Marcus King
#
302
Ranking
Rising Artist
BIRTHDATE
BIRTHPLACE
Greenville
,
SC
,
USA
30
Marcus King is a Greenville, South Carolina-born fourth-generation blues guitarist who was performing onstage with his father at age eight, dropped out of high school to pursue music full time, earned a Grammy nomination for his 2020 solo debut "El Dorado," and delivered one of Nashville's best albums of 2025 with "Darling Blue," recorded at the legendary Capricorn Studios where the Allman Brothers once made history.
Current Tour & Setlist
The Marcus King Band's "Darling Blue Pt. 2 Tour" is a 39-city North American run kicking off May 16, 2026 at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, hitting major stops including Nashville's Municipal Auditorium on May 27, The Anthem in Washington D.C. on June 3, The Met in Philadelphia on June 4, MGM Music Hall at Fenway in Boston on June 12, Massey Hall in Toronto on June 16, the Salt Shed in Chicago on June 19, the Fox Theatre in Detroit on June 23, and a West Coast swing through Oakland, Seattle, and Vancouver in July. Penelope Road and Willow Avalon appear as support on select dates, and fans can expect a setlist drawing from "Darling Blue" alongside favorites from "El Dorado," "Young Blood," and "Mood Swings."
Early Life
Born March 11, 1996, in Greenville, South Carolina, Marcus King is a fourth-generation musician who traces his musical lineage back to his fiddle-playing great-grandfather, through a grandfather who played both fiddle and guitar, to his father Marvin King, a blues guitarist who toured nationally since the 1970s with his own group Marvin King and the Blue Revival. Marcus picked up a guitar at age two or three, was performing live gigs alongside his father by age eight, and recorded his first studio track at age eleven on one of his father's albums, all while juggling club gigs that ran until 2 and 3 in the morning as a teenager in Greenville's local honky-tonks before dropping out of high school in his junior year to get his GED and pursue music full time.
Career Highlights
King formed the Marcus King Band in 2013 at age 17, released their debut album "Soul Insight" in 2015, and spent years building a devoted following on the jam band and blues circuits through relentless touring, drawing comparisons to Jimi Hendrix as a teenager and earning a reputation as one of the most gifted young guitarists in the South. He signed with Dan Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound label and released his breakthrough solo debut "El Dorado" in 2020, earning a Grammy nomination for Best Americana Album, before following it with "Young Blood" (2022) and "Mood Swings" (2024) under his own name. His 2025 album "Darling Blue," recorded with his full band at Macon, Georgia's legendary Capricorn Studios using Gregg Allman's 1966 Guild Starfire bass on one track, was named one of Nashville's best albums of 2025 by The Tennessean and praised by Forbes as straddling the line between old-school rock rowdiness and time-tested country twang.
Family & Personal Life
King married Briley Hussey in 2023, and his album "Darling Blue" takes listeners through his state of mind before and after meeting her, with the Blue Ridge Mountains serving as both a musical and personal backdrop throughout the record. He hosts an annual Marcus King Band Family Reunion festival, an event inspired by the childhood gatherings at his great-grandfather's house in the Blue Ridge Mountains where the extended King family would share covered dishes, fried chicken, and hours of picking and singing, and has held the festival in Black Mountain, North Carolina and at Firefly Distillery in North Charleston, South Carolina.
