Description

It s a classic rock & roll story: the chance encounter that becomes collaboration, then a band; the gathering of players and like-minded spirits that tightens and grows in songwriting, rehearsals and club dates; a debut album that finally arrives after all of the labor and waiting; the follow-up that beats a new set of odds and jumps ahead in vision and drive, proving the first record was no one-shot deal.

For Mike Campbell, External Combustion – the second album by his first band as a leader, the Dirty Knobs – is proof that lightning can strike twice. Campbell experienced all of the above and more with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – riding shotgun with his friend and captain as lead guitarist, co-producer and, at times, co-writer – when he met guitarist Jason Sinay at a session in Los Angeles in 2000. I didn t like him at first because he had a green guitar and a mohawk, Campbell recalls with a laugh. But when we started playing together, I realized he had good rhythm, good sound. And he worked really well with me.

The first album was about the boogie, affirms co-producer George Drakoulias. But External Combustion threw the net wider. Country firebird Margo Price sings backing vocals in Cheap Talk , a bluesy march in smokey orchestration, and duets with Campbell in the country-soul ballad State Of Mind , decked out with strings and brass in the frontier-symphony image of the Band. That s the distinctive glam-Dylan bite of Mott the Hoople singer Ian Hunter in the second verse of Dirty Job , while Heartbreakers pianist Benmont Tench brings the Jerry Lee Lewis in Lightning Boogie .

And in It Is Written , Campbell conjures ghostly wisps of Bob Dylan-like harmonica in a topical urgency that turns into a reflection about the devotion to one person, Campbell says – his wife Marcie. It s a true story about coming out to California, her taking me in. But that s not a harmonica – it s a piano riff run backwards.

The Dirty Knobs made External Combustion in three weeks over the summer of 2021, a few days at a time, Drakoulias says. Everything was coming off the floor – whatever they were playing, whatever felt good. That speed and raw commitment comes right out of the starting gate in the garage-rock torpedo Wicked Mind ; jumps to a Howlin Wolf-style shuffle in Brigitte Bardot ; and is there at the finish in Electric Gypsy , a blaze of guitars in waltz time that Campbell began writing in the morning and showed to the band in the afternoon. The Knobs cut the song – named after one of Campbell s guitars, a gorgeous instrument with a mosaic finish in mother-of-pearl and abalone – the same day in one pass.

The Dirty Knobs have now been a band for nearly two decades – and played about 20 gigs, by drummer Matt Laug s count, mostly in the cracks between Heartbreakers tours. But Drakoulias says it was at the early club shows that Campbell became a real bandleader with the patter, telling stories, communicating. That motivated him to work on the singing – to dig down, take it seriously.

Both he and Tom – being in a band was what they really loved, the producer adds. Campbell now has guys he loves playing with. He s trying to find his own world, one that feels like him.

And he s achieving that.

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