I was extremely impressed by guitarist Marcus King’s willingness to delve deeply into mental health and substance abuse issues when we sat down to talk about his strong new album Darling Blue. An edited version of our interview appeared in Guitar World - online already, in print in the December issue - but I welcomed this opportunity to share our whole conversation. I think you’ll find it interesting, and maybe even inspiring.
Darling Blue is the Marcus King Band first album since 2018’s Carolina Confessions. This may sound weird about a group that has been road warriors since they debuted with 2014’s Soul Insights. But King’s last three albums have been solo efforts, recorded with producers Dan Auerbach and Rick Rubin and their crews of session musicians. Emphasizing this back to his roots approach, King recorded Darling Blue at Macon, Georgia’s Capricorn Studios, where the Allman Brothers Band, Marshall Tucker Band, Wet Willie and many others recorded landmark Southern music.
“It was really healing to be back in that room,” King says. “And just to be in Macon, a city with a lot of magic and musical history.”
The album’s Americana blend also shows the influence of Motown, Sly and the Family Stone and King’s beloved South Carolina homeboys the Marshall Tucker Band. King’s passion for Tucker is highlighted by his role in the Toy Factory Project, a group put together by MTB founding drummer Paul T. Riddle to pay homage to his original band. It also features Charlie Starr (Blackberry Smoke), bassist Oteil Burbridge (Dead and Company, Allman Brothers), keyboardist Josh Shilling and fiddler Billy Contreras, who also plays on Darling Blue. The band debuted last summer with a single show, with more to come, as well as an album that also features Derek Trucks.
The paperback edition of my fourth book, Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s, was recently released by St. Martin’s Press. It was the third consecutive one to debut in the New York Times Non-Fiction Hardcover Bestsellers List, following Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan and One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. My first book, Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing, about my experiences raising a family in Beijing and touring China with a popular original blues band, was optioned for a movie by Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Productions. I am also a guitarist and singer with two bands, Big in China and Friends of the Brothers, the premier celebration of the Allman Brothers Band.
