Mark So

You won’t be seeing Mark Knopfler in melodramatic newspaper headlines or on talent show panels. The much-travelled craftsman prefers to reside wherever the song takes him, from writing room to rehearsal space, recording studio to concert hall. He is, as tirelessly and inquisitively as ever, on the trail of some musical truth, just as he has been since the 45s of Ricky Nelson and Lonnie Donegan, or the playing of Hank Marvin and Duane Eddy, sent him down a path that led to 125 million record sales.

It seems odd that Salvation Blues is Mark Olson's first true solo recording. After his tenure with the Jayhawks, Olson left the band to spend more time in Joshua Tree with his then-wife, fellow singer/songwriter Victoria Williams. Olson released a quartet of recordings with the Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers (aka the Creekdippers), always with Williams either sharing the billing or in the band. Olson and Williams divorced in February of 2006, and he lost the home he built in Joshua Tree as a result. He took off on a solo tour of Europe where the sketches for a number of the songs on Salvation Blues were written.

Knopfler promoted the album on his Tracker Tour, which started on 15 May 2015 in Dublin, Ireland. The tour included 86 concerts in two legs — Europe and North America — and ended on 31 October 2015 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the United States…

With the release of Get Lucky, Mark Knopfler has made as many solo studio albums as he made group studio albums with Dire Straits, which may be a signal that it's time to stop comparing his two careers and simply accept them as separate entities…

The latest volume in a series which is rapidly accumulating critical superlatives. Described by International Piano as ‘one of the most gifted pianists of his generation’, Mark Viner is steadily gaining a reputation as one of Britain’s leading concert pianists; his unique blend of individual artistry combined with his bold exploration of the byways of the piano literature garnering international renown.

A follow up to The Studio Albums 1996-2007 release in October 2021, is a second collection of Mark Knopfler studio albums, including Get Lucky (2009), Privateering (2012), Tracker (2015) and Down The Road Wherever(2018) plus a collection of studio b-sides and bonus tracks and two previously unreleased songs – ‘Back In The Day’ and ‘Precious Voice From Heaven’.  Audio has been overseen by original mastering engineer Bob Ludwig at Gateway Mastering. This is a mini-vinyl style 6CD collection in a clamshell-style box. Original studio albums housed in gatefold sleeves with folded printed lyric sheets. Bonus disc in single sleeve wallet with lyrics insert, plus 5 art cards.

In 2002, Mark Lanegan was looking to make some changes in how he approached his music – the Screaming Trees had finally collapsed at the end of the '90s, he'd found a new fan base as a frequent guest vocalist with Queens of the Stone Age, and the spare, blues-leaning solo efforts Lanegan cut for Sub Pop were no longer side projects but the first chapters of a new career. As Lanegan was strategizing his next move, he went to Houston, Texas and in five days recorded a dozen songs with a handful of talented local musicians, including guitarist Ian Moore and longtime Willie Nelson sideman Mickey Raphael on harmonica, with Justice Records founder Randall Jamail as producer. While the sessions were meant to be demos for a stack of songs Lanegan had written for Jamail's publishing house, the finished product sounded good enough to be an album, and in 2015 Lanegan finally released the material under the title Houston: Publishing Demos 2002. The jolly irony is that while these are supposed to be demos, in many respects the performances sound more polished and "commercial" than most of Lanegan's early solo efforts, capturing a laid-back but buoyant mood that's informed by country and blues as much as rock, and Lanegan seems comfortable singing with the group, rather than simply laying his vocals over the top.