John Christopher Knight Family on NPR

Release Date: 8/15/2005. Expired: 8/16/2005

The Kentucky farming family that will bring its music tour to The Renaissance Center next month will be featured on Middle Tennessee public radio stations tomorrow morning.

The John Christopher Knight family will be interviewed and perform on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition program, which airs 5-9 a.m. weekdays.

The Knight family segments are scheduled for 6:35 and 8:35 a.m. Tuesday and can be heard on WPLN-FM 90.3 in Nashville, WHRS-FM 91.7 in Cookeville and WTML-FM 91.5 in Tullahoma.

The Knight family brings its Coool Bus tour back to The Renaissance Center in Dickson for a concert Sunday, Sept. 18. Tickets for the 2 p.m. show in the Performance Hall are $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and $6 for children under 13.

The Knight family’s debut CD, Way Down Inside, climbed the national record charts right alongside popular artists such as the Dixie Chicks and music legends like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. For more than a year now they have been touring all over the country in a converted school bus, playing sold-out concerts in a variety of venues with the tour schedule showing a break for “spring plowing and planting” followed by “farming time” on the family’s web site (www.johnchristopherknight.com).

Their performances feature original songs by Knight, family stories and several of his nine children performing on multiple instruments.

Their Coool Bus tour has taken them all over the southeast and every stop generates media buzz with numerous newspaper and magazine articles and television and radio appearances. They’ve been featured on NBC’s Today Show, CNN and PBS.

Just 20 years ago, the Knights were a typical suburban family, living in a five-bedroom home with two cars in the driveway and Knight a successful businessman, soccer coach and player. But Knight decided to make a drastic change in lifestyle while he was recuperating from a soccer injury that laid him up for four months.

Knight put the family’s belongings in a barn, sold the cars and rented a farm where he, his wife and their five children lived in a camper and a handmade shack. After quitting his job, Knight bought his own farm and, using only hand tools, built a barn and the main part of their new house. They hauled water by buckets for two years before installing a ram pump and gravity flow water system. The family, now grown to nine children, still lives without electricity, farms with horses and organically, and raises and trains border collies.

It was at a border collie event that the family was “discovered” while sitting around the campfire singing some of Knight’s original songs.

That launched a new life for the Knight family when the CD debuted at number 44 on the AMA Radio Airplay Charts.

So now, the family that doesn’t own a television or radio and had to borrow a battery-powered CD player to hear their own CD is traveling around the country and playing in front of sold-out audiences. Knight’s original songs invoke family themes and are intertwined with stories about his family and lifestyle. He is joined on stage by several of his children, most of whom play multiple instruments and join in on tight harmonies.

For more information on the John Christopher Knight and Family concert at The Renaissance Center, call (615)740-5600. To purchase tickets, call (615)740-5570.

The Renaissance Center is a fine arts and technology education and performing arts center at 855 Highway 46 South in Dickson, just 35 miles west of Nashville on Interstate 40 at exit 172.

Visit the Events - Concerts and Recitals page for more about musical performances.

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