Bringing the Blues
Ruston’s D.K. Harrell Reaching Out
The blues is a living, breathing organism — the lifeblood of the collective souls of the exultant, the downtrodden, the righteous and the damned. This past year has seen a bit of a blues resurgence into popular culture through Ryan Coogler’s rollicking Mississippi Delta Vampire blockbuster “Sinners,” a film steeped in the near-mystical ability of music to transcend time, space and generations, dating back to the dawn of man.
For some, the blues might feel borderline archaic, perhaps entombed within the fabric of the past, the fodder of retrospectives merely, or the odd standards album revisiting the glory days of juke joints and old school dudes picking guitars gifted to them by supernatural entities on moon-drenched crossroads. Its influences are legion; with nearly every genre of American music having incepted the lyrics, bass lines and instrumentation of the blues into their core DNA in some manner. But the true blues, the soulful sound of gospel and wailing, is as alive today as it ever was through a brand new group of singer/songwriters heralding the dawning of a new age of musical innovation. One of those heralds, the brightest and most prolific of his generation, is D.K. Harrell.
Born D’Kieran Harrell in Ruston, Louisiana, in 1998, D.K. found the rhythm that connects the blues and the divine early on, singing in his church choir around the same time he first heard the voice of B.B. King and sought to emulate him. D.K. found comfort and inspiration in many of the masters, with Albert King, Freddie King, Elmore James and Muddy Waters all flowing through his mind and guitar strings as he sought to find a sound as reverential to the past as it was forward-seeking and new. As D.K. preaches before “Praise These Blues”, the final track on his second studio album, “Talkin’ Heavy,” “If you listen to the blues, don’t be ashamed; for the blues and the gospel are just the same.”
Already touted as a luminary at the young age of 27, D.K.’s talents are being celebrated around the world, from festivals in Mississippi and Louisiana to shows in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Spain and Norway; spreading the good word of the blues while gleefully making it his own. From his first paying gig as an invited guest to the B.B. King Symposium in Indianola, Mississippi, where he played “The Thrill Is Gone” on his idol’s guitar, Lucille, to today, with the release of his second album, D.K. has been embodying the line between the saintly and the sacrilegious, the profane and the holy, that intangible imperfection that makes the blues played right sound so sweet.
“The past gives a blueprint that you can add yourself to. I keep progressing by keeping all the genres in the mold,” says D.K. on dkblues.com, “and I keep exposing my music to younger folks everywhere I go. I am hell-bent on crossing the blues over to a new generation of fans.”
The blues is alive, that much is for certain, and it’s soaring on the strings of D.K. Harrell.
