Daniel Knox

Artist bio

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Springfield, Illinois native Daniel Knox escaped to the big city in 1999 to attend film school. Intent on composing his own scores, he began sneaking into the Hilton Tower’s Grand Ballroom to teach himself to play the piano. As this bit of mischief gradually paid off, plucking became music-making, and when he incorporated his booming tenor, sound-scapes became songs. Years later, he has amassed a dark and diverse repertoire, addictive as much for its narrative and lyrical deftness as for its musical lure.

In January of 2007, Knox accompanied filmmaker David Lynch on organ for the Chicago premier of Inland Empire at the historic Music Box Theater. This led to his participation in David Coulter’s (Damon Albarn, Tom Waits, Nick Cave) production of ‘Plague Songs’ at the Barbican in London alongside the likes of Damon Albarn, Rufus Wainwright, Sandy Dillon, Imogen Heap, and Phil Minton. It was a bang-up London debut - enough for the Evening Standard to refer to Knox as a “name to watch.”

Following the event, he played his first batch of shows outside the borders of Illinois to enthusiastic, capacity audiences in the UK and Ireland as the support act for the Handsome Family.

More recently, he performed with Rufus Wainwright and opera star, Jessye Norman at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, contributed vocals to Jarvis Cocker’s 2009 album Further Complications, lent a song to the short film Taxidermist (Bertie Films, UK) and shared stages with Cocker, Baby Dee, Camille O’Sullivan, the Bitter Tears, and A Hawk and a Hacksaw. He continues to add to his recorded output – which includes the full-length and first of a trilogy H.P. Johnson Presents : Disaster and the soon to be completed follow up Evryman For Himself.

Knox is recording Evryman at his home in Chicago. Some of the songs soar, some lilt and jeer, but all are stamped with his contagious melodies and preoccupation with styles of the 1920’s – a peculiar package for his lyrical jabs and barbs.

A Harold Arlen for the darker set, he bellows tales of disillusionment, obsession, and criminal intent with as much sarcasm as sincerity. Daniel Knox is a rogue at the piano, crooning, sneering and shouting so that his cast of characters may speak.

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“With his roguish wit and rich warble, this telegenic Chicagoan pianist was the highlight of the Barbican’s ‘Twisted Christmas’.”

Time Out London in a preview of “2009’s Hottest Music Acts”


“A name to watch” London’s Evening Standard


“Daniel Knox opens” Chicago Reader


“Divine Comedy-ish crooner” Time Out London

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