Aidan Knight’s father, an avid guitar collector, bought him his first guitar—a gorgeous 1958 Guild M-65 Freshman, manufactured in Hoboken, New Jersey—when Knight was still a teenager. It remains his favourite guitar. Small coincidence, perhaps, that one of the character-driven songs off his new LP, Small Reveal, chronicles a lonely clerk dreaming of love while she stocks shelves in a grocery store in Hoboken. Knight’s approach to songwriting and sound production was inspired by the multilayered screenplays of Charlie Kauffman, the atmospheric production of Daniel Lanois, and the band’s private sojourn at Protection Island (just off the shore of Nanaimo, BC) while recording. You can certainly hear the country air in the pedal steel, but Knight’s manipulated arrangements of trumpet and flugel horn create something far more introspective and modern. That’s “audio alchemy—turning something recognizable into something fantastic and unrecognizable,” he says. Raising funds to tour from the sales of their last EP, Knight and his band are currently crossing Canada in their proud new 1999 E350 Econoline van and will rest for awhile in Halifax.
5th Anniversary Concert Series: Aidan Knight
w/Folly and the Hunter, Ariana Gillis, $12.50/$15
Wed May 15, 7:30pm, The Carleton, 1685 Argyle Street
This article appears in May 9-15, 2013.