is an old, big, huge mast boat, whatever. And he's so excited to go get this record, and so he went to, I think, five or six bookstores in Orange County `Christian' bookstores and not one bookstore had it. And you know what they said to my dad? `Well, Mike Knott's not a Christian. Of course we wouldn't carry that.'"
Such is the norm for Mike. He is always in the midst of a misunderstanding or a conflict. "You know, it's just, I guess, I take a more wilder aspect to music, sometimes, that people don't completely understand. And a lot of people like to make decisions just on those things, without really searching the facts." There are always rumors flying, and there are many preconceptions about Mike. He came from a secular band to the Christian music scene and has been surrounded by controversy ever since. He doesn't fit into the nice, conservative, predictable stereotype of a Christian musician. At his first gig in a church he "danced around a little bit on stage at a Calvary in the early 80's and they banned us from every Calvary. I mean, today, of course, you can do that, but it's just the way it was back then." And these days people call him the "bad boy of Christian rock." Mike's feeling about all the rumors and negative attitudes toward him is "I don't think people would say those things about me if they knew me. And the ones that would still say that after knowing me, they would be saying it for a different reason. It wouldn't be a loving reason." And though he will always have enemies, it isn't easy for other people to get to know someone they don't understand.
So who is Michael Knott? First, Mike is part of a loving family. Both his parents are long time Christians, who support Mike in his music. He has been married for 10 years, and both he and his wife have been attending the same Calvary Chapel since before their marriage. They have a 6 year old daughter and their second child is on the way. Mike is looking forward to being a father of a newborn again, "I'm super excited. I love children." As a provider Mike once recorded 4 albums on 4 labels within a year "to feed my family and pay the rent." As a family man, Mike often includes his family in his work. This ranges from collaborating with his father on Dogfish Jones to this story he tells about his daughter. Mike had written all the songs for the Strip Cycle album and was about to start recording. "I went to grab my guitar, and my daughter was two at the time, and she had turned all the guitar pegs, or three of the guitar pegs. I picked it up and started playing the songs, and I noticed my guitar had been de-tuned. But it sounded really cool, so I figured out what the tunings were on the strings and did the whole record that way. I called it `Toddlers Twisted Tuning.'"
Apart from his family, there are a number of ways Mike has been described, from a non-Christian to a liberal, to a zealot like Peter, to a Proverbial fool who speaks too often and too soon with too little thought first. His strong convictions and outspokenness have landed him in the hot seat many times. While promoting a seven-band show at a Christian high school Mike became upset that "they teach evolution as if it's true." Inspired by Dead Poet's Society, which he had seen the day before, Mike decided to `seize the day' and spoke his mind with some strong words. He went "out of bounds," started a riot and wasn't allowed to play at the show. Recognizing his error, he met with the pastors involved and the principal to explain and apologize. Another time he got upset at an inconsistency in the treatment of himself and The Throes by a record company representative after he'd gotten a release from his recording deal. Shortly after that The Throes tried to get a release because they felt their deal was bad for them, but the rep wanted a $2,000 release fee, which the band couldn't really afford. Mike was irate and called the rep and left a threatening message on his answering machine. Despite the good intention of trying to right a wrong done to someone else, this was an admittedly poor handling of the situation by Mike, "that was another major, major mistake I made."
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