Having grown up in the tough, migrant, working class northern suburbs of South Australia in the sixties and seventies, King was exposed to the musical tastes of other British migrants names such as Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, Howling Wolf, Leadbelly and Robert Johnson.

He later earned a living as a truck driver, storeman, labourer, salesman and teacher and has drawn upon this myriad of experiences as fodder for his songwriting.Tony J King creates the music of a journeyman with roots in the street corner blues and folk of yesteryear. With influences ranging from James Elroy, Edgar Allen Poe, Homer, Kerouak and Joseph Conrad, King delivers a slow burnin mix of low fi urban myths, half truths and dark gospel in quirky musical tales honed from a pre occupation with the unusual, the exotic and the downright bizarre.