The Reinvention Of Gary Clark Jr.

How the modern blues trailblazer has defied convention and broken the mould in order to find himself, pushing the genre in new directions along the way…

It would be fair to say singer/guitarist and multiple Grammy winner Gary Clark Jr. has a complicated relationship with the blues. On one hand, he learned virtually everything he knows about music from growing up in Austin, Texas – starting with his experiences at the local Baptist church where he backed the choir and later at Antone’s, the club in which Stevie Ray Vaughan and his elder brother Jimmie had famously cut their teeth some decades prior. These early years were pivotal in moulding Clark as one of the most commercially successful, critically revered and musically diverse guitar heroes of the modern age – a man who’s played with everyone from BB King and JeffBeck to Alicia Keys and Foo Fighters and comfortably held his own...

“The first time I walked into Antone’s was kinda mind-blowing,” he told this writer around the release of his 2015 album, The Story of Sonny Boy Slim. “It was something I don’t really know how to describe, there was this feeling that brought depth to my life. Clifford Antone [now deceased] took me in and brought me under his wing. He introduced me to Jimmie Vaughan, Hubert Sumlin, Calvin ‘Fuzz’ Jones, Pinetop Perkins – all these greats that played with Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf.