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King, Justin
Published: July 2003
Story: Jeff Royer
Photo: Press photo |
A 30-second video clip of Justin King made a believer out of me.
There he sat, alone on the concert stage with a double-neck acoustic
guitar in his hands. On the lower neck, King's left hand tapped out a
frenetic melody line, his fingers jutting out in every direction in a
plunkety rhythm he duplicated by hammering the body of the guitar
like a bongo with his right hand.
And that's when King hit his stride. Without missing a beat, he slid
his right hand to the upper neck and started tapping out a
counter-melody, full of little nuances, finger slides, and rhythmic
skips. He was performing an amazing solo over the already-convoluted
lower-neck melody part. My jaw dropped onto the keyboard.
Hailed as a virtuoso by the age of 19, King (now 24) has spent the
past few years traveling the world in support of music greats like
B.B. King, Diana Krall, and Al Green. His current tour with James
Taylor will bring him through Central Pa. this month.
King has also been successful at translating his compositions to
tape, resulting in three critically acclaimed albums. It seems that
just about everyone considers King to be an absolute prodigy - except
for King.
"I definitely don't personally see it in that light," King says. "I
just really enjoy what I'm doing, and I kind of feel that people can
say what they like to say about it. And I appreciate the compliments,
for sure, but I don't necessarily take it that much to heart, because
there's a lot of better guitar players.
"It's just a means to express myself, I guess. I don't see guitar in
a technical way. I've never studied music anywhere. I still don't
know all the notes on a guitar," he laughs. "It's just not something
that I really have ever really cared about."
After cutting his teeth on the drums, King began experimenting on the
guitar while playing in a high school grunge band, of all things. "It
was a high school-issue guitar. I didn't know how to tune it or how
to string it up," King chuckles. His interest was sparked, and before
long he decided to teach himself how to make that guitar sing.
"It was trial and error, seeing what sort of different sounds I could
get out of a guitar, and the tapping thing sort of made me think of
doing the double-neck guitar thing," King explains. "It really does
take a lot of concentration, just because there's a lot of aiming
that you have to do with your fingers to get some of those things to
happen. But at the same time, it's really not a very intellectual
process for me. A lot of it's muscle memory, and then also just
playing the song, making melodies happen. And that part I think is
pretty natural."
The fact that King is an independent artist makes it all the more
amazing that artists like James Taylor are inviting him to accompany
them on the road. Already on a path to stardom, King shrugs off the
idea that he would need a major label to accomplish his goals. "I'm
always going to do my own music anyway, and if people want that, then
they want it. If they don't want it, then I'll just keep on making
it," King explains.
"A lot of bands go get signed because they need the money to do their
record. Luckily, I have a studio I can do my own records in. So it's
kind of a take-it-or-leave-it thing for me. Because I don't really
need it," he continues. "But in the future, I think I'd like to work
with a label that has some good distribution and some good marketing."
King expects his next album, a more straight-forward study in
songwriting, to be released in 2004. For more information and some
stunning video clips, visit
www.justinking.com.
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