Background and Current Activities
Born on June 13, 1979 in Palmer, Alaska, King comes from a family well known in the wine business under the King Estate name. King attended O'Hara Catholic School from the first grade through the eighth grade. He later attended Marist High School before attending South Eugene High School. He dropped out of high school as a sophomore and entered the San Francisco Art Institute to study painting. He began playing drums and guitar around age 14 and wrote and performed songs with his current bassist, Drew Dresman. King began to focus on acoustic guitar at age 19, and in 1999 he released his self-titled album, followed by Opening in 2000. In 2001, after traveling through Europe, Ireland and Great Britain, King recorded "Le Bleu"--an instrumental acoustic guitar record which featured long-time friends and James West on percussion, Troy Sicotte on bass and Linh Renken on violins. Le Bleu was recorded at Peter Gabriel's "Real World Studios" just outside of Bath, England.
Inspired by Real World Studios, King returned to the US and began construction on his own studio "Blackberry Hill". The studio took about two years to complete during which time King toured the country as a solo guitarist opening for James Taylor, BB King, Diana Krall, North Mississippi All-Stars, Al Green and others. Just after building Blackberry Hill King recorded another instrumental record, "I-XII", with James West, renowned bassist Michael Manring and European guitarist Carlos Vamos. Shortly after that King started a band with James West (later replaced by Nadir Jeevanjee), Troy Sicotte (later replaced by Drew Dresman), and Ehren Ebbage (later replaced by Chris Plank). The band toured the country for about one year before being signed to a major label record deal with Epic Records in 2006.
The band recorded the self titled "Justin King and the Apologies" record at Justin's Blackberry Hill studio as well as studios in Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. The recording process took more than a year during which time the band continued to tour extensively throughout the nation as well as some international performances. After a large shakeup at Epic Records in which the president and the band's A&R representative left the company the band stayed on in limbo with Epic for about one more year before requesting to be let go from the label. Epic gave the master recording rights to the band and the album was released independently by the band shortly thereafter. After touring tirelessly throughout the year the band broke up around the end of 2007.
Since the disbanding of The Apologies, King has pursued an interest in photojournalism, having spent August 2008 in Iraq embedded with the Oregon National Guard at Balad Air Base. He accompanied the US military on patrols and raids as well as medevac missions and convoys. His photos appeared on the BBC's website and his stories were featured in Oregon's mainstream news publications.
King is currently finishing a degree in oil painting and photography at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon.
Read more about this topic: Justin King (guitarist)
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