Interview with Kingfish

Kingfish travels the hard road to Byron

Hailed by Rolling Stone as ‘a rare 21st century guitar hero and the undisputed future of the blues’, Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram stands at the crossroads of history and innovation, channeling the spirit of the Delta, while boldly reimagining what comes next. Now, with his new album, Hard Road, Kingfish is touring with this previously unexplored musical territory, infusing his signature sound with a genre-blurring approach fraught with creative urgency and heretofore untapped emotional range.

Seven spoke to Kingfish at his home in LA.

First and foremost tell me about your new record.

The album, Hard Road, just dropped, back in September. It has a lot of roots and, you know, roots of the blues, and so I just wanted to showcase that and it’s been great. Folks have been loving the material – it’s been awesome.

You’ve been to Australia quite a bit. You keep coming back. You like us?

Oh yeah, I love it for sure. Australia’s response to the blues has always been super great. You know, you guys love it. You guys don’t treat it like ‘yesteryear’ music. We always have a fun time when we go to Australia.

I imagine you have a lot of guitars. Is there one that you just really love playing?

Yes, the last year or two, maybe even more, I’ve been using my Fender Signature tele (Telecaster – it truly is a beautiful instrument). This is pretty much like a tele ‘Deluxe’. Also I have an LP (a custom Les Paul) that I really love – so those have been, like my two main guitars.

You’ve had a huge career from a young age – you just turned 27. How do you feel approaching your 30s, is your approach to your music maturing?

Definitely – the reason being, as I get older, I’m having more experiences, meeting new people from all walks of life, and influences in my music.

Of course, the older I get, I feel like my music will change as well.

Do you come from a musical family?

Yes, for sure. On my mum’s side of the family, my mum was a singer. All of my uncles and aunts sang and played instruments, so they were the first musicians that I was around before I started learning, and playing the blues.

Did you learn music at school?

I took music classes in school, but I was also part of the arts in education program that the Delta Blues Museum held in my city of Clarksdale, Mississippi. So I learned there and I also took some classical music lessons while I was in middle school as well.

You’re constantly touring and recording – are you still finding enough to inspire you for new material?

Oh yeah, definitely. Even when we were recording Hard Road, I was always making songs. I have a lot of material, for maybe at least two more albums. Even after we were done recording I’m always in the studio making songs and stuff like that.

Are you having enough fun?

Definitely! I don’t think I could do this if I wasn’t having fun, you know, it beats being at home for two years, you know, due to a pandemic! I’m always having fun when I play.

People hail you as the new innovation in blues. Are you finding that you’re battling between the old style blues and new things that you’re trying to bring to the blues?

Oh definitely. That’s something that I’ve been kind of struggling with for a few years now.

Because of where I come from people expect me to sound a certain way, but they don’t know that I have a lot of influences, and a lot of people that I draw inspiration from, that’s not blues. I’ve always been told that I have the potential to do stuff outside of the box and that’s what I really want to do. But the more you go outside the box, the more you lose the essence of what the music is. And it can be a slippery slope.

I think for me, the best thing that I can just do is just play – you know, somebody will like it.

Kingfish with special guest Ash Grunwald, is playing The Green Room, Byron Bay on Thursday, February 26 at 6pm. Tickets and information from www.thegreenroombyron.com