King is well known on the club circuit, especially in the Marigny and the Ninth Ward where he often plays until the wee wee hours. King is the epitome of the New Orleans blues guitarist, whose party-friendly jams feature exhilarating volume and the texture that comes from well-manipulated distortion and overdriven PA equipment. That’s him rocking the theme songs of NCIS New Orleans.

King is not a likely subject for an audiophile release. On Going Upstairs King is backed by his regular band, but not the way they usually sound. In fact, the record could have easily been just King’s vocals accompanied by his own guitar playing, Lightning Hopkins or John Lee Hooker style. Kachkachishvili captures the nooks and crannies of King’s voice perfectly, the best point of the recording. The downside is that King’s ratcheting, hypnotic blues incantations are not well-suited to audiophile perfection. Every wrong note, distortion, fumbled ending and muddy passage is exposed with klieg lights, robbing the music of much of its dank mystery. The decision to include a live track from B.J.’s at the end of the record only serves to demonstrate what’s missing on the rest of the recording.