Wilson T. King Pushing Modern Blues with The Last of the Analogues
With Wilson T. King’s latest album The Last of the Analogues, the British guitarist is attempting to expand on what people think of when it comes to the blues.
King was recently featured in Guitar Player, where he discussed what he considered a darker project, his motivation behind the record and the gear he used on it.
“My first record, Follow Your First Mind, was more of an experiment,” he said. “For this one I brought in a lot of the production skills I learned over the years working with indie bands. Songwriting became a little more important on this record. I think it’s darker, I think it’s more widescreen, and I think it’s got a bigger message. I found more spaces for the guitar to breathe in, free of what’s come before, which I think is really important for the guitar to survive as a contemporary art form. That’s why I did it: out of a love for the guitar. I can’t express that too vividly.”
While King used a ’69 Stratocaster on the majority of the album, he noted that he pulled out a Guild acoustic guitar for the lead-in to the bombastic track “This Mountain of Fire.”
“That’s a Guild from the mid ’90s in stereo,” he said. “It was a mistake how I got that sound. I had a reverb on it and somehow I had bussed it to another reverb with a slight delay. I didn’t realize what I had done for a couple of weeks but I thought it sounded brilliant. I think the mic was a Rode Classic, six to 12 inches back, aimed at the neck joint, and I rolled off the low end. I was definitely thinking Townshend on that, like on Quadrophenia or Who’s Next where he gets that widescreen acoustic sound.”
Read the full Q&A here and click here to hear “This Mountain of Fire.”
