Daniel Knox - The adventures of a lonesome American

Imagine a young man who's just arrived in a big city to study film. Nothing about the “professional” approach to art appeals to him, and so he ends up wandering the city at night, pretending to be its watchman, if not its owner. One night he walks into the Hilton, deep in downtown, and takes the elevator up to the restaurant, to the panoramic ballroom, where everything still echoes with memories of a thousand gala dinners, of smiles and chatter. In the middle of the room a grand piano awaits him, gleaming, an object with a life of its own, that calls out to him — abducts him, really. Every night he'll go there to practice on that piano, undisturbed by the guards, until one kind gentleman drops a dollar into the glass left on the piano a few hours earlier…

Can you suggest a song by “Daniel Knox” that could serve as an introductory theme and a guide to the album, and to your music? What's the song about?

The intersection of Lawrence and MacArthur is notorious for car accidents. I grew up on one of its corners, in an old grocery store/pharmacy building built in the 1920s. My mother and my stepfather lived on the grocery store side, I lived on the pharmacy side. There were so many accidents in the summer that I got used to sitting on the porch with my camcorder waiting for one to happen. More interesting to me than the accidents themselves were the people who showed up right after. They were impromptu neighborhood gatherings where all kinds of people would come out of their houses and stand on their lawns to take a look. I shot this video over the course of a single day in 1996.

It was really fascinating to discover the story of your beginnings as an artist, when you used to play the grand piano at night in the ballroom of a luxury hotel in Chicago. Do you think you'd be doing the same things now, or that you'd even be a musician at all, without such a mythological origin story?

I think that if I hadn't found my way to music, I'd be telling stories in some other way. I grew up wanting to make films, and I think I still have a good film in me.

Meeting David Lynch was certainly an important moment for me. I grew up on his films. They spoke to me in a very direct way, much more than anything else did.

When I was a kid I used to make films myself. I made them with a camcorder, in my neighborhood, with friends. My brief stint at actual film school told me that this wasn't a way to make a film — it was incredibly discouraging. But when Lynch talked about making “Inland Empire”, he described it exactly the way I had done it as a kid, and with the same enthusiasm. It was an important moment for me to meet an artist I love so much, but also because it dispelled a lot of the discouragement that film school and film people had instilled in me for most of my life.

Well, “Daniel Knox” was what I'd call an inevitable accident. We'd gone into the studio to record my next album, “Chasescene”, but we needed more time. We also had a handful of songs we knew weren't right for that record, because I'd written too many. So, since we needed more time, and had extra material on hand, I went back to two other projects I'd devoted most of the previous two years to. “Black & Whites” and “14 15 111” are two video projects I worked on with photographer John Atwood.

“Black & Whites” is a collection of 12 songs and score pieces accompanying videos shot by Atwood and edited by both of us. Out of this came “By The Venture”, “Lawrence & MacArthur” and “White Oaks Mall”. We created “Black & Whites” at Robert Wilson's Watermill Center and showed it at 92Y in New York and at the Kennedy Center in Washington. We've performed it in various incarnations, but the full version is for piano, voice, drums/percussion, electric bass, string quintet, horns, melodica and musical saw. The video of the finale can be seen below.

“14 15 111” was written for Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art. This is where “Blue Car”, “David Charmichael”, “Car Blue” and “14 15 111” come from. As with “Black & Whites”, the video is projected onto a screen behind the musicians, who play in the dark beneath it, but in the show half the music is pre-recorded and synced to the video, while the musicians play along with the pre-existing music.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I think the additional arrangements (horns, synths, drums, strings) really add something to your music. How did it all come together? Does it bother you not being “alone” on your record anymore?

No, it doesn't bother me. I'm a musician, I can be alone as many times as I want! But I'm very proud and lucky to be able to play with excellent musicians. My drummer Jason Toth, bassist Paul Parts, musical saw player Chris Hefner, upright bassist Jim Cooper, and I've added a really great guitarist to the band, who now goes by Joshua Fitzgerald Klocek. You'd like him, he plays in a band that covers Italian film soundtracks. I've also been lucky enough to play with people like Ralph Carney, Thor Harris and David Coulter.

But I get plenty of "alone time" (whether I want it or not) when I'm on tour these days.

I was struck by the cover art of “Daniel Knox”, it's very plastic and vivid, as if it came from a resurrected nineteenth-century painter. At the same time I find it hard to grasp the main feeling you're trying to express, much like with the music itself. Also, it's fairly unusual to see the artist's face and name on the cover. Can you tell us about that choice? What feeling were you trying to capture?

The painting on the cover is by artist Gregory Jacobsen. I can't overstate how impressed I am by him and his work. I was thrilled when he agreed to do the cover. It had become clear while making this record that if this wasn't going to be my self-titled album, nothing else would be, and since this is a departure from myself I wanted the cover to reflect that. I think it's also something different from Jacobsen's own work, even if only in terms of subject matter.

I'm not sure whether you're still working as a projectionist, but cinema has clearly played a role in your development as an artist. Can you draw a comparison between “Daniel Knox” and a film?

Yes, I still work at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago. I'll keep doing it as long as I live there, because I love it. It's a beautiful place to see a film and a stimulating place to be in general. I don't think I can connect “Daniel Knox” to a film, except to the one that, in my mind, remains visually unfinished. If I had to compare myself to a film, though, I'd probably say “Duck Soup” by the Marx Brothers.

Places like shopping malls and highways, the landmarks of the American landscape, populate your songs. You once said in an interview: “I've written a lot of love songs about stores”. This trait sometimes crops up in American artists. Is this your way of creating a network of mythological places, of finding a geographic symbology for places that mean something to people, in a country where shared historical landmarks aren't so clearly defined?

I'm not sure I understand the question. I think a lot of people write about shopping malls, highways, and road construction or urban decay from a critical or nostalgic angle that doesn't interest me. For me it was about discovering how much of the landscape I inherited growing up had actually seeped into the landscape of my imagination.

If there's a mythology to be found in my songs about Springfield, it's an abstract one, with a very loose connection and plenty of room to move around in. I'm not interested in pinning these things down or painting some biographical account of my childhood. I just started paying closer attention to places I'd taken for granted, especially since I've seen so many of them disappear in recent years.

I know Lou Rogai well and he's someone I admire enormously and love as a human being. He's a tireless creative force and I've learned a lot from him. His new record is really good, too.

In 2013, there was talk of completing your trilogy made up of your first two records and “Chasescene”. Then “Daniel Knox” came along, but “Chasescene” should still be in the works. Can you tell us about it?

“Chasescene” has already been recorded. As I said before, “Daniel Knox” comes from the same sessions. There are just a few tracks and the mixing left to do. I would have finished it sooner but I was on tour for most of the year. I'm prouder of “Chasescene” than of anything I've ever done. I've been writing and rewriting its songs since 2006, so I'm very eager for it to come out, next year.

I recently went to the Handsome Family concert in Milan, and it was pretty crowded – I think it's no great secret that their success was helped along by the opening song from “True Detective“. Do you have any other collaborations with film or television in the works? Can you name a director you'd like to work with (besides David Lynch, I have to assume)?

I've written for film in one way or another for years, but scoring a TV series is something that's intrigued me for a while now. I really admire Michael Giacchino's score for “Lost” and Brian Reitzell's music for “Hannibal”. I love scoring in general, but television gives composers such a broad canvas to work with; themes that can evolve over the years and develop over time.

I'd really love to score a Wim Wenders film at some point, and I think I'd enjoy scoring an action movie too. But honestly, I'd be thrilled to collaborate with any director who has a clear and interesting vision. Radio interests me a lot too, though I'm not sure where my place in it would be.

We don't have a thousand people to film while they play one of your songs, but can you promise you'll swing through Italy on your next European tour?

No promises, just hopes that I'm keeping my fingers crossed for.

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