March 12–19, 1998

music

Flower Power

The transcendental twang of singer-farmer Cheri Knight.

by Margit Detweiler

On the farm she shares with her husband, Mac, in the small town of Hatfield, MA (pop. 3390), Cheri Knight grows annuals. And every year around this time, when the ice begins to thaw, she plants flowers in long rows, tending them until they're ready to be cut and sold at Boston-area farmers' markets.

But this spring, Knight is taking time off from farming to focus on another labor of love—her music.

"The greenhouse work isn't really that much," says Knight from a hotel in Minneapolis. "Other people are going to do that for me. They know how much this album means to me."

A former bassist and vocalist with country rockers The Blood Oranges, Knight is touring with her second solo work, The Northeast Kingdom—a beautifully crafted collection of songs driven by Knight's luscious drawl. Many of the songs came to life in and around Knight's farm.

While tending her roses, she got the melody ideas for the pretty, mandolin-picked "Rose On The Vine."

"And then I finished the rest of it in my van, carting around flowers here and there. I'm inspired by nature. It's everything. I guess it's my lame attempt to transform what I see around me into something else. Because nothing I ever do is going to be as cool as the flowers I grow—or a tree." With a laugh, she adds, "I'm a practicing transcendentalist."

		Knight grew up reading Walt Whitman, Emerson and Thoreau. "That's the stuff that really floats my boat," she says.

The adopted daughter of a family of dairy goat farmers in Northampton, MA, Knight grew up reading Walt Whitman, Emerson and Thoreau.

"That's the stuff that really floats my boat," she says. "I'm always fumbling around trying to get that going on in my music."

Knight has been playing and writing songs for as long as she can remember—from piano lessons as a kid to various Northampton bands. In 1989 she joined The Blood Oranges, whose hardcore roots-rock sound attracted a cult-like following over their six-year run.

"The Blood Oranges meant more to me than probably anything I'll ever do. We just believed in what we were doing. At the time we were swimming against the popularity of grunge music and alternative rock. People just didn't get what we were doing. That sort of fueled us to be into it even more."

But eventually, Knight says, the band gave up, having released albums on floundering indie label ESD without ever moving up to a major label. Our own roots-rockers Go To Blazes, also on ESD and friends of Knight, met a similar fate. When ESD folded, Go To Blazes also decided to call it quits.

"I was so mad—[Go To Blazes] were getting really good, their songs were starting to come together and people were getting really interested in them and then they gave up. I remember yelling at [lead guitarist] Tom Heyman. 'Cause they broke up for the same reasons Blood Oranges did. Because we had put a record out and didn't get a major record label deal out of it. In hindsight that attitude hurts your music in the long run."

Knight's first solo album in 1995, The Knitter, was an evocative collection of folk songs, also released on ESD. But the album's distribution was small, few heard it, and the experience left Knight disenchanted with the music biz. (When she plays Sam Adams tonight, she'll have copies of The Knitter in tow.)

"I said, Well, I guess I'll go home and grow my flowers and just make tapes for my friends at Christmas."

But then a friend passed along one of Knight's songs on a mixed tape to renegade rocker Steve Earle. Earle had just founded his own label, E-Squared, with Ray Kennedy and was charmed by Knight's song. He immediately ordered a copy of The Knitter and called Knight from Ireland.

"He offered me a record deal right away. He had no doubt that he wanted me on his label."

Earle wasn't familiar with The Blood Oranges and Knight had never heard any of Earle's material, but they discovered they had a lot in common.

"We both like to work the same way—fast, don't agonize, spend all the time you need getting the songs and then make records quickly and cheaply. I make every record that way. I've always made records for under $15,000. If you beat it into the ground, sit there and do one part over and over, you lose the life on the disc."

Recording for an intense two weeks in Nashville, Knight and the "Twang Trust" (producers Earle and his partner Ray Kennedy) enlisted old Blood Orange-mates Mark Spencer on guitar and Jimmy Ryan on mandolin, former dB member Will Rigby on drums, Tammy Rogers on fiddle and Emmylou Harris on a few background vocals to create the lush Northeast Kingdom.

A flower becomes metaphor in the song "Black-Eyed Susie" as vicious Neil Young-style riffs, clanging cowbell and Knight's strong vocals work their honest charm. Stellar songs like "Sweetheart" showcase the sturdy, familiar harmonies between Spencer and Knight.

"Sweetheart," like many of her best songs, can't be easily slotted into a single genre. Softer ballads like "Crawling"—drenched in pedal steel, Jimmy Ryan's mandolin picking and the distinct harmonies of Emmylou Harris and Knight—are as fragile as petals. The trance-like, Celtic-tinged "Dar Glasgow" is haunted by the ghost-like sounds of harmonium, hurdy-gurdy and Harris' lilt.

"Harris is what I consider at the very root of the music that I do. I'm just another generation of it—she's the queen mother. She knew The Blood Oranges—the band was very well-known in Nashville. I have people down there at some of the straight-ahead country labels who are really big fans of mine. But they know what they can make money at and they know what they can't."

The song "White Lies" is pure Nashville—country swing at its proudest.

When was the last time Garth Brooks sounded so authentic? But recording in Nashville, Knight stresses, didn't give her any extra country cred.

"I don't consider what I do Southern music. I'm not really inspired by that. I write about what's around me. And I'm a completely dyed-in-the-wool New Englander. I'm not trying to be a country artist. I could care less about that. I grew up in the Appalachian Mountains—the Appalachian Trail ran right through town even though I'm north of the Mason-Dixon line—and there's a big bluegrass tradition there."

On the rousing anthem "Hatfield Side" she sings about another tradition—the pride of her small town and its rivalry with the neighboring Hadley.

"The towns used to be just one town and the Connecticut River used to go right through the middle of it. Then the town split off for obvious logistical reasons. They're all the same people—they're all Polish potato farmers. But they've got this rivalry, and who knows how far back that goes. Everybody tells you something different. That's the beauty of it."

When Knight's tour concludes she'll get ready for summer, the busiest time of the year for her flower farm.

And if she had to choose between singing and weeding?

"I've already been put in that position, and I got so stressed out I threw up for like three days. I spent many years trying to get myself doing things that really meant something to me, and when you do that you can't give things up that easily. I wouldn't give either one up. I can rearrange my goals. I don't have to be some big rock star or anything like that. It's not important. I just wanna make records and do my other stuff, too."

Cheri Knight plays with the Rolling Hayseeds Thu., Mar.12 at Sam Adams, 1516 Sansom, 563-2326.