Davy Knowles - The Only Son

“The Only Son” is the first song on and the first single from the most intimate, stripped-down, and personal album of Davy Knowles’ career, If I Should Wander. Knowles describes it as “a song about guilt, about a feeling of failure and of letting down those most important to you. Misguided or otherwise.

“If I Should Wander feels less like an album and more like a diary to me,” says 36-year old Isle of Man-born guitarist, singer, and songwriter who has earned multiple Top 5 albums on the Billboard Blues Chart. “I couldn’t be more honest or more open to my own thoughts and feelings at the time I wrote these songs. There was no hiding, no skirting around the subjects. For the very first time they came flowing out - one after the other and in the order they appear on the finished album. The songs also took form in a radically different style than that of anything I had written previously. All of the songs for the album were completed within two months.

“After that I waited. Whilst I never lost faith in the music, (it felt far too personal for that), I absolutely lost faith in my abilities and direction. This was such a far cry from the music I make my living playing. Why would anyone following my work in that arena want this? It took a very long time to understand a vital truth. It wasn’t written for them. This is a purely selfish endeavor. Meant only for me and those I hold close. Somehow, (and even typing this sounds strange) once I accepted this, the idea of sending this music out into the big bad world didn’t seem quite as frightening a prospect. ‘Folks don’t like it? That’s OK. It’s not for them. This one is for you.’ There is a little hope of mine that maybe someone, somewhere may see a little of themselves in one of these songs and perhaps not feel so alone.

“In keeping with the way these songs were written, and what they were written about, I decided to record these at home, on my own in my little music room in the flat I live in. Close, personal, intimate. More like a confessional than a recording. No frills, no trickery and just one microphone.

“I have owned the instrument I used to write and record this album (a National Triolian resonator built in 1932) for 15 years, and have played it onstage all over the world, always in the Delta-Blues style this guitar is synonymous with. However, as soon as this style emerged from it, I felt like I finally had discovered what this instrument was truly for.”