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Eugene guitar wiz plays on
■A youthful Justin King has
just finished his third album
and is planning his fourth
By Mason West
Oregon Daily Emerald
After four years of playing the
acoustic guitar, Justin King has put
one priority on his music: “It’s
more important to be moving than
impressive.”
At the age of 22, the local guitar
wizard has already released two al
bums and traveled the world pur
suing his craft and finding new
ways to affect people with his mu
sic. His skill has earned him a reg
ular spot at Cafe Paradiso on
Wednesday nights at 8:30 p.m. and
taken him to England to record ma
terial for a third release.
King started playing music with a
drum set but quickly found the elec
tric guitar at the age of 14. However,
it wasn’t long until he grew restless.
“I was playing a lot of stuff that
was angsty, like every teenager goes
through, and I realized, like proba
bly every teenager realizes eventu
ally, I didn’t like feeling like shit all
the time,” he said. “Part of my
movement away from that kind of
sound was a longing to be a little bit
more creative and a little bit less
down on everything.”
King made the switch to acoustic
guitar at 18 and since then said he
has viewed the electric guitar as
purely a melodic instrument that
“feels like jelly.”
King fuels his progress on the
acoustic guitar with passion and
motivation but not with teachers
and books. He has studied with
other musicians, but never in a
strict teacher/student relationship.
King defines them as “interactive
relationships.” King also briefly at
tended both Lane Community Col
lege and the University — but nev
er to study music.
“What I’ve seen happen is if you
remove the mystery completely
from music and make it just math
and formulas, you remove some
emotional aspect to it,” he said.
Despite King’s lack of formal
training, he said he fears that many
Mason West Emerald
Justin King (right) works with Billy Barnett, owner of Gung-Ho Studio, to edit the rough
recordings for King’s third release, due out early in 2002.
people limit his music to its more
formal aspects.
“A lot of people see me as a tech
nical guitar player, and that’s OK I
guess, but I really wouldn’t like to
be thought of that way. You can’t
cuddle up to technical,” he said.
King learns through experience
and collaboration. He spent a week
in France at the home of guitarist
Pierre Bensusan gathering new
ideas. He also traveled around
Spain learning about flamenco gui
tar by hanging out in traditional fla
menco bars. There he found a gui
tarist named Carlos who played
nightly at a bar called El Cabaret.
“He didn’t speak a word of Eng
lish, and my Spanish is like, total
caveman, but I would sit there and
watch him, and afterward he’d come
over and we’d just fuck around on
the guitars. I would just try and fig
ure out what he was doing, and he
was trying to figure out what the hell
I was trying to do,” King said.
King doesn’t claim to play in any
traditional guitar style because he
adds his own flavor to everything
he learns. He is influenced by oth
er musicians, such as Michael
Hedges and “a bunch of artists who
you would have no idea who they
were.” King is also inspired by
ideas, as was the case with a song
called “Locomotive,” which was
born simply by his thinking about
how to represent the sound of a
train with a guitar.
Sometimes, King’s ideas surpass
physical capabilities. A year ago, he
began toying with the idea of using a
guitar technique called tapping,
Turn to King, page 8
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