I was a teenager when I first heard Mark Knopfler’s “Sultans of Swing” on the radio. He was part of the band Dire Straits, which he founded with his brother. They released their first album in 1978. While Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin dominated the air waves at the time, Knopfler’s unique blend of country finger-picking guitar and smooth jazz somehow seeped through the megarock FM stations.

Then I unexpectedly saw him live about 10 years later in Sacramento. Arco Arena (where the NBA Kings play) had just opened, and guitar god Eric Clapton performed the first concert there. I had no idea that Knopfler would be appearing, and I had no idea just how great a guitar player he was until I heard him upstage the legendary Slowhand. I had expected to be blown away by guitar prowess, but not by someone else.

Now it’s been 30 years plus change, and I’m still listening to Knopfler. No, not the old stuff that gets regurgitated on the classic rock stations that has my 12-year-old son asking me if I’ve ever heard of Pink Floyd. And I am thankful that he’s listening to “Dark Side of the Moon” instead of the dark undertones of Slipknot. But I digress.

The point is that it’s amazing how much new, fresh, original, truly good music continues to be released but somehow gets lost behind the MTV (ironic that Dire Straits has a song about that) and commercial radio blare or the exclusive underworlds of online music chat sites. So I thought I would occasionally share some of my discoveries with you, starting with Knopfler’s “Get Lucky” CD released Sept. 15.

“Get Lucky,” Knopfler’s sixth solo album, projects a confidence, craftsmanship and nostalgia that comes with maturity in music and in life. Knopfler returns to his northeast England youth through melody and lyrics exemplified in “Border Reiver,” a song that pays tribute to ordinary but long-lasting influences. I have to admit, I had to do a bit of research to find out that a border reiver was a Scot-Anglo raider in the Middle Ages, but Knopfler uses it as a metaphoric tribute to the dependable lorry drivers who picked him up as a young hitchhiker.

Regardless of Knopfler’s geographically specific stories in each track of “Get Lucky,” anyone with enough years for reflection can relate to his plaintiff “Before Gas and TV” or his universal teenage boy’s misgiven passion for a Corvette in “The Car Was the One.” When I listened to the entire CD, it was strange how a Celtic violin and cittern could make me think of Sunday fried chicken or lonesome loons in the swampy boot heel of southeast Missouri of my own youth. I came to Maine with my husband because of his idyllic memories of summers in Harpswell kept alive by the smell of brine and the sound of foghorns. Change the names and setting — we seem to have the same past that plays a new role in our present.

Knopfler was born in Scotland in 1949, but grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne. Like true country musicians of any country (sometimes pretentiously referred to by others as folk artists to distinguish them from the Nashville connotation), Knopfler gracefully brings his roots of land and youth to life in musical vignettes that range from an American blues sound in “You Can’t Beat the House,” to a classic Gaelic tribute to his Uncle Freddy, a bagpipe player killed in battle.

While the stories and musical styles make this CD one of my favorite Knopfler creations, my only regret is that he gives only momentary glimpses of his amazing talent as a guitarist. But, perhaps, he didn’t want to upstage his own stories, stories that we all have.

Emily Tuttle spent several years traveling and writing as a daily news reporter in California and Arizona. Music is one of her passions. She lives in Minot and works as a free-lance writer and ESL teacher.