Band Bio

Every so often a truly explosive, blues-steeped star comes slamming down the pike. The '60s were filled with acts from Buddy Guy and Eric Clapton to Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page but each generation has since added to the legacy. Think of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robert Cray, Susan Tedeschi, Warren Haynes and Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

Now think of Davy Knowles. Think long and hard and toast a bright future. Hailing from the Isle of Man, the tiny kingdom in the middle of the Irish Sea, might have posed a challenge to that childhood epiphany for a lesser talent. Instead, Davy just borrowed his father's acoustic guitar and painstakingly learned to play "Sultans of Swing" by ear.

Fronting his band Back Door Slam, the 23-year-old British phenomenon with an encyclopedic grasp of blues-rock draws on influences from Robert Johnson to Rory Gallagher, gives it a fresh Celtic feel along the way. As a songwriter, Knowles puts the muscle back into the blues but also offers a progressive, folk-bluesy slant. "My music gives you a freedom to express yourself," says Knowles, who hails from Britain's Isle of Man. "With blues and with roots-based music as a whole, and with folk music, too, you can bend it any way you like. You can call B.B. King 'blues' but a lot of people will also call John Mayer 'blues', It's just the way you express it."

"Davy is very young but he already has got a recognizable style. He's definitely the gunslinger guitarist of the 21st century," says Frampton who produced Coming Up For Air, Davy's Sophomore Album.