Dan has been the epitome of the self-starter musician. Examples of that independent spirit are his handmade, home-recorded, self-released recordings accounting for the majority of his albums. It wasn’t until recent that Dan received an offer to record in a professional music studio.

Dan now has nine albums all of which contain only original material. Of the nine releases, there is a Best Of Dan Knudsen (2000-2004), a live album: Live at Strange Maine (2006) and a tribute album titled, A Tribute To Dan Knudsen (2007) which features local bands and singers covering Dan‘ songs. These three albums highlight songs from his first two studio albums, Sunsong (2000) and Grass, Grain, & Appleseeds (2002). Dan released the Best of Dan Knudsen Volume II (2005-2010) on April 11, 2010. The album puts a spotlight on what he refers to as “classics” from his albums spanning the past five years and also features two new tracks as is the case with each of his compilation CDs incuding his live and tribute albums — all offering brand new songs which serve as a welcome bonus to devoted DanFans. His latest album, Lost Airways, released on June 22, 2011, features five new songs. The tenth album due out in 2012 will mark twelve years of recording for Dan. Quite an acheivement worthy of attention in it’s own right. Be sure to visit his music page and click on an album which will take you to his store where you can listen to songs buy tracks or the entire album (downloads or physical copies), read the lyrics, and check out some of his original artwork of which copies are available for sale as well.

Dan is a dedicated open-mic attendee at a few of the Portland venues. In addition to his regular appearances at these weekly spots he occasionally lands shows at venues allowing anywhere from a split-bill set to a full-length featured concert. It’s at these occasional booked gigs where he can be seen accompanied by other artists when they’re available to do so.

“As a writer and a performer, I really love the fantasy of it. Some of my songs, you know just like heavy metal music, and classical music, are very epic and they’re the kind of songs that could be used on the soundtracks of movies or TV shows. In terms of songwriting, and creating visual art, it takes a very child-like approach. Basically, I’m a teenager that’s trapped inside a young adult body, that’s why I love children so much – I’m a kid at heart, I like kids and I’ve written a lot of children’s songs and so it’s very healthy and it helps keep me young in addition to exercising.” –Dan Knudsen

In addition to selling The Sharks Are Gone posters and Creatures Of The Sand t-shirts, both containing artwork created by friends, Dan has and continues to create his own visual art pieces.

“I still have yet to mature as an artist, a visual artist and as I become more experienced I’ll be making better pictures but I think I am becoming more and more passionate about it and eventually, before I know it I’ll probably develop as much a passion for visual art as I’ve had for songwriting. Eventually I’d like to get away from just making album covers that have photos of me made on certain colors of construction paper—eventually, I’d like to start making CD covers that are like real pictures, not just one color of construction paper but basically like a photograph or a picture drawn with many different colors. I’ll get to that one of these years.” –Dan Knudsen

This brief biography of sorts was derived from a comprehensive interview.