Mark Knopfler Announces New Album, ‘Down the Road Wherever’
Mark Knopfler announced that his ninth solo album, Down the Road Wherever, will be released on Nov. 16.
The 14-track follow-up to 2015’s Tracker will be available in standard formats along with a deluxe CD version and a box set.
A press release calls the record a collection of “unhurriedly elegant new Knopfler songs inspired by a wide range of subjects, including his early days in Deptford with Dire Straits, a stray football fan lost in a strange town, the compulsion of a musician hitching home through the snow, and a man out of time in his local greasy spoon.”
The statement notes that Knopfler "has a poet’s eye for telling details that infuse his songs with his unique psychogeography – ‘where the Delta meets the Tyne’ as he describes it – and his warm Geordie vocal tone and his deft, richly melodic guitar playing are as breathtaking and thrilling as ever.”
“‘Down the road wherever' is a line from 'One Song at a Time,'" Knopfler noted. "I remember my pal Chet Atkins once saying that he picked his way out of poverty one song at a time, and it just stuck in my mind. You get to an age where you’ve written quite a few songs. But Down the Road Wherever seems to be appropriate for me just because it's what I've always done.”
Knopfler said that the "business of making a record, from having written a song and then bringing it to musicians, it can be quite a bendy route." "It’s not just motorways all the way," he said. "You can end up in the occasional cul-de-sac, then you have to do a 16-point turn to try to get your truck back out on the main road, as unobtrusively as you can. That’s part of the fun of it.”
Mark Knopfler, ‘Down the Road Wherever’ Track Listing
1. “Trapper Man”
2. “Back On The Dance Floor”
3. “Nobody’s Child”
4. “Just A Boy Away From Home”
5. “When You Leave”
6. “Good On You Son”
7. “My Bacon Roll”
8. “Nobody Does That”
9. “Drovers’ Road”
10. “One Song At A Time”
11. “Floating Away”
12. “Slow Learner”
13. “Heavy Up”
14. “Matchstick Man”