Episode Details

The band Knockout Artist stopped by Live & Local this week, following the release of their new album “Ramshackle Deluxe.”

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Formed in 2024, Knockout Artist officially arrived on the scene last year with their debut EP, “Hit After Hit After Hit.” “Ramshackle Deluxe,” their first full-length album, takes the initial promise of “Hit After Hit” and brings it into full bloom, with an exciting but hard-to-classify sound that’s been characterized as everything from “garage punk (meets) outlaw country” to “a cross between the Velvet Underground and the Flying Burrito Brothers.” (Either way, it’s damn good rock.)

“Initially (we) were going to be kind of folky and country,” says Phil Venable. “And then I was like, ‘let’s get Danny involved’ –“

“And it all went to hell,” laughs Danny Hooley.

Today, Knockout Artist is a five-piece band, with Hooley and Venable on guitar and vocals, Matt Neal on bass, Rock Forbes on percussion, and Simeon Berkley on pedal steel, all collaborating together on the process of writing and crafting each song. And that’s not all: Venable says it also took a sixth individual, veteran producer Tim Harper, to bring “Ramshackle Deluxe” to life.

“Tim Harper is the best,” Venable says. “He did an amazing job. We had all these songs and he made them better: he coached us to stretch and reach for things that were beyond (our) initial grasp – and it sort of brought home the role (of) a producer as psychologist.”

Listen to the album and purchase it on Bandcamp.

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