Springfield, Illinois native Daniel Knox escaped to the big city in 1999 to attend film school. Intent on composing his own scores, he began sneaking into the Hilton Tower’s Grand Ballroom to teach himself to play the piano. Years later, he has amassed a dark and diverse repertoire, addictive as much for its narrative and lyrical deftness as for its musical lure.

In January of 2007, Knox accompanied filmmaker David Lynch on organ for the Chicago premier of Inland Empire at the historic Music Box Theater (where he also works as a projectionist). Next came a series of group shows at London’s fashionable Barbican Theater, his first tours in the US, UK and Ireland, and a performance with Rufus Wainwright and opera star, Jessye Norman at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center.

More recently, Knox contributed vocals to Jarvis Cocker’s 2009 album Further Complications, lent a song to the short film Taxidermist (Winner Palm Springs International Film Festival 2009 - Bertie Films, UK) and shared stages with Cocker, the Fiery Furnaces, A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Sharon van Etten, and the Handsome Family.

Knox recorded Evryman for Himself at home in his Chicago bedroom. It is the second album in an envisioned trilogy, falling in between the self-released Disaster and the forthcoming, Chasescene. Some of the songs lure, some lilt and jeer, but all are stamped with his contagious melodies and preoccupation with styles of the 1920’s – a peculiar package for his lyrical jabs and barbs.

A Harold Arlen for the darker set, he bellows tales of disillusionment, obsession, and criminal intent. Daniel Knox is a rogue at the piano, crooning, sneering and shouting so that his cast of characters may speak.

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