In 1994, a young British band called the Hoax released a reasonably successful album called Sound Like This. You might even remember it. For me, the...
In 1994, a young British band called the Hoax released a reasonably successful album called Sound Like This. You might even remember it. For me, the album's strongest selling point—and the reason I played it over and over again back in the day—was the undeniable skills of the band's guitarists, Jesse Davey and Jon Amor, who convincingly nailed the late Stevie Ray Vaughan's playing style and tone. And, yes, I know that was "a thing" in the early to mid-Nineties (I did it too), but Davey—in particular—took it to mesmerizing new heights.
As Amor told The Guitar Magazine in 2015[1], "Stevie Ray was our hero…to an unhealthy extent. Anything he did, we decided we were going to do as well." This meant the whole SRV deal, from guitar choices (Fender Strats, obviously) to the thickest strings their fingers could possibly cope with.
Let's take a moment so you can see/hear what I'm talking about. Here's a clip of Davey performing in 1998:
If you need more examples, check out the guitar solo from the Hoax's "Scaramouche"[2] and this bonus clip of Davey in action[3].
Davey has stayed busy since those ancient times. Besides periodically touring and recording with the Hoax (voted Britain’s best blues band for five years and inducted into the British Blues Hall of Fame), not to mention the Davey Brothers and several other blues-centric projects, his impressive playing and/or writing can be heard on a host of feature-film soundtracks and releases by Mick Jagger, Ringo Starr and Dave Stewart. He also shoots music videos—hey, he's a multi-talented gent.
At some point, Davey—who always enjoyed tinkering with his gear—launched King Tone Guitar[4], a company through which he designs, builds and sells