"I heard the spirit of Jimi Hendrix coming from the open, streetside windows of a joint called B.D. Riley's. It was ‘Red House,' executed superbly by a surprisingly young trio called Back Door Slam.” – Patrick MacDonald on Back Door Slam at SXSW in the Seattle Times

Almost everyone, if pressed, can recall some key point in their life when a single event caused them to suddenly and dramatically alter course. To have had such a revelation at age 11 and to have made good on it—turning a spontaneous passion into a serious profession that demands lifelong commitment—now that's a little out of the ordinary.

“I was in a car with my dad, and he put on Dire Straits' ‘Sultans of Swing,'” explains Davy Knowles, 20-year-old guitarist, singer and principal songwriter of the blues-rock trio Back Door Slam. “I just fell in love with the music then and there. That track changed my life, and I realized, ‘I really want to be able to do that.' ”

The inspirational moment occurred on the Isle of Man, the tiny kingdom stuck in the middle of the Irish Sea (roughly equidistant from Belfast to the west and Liverpool to the east), where the teenaged trio coalesced—with this particular lineup in 2006. Knowles and drummer Ross Doyle, 20, had played together in a prior version; bassist Adam Jones, 19, was the most recent to join. Taking its name from a song popularized by early inspiration Robert Cray, Back Door Slam, has, however, acted rather swiftly on its intention to make good. Under the guidance of the same IOM-based management team that launched multi-platinum Grammy-nominated Corinne Bailey Rae last year, they have already issued a pair of EPs and a full concert DVD, wowed audiences at the U.S.'s taste-making South by Southwest conference, supported name acts as diverse as Don McLean and Elvin Bishop, and prepared an audaciously impressive debut album, ROLL AWAY, issued by independent Blix Street Records, best known for the catalogue of recordings by the late Eva Cassidy. That release was preceded by the band's first full American tour.

If conventional wisdom has it that the most popular activity of the young is rebelling against everything that preceded them, it's wisdom that is in need of some reevaluation. Both the general tradition of the blues and the specific experience of Back Door Slam refute it, in ways that support the linkage of all good music across any expanse of time or space. “Sultans of Swing” got Knowles started on guitar (“I nicked my dad's acoustic and figured the song out by ear. I must've played it for a year.”) and led him to his father's record collection. “That's where I found people like John Mayall's Bluesbreakers,” Knowles recalls with obvious fondness, “and, from there, I got into Eric Clapton and Peter Green in the early Fleetwood Mac, and [late Irish axe-man] Rory Gallagher, who I just love. Then I began reading guitar-player magazines and started seeing who the people I was influenced by had listened to, which is how I learned about Blind Willie Johnson and Robert Johnson.”

As much as the band enjoyed recording its debut long-player "Roll Away", playing live is “definitely where it's at,” says Knowles. “It's all I ever wanted to do: go on tour and keep playing.” Which is what Back Door Slam did throughout the spring and summer of 2007. On their Austin stop at SXSW, the musicians ran into a fellow artist with Isle of Man connections. “We got to meet Pete Townshend,” Knowles enthuses. “He was really nice and took time to speak with us. He went to school on the Isle of Man for a bit, and I think he's still got relatives there.”

The hook-up with the Who man further underscores just how far the young trio has come in such a short time. At the end of May, Back Door Slam performed on the same bill with The Who, as featured guests at the Isle's first annual Peel Bay Festival. It's not at all unlikely that their performance on that stage, and on the 11 tracks that comprise the ROLL AWAY album, will wind up affecting music fans just as deeply as “Sultans of Swing” touched Davy Knowles. A tradition continues.