Lewis Knudsen is a singer / songwriter / music composer based in the Quad Cities, US.In 2007 – 2008 Lewis was waiting tables in Chicago, writing songs all the time, but not knowing what to do with music. He tried to start a band, it didn’t work out. Lewis constantly wondered what he was doing with his 20’s.
Lewis had also always wanted to travel, and learn another language, In early 2009, he decided to put music on the back burner and go to South Korea to teach English at Nokyang Elementary School in Uijeongbu, north of Seoul. Lewis actually did learn a decent amount of the Korean language, and his experience during these two years was transformative with a variety of life challenges and lessons.
In early 2011, Lewis returned to the US with a renewed sense of opportunity and adventure in life. He began playing live music in Senior Living homes, and quickly started playing restaurants, cafes, bars, wineries, basically anywhere that paid.
Lewis continued to play music while working part time jobs until eventually, as of January 1st 2018, he was able to earn a living entirely from music performance. He was definitely grinding, playing well over 200 gigs a year, but was living the dream.
As a celebration of the move to full time music, at the outset of 2018 Lewis decided to write and record a new original song every week. On any streaming service you can find all of the individual tracks from this project as singles, as well as an album called simply “2018” which is sort of a ‘best of’ from this ambitious songwriting project.

March 15th, 2020 amidst the COVID 19 pandemic, the shutdown happened and all the gigs were gone. Lewis started doing Facebook livestream concerts, including a 12 hour concert, and fans, friends, and family showed up in a huge way, but Lewis knew that he needed to look at other avenues of music in the long term.

In a completely unexpected way, the pandemic actually catapulted Lewis into the world of commercial music composition and after about 5 months, landed a song on a commerical in Paris, France for Ouigo, a high speed train service, and continues to write and record music for major brands all across the globe.

Lewis’ career is now a hybrid of songwriting, music production, and live gigs. As live gigs seem to be back in full swing for the time being, he plays live shows with a renewed sense of gratefulness. With all our video and sound technology, it seems that having people get together in one place is still the best way to experience music. The past few years have taught the lesson that nothing is guaranteed, and all should be cherished and enjoyed.