Judson McKinney hopes he has just joined the likes of Elton John, James Taylor and Tom Waits. All three of them performed early in their careers at the legendary Troubadour club in West Hollywood, where McKinney had the opportunity to take the stage on June 20.
\nUnlike the alums who headed to Nashville (see p. 20), McKinney headed to Los Angeles with a degree in philosophy. He\u2019s worked hard, pounding the streets with CDs, even living in his car on occasion.
\nBut it\u2019s paid off, as evidenced by his performance at the Troubadour. With a style that\u2019s been described as Americana, the singer\/songwriter\/guitarist is playing regularly at venues in Los Angeles and beyond. His new album, \u201cDrink the Wine,\u201d released by Atomic Sweater Records, cracked the iTunes charts upon its debut. And one of the tracks, \u201cPeople Grow Up So Slow,\u201d is soon to be featured in Michael Rosenbaum\u2019s film \u201cOld Days.\u201d
\nHis reviews describe him as \u201cboth straightforward and oddly mercurial.\u201d A reviewer from L.A. Record described the performance at the Troubadour like this: \u201cJudson and his Americana crew rocked the Troubadour and got everybody\u2019s hips shaking and faces smiling.\u201d LA Times has called him one of \u201cthe more compelling live acts around.\u201d
\nAt Clemson, McKinney played in a band called Sum Yung Gai, later known as Everyday Strangers, which performed at the now-defunct Joint, as well as at the Handlebar in Greenville and at clubs in Charleston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Judson McKinney hopes he has just joined the likes of Elton John, James Taylor and Tom Waits. All three of them performed early in their careers at the legendary Troubadour club in West Hollywood, where McKinney had the opportunity to take the stage on June 20. Unlike the alums who headed to Nashville (see p. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[3296],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumniprofiles","tag-winter-2013"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4952"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}