Joe Lee King

Guitarist, singer and songwriter Joe Lee King renews the best old school rock’n’roll, pop and roots music values for the modern age. A master of the electric guitar, he’s also an award-winning songwriter who knows just what hits listeners where they live, feel and move from making his musical bones over many years and countless miles playing most every stage on the Northeast club circuit. Creating music “somewhere between the hook-heavy pop style of Tom Petty and the gravelly frankness of Bo...

Guitarist, singer and songwriter Joe Lee King renews the best old school rock’n’roll, pop and roots music values for the modern age. A master of the electric guitar, he’s also an award-winning songwriter who knows just what hits listeners where they live, feel and move from making his musical bones over many years and countless miles playing most every stage on the Northeast club circuit. Creating music “somewhere between the hook-heavy pop style of Tom Petty and the gravelly frankness of Bob Dylan’s lyrics” as Musician’s Exchange observes, King stresses the song, feel, soulfulness, lyrical literacy and live performance showmanship as much as his formidable six-string skills. Now living and making music in Austin, TX, he’s a natural fit in a city known for both superior songwriting and great guitar playing. It’s all the organic result of absorbing the finest seminal inspirations and then taking them into new original directions that were then road tested and honed playing rock, blues, soul and more before audiences hungry for music that makes the good times flow. And also by time spent within the New York City club scene and record industry, as well as the musical mecca of Woodstock before finding his place in the heart of Texas. Along the way King has opened shows for such diverse acts as James Cotton, NRBQ, 10,000 Maniacs, Jules Shear and Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze and played numerous top clubs on the circuit from Richmond, VA to Bangor, ME and back again, making a living with his musical skills and savvy for decades. In his New York-based band Tripwire – hailed as “tough-guy pop/rock” (Modern Musician Monthly) and “roots music filled with good grooves, sweet guitar sounds, gutsy vocals and hit-home lyrics” (The Music Paper) — King was backed by the world-class rhythm section of drummer Shawn Pelton (the backbone of the Saturday Night Live band for 18 years who has worked with Bruce Springsteen, Sheryl Crow, Billy Joel, Shawn Colvin and others) and bassist Mike Stanzilis (whose credits include John Eddie, Me-Ow and hit songwriter Dimitri Ehrlich). During King’s Woodstock stint he musically mixed it up with Levon Helm and Randy Ciarlante of The Band, drummer Jerry Marotta (Peter Gabriel, The Indigo Girls, Hall and Oates, Tears For Fears, Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney, 10,000 Maniacs, Suzanne Vega and Joan Armatrading, to name but a few), bassist Tony Levin (Peter Gabriel, King Crimson and many more) and other notables on the scene. All along his musical journey, King has kept a sharp ear peeled to what makes music really work. Weaned and teethed on the hit Top 40 radio of his youth in Waterbury, CT, he came under music’s unshakable spell at about age 10 thanks to two events: “I saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show and picked up the guitar like 30 million other kids,” he explains. Then not long after “I heard ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ on the radio, got cold shivers and stopped dead in my tracks.” Taking up guitar while still in grammar school, by his early teens King was playing dances and graduated from high school into making a living as a musician. With some local pals he started playing blues, inspired by Paul Butterfield Blues Band plus masters like Little Walter and Muddy Waters. Performing for rough and tumble audiences in the factory town of Waterbury instilled in King early on the value of playing music like you mean it as well as music that means something. With the Connecticut clubs a regular stop between New York in Boston for recording acts of all stripes, he heard and absorbed lessons from the cream of the crop during a golden musical era. And just as important were such then-local stars as Big Al Anderson of The Wildweeds (and later NRBQ, now a hit Nashville songwriter as well as solo artist), Leslie West, Roomful of Blues, Duke Robillard and others. It was a milieu not unlike the one a little further down the Eastern Seaboard that birthed stars who King has been compared to like Springsteen and Southside Johnny. “I just soaked it all up,” he notes. “I loved it because I was earning money and playing guitar and getting better at it. That’s how I learned to play. But songwriting was also a strong point for me. I always dug the power of a great song. I’ve also always had this weird split between blues and pop-rock. And I’m trying to combine it all into one thing. When I play blues I don’t just play straight blues. I always try to mix it up.” Basing himself in central Connecticut as well as New York City for a bit in the late 1970s, King managed the not-so-easy trick of playing original music night after night on the club circuit with his own bands and others for many years. By 1985 he moved to New York to get involved in the record industry, and played and performed with Henri Watusi, a band made up of former new wave stars Polyrock, that recorded for Epic and Capitol Records. Determined to start making his own mark, he formed Tripwire and recorded what Sound Waves praised as “a convincing debut disc,” Virgin Mary Tattoo. Winning such kudos with the CD as “very pleasurable” (Musician’s Exchange), “arena-rock chops” and “radio ready” (Modern Musician) and “great recreation” as well as “writing [that] exudes savior faire” (Sound Waves), the band became a regular draw on the Manhattan club scene and even frequently played, of all places, punk music landmark CBGB. Migrating up to Woodstock at the end of the 1990s, King continued leading his own bands as well as doing solo shows and playing blues, including opening slots for Helm on his famed Midnight Ramble. But the signs that Austin was beckoning were already in the ether. He befriended and started writing with singer-songwriter Colin Brooks, now with rising Austin Americana stars Band of Heathens. And also got to know Flatlander and solo star Jimmie Dale Gilmore, who became a fan of King’s CD title song “Virgin Mary Tattoo” (of which Modern Musician said, “I could easily hear John Hiatt covering this tune with Bonnie Raitt providing the slide accompaniment”). He landed in Austin in 2008 and did time as lead guitarist in the popular Texas Hill Country band The Dust Devils while starting to develop his own act. He also won a 2009 SESAC Americana songwriting award for a song he wrote with Brooks, “Somebody Tell the Truth,” recorded on the acclaimed Band of Heathens album One Foot in the Ether. Now making his way onto the stages of Austin’s clubs and readying for his next recording, King brings to what he plays a broad backdrop of influences and inspirations as well as his veteran’s feel for making music with surefire listener appeal and impact. “I want to bring back into music all that is too often missing today” — guitar playing that speaks to the song as much as it soars and sizzles, songs rich with meaning and imagery that also hook the ear, singing that’s real and comes from the heart and soul, onstage showmanship, irresistible grooves and a feel good vibe that makes any show he plays special. Given how such stuff has proven its power time and again, Joe Lee King is ready to etch his name into the mighty Austin honor roll and the consciousness of music lovers far and wide.