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Dean Knight plays bass as a guest artist with the Grateful Dudes when Bill Bryson is off touring with the Laurel Canyon Ramblers.
A school teacher by day, Dean sings lead and backup, and is especially popular for "Working on a Building", an old Bill Monroe gospel classic.
Musical History HighlightsDean started his interest in music with Elvis, the Beach Boys, and the Beatles, leading him to purchase his first guitar at age eleven. Playing in rock bands since 7th grade exposed him to a variety of styles and approaches to music. In the summer of ’73 he joined his first country-rock group calling themselves Parson’s Trail (in part after Gram Parsons and also in memory of a historical preacher frequenting the San Fernando Valley a century earlier). From this music he was led to bluegrass.
While visiting relatives in Canada, he found himself one night being casually entertained by a 20-year old banjo player from Michigan. Dean’s fascination with the pace and scattering of notes which pelted his ears that evening drove him to return to Sunland-Tujunga with a burning desire to form a bluegrass band.
From Parson’s Trail the country band grew Parson’s Trail the bluegrass band, which he stayed active with for about 3 or 4 years. A few years later, marriage moved Dean away from all music for the next 8 years until he got a call to fill in on bass at a pizza gig (bluegrass and pizza?). This was when he got serious about the music he enjoyed do much, bought some real bluegrass recordings and started taking this mountain folk music of the heart seriously!
Since 1989 Dean has played with Southern California bands like Liberty, The Walden Dahl Band, Silverado, Chris Stuart and Backcountry, and currently with Hazel Mountain, as well as Sheri Lee and Blueheart. He has worked as and taught sound engineering, as well as given a number of workshops on bluegrass bass, teaching bass at the British Columbia Bluegrass Camp in 2003, and twice at the CBA Bluegrass Camp at Grass Valley CA where he taught and performed in 2004, as well as this last summer. Hazel Mountain performed throughout the summer of 2005 at Disneyland in Frontierland. Dean has been teaching high school mathematics for ten years and in education for the last twenty years.
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To contact Dean, click here: dean-knight@grateful-dudes.com
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