A Few Honest Words: The Kentucky Roots of Popular Music

3. Chris Knight: Trailer Poet

Chris Knight Trailer Poet It was supposed to be the year of the rural film. Going into the Seventy-eighth Academy Awards ceremony, held at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood in early March 2006, odds were on the groundbreaking drama Brokeback Mountain, the story of two cowboys falling in love in the wilds of Wyoming, winning the Oscar for Best Motion Picture. It was a done deal—or so everyone thought—when Jack Nicholson sauntered across the stage to present the award. After introducing the nominees, he opened the envelope and allowed a tinge of surprise to cloud his iconic voice: “And the Oscar goes to . . . Crash!” Some in the audience audibly gasped. Raising his eyebrows, Nicholson mouthed “Whoa!” to someone offstage. Backstage, Brokeback Mountain co-screenwriter Larry McMurtry , legendary author of the rural novels Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show, was not shocked in the least. “Members of the Academy are not rural people,” he explained to the Associated Press. “We are an urban nation. We are not a rural nation. It’s not easy even to get a rural story made.” This was not news to people from Kentucky, a largely rural state made up of small towns like Slaughters, population 238. Tucked away in the northwestern part of the state, it’s a commu62 3 63 Chris Knight nity that many in the big-city media might dismiss as a cultural backwater. Slaughters has no grand buildings on its Main Street and no large businesses, for that matter—only houses with giant oak trees sprouting from neat front yards, coal mines, and the CSX Railroad that slices through the hamlet. But what this town does have are stories—tons of them, in fact, just waiting to be told. Even the founding of Slaughters has taken on legendary status among the townspeople: local tradition has it that the town was named for one Gustavus G. Slaughter, who won the right to name the hamlet and the post office by winning a card game in 1855. For years, alternative country singer-songwriter and Slaughters native Chris Knight has been a keeper of these stories, many of which have shown up in his music—seven albums of songs set mostly in and around his hometown. Many of his characters are what people in this part of the country would call “pure outlaws ”: there’s the wild cardplayer and shooter in “Becky’s Bible,” the rowdy teenage boys of “Oil Patch Town,” and the meth cookers of “Hell Ain’t Half Full.” And every now and then, he allows his more tranquil side to shine through, writing about the young “river rat” of “The River’s Own” and the reformed sinner traveling “The Lord’s Highway.” All portray rural people as complex individuals , neither romanticized nor vilified. “I just wrote what I knew,” he says modestly, quietly, in an accent that is perpetually tied to the region’s rolling hills and rich earth. “I just did it the way I saw it.” Country people are known to be stubborn. It’s a philosophy that has generally served them well, carrying them through farm foreclosures , droughts, and coal mining disasters. But these days, their tenacity seems to be focused on maintaining their physical geography and personal dignity, both of which are necessary for remaining rural in an urban world. 64 A Few Honest Words Chris is country to the bone, one of those quiet men whose determination is lodged in the steeliness of his voice and carriage. His beefy frame makes it clear that he has known hard work. Even now, on one of the hottest days of the summer, he is building a barn on his forty-acre piece of property. His biceps bulge from the rolled sleeves of his trademark T-shirt: you know he could whip your ass if he took a notion to. But his strength isn’t confined to his physical presence—it’s a case of body mimicking soul. And this, he believes, comes from the land itself, the rolling landscape that he has steadfastly refused to leave. “It’s beautiful out here,” he says with more than a shred of defiance. “I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. I live out in the hills. I don’t even like to go to town.” When Chris was signed to a deal with Decca Records, a major country music label, in 1998, he...