Dedra, David McKnight, & me
at a texas state band party
(circa January 2005)
Rest In Peace David McKnight. We lived one floor apart for two years and went to marching band practice every day of every football season together, but over time and distance, we lost touch. It took 4 months for me to find out that he died.
David McKnight was a brilliant saxophone player born March 20, 1986 in Houston Texas, who accidentally drowned late in the night of June 27, 2015 in the very river we spent so many nights of our formative years playing and frolicking in.
I was lucky enough to march with him in the Texas State Band, and live directly below him at the Meadows Apartment Complex, in San Marcos, Texas. We shared music; a connection that can mean more than conversation sometimes. I would lend the guys upstairs my vinyl records, and David and Xavier would return the LPs a month later, along with a cassette tape of that record's music, so I could listen to it in my Pontiac on my drives back and forth to Austin.
His horn defined the sound of the groups that were lucky enough to have him. Black Joe Lewis & The Honey Bears and Mama K & The Shades will never sound the same. If you haven't already heard the explicit version of Black Joe Lewis & The Honey Bears' "Tell 'Em What Your Name Is!", please go buy it now and listen to it through headphones, on a chair that overlooks trees or grass outside, and marvel at the gift that ended too soon.