On the dusty streets of Yuma, Arizona, under a brilliantly ubiquitous sun, Cameron Knowler spent his childhood picking guitar and racing motorcycles at the foothills of the Gila Mountains.  It was from this setting - a desert town gilded in silence, home to 90% of North America’s lettuce production and a high school that once functioned as a territorial prison - that Knowler developed his place-based philosophy of documentation.  An acclaimed educator, multi-instrumentalist, and recording artist, Knowler specializes in the art of the conceptual record, putting forth instrumental works that Folk Radio UK has referred to as “Western sound-painting.”  His craft follows in the theoretical footsteps of instrumentalist and songwriter Norman Blake and expands upon that territorial folk convention: Knowler brandishes a post-modern perspective on American traditional music that nods to both his formal theory training and his roots in the American West.  

Having never attended school as a child, Knowler found his way to the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music; and yet, despite an undergraduate degree in jazz guitar performance and a masters in archival work, he continues to resist the chokehold of normativism.  In addition to establishing himself as an esteemed sideman and solo artist, Knowler has developed an educational ethos rooted in practicality, theory, and intuition.  He maintains that life is not to be enjoyed but rather learned from, and continually gravitates toward vintage instruments for the purpose of wrestling with the discomfort they proffer.  While Knowler himself is ever-roaming the miles between Los Angeles and Nashville, his writing can be dependably located in the pages of Acoustic Guitar Magazine and Fretboard Journal.

Click here for an in-depth interview with Cameron on the Fretboard Journal podcast.