Gary Clark Jr: I'm just playing nasty, wailing lead You don't hear a lot of guitars in contemporary pop music, and almost none in the dominant black urban forms. Clark remembers being at school in Austin, Texas, when a young, black friend from his basketball team asked him why he played electric guitar. He said, 'Black people don't play the blues. It kind of blew my mind. He first picked up the instrument aged 12. I loved the way it looked. My dad had these records at the house - Brothers Johnson, Johnny Guitar Watson and B B King Live At The Regal, and I was fascinated by the image and then the sound. The electric guitar can scream and cry and wail or it can be as mellow as you want it to be. Being kind of reserved, it became my way of letting go. At first, Clark played with other neighbourhood kids, who were fans of rock bands from the Ramones to Metallica. It was kind of these shy kids getting together by sharing licks and chords. It was cool. When he heard Jimi Hendrix playing Little Wing, something changed. It just flipped for me. It was so powerful. The guitar started to occupy so much of my time that I got in trouble at school. I would practise as soon as I got home at 4.30 in the afternoon until I went to bed at two in the morning. I still do. When I'm at the house, I'm attached to it. Always trying to figure out new things. It's like an obsession to keep expanding, figuring out what I'm capable of. At 14, he discovered the thriving Austin blues scene, where many of America's most renowned blues musicians get together and jam in bars. Even then, he says, he was usually the only black face in the place, but he was quickly welcomed into the fraternity. I kind of learnt on the fly. They'd say, 'Hey, we're doing T Bone Shuffle in the key of G, starting on 5, boom!"" He was taken under the wing of renowned blues guitarist Jimmie Vaughan, brother of the late, great Stevie Ray Vaughan. I was learning the history, listening to records by B B King, Albert King and Freddie King, T Bone Walker, Lightning Hopkins, Elmore James, Hound Dog Taylor, all that stuff. Then I really started getting into Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, Skip James, Elizabeth Cotten, the acoustic finger-picking style. Before you can get where you're going, you have to know where you come from. Most modern electric guitarists play with racks of effects pedals, so that it often seems they are operating their instrument as much with their feet as their hands. Clark, however, just uses the basics, wah-wah, fuzz and delay, essentially the same effects pioneered by Hendrix. I like to keep things very simple. I know some guys who are really into the technical side, pick-ups, knobs, frets, whether the guitar is rosewood or mahogany. They've got pedals and they've got other guys in the back standing on pedals for them. Man, that just seems exhausting. If it turns on and it works, then I'm OK. One of the things that sets Clark apart is his sweet, liquid singing voice, softening the rock edges of his band, keeping things in a groovier, more R and B frame. He still hasn't really captured his potential on record, releasing a handful of independent EPs that are soulful and technically adept, but don't reflect the hypnotic grooves and spontaneous explosiveness of his live shows. He is currently recording his major label debut album for Warner Music, with producers Rob Cavallo (Green Day) and Mike Elizondo (Eminem, Fiona Apple) at the helm. If they can bottle his mercurial talents, Clark might just be the man to bring guitars back into fashion. "The guitar has definitely still got places to go, I'm just not sure where," says Clark. I have moments at my house when I'm playing, and it will be four hours later, and I kind of snap out of it and I'll be like 'Whoa, where did I go? That's the sweet spot. I feel like I'm headed towards something. I don't know what it is, but that's the quest, that's the Holy Grail.