Cameron Knowler Previews CRK With 'La Paz'

(TB) Cameron Knowler unveils "La Paz" ahead of the release of his new album CRK, arriving this Friday, April 4 via Worried Songs. The third and final single from Knowler's upcoming second album is a hopeful yet melancholic instrumental piece for two acoustic guitars (featuring Jordan Tice of Hawktail), inspired by a ghost town just north of Yuma, Arizona, in the Sonoran Desert. Much like Gillian Welch and David Rawlings' folk anthem "My Morphine," the track evokes a vivid image through light, shimmering patterns, creating the illusion of a single instrument performing.

As "La Paz" and the previously released singles "Felicity" and "Secret Water" have helped reveal, CRK draws from a rich tapestry of folk tradition, using deep reverence in the genre to reflect on a complicated upbringing in Knowler's hometown of Yuma, AZ. "These songs paint a picture of my relationship to that place, my isolated childhood there, and how it all crumbled after my dad was suddenly incarcerated in 2008," Knowler says. "Those early impressions fuel my work in spite of their once-stifling darkness; the backdrop, a theatrical bordertown, always moves on with characteristic resourcefulness. Everything in that town is small, bare and historically charged which is a fitting analog to the artforms I'm most attracted to: instrumental songs, polaroids, short fiction and personal narrative. Those are all represented in this project."

CRK draws on the history and geography of Knowler's birthplace-a border town known for its lettuce production and defunct territorial prison. In line with the regional ethos of the composer Frantz Casseus and the minimalism of Bruce Langhorne, this instrumental guitar record launches into a world of desert sun, propane tanks, dark jail cells, and the verdant Colorado. Knowler ferries listeners across a sensitively crafted world with deft, understated playing, pushing the current of instrumental acoustic music forward through lush original compositions, while keeping an eye on tradition with his singular arrangements of old time fiddle tunes. With what many describe as the closest thing to the right hand of Norman Blake, Knowler's delivery also nods to the work of creative outsiders Terry Allen and David Rawlings.

With this work, Knowler sonically illuminates untold stories of the Sonoran, lending a voice to the pictorial canon made famous by Dorothea Lange and western films such as 3:10 to Yuma. There is a sense of interiority to the record as well, Knowler says, noting that he "grew up isolated, unschooled in a desert with very little contact with children my own age." He only returned to his hometown recently to revisit places held in memory, and CRK stands as a direct result of unpacking those landscapes coded with personal darkness. By creating an outward-facing work of art, Knowler strives to "make sandcastles out of grief" and emblazon the diorama of his youth.

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