Mark Knopfler in studio making new album

Singer-guitarist Mark Knopfler is currently working in a studio in London with a group of musicians to make his first solo album since 2004's Shangri-La. Keyboardist Guy Fletcher, who's worked with Knopfler since the Dire Straits days, is keeping an online diary that can be found at mark-knopfler.co.uk, and he wrote, "Mark and I have been whittling away at his new songs here at British Grove Studios since early 2006, but with the many other tours, projects, bits and bobs on the go last year, we didn't really get as much time in the studio as we'd have liked... So on to 2007, and we're kicking off the new year with a month of sessions." There's no word on when they plan to have the record finished.

While the music has been in progress for the past year, Knopfler told us that he never knows how it will sound until he gets with other players: "What happens with a song is it sits in a notebook, and then when you start running it down with a band and stuff, it's when it starts to slide off your notebook and go out into the world. It's a great feeling, actually, when it's happening. In some ways, bits of it don't belong to you anymore, I suppose, or there's a sense in which it doesn't belong to you anymore."

Knopfler and country legend Emmylou Harris toured last year behind their album All The Roadrunning, and the shows resulted in the live CD and DVD called Real Live Roadrunning.
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