Meet Max Knouse

Today we’d like to introduce you to Max Knouse.

So, before we jump into specific questions, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I’m a musician based in Los Angeles, where I moved to about a year ago from Phoenix, AZ. It’s been really exciting to be around a scene like what’s happening around LA right now, which has been both welcoming and challenging in terms of the prolific and special minds that are out here working. It feels like the perfect place for my music practice, which is sort of interested in blending a kind of improvisational jazz ethic with a more crystalized standard type of popular songcraft.

It seems worth noting here that the small music venues around our city (Zebulon!) must survive this pandemic, which will likely mean a ton of help from all of us getting the word out and giving what we can.

In high school back in Arizona I got really interested in Jazz, specifically of the 50’s and 60’s, which I was later able to study deeply at the wonderfully small jazz program at ASU, a university universally goofed on, rightly, but also there are a lot of small schools and programs and brilliant people there who probably slide under the radar of the late night show goofers.

I spent my early years in Athens, Ohio in the 90’s. Looking back, it was special to have caught glimpses of the local kind of ‘mountain music’ or whatever that was mostly covered up, but still, glimpses from decades and centuries of people who lived their lives there. I can link my current interest in songs to that early music.

So, through these places and times, I can kind of see how my current work emerges from it. To me, the greatest musician ever was Thelonious Monk, so it’s like if he was checking out a John Prine, or even someone more mysterious like a Lee Hazlewood. Although I wouldn’t put my music on the same pedestal as all that. A group who, to me, perfectly exemplifies this approach is Giant Sand and what they did over the years.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It’s funny to talk about any other type of struggle while the virus is happening. I’ve been living off of playing music live for the last ten years, and many of my friends have for longer. So to be honest, this is definitely a new and scary time. But I feel so lucky to be safe and surrounded by a strong support system of good family and friends. It’s been cool to check on people and be checked on. The government has bailed out large industry and given small amounts of extra relief to the unemployed while “essential workers” and especially healthcare workers get a big thank you and maybe free pizza. That definitely seems wrong, and I hope the energy behind hazard pay and things of that nature continues to grow.

Can you give our readers some background on your music?
Pre-sales are up for this record Road Toad Ribet, which I did with a bunch of musicians, some old Phoenix friends, largely Kate Bivona, Jordan Tompkins, and Nat Theobald, and spanning to include Albuquerque peeps A Hawk and a Hacksaw, and also NYC’s Cassandra Jenkins on vocals. The record was produced by John Dieterich and Michael Krassner. John got the non-AZ musicians on board and also added a lot of new futuristic kinda flavor to my basically folky-at-heart songs, which he does with a guitar but also with a DAW. Krassner did most of the basic live tracks in his back house which is called the 7 Track Shack or something like that. The last Simon Joyner record was also done in there. Krass also masterfully mixed my crazy record, which seemed like no easy feat and probably almost broke him.

Besides getting that record out, I’m finishing up a new record of songs. I’m also interested in producing for other musicians. I am learning a ton by asking my friends who work in studios too many questions all the time. I’ve had a couple of opportunities to produce things now, for which I owe some friends for putting their faith in me. So yes, please hit me up for recordings!

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Luck is kind of an everything theory, which starts to make it not a very interesting pair of glasses for looking at the world. Nowadays, people proclaim that if you speak in a loud enough, with a blunt enough voice about the thing you want and with enough self-image to match, you will be given that thing you want. Some days that seems all too true. Some see that as “positive thinking,” a gift from the universe or something, which makes luck seem like a sweet old idea by comparison. I mean, the McDonald’s Monopoly thing went almost entirely to the mob right? I see that kind of self-given prosperity as a much uglier and more shallow truth of the world which needs serious tending to… but I’m a Midwesterner at heart. So no, I can’t say I have much faith in a fun kind of material luck anymore.

But I do think of people I happened to be surrounded within different parts of my life. Having parents and siblings who were interested in creating things and the idea of going it on your own, which is a serious blessing and a more serious curse. Meeting my partner Meredith who had a certain strange, deeply secret kind of artistic view of things that I could relate to and glean from. “Glean” is a farming term, by the way. Meeting Michael Krassner who happened to be in Phoenix at the same time I was and getting to be a part of his musical world which links to so many other important musicians and musical movements… Basically, I think you’re lucky if you have a few good people around, doesn’t take many. And that’s it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://maxknouse.bandcamp.com/album/road-toad-ribet
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maxknouse/
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPsXU_evR-4

Image Credit:
Meredith Minne

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