Meet Me In Memphis, the debut album by King Bee & The Stingers, plants its roots firmly in that city’s fertile musical soil but stretches across the blues landscape and beyond. From Chicago to the north, Muscle Shoals to the south, and even across the pond for some vintage British guitar finery, the songs spin tales of love, obsession, regret, redemption and more. “We started playing these songs in the spring of 2018 and started recording them shortly thereafter,” explains harmonica player/singer and band founder Mark ‘King Bee’ Menefee. “Then we played a lot of gigs over the summer, the songs changed, got better so we went back and rerecorded them.”
Menefee formed the band in 2007, but it wasn’t until his daughter, Sarah, came on board as lead singer in 2014 that the group began to come into their own. They steamrolled to the semi-finals of the International Blues Challenge in 2018 and 2019, gaining fans from around the globe for their expansive take on the blues. “We don’t play traditional 1-4-5, 12-bar blues, and I think that’s something that sets us apart,” Sarah comments. “It’s a very conscious decision,” she adds, “we don’t try to emulate any one blues sound or tradition in particular, we just let it all come together and flow naturally.” Over the course of Memphis‘ 10 tracks that natural flow is clearly evident; this is a band firing on all cylinders and ready for their turn in the spotlight.
