Marcus King faces heartache, addiction, and mental health head-on in his music. Pain quakes below the vibrato of his voice, and his delivery weighs heavy with booze-drenched regrets and mistakes in lonely hotels. During 2020, he linked up with Dan Auerbach and cut his solo debut, El Dorado, garnering a Grammy Award nomination for “Best Americana Album.” Between headlining venues, he performed alongside Chris Stapleton, Greta Van Fleet, and Nathanial Rateliff in addition to gracing the bills of Stagecoach and more. He has launched various mental health initiatives, including a guitar auction collaboration with MusiCares. Now, his 2024 album Mood Swings feels like the moment of baptism when water washes away a life’s worth of sins and degradation and all that’s left is a revived, yet still real-as-hell primal scream. It’s as if King strained raw soul straight from his gut up through that broken heart and onto the record under the watchful eye of Rick Rubin. Emphasizing his vocals front-and-center more than ever before, the trusty guitar he’s so often associated with plays the sideman this time around (though there’s no shortage of impressive shredding). For as dark as everything seemed, you can’t help but feel a sense of hope in the power of Marcus’s voice.

Drew Smithers

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Jan 25, 2025

Marcus King: An Intimate Acoustic Evening Featuring Drew Smithers · Strings Music Festival

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