Ya didn't want to wake me from the slumber I was in, Instead you just let me be. Ain't nothin' wrong with that, baby. Ain't nothin' wrong with that.

How I imagine an interview with Marcus King would go:

Interviewer: So, how did you come up with your unique sound? Where do you find the creative space to make your music?

Musician response: The music was already there – it just came through me. I guess you could say I'm a muse. It already existed in the universe and I am a medium through which it manifests.

Marcus King is a conduit for divine sound. Whatever might be his other talents, which I am sure are many, King was put on this earth to channel music. As his fingertips glide over the slender neck of his grandfather’s burgundy 1962 Gibson ES-345, he sings the blues of a man who’s been alive on this earth for much longer than 21 years. Strife, sorrow, heartache, love and joy. Blues ballads of a rapturous, yet painful at times, wondrous life. He gets it.

His voice and microphone finesse are nothing short of prodigy art, as Warren Haynes, Susan Tedeschi, and Derek Trucks I know would attest. He is “the anointed one” of the upcoming generation, and anyone who says “all the good musicians have died” has not been digging into the music scene long enough. And they most certainly have not seen Marcus King live. Marcus moves his crowd to tears, or at the very least, wide-eyed enchantment.

We showed up to his $19 ticket concert ready to rock, which we did, and we danced. But when it all was said and done, and we had cut a rug to our hearts’ content, all we could do was stand there, watching him in awe with arms crossed and mouths agape. This Greenville South Carolina native is what we’ve all been waiting for. His talent is taking the world by storm. Suffice it to say it almost made me feel a little less grief about Duane Allman dying so young in a motorcycle accident because whatever Duane left behind, Marcus is surely picking up and RUNNING with it.

 As I watched Marcus King beguile the audience, I could see Stevie Ray Vaughn, Etta James, Jimi Hendrix, Duane and Greg Allman and so many other late musicians looking upon him, smiling.

“Let there be music,” they’re saying from heaven, “and let it explode through the heart, voice, and fingertips of Marcus King.”