A 21st-century bluesman raised in the heart of the Mississippi Delta carries with him both instant credibility and the burden of an illustrious history. Growing up in an environment so saturated with the imposing spirits of America’s musical past, a person might, you’d think, find it hard to pick up a guitar and even consider making a career with it. But Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, born 26 years ago in Clarksdale, Mississippi—the legendary stomping ground of Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker, memorably depicted this year in Ryan Coogler’s hit movie Sinners—doesn’t seem to have paid much mind to any of that. For him, the blues has simply always been a part of his everyday life.“Muddy Waters and B.B. King were the first two bluesmen that I learned about at an early age, before I even got to proper schooling,” Ingram said in a recent Zoom interview. “My dad showed me a PBS documentary on Muddy Waters and he showed me B.B. King doing a cameo on an episode of Sanford & Son. I remember those two things very well. And not only that, I lived right next to a blues band. Being around them definitely made me want to do what I’m doing now.”Getting from there to here—“here” being the position of critically lauded, internationally touring Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and guitarist—involved a mixture of raw talent, good genes (Kingfish comes from a musical family; the late great Black country star Charley Pride was his mother’s first cousin), and a supportive cultural infrastructure. Not long into his elementary school years, Ingram got involved in the music education program at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale. Starting out on drums in his church group at age six, he switched to bass by 11 and guitar by 13.“When I started learning about the blues, I wanted to get on guitar,” he recalls, “but I felt like my fingers were too big for the strings, so I moved to bass and that became my primary instrument. And when that phase went away, I switched to guitar. First I would do some of my bass fills and lines [on guitar], and next thing you know, my teachers at the museum taught me how to use the first two high strings, and once I started learning a couple of chords, I took it from there.”Christone 'Kingfish' Ingram's GearGuitarsFender Kingfish Telecaster Deluxe signatureBanker Custom V2001 Gibson Memphis ES-335Gibson ES-339Fender Custom Shop StratocasterCustom Michael Chertoff Les Paul-style electricFender Acoustasonic Fender RedondoAmpsTwo Fender ’65 Twin Reverb reissuesEffectsDunlop Cry Baby Mini WahMarshall ShredMasterBoss DD-3 Digital DelayBoss TU-3W Chromatic TunerStrymon power supplyStrings, Picks, & AccessoriesErnie Ball Power Slinky strings (.011–.048)Dunlop Jazz III picksShure BLX4That he did. Within a couple of years, Ingram was gigging locally and, thanks in part to his Delta Blues Museum connections, gaining national notoriety. At 15, he performed with the museum’s band for Michelle Obama at the White House. The emotional authority of his guitar playing in particular astonished listeners. Veteran bluesman Eric Gales told Blues Rock Review that Kingfish was “killin’ from day one … It’s a beautiful thing to see such a vibrant, intense, very skilled artist.” (Gales and Ingram have since become close comrades, referring to each other as uncle and nephew.)“Muddy Waters and B.B. King were the first two bluesmen that I learned about at an early age.”Ingram’s superb 2019 debut album Kingfish, the recording of which was financed by no less an elder statesman than Buddy Guy, turned plenty of heads in the music world; its crunchy opening track, “Outside of This Town,” remains an excellent introduction to the Kingfish style. Its 2021 follow-up, 662, won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album, and 2023’s fiery Live in London consolidated his status as a major modern blues force. His latest collection, Hard Road, presents a markedly different picture, though. No longer a Clarksdale resident, Kingfish now makes his home in Los Angeles, where he moved three years ago. “Sometimes I miss the simplicity of Mississippi,” he acknowledges. “But out here in California I definitely have more resources, more opportunities, and more ways to work.”That new reality is reflected in the songs on Hard Road, which were the product of collaboration with 11 songwriters and 12 musicians, recorded with three producers in 11 studios spread across two states—a level of ambition, and logistics, that dwarfs any of Ingram’s prior work. For five songs cut at various locations in Nashville, Tom Hambridge (Buddy Guy, George Thorogood, Susan Tedeschi), who’s been working with Ingram since the start of his recording career, took the reins. Patrick “Guitar Boy” Hayes (Usher, Trey Songz, Keyshia Cole) helmed sessions for four songs in L.A., Hollywood, and Irvine, California, while up-and-comer Nick Goldston oversaw two songs in Santa Monica and Memphis.As you’d expect, it took a while to put all this together. Ingram at first estimates a gestation period of three to four years, then reconsiders. “Probably even longer than that, because some of the songs that we used were from the 662 sessions,” he says. “But it was really when I came out here to L.A. and was working with Guitar Boy in the studio week after week when I wasn’t on the road that this project was born. I was a little scared, making a project with all these different genres. I didn’t want it to sound like a random jukebox thing, you know? I just wanted to do more music that showcased a lot of other things about my talent: the vocal range, the writing, stuff like that.”“Sometimes I miss the simplicity of Mississippi. But out here in California I definitely have more resources, more opportunities, and more ways to work.”Hard Road certainly achieves that goal. Riff-powered rock and luscious R&B coexist comfortably with more traditional-sounding electric and acoustic blues turns. “Nothin’ But Your Love,” for example, is an irresistible slow jam recalling Prince in his ’80s prime that keeps the focus squarely on Ingram’s rich baritone. “That was one of the songs we’d been sitting on since 2021,” Kingfish reveals. “A young man out of Nashville by the name of Dylan Altman came to us with it, then we added a verse and switched some things around. We recorded that in Memphis at Royal Studios, and for the solo I was using my Custom Shop Strat with just a little bit of gain on a [n Ibanez] Tube Screamer, going through a Sunn amp. I remember that session because I don’t play Strats that often, except in the studio—live it’s all [guitars with] humbuckers.”As Ingram’s comment makes clear, Hard Road’s stylistic diversity doesn’t mean an absence of guitar solos. For further proof, check out his slippery-smooth funk excursions on “Bad Like Me” or his psychedelic scorcher on the downright Hendrix-ian “Crosses.” Moments like these also demonstrate Kingfish’s multidimensionality as a player. Sure, he can lean into a gut-punching bend with the best of them, but his ear for melody and sophisticated sense of harmony are what really set him apart.“The Covid era was a little good for me,” Ingram says, “because I was able to sit back and [wood]shed and learn more about music theory. I was always into it, but I just wasn’t figuring out a way to play it. I’m still learning, but now I definitely know the numbers, and I can explain a bit of what I play. Shout out to a couple of guitar players outside the blues, like Isaiah Sharkey and Jerry Mosey and Uncle Kevin Wilson in the gospel realm. These are players that I listen to who are fluent in that area, that I can borrow stuff from and pull into my blues. Josh Smith, too, who’s one of my favorite blues-fusion players.”Of course, when showtime rolls around, the time for shedding is over and Ingram lets the spontaneous phrasing instincts that he’s cultivated for years take charge. Most of the time, he says, it’s not a process that involves the conscious mind. “For my live show, there are definitely spots in certain songs where I feel like a certain lick needs to go there, because it just sounds good on top of that progression at the time, so I do think in that way. But as far as soloing goes, it’s all improv.”“I was a little scared, making a project with all these different genres. I didn’t want it to sound like a random jukebox thing.”Another noteworthy fact about Hard Road is that it’s Ingram’s first release on Red Zero, the record company he recently co-founded with his manager, Ric Whitney (all previous Kingfish albums were issued by the respected blues label Alligator). According to Ingram, Red Zero is no mere vanity imprint. He and Whitney intend to build a significant stable of artists in the months and years ahead, inspired in part by SAR Records, the indie label founded by Sam Cooke in 1959 that was an early home to artists such as Bobby Womack, Johnnie Taylor, and Billy Preston.“My manager and I formulated this idea,” Ingram explains, “because we saw a lot of talented artists out there who aren’t being shown in a proper light. We wanted to give them an opportunity. Sam Cooke gave some people a shot who hadn’t been lucky like he was. So that’s pretty much all I’m trying to do. And me owning my records, of course we thought about that as well. But for me, the bigger picture was just shining a light on a lot of young and old and middle-aged talent, in the blues and outside the blues.”Early Red Zero signings include Texas guitarist Mathias Lattin, winner of the 2023 International Blues Challenge in Memphis, and St. Louis soul singer Dylan Triplett. “We have a lot of guitar slingers these days,” Ingram says, “but we don’t have much of a Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland type of thing going on, and that’s what Dylan has. We’re starting with the blues because that’s our forte and we want to take care of family first, but Ric and I are both lovers of music and we can definitely see ourselves venturing out into other genres.”
Before that happens, Ingram will be venturing out on the road once again, where he’s starting to like what he’s seeing. “Man, I think the blues is thriving,” he says. “And in a sense of young artists coming out of the woodwork, like the ones I just mentioned, Mathias and Dylan [both of whom are joining Kingfish on tour], and Stephen Hull and bands like Southern Avenue. It’s all out there—artists that are honoring the tradition but also creating a new sound and bringing that sound to a broader audience.”
Artists, in other words, like Christone “Kingfish” Ingram.
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