McKnight will avoid spectacle in isle shows

Brian McKnight is promising an intimate evening of music and chat when he performs two shows in Hawaii next week as part of his aptly named “Just Me” tour.

“It’s a one-man show, a piano, a couple of guitars. I tell stories. It’s part comedy show, part concert,” said the popular R&B singer and songwriter.

In short, it is the type of show McKnight believes in.

“There’s a difference between a singer and an artist, and the two don’t necessarily go hand in hand,” he said in a phone interview from Los Angeles. ”I posed this question on Twitter about a year ago: Do we go to concerts to see the concert or do we go to concerts to hear (the singer)?”

He was disappointed when a majority replied that they went for the spectacle.

McKnight — who plays nine instruments, including piano, guitar, drums and flugelhorn, and has collaborated with the likes of Quincy Jones, Mariah Carey, Justin Timberlake and Rascal Flatts — will perform Nov. 3 at Blaisdell Concert Hall and the following night at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center.

Looking back, McKnight said he feels lucky to have broken into the music business at a time when mainstream radio stations were open to romantic ballads. His first hit was “Love Is,” a duet with Vanessa Williams, in 1993. Several hits followed, including “One Last Cry” and “You Should Be Mine (Don’t Waste Your Time),” but he scored his career best with “Back at One,” which sat in the No. 2 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for eight weeks in 1999 and was certified “gold” for its digital download sales as a single. His Grammy-nominated album, also titled “Back at One,” was certified multiplatinum with sales of more than 3 million copies.

His latest album, “Just Me,” was released in July and includes 10 new studio tracks and 12 songs recorded live at an acoustic performance at the Avalon in Los Angeles in February.

McKnight, 42, is an outspoken critic of much of the music that currently gets radio and online play. He says it’s important that music “means something.”

“I would like to believe that people are going to bring that (idea) back, but I’m not so sure … Because of the Internet and because everything is so ‘right now,’ just about anyone can be a music star, and I’m not sure if that should be the case … ,” he said.

“There are so many people out there who are starving for what I would call, quote-unquote, real music, and the (music industry) is not servicing those people.”

Doing more than 100 shows a year, McKnight said he is content to sing the hits his fans want to hear.

“This year I finally came to the realization that it’s OK to sing the same hits that I’ve been singing for the last 20 years pretty much for the rest of my life because they came from a time when people used music to be the soundtrack of their lives, and I think these kids (growing up) now probably are not going to have a whole lot of that,” he said.

“When I first started my favorite singers were James Ingram, Michael McDonald and Stevie (Wonder), and it was interesting to see that at a certain point the guys didn’t have (record) deals and they were just out on the road and they seemed OK with that. Now I’m there and I’m OK with that.

“People still come out. They still sing the songs along with me just like they did 10 years ago. It’s great.”