If you haven't heard of Gary Clark Jr., you are missing out. He is a tantalizing blend of soul, blues, R&B, and grimy sweaty guitar solos. His sound is distinct and original. A perfect mix of old and new. His music speaks to you from a tall worn barstool in a dimly lit back ally blues bar. The sound has a sweet simplicity to it without being watered down in the slightest. Heaps of reverb, fuzz, and compression hit you all at once in a wall of carefully constructed noise. His latest album made waves getting played on all major indie rock stations. Though his sound is laid back, this man is blazing through the music business at a quick pace. Take a listen and see what this man is all about in this interview by Rolling Stone Magazine. Gary Clark Jr.walks into Arlyn Studios in Austin, Texas, like he, if not owns the place, could navigate it blindfolded, walking backwards and playing a gnarly solo. There were stabs at rock, rap and R&B mixed in with the electric blues on which Clark made his bones. Clark has made seven albums and few EPs, but this is only his second major-label studio full-length. Gary Clark Jr. walks into Arlyn Studios in Austin, Texas, like he, if not owns the place, could navigate it blindfolded, walking backwards and playing a gnarly solo. This is not a surprise. The 31-year-old Clark, blues guitarist, lifelong Austinite and increasingly famous recording artist, has just spent a year and change in this deceptively small studio working on and off to finish The Story of Sonny Boy Slim, the follow-up to his Grammy-nominated 2012 studio album, Blak and Blu. (The killer, self-explanatory Gary Clark Live appeared in 2014.) "I really wanted to just come back home and be in the studio, hang out and go back to my house,"said Clark, fedora pushed back on his head, wearing a V-neck white T-shirt and jeans. Which is to say that Blak and Blu was an L.A. album, recorded in Tarzana and produced by industry heavy hitters such as "Real Slim Shady" co-writer Mike Elizondo and longtime Green Day helmer Rob Carvallo. There were stabs at rock, rap and R&B mixed in with the electric blues on which Clark made his bones. Sonny Boy is a pure Austin product, written and recorded at Arlyn, produced by Clark with his live engineer Bharath "Cheex" Ramanath and Arlyn's chief engineer Jacob Sciba. From the screaming solos on "Grinder" to the stomping funk on the almost Prince-ly "Star" to the acoustic gospel (!) on "Church," everything on the tracks we previewed sounds of a piece, the product of an artist who can play almost anything he picks up, working with a tight, trusted crew. We head into a control room at Arlyn. "These guys," Clark says, gesturing to Sciba and fellow engineer Joseph Holguin, who are cueing up the finished songs, "put [in] a lot of hard work to let [...]
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