Kenny Knight

Colorado country-folk singer/songwriter Kenny Knight released his lone album, Crossroads, in 1980 before retiring from professional music. The Georgia-born, Denver-raised musician was captivated by the guitar from a young age, joining his first band the 13th Street Exit when he was just 11. Around this same time, he began writing his first songs and hanging around local music shops meeting the older, more-established musicians on the scene. By 1968, Knight, then in his mid-teens, had formed another garage band called Black Flag, who made the national news when they played a presidential election rally for Nelson Rockefeller at Denver's Brown Palace Hotel. Professional and skilled beyond their years, the young bandmembers did session work at a local studio and played the local Denver clubs after receiving a work permit from their junior high school. Before enlisting with the Marines in 1972, Knight had become a mainstay in the local garage scene and he continued to write songs while stationed in California's Camp Pendleton. With the aim of becoming a songwriter, he would use his leave time to drive up to Los Angeles and pitch his songs to potential publishers. He came close to closing a deal, but eventually was forced to head back to Denver to help with the family business. Throughout the '70s, he continued to write and record demos at home while working as a painter at his father's auto body shop. His cousins had once had a popular duet group called Deb & Sylvia in the '50s and '60s, and when they relocated back to Denver in the late '70s, Sylvia encouraged Kenny to make his own album. Repurposing an old carriage house on her property, Sylvia built a modest home studio and, alongside family and friends, she and Knight spent the evenings recording the songs that would make up his debut. A mix of world-weary Americana and thoughtful, folk-flavored country-rock, Crossroads was self-released in 1980 in a very limited run. In spite of the quality of the material and performances, the album failed to make an impact, and though he continued to make music on a personal level, it remains Knight's sole release. In 2015, after languishing for 35 years in obscurity, Crossroads was reissued for the first time by North Carolinian label Paradise of Bachelors.
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