Jordan Tice / Cameron Knowler

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On the dusty streets of Yuma, Arizona, under a brilliantly ubiquitous sun, Cameron Knowler spent his childhood picking guitar and racing motorcycles at the foothills of the Gila Mountains.  It was from this setting – a desert town gilded in silence, home to 90% of North America’s lettuce production and a high school that once functioned as a territorial prison – that Knowler developed his place-based philosophy of documentation.  An acclaimed educator, multi-instrumentalist, and recording artist, Knowler specializes in the art of the conceptual record, putting forth instrumental works that Folk Radio UK has referred to as “Western sound-painting.”  His craft follows in the theoretical footsteps of instrumentalist and songwriter Norman Blake and expands upon that territorial folk convention: Knowler brandishes a post-modern perspective on American traditional music that nods to both his formal theory training and his roots in the American West.