(electric guitar lick)
- What's going on, y'all?
This is Christone Kingfish Ingram
and I'm here to showcase
my new Fender Signature Tele Deluxe.
(electric guitar lick)
I got my start in a town called Clarksdale, Mississippi.
That's my hometown.
Town that's very significant for the blues,
has a lot of rich blues history.
I started learning in the Delta Blues Museum
Arts and Education program,
under the tutelage of two
nationally but known blues men,
Bill Perry and Daddy Rich.
Mr. Perry was the one that actually gave me
the name Kingfish.
So from that class, I learned all about the blues
and how to play guitar,
and bass guitar,
that was my first instrument.
And from there, I went on to start
playing for different like local blues bands in the area,
and ended up on guitar, and I have my own thing.
(blues guitar lick)
My inspiration for, you know,
from different players,
I know how to say, you know, the old school,
you know, acoustic guys like Robert Johnson and Son House,
to the guys who electrified it like B.B. King
and Muddy Waters,
and Albert King, and Freddie King,
you know, Magic Sam,
and the list goes on and on.
To the guys who like modernized it a little bit,
like Hendrix, Prince, Gary Moore.
Even guys of today like Eric Gales, Eric Johnson,
a whole bunch of players I listen to.
(blues guitar lick)
What I love about the Telecaster shape is that,
it's comfortable for me.
You know, it's always been comfortable for me.
It gives me like a, kind of like a hollow body
type of feel.
Not only that, I've always been into like
the humbucker sound,
so that's kind of the reason why I chose the tele deluxe,
and it definitely fits me because, you know
the humbuckers are there,
and it gives me that like really overdriven hard rock,
bluesy sound I've always wanted.
(overdriven guitar lick)
Well the inspiration behind the,
you know, the finish and term Mississippi night,
when it gets dark back home in Mississippi or the south,
we have a term it gets, you know,
like blue, black, you know?
I want to intertwine that
along with my favorite color of purple.
For me, Prince was the goat.
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's one of the reasons why I went purple.
You know, one of the two reasons why I went purple.
So I think the guys understood, you know,
exactly what I meant, you know,
when the light hit it, you know, you can see the purple.
And when the dark hits it, you know,
it looks like night.
So for sure, almost definitely Mississippi night.
(blues guitar lick)
I describe the custom pickups,
I think they sound like the 50s sound,
the sound that I was always used to as far as
kinda like humbuckers, so, you know,
taking inspiration off of Gary Moore
who's like one of my favorite LP players.
I want to have that sound that I can emulate.
So the pickups are definitely hard and edgy,
but you can dial them back a little bit
and they clean up very nicely.
When you grow the volume back,
it gives you more of a smooth sound, for sure.
(blues guitar lick)
The pickups will be definitely available
for anyone who's just looking to achieve my sound,
or create a sound of their own.
You could put them in a strat, tele,
whatever you choose to,
pretty much modify and make your sound.
The pickups will definitely be available for sure.
(blues guitar lick)
What makes it unique as well,
you have the bridge.
That came from me,
you don't have an inspiration, you know,
from the troublemaker tele that Fender made.
And only that, just playing a whole lot
of hollow bodies and other style guitars
down through the years, that I was used to.
So I wanted to bring it over to here
and it's definitely giving me that same sustain
that I would get in another style guitar as well,
so yeah.
(blues guitar lick)
I had a custom shop strat
a master builder, Carlos Lopez pretty much made for me.
And that was the neck that I chose, the V neck
and it was like very comfortable.
So I just wanted to like, pretty much like emulate that
when I was making my signature,
you know, just so I could be comfortable.
(blues guitar lick)
I've always had a thing for the large 70 head stock.
And if you notice,
I have the vintage style tuners over here,
rather than the modernized one.
For these, I just think they're more comfortable.
And I think for me, that's easier.
(blues guitar lick)
I would say the significance,
it represents Kingfish
and you know, it's a Kingfish guitar,
so I want that stamp to be all over the guitar.
(blues guitar lick)
Okay, if you notice we have the three-way switch here.
We're currently on the neck position.
We have a volume and tone control, simply for the neck.
You can go to the treble part here.
We have a volume control for the bridge and tone control.
And if you go into the middle spot,
this is actually my favorite spot to play chords in
'cause it's a very like warm, sweet spot.
You have, you pretty much have both the controls.
So you can pretty much control it,
but you can get like an array of tones with it, for sure.
(blues guitar lick)
This guitar definitely has gotten me
through the entire show.
Like I said, I really don't rely on much,
as far as like dynamics, I play really loud,
you know, on my solos,
but there are times when I, you know,
pretty much scale it back.
It's pretty much black and white.
So this guitar is there to pretty much do that for me.
(blues guitar lick)
You know, when I need to go loud and go hard, it's there.
I can just turn the volume knob up and just,
you know, hit everything.
When I want to be sweet,
I can nail it back and, you know,
be clean and be more melodic, and more soulful for sure.
It does that for me.
I've definitely held my own with this guitar
on the whole show.
(blues guitar lick)
The best songs for me are the ones that come out of nowhere.
But sometimes I do sit down and like, okay,
I have this little tidbit I wanna write.
I'd say for me, like writing about life
and taking inspiration from life,
is the best thing for me, as far as like writing.
Sitting there and just
going through something,
and you know, like little melody comes out, you know?
To me like, that's the best time for writing,
is when it comes outta nowhere, you know?
(overdriven guitar lick)
I say in the future, I say definitely be more music.
I have a lot of things I wanna do musically
as far as like intertwining the blues
with certain, you know, certain genres,
you know, certain things that showcase my voice.
I just have more music and more shows man.
And I'll hope there's more memory
to make in the future for sure, for sure.
(electric guitar lick)