Born in Derbyshire, raised in Southport and currently resident in Moseley, Michael Weston King first stepped into the spotlight when, in 1992 after the collapse of country rock outfit Gary Hall and the Stormkeepers, he formed his own band, The Good Sons. Over the course of the next decade - with a year's hiatus during which time solo debut God Shaped Hole emerged - they released four albums before rising costs and declining sales forced them to call it a day.

Since then, despite constant frustrations with the music business's purse strings, King's carved an increasingly successful solo career, releasing a series of critically acclaimed studio and live albums, most recently A New Kind of Loneliness and Crawling Through The USA respectively, that have seen a shift away from alt-country to more folk and soul influences. as well as various live collaborations with Jackie Leven, Jeb Loy Nichols, Peter Case, and Andy White.

Now, backed by a lengthy tour, comes his latest, I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier, a collection of covers and originals that revives the, if not lost then certainly misplaced, genre of the protest album.

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In Praise of a Little Known Musical Instrument - A Small Wooden Box Called a 'Cajon'

Click to read all about Skuffle and the new album

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The Best Albums of 2008 - as voted by you

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