Amanda Knox at Eddie Vedder's house and on stage with Mike McCready of Pearl Jam

When he was in prison in Italy, accused of the murder of Meredith Kircher, Amanda Knox was looking for comfort in singing. “People in other cells learned to recognize my voice even before they know that it was me,” says Knox remembering the imprisonment period. «They led themselves from the cells towards the corridor and asked for this or that song. For a while I was a kind of human Jukebox ». When a prison chaplain taught her to play the piano, she began to practice in the cell on a keyboard designed on paper.

It is a story not too dissimilar from that of Eddie Lowerry. In jail in the 1980s on charges of rape from which he was in the end he was exonerated, he played the guitar given by the mother. “At night I felt radio rocks in headphones and I imagined I was on stage with those groups and my guitar.”

And then there is Bill Dillon, who wrote his first song on a roll of toilet paper in an insulation cell in Florida in the 80s. The piece is titled Black Robes and LawyersHe finished it using the equipment given by Lynyrd Skynyrd. “Basically he said: why nobody listens to me?” Dillon was unjustly sentenced in 1981 for murder and no magistrate (Black Robes), nor lawyer (Lawyers) He believed in his innocence.

After almost four years of preventive imprisonment, Knox was acquitted of the murder charge in 2015 (In January 2025 he was definitively sentenced for having slandered Patrick Lumumba to a three -year sentence already taken for granted between 2007 and 2011, editor's note), Lowerry in 2003 after nine years of jail, Dillon in 2008 after 27 years. The music they dreamed of doing during the imprisonment period has become real: now they are part of the exoneree band that recently performed on the occasion of the Innocence Network Conference of Seattle with Mike McCready of Pearl Jam.

“It was a mixture of feelings that went from joy to pain,” says the guitarist. It was his wife Ashley O'Connor, who principals the Washington Innocence Project's Board of Directors, to involve him. “Music is fundamental in the healing process.”

Last Weekend, Me and the Exoneree Band performed at the Annual Innocence Network Conference. I'm love to tell you a little about the band. BETWEEN US, We've Served More Than 102 Years of Wrongful Imprisonment. It's an Honor and Privilge to Celebrate Our Freedom With Music. pic.twitter.com/kxk8dbdibj

– Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) April 9, 2025

The exoneree band began to perform in 2011 at an event in Cincinnati, playing the song written by Dillon on toilet paper. “We organized a kind of talent among the acquired defendants of the whole country,” says Lara Zarowsky, executive director of the Washington Innocence Project. “There are a lot of talents in our community, music is one of the ways used to overcome prison trauma.”

In the first training there were Lowerry (solo guitar), Dillon (guitar and bass), Darby Tillis (voice and bass), Antoine Day (voice and drums) and Raymond Towler (guitar and keyboards). In total, 85 years of unjust detention were made. “I had some songs aside, it was not difficult,” says Dillon, who is on pause from the group waiting for a heart transplant. “The aim is to raise public awareness about unjust convictions.”

Since then the band has performed to the events of the Netrocen Network throughout the country and wherever it could. Jim Tulio, who won a Grammy, produced Dillon's solo album of 2014. Tillis died in 2014 and Dillon no longer plays, but are still considered in some way part of the band, which he now sees at the voice Knox and at the bottom Ted Bradford, who had to wait 10 years and the DNA test because the sentence of rape was reversed.

Last April 5 they played at the Seattle Rabbit Box with a McCready guest on guitar. “We did a couple of pieces of the Pearl Jam,” he says, that is Black And Yellow ledbetterwith Knox vocalizations. “I never play these songs without the Pearl Jam, but the opportunity was important. I promised myself to do everything those guys wanted. I am honored to be part of this thing ».

If You Misset My Other Post, Here's Me and Mike Wailing On Our Respective Instruments! And shout out to Ashley McCready, Robynne Hawthorne, and the rabbit box for hosting. I Try To Play Music AS Often As I Can -I Find It Cathartic and Healing – STAY TUNED FOR MORE! pic.twitter.com/lvd4fuwdwz

– Amanda Knox (@amandaknox) April 9, 2025

Knox, who is from Seattle, has known Pearl Jam for years. “They have long supported the battle of those who were unjustly sentenced and contacted me when I went home,” he says. «The first exonere I met was through Pearl Jam. It was Damien Echols (One of the West Memphis Three, editor's note), I met him at Eddie Vedder's house. Performing me with Mike on the stage of the Rabbit Box was fabulous ». According to McCready, Knox “has a nice musical intuition, with his vocalizations he added to Black A dimension of pain, beauty and magic that I tried to follow ».

In Seattle they also made the original Lowerry pieces including Name of Justiceon the crisis of the American judicial system, e My Cellwho talks about the nights spent listening to the radio imagining that he played alongside his heroes, a dream that has come true, being on stage with a 90s rock legend.

Now Knox would like to give the band some unpublished songs he wrote. He recently published the autobiography Free (interview at this link) and collaborated with Chris Ballew of the Presidents of the United States of America. «The musicians of this band are united by a special bond. It is a great thing to have the opportunity to tell our stories and to do it using an art form. It's something that has always been helpful to me ».

From Rolling Stone Us.