Exploring blues-rock sensation Marcus King’s creative uses of chromatic passing tones and colorful pentatonic mutations.

BY DAVID BREWSTER

AT THE TENDER age of 15, Marcus King attempted to sneak into the Orange Peel, a concert venue in Asheville, North Carolina, to deliver his demo to Warren Haynes. A decade later, King has grown into the real deal and established himself as one of the most celebrated young lions on the modern blues-rock scene. The gifted musical prodigy is brimming with creativity, inspiration and chops, bundled with a soulful touch, earthy, organic tone and confident and gritty, yet smooth vocal style that brings to mind that of Gregg Allman, as well as Haynes.

While King’s vocals are impressive and appealing, as is his mature songwriting, it’s the exciting and emotive licks and solos coming from his fingers that are the highlight of his musicality for guitar players. King’s adventurous approach primarily embraces and displays elements of the classic blues, rock and R&B guitar traditions, along with a good helping of gospel and Memphis soul and some country, jazz and acoustic folk and bluegrass leanings. His soulful style, especially when it comes to string bending and finger vibrato, reflects the formative influences of such legendary players as Haynes, Duane Allman, Toy Caldwell, Terry Kath, Jimi Hendrix, Dickey Betts and Derek Trucks, among others. Meanwhile, his more harmonically and rhythmically dense “fusiony” solos bring to mind the virtuoso playing of such technically advanced players as John Scofield, Eric Johnson, Jimmy Herring and Joe Bonamassa. Whether he’s playing his trusty Gibson ES-345 semihollow-body or his vintage Fender Telecaster, both of which he runs through a split-signal, biamp setup into two tube amps - a Fender Super Reverb and an Orange Rockerverb 50 MKII - King’s signature touch and guitar voice are unique and consistently spot-on.