Mike Campbell & The Dirty Knobs

While 2020’s Wreckless Abandon is their first official release and occasion to tour, The Dirty Knobs first came together 15 years ago after Mike Campbell met guitarist Jason Sinay at a session and liked the way their guitars sounded together. After adding the acclaimed rhythm section of bassist Lance Morrison (Don Henley) and drummer Matt Laug (Slash, Alanis Morrisette), The Dirty Knobs became an outlet for Campbell to work on some of the other songs he was writing between Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers records and touring.

They got together when schedules permitted, playing music without an agenda, expectations or deadlines, without worrying about outcome or hits, pushing boundaries of taste, imagination, and genres and creating some of the most brutally confident yet psychically dangerous rock and roll since sonic-renegade juggernauts the Yardbirds first sauntered onto a London stage and ripped into “For Your Love.”

As the years went on the Knobs played out here and there, almost incognito, in little clubs in Southern California. Looking mysterious and a little troubled in their mirror shades, neck scarfs, black shirts, and vests, they were propelled out of rock’s murky past but born full-blown.