Tied Up in Knott

Anyone who knows me well will have heard me mention Michael Knott at least once. He was, of course, a mainstay on my radio show.

I can remember drooling over the new release of Aunt Bettys, Knott’s newly formed “secular” band. When I saw it come in to the radio station one afternoon, while I was on the air I nearly jizzed my pants. I scrapped whatever it was I had planned for the show and dedicated it to the new album.

Mike Knott has been playing music since the late 70s, although back then it was cheesy garage band stuff. Eventually it morphed into cheesy Christian garage band stuff, mostly under the name of his band Lifesavers.

However, in 1986, he came out with a new band and a new album that made people in the Christian marketplace sit up and notice. The band was “L.S.U.” (which stands for Lifesavers Underground), and the album was Shaded Pain. While some of it was still the cheesy Christian Rock people had come to expect, some songs explored some deeper issues of Christianity. The title track in particular took on the tendency of Evangelical Christians to hide behind a fake mask of happiness, and pressure others in the church to do the same.

While there are many fun songs in Knott’s repertoire, a lot of them after that point consisted of Knott putting his own flawed and painful Christianity on display. Throughout his career, Knott has experienced a divorce, disillusionment with the church, alcoholism, bankruptcy, and critics who constantly attacked his faith.

So when Knott attempted to leave the Christian Music Industry with the Aunt Bettys (originally Aunt Betty’s Ford, but was sued by the Ford Motor Company) he recorded "Jesus". The song begins in almost exactly the same way as a song he had put out just a few years earlier which was a desperate, quiet song of prayer by a man who had lost his girlfriend in a car accident. This song, however, featured a brutally honest Knott asking Jesus for money so he could stay out of jail, or at least a drink so he could forget about it a while.

Through all this, Knott maintains a Christian faith, one that holds firm to the idea of atonement. Again, something I respect, but don’t share.

I repeatedly held him up as an example, on my radio show, as someone who was able to maneuver the difficulties and contradictions of Christianity without losing his faith.

Another song, which sticks out in my mind, comes from his Grace Shaker album, probably my favorite. It’s called "Double" and it features Knott pondering the failures in his own life, and in those of the people around him without offering any simple way out. In fact, the only consolation for Knott is that Jesus accepts you anyway, no matter how much you drink and fuck up your family.