CMJ: Triple AAA: "One of last year's gems was David Knopfler's The Giver. Now he's back with "small mercies" the most distinctive and winsome music we've heard this year."

Hard Report: "David knopfler has put out a fine album that some people are calling "the best album Dire Straits has ever made"

R.A.D: "Like Van Morrison, Knopfler glides between styles with a smooth ease"

Folk and Blues News (USA): "A rare creative gem among the current tidal wave of singer-songwriter releases"

Rolling Stone: "another understated charmer"

Sing Out: "Another fine collection of detailed, touchingly human songs . . he makes beautiful recordings"

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Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Knopfler grew up in Newcastle Upon Tyne. With a guitar and a piano in his bedroom and a drum kit at age 11, it is not surprising to find him the master of the many instruments he uses. By 14, he was performing his own songs in folk clubs and although he has a college degree he can't recall any other aspirations beyond writing songs, composing and playing music.

In 1977 he founded Dire Straits, working intimately with chord progressions and arrangements with brother Mark, recording and touring extensively before resigning three years later to broaden his horizons. David has always made uncompromising life choices. This relaxed but disciplined approach to his work and his life, showing no regard for hanging out, or to the platinum discs piling up in his cellar, is indicative of Knopfler's entire philosophy. David believes in Success without Fame - Happiness without Hype or Glory, preferring the substance of real work and the loyalty of real friendships and relationships to those more fashion conscious, ephemeral insecurities that so beset the pop glitterati who like to be seen at the awards ceremonies.

He lives quietly in the English countryside, slowly notching up an impressive list of writing credits. An understated integrity and honesty define David Knopfler both in his work and private life. An uncompromising family man (still happily married to his first wife after fifteen years - a rare achievement in this business), his son attends a local school, where Knopfler makes the school run daily. A life-long member of Greenpeace and Amnesty, he is more prone to sending a cheque than using such organisations to further his own publicity. That he has deftly avoided the usual media intrusions and the drink, drugs - burn out - rock-n-roll traps for so many years, unperturbed in the marketing and promotion led hysteria this business engenders, is testament to David's consistent ongoing maturation and development. "I guess, like many others, I may have left the better part of my short term memory somewhere out amongst the empty brandy bottles and rizla papers of the seventies, but I couldn't say I regret anything ( Not that I'd remember it to regret it)"

Knopfler's heroes are rich and diverse, but if pressed to name influences, lists Randy Newman, Joni Mitchell, and Lowell George amongst many others.

David has been writing all his life: "I don't regard what I do as remotely glamorous. Anyone who's been backstage on a club tour, or been an airborne commuter, stuck in a 737, stacking at Heathrow Airport, will know exactly what I'm talking about. I write music to try to feed and resolve something in myself on an emotional and spiritual level, not because of any exotic desires for fame or popularity, of course I could be talking bollocks." David is well aware, that by writing songs that are honest and not wilfully indirect, he has however been lucky enough to touch a wide audience without prejudicing his own aesthetics. And while he has enjoyed the respect of his peers, critical accolades and chart successes, in his home country, England, he appears, with evident mischievous enjoyment, to have managed to keep his profile so low as to be almost invisible.

"I can't exactly say what gives a song or a story, power" he ponders, "but I sure know when I hear it. It's not a clinical manufactured thing. It's something you feel in a cold chilled tingle of excitement. Hitting that nerve for me is the whole drug of music. I wouldn't want to mess too much with it. Songs either work on your emotions or they don't."
David's activities in '96 will include: making another album, producing, directing and editing his own videos; developing design and animation skills on computer; regularly creating his own artwork for record sleeves; drafting architect's plans for a new recording studio; being a paid guest speaker for audio engineering students and others. As well as maintaining a substantial personal web-site, a monthly column in Europe, David has his first book published this May, Bluff your way in the Rock Business and he continues to write material for future albums as well as film and TV work.

"I'm only a strummer really" says Knopfler.

Recordings include : Release, Behind The Lines, Cut The Wire, Lips Against The Steel, Lifelines, The Giver and Small Mercies.

Numerous film and TV score credits include Jacob (Feature film); Shergar (BBC Drama); Brandon Lee's Soldier of Fortune (Feature film); Der Grosse Bellheim (Award winning Drama); and despite innumerable titles and underscores for serialised TV David has never recorded music for a jingle or an advert.

These are just some of the comments the press made about David Knopfler's last album "The Giver"

Q Magazine London: "Truly Delightful"

Hot Press: "A triumph"

"He manages to recall the ebb and flow of his former band, while adding a captivating eerie undercurrent"

Entertainment Today (USA): "In the tradition of singer songwriters such as Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman and Van Morrison, David Knopfler has produced a highly palatable collection of songs"

Disctinctions(USA): "Surpasses much of the recent material his brother's band has released"

Folk and Blues News: "The album that Mark knopfler might love to make"

Birmingham Post: "Warm evocative listening and if you've lost faith with Dire Straits slide into stadium anonymity, this should firmly remind you why the Knopfler name was so exciting in the first place"

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