Knox Global Tour Launches With New Album

Ohio singer-songwriter Knox has released his sophomore album, My Midwest Best, through Atlantic Records, and the Knox global tour launches October 9 in Boston. The record arrived October 2, led by the focus single "Sad Song" and its official music video. Across 12 tracks, Knox returns to the pop-punk and emo records that shaped him, naming Fall Out Boy, Hawthorne Heights, and The All-American Rejects as the blueprint. He calls the album his proudest work to date, describing it as the sum of everything he absorbed from those records and everything he has learned about making music since, and as a portrait of "what it sounded like growing up in the middle of nowhere, Ohio."

For the album, the rollout ran through the summer on a string of singles: "Go For Broke," "Long Story Short," "After The After Party," "Better Than Me," and "4.3 Forty." According to uDiscoverMusic, the record was cut mostly live and self-produced by Knox, whose full name is Finn Keogh, alongside guitarist Jimmy Lanwern over several weeks. The songs circle shame, accountability, memory, and vulnerability. In its review, Melodic Magazine wrote that the record moves between rock, pop, heartbreak, and humor "without ever feeling like Knox is trying to become someone else," landing on a simple verdict: Knox, "a little older, a little wiser, but still very, very much so Knox."

The biggest headline run of his career

The Knox global tour, billed as "Knox's Midwest Best Live On Tour," is a 33-date headline run that begins October 9 at Paradise Rock Club in Boston. The North American leg crosses the continent, with an October 15 home-state stop at Kemba Live! in Columbus, Ohio, and wraps November 7 at Marathon Music Works in Nashville. It is his most extensive headline trek so far, following a year of festival slots and support dates that carried his songs to bigger rooms. Emi Grace, Southcourt, and Modernlove join as support on select dates. Physical copies of the album, including signed vinyl and CDs, are available for purchase, according to BroadwayWorld, whose report on the Knox album launch and world tour covers the rollout.

The Knox global tour keeps going at the start of 2027, when Knox brings the show to Europe and the UK, with stops in Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, London, Amsterdam, Cologne, Berlin, and Munich. Then it is on to Australia in March, with dates in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. Demand is already outpacing the rooms: his spring date at London's O2 Academy Brixton sold out before the album was released, according to uDiscoverMusic, which covered the Knox tour announcement ahead of the album release. Knox previously supported Wolf Alice and played the main stage at Reading and Leeds this past summer.

An emo revival with Midwest roots

The timing lands inside a wider return of mid-2000s guitar music, and Knox's version is rooted in regional identity. The album treats Ohio as more than a setting. It is the engine of the songwriting, the place that gave him both the sound and the stories. Where other revival acts borrow the wardrobe of the era, Knox borrows its engine room: big choruses, fast drums, and lyrics that name the exact thing most people only think. BroadwayWorld reported that the record channels the bands that shaped his childhood into his most confident work to date. Knox joins a busy fall of album news on this site, from Take That's Dreamers album to U2's Carnaval de Luz announcement.

For listeners who grew up on the same records, the appeal is direct. Knox writes about the years when everything felt huge and nothing was certain, and he does it without sanding down the rough edges. "Sad Song" sets the tone for the record, and the Boston opener lands one week after release, giving the new songs their first real stage test. Knox said the album is a representation of where he is from, and on this tour that claim gets put in front of a crowd, night after night, on three continents.