Skip to main content

New Music Monday: Sonny Knight and the Lakers

Sonny Knight and the Lakers
Sonny Knight and the lakers hey girl i'm still here

On April 29th, 2014, the debut album from Sonny Knight & The Lakers, I’m Still Here, will be released in the US by Secret Stash Records on LP, CD, and digitally. For Sonny Knight, the making of his debut album nearly 50 years after recording his first single has effectively pushed the reset button on a long and interrupted career, bringing it around full circle musically and geographically. He and his new backing band, the Lakers, recorded I’m Still Here in a subterranean Minneapolis studio a scant seven blocks away from the basement studio beneath a long shuttered record store where he recorded his first 45 (as Little Sonny Knight & The Cymbols) in 1965 at age 17.

Related Videos

Shortly thereafter, music took a back seat to a three-year stint in the army. A few more years in the Bay Area followed, before he returned to Minnesota in the mid-1970s and joined the now-cult favorite funk group Haze. By the early ‘80s, Haze had broken up and Sonny walked away from music for a full time job as a truck driver.

Unbeknownst to Sonny, not only had that lone 7” record he cut as a teenager (“Tears On My Pillow” B/W “Rain Dance”) become a prized item in R&B collector circles in the ensuing decades, his powerful voice had not been forgotten. In the 1990s, vocalists Monroe Wright and Maurice Young (formerly of Minneapolis soul legends the Valdons) extended him an invitation to join their new group, The Bachelors. When the Valdons were revived in 2012 in celebration of Secret Stash Records’ Twin Cities Funk & Soul compilation, Wright and Young tapped Knight as a new member.

After six months of working together on shows promoting Twin Cities Funk & Soul, Sonny and Secret Stash founder / in-house funky drummer Eric Foss formed Sonny Knight and The Lakers. In the spring of 2013, Sonny and the Lakers hit the ground running – playing gigs a few short weeks after their first rehearsal. Within months they had grown into their own as a band. In the fall, Sonny and the guys spent a long weekend at a cabin in Northern Minnesota and it became a defining moment. Staying up late, listening to old 45s, learning gospel songs, and wood shedding tunes was a way for the band to develop a similar vocabulary and refine their direction. It transformed them from a group of good players into a band. When they returned home, they set up a string of performances and residencies in Minneapolis and St. Paul. By the end of their residency at the Eagles club in South Minneapolis, virtually no breaks interrupted or slowed down their live sets. Non-stop rehearsals and live performances helped The Lakers tighten up their sound. That, coupled with the inspiration found during the cabin trip, laid the ground work for recording an album.

Nearly fifty years have passed since Knight’s first recording, but for the first time he feels like the center of attention. He says, “Sometimes I wonder, why me? Why are all these great things happening now? All I can say is thanks. These are dreams that I had forgotten. Only now that they are starting to come true do I remember that I had them at all.”

Purchase I’m Still Here on iTunes!

http://sonnyknight.com/

Editors' Recommendations

New Music Monday: Streets of Laredo
new music monday streets laredo of

Brooklyn-based, New Zealanders’ Streets of Laredo have released their first full-length album, Volume I & II on Dine Alone Records on October 7th. Destined to be a soundtrack for all things Fall, this album is a sing-a-long collision of jangling harmonies, stomping percussion, horns and guitars.

Founded by close-knit family members Daniel, Dave and Sarahjane Gibson and inspired by the fervour and madness of the 70’s folk-rock circuit, Streets of Laredo was born out of trying to escape the mundane everyday working life. Older brother Dave tells the story, “Both Dan and I had done the hard yards in bands in New Zealand but we were worn out and a little lost by it all. And broke. I was running this t-shirt company and Dan walks in one day to tell me that he’s finished with music and he’s gonna go get a real job. All of a sudden my ‘big brother’ instinct kicks in and rather than see this young songwriter throw it all away, I gave him a job doing t-shirt orders, and we started working on demos and writing songs together, pretty much day and night from then on in.”

Read more
New Music Monday: Bassnectar
new music monday bassnectar

Bassnectar is one of the longest standing and most respected artists in American electronic dance music. He is the original long hair behind the tables, having been in the game well before most of his contemporaries and amassing an epic fan base and having sold over 160,000 tickets to his solo shows alone in 2013. His art brazenly oversteps the bounds of contemporary EDM, pulling from a dynamic array of source material and attracting lovers of all genres, from dubstep to metal, punk rock, hip hop, and all forms of EDM (drum & bass, trip hop, etc) and beyond. His art is more than just an auditory experience; it serves to evoke all human senses with live shows that feature unparalleled light shows and awe-inspiring visual queues. Bassnectar intends to not only foster its own community of loyal Bass Heads, but also contribute to the global community at large through charity and social change by giving one dollar from every ticket sold to a non-profit, as part of his “Dollar Per Bass Head” Program.

Bassnectar is the brainchild of Lorin Ashton, a San Francisco-based DJ, producer and artist. Lorin, who released his first album in 2001, began the project as an open-sourced musical experiment exploring the interplay between music and community. His music fuses everything into an electro-synthesis of intense basslines and hypnotic soundscapes. Coming from a background in death metal, Ashton was not intent on approaching EDM from a traditional standpoint and it was a very natural and unique progression. It is this openness to exploring new ways of creating dance music that has attracted droves of loyal fans to Bassnectar’s recordings and live performances. Being purposely limitless, Bassnectar is as diverse as it is heavy, as raw as it is meticulous, and as fierce as it is imaginary. This explorative take on music led to a deep involvement in the death metal scene of the nineties. Ashton started a band called Pale Existence and began playing and promoting underground shows.

Read more
UFC Live Stream: Watch UFC Fights Online From Anywhere
ufc 257 poirier vs mcgregor 2 ppv bundle deal conor v donald cerrone

Looking for a way to watch UFC fights online? For years, restrictive broadcasting regulations made it difficult for sports fans to cut the cord and switch from cable to streaming. However, thanks to sports broadcasters like ESPN, live MMA events are now readily available online. Today, you can easily stream UFC fights directly on your PC, mobile device, smart TV, or gaming console thanks to ESPN+. If you're searching for the best platform for watching UFC live streams, you've come to the right place. We've got all the information you need, including a schedule of upcoming fights, right here. Read on to discover the best way to stream all the UFC action happening every Saturday.

Watch the Official UFC Live Stream
By far the best way to watch UFC live streams online is ESPN+, a premium streaming service that launched in 2018. ESPN+ delivers a cornucopia of sports content, including MMA and boxing, to almost any modern streaming device. That said, you've got some other options that are also worth mentioning. But due to the very tight relationship between ESPN and the Ultimate Fighting Championship, you'll still need to sign up for ESPN+ in order to live stream UFC pay-per-view events.

Read more