Christone "Kingfish" Ingram
Blues
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 looks back at his extraordinary GRAMMY® Award-winning journey thus far by lighting out for previously unexplored musical territory, infusing his signature sound with a genre-blurring approach fraught with creative urgency and heretofore untapped emotional range.
Executive Produced by Ingram and Ric Whitney for Kingfish’s newly minted Red Zero Records with production by Patrick “Guitar Boy” Hayes, Nick Goldston, and longtime collaborator Tom Hambridge, Hard Road is Ingram’s most sophisticated and musically ambitious collection yet, one which renews the long tradition of the blues by welding it to multiple strains of contemporary Black music. Songs like “Nothin’ But Your Love” and the fiery “Voodoo Charm” see Kingfish effortlessly uniting classic blues licks with hard rock, no-holds-barred funk, soulful pop, and velvety R&B, all with resounding immediacy and astounding eloquence. With each album, Kingfish has upped his already prodigious game, not only in his breathtaking guitar playing but in the increasing strength of his deeply personal songcraft and vocals marked by a depth of expression well beyond his 26 years.
“I feel like this is one of the first times people will be seeing me outside of just the blues thing,” Kingfish says. “ I’ve always wanted to do music that showcases my voice and my songwriting as well as my guitar playing. And I feel like this is the first album that showcases this approach.”
A native son of Clarksdale, Mississippi — the de-facto Ground Zero for the Delta blues, just a stone’s throw from the fabled crossroads where Robert Johnson made his fateful deal with the devil — Kingfish’s six-string prowess first turned heads when he was still but a teenager. Though steeped in the tones of B.B. King, Albert King, and Buddy Guy, what set Ingram apart was how he expanded the form, blending in funk, soul, rock, pop, and jazz to create what has proven an evolving body of work that has drawn accolades, acclaim, and honors from all corners of the globe. 2019’s debut album, Kingfish, topped Billboard’s “Blues Albums” for an incredible 91 weeks and earned him his first GRAMMY® Award nomination, plus three Blues Music Awards, including “Album of the Year.” Kingfish followed up with 2021’s 662, titled after his hometown MS area code, which won both the GRAMMY® Award and Blues Music Award for “Best Contemporary Blues Album.” In 2023, the incendiary Live In London received yet another GRAMMY® Award nomination as well as his second Blues Music Award for “Album of the Year” and third consecutive triumph in the “Best Contemporary Blues Album.”
Having now seen the world and returned home irrevocably changed, Kingfish was determined to push himself as a songwriter, baring his soul and revealing new shades to his character. “Crosses” showcases Kingfish’s personal spirituality with a righteous roar of rock ‘n’ roll testimony while “Clearly” and the heartbreaking “Hard To Love” sees him reaching acceptance that the path he’s chosen for himself is strewn with both the highest of highs but also agonizing lows.
“I’m still learning this songwriting thing as I go,” says Kingfish. “I learned telling your story is the best story. I’m having more personal life experiences as I go and that plays a big part in the songwriting. I always try to get a little bit more personal than before. I have a journal pad here in the studio but most of the time I’m pretty much writing on my phone. The writing goes on in the studio, it goes on in the hotel room and on the bus. If the line comes, I’ll just jot it down in my notes. I feel like, for musicians, that part of us kind of never turns off.”
Dripping with lusty energy and bewitching sensuality, the slinky funk of “S.S.S.” expands the parameters of Kingfish’s music to incorporate other facets of his personal tastes. The elemental power of his guitar remains at the center, with its searing tone and squalls of blistering leads, but Hard Road makes unexpected stops at smooth R&B, pop, and neo-soul, genres that tend to demand a bit more delicacy in their arrangements and instrumentation.
“In those genres of music, you have to be a little more restrained with your playing,” Kingfish says. “You have to tell a story rather than being all over the place. That’s a good thing, because it showcases another side of my playing, rather than people thinking that I might be a one trick pony when it comes to guitar techniques."
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