TRURO - Josh King just loves to perform before large crowds.
He's not always so enamored, however, with fan reaction after a performance, especially when dealing with those pesky, star-craved girls.
"After I'm done, before I could even sit down," he says of one performance earlier this year, "like five to seven girls come up to me and they line up and they start saying, 'You're so cool, you're so cool, you're so cool and you're so cute.' And one said, 'I want to marry you,'" the budding harmonica player says, via a telephone interview from New York.
"I felt like the Beatles because I was getting chased by girls. It got so bad I had to go down the escalator. I had to like ditch them in an area where they didn't know where I was ... I had my backpack and when I ran past the table, I'm like, 'Lighten the load.' So I dropped my backpack on this chair so I could like run even faster ...
"Let's just say, it was kind of a little bit annoying ..."
Ahhh, the price of stardom. And, Josh is still only nine.
"He's gotten phone numbers from little girls five or six years old and he's gotten phone numbers from women that are older than me," laughs Josh's mom, Joy.
Josh will be performing at next week's Dutch Mason Blues Festival as a special guest of event ambassador James Cotton.
The youngster began wailing on the harmonica about three years ago after his father arrived home from work one day with a surprise gift.
"He thought it would be a cute toy," Joy says. "He (Josh) drove us all nuts and we kicked him out of the house for a while because we got tired of hearing it. We kicked him out and told him he had to play it outside and he drove the neighbours nuts. But he eventually figured out how to turn that blowing and ear-piercing sounds into songs."
The strange part of it all, she says, is that her family at that point, was not even into the blues.
"He just took it up on his own and didn't know what it was," she says.
Before he took up the harmonica, Josh had already been involved in modelling and acting activities. At one point, after he had taken an interest, while in New York as part of his acting activities, they got connected with a harmonica instructor. And one of the first teaching tools Josh was introduced to was a James Cotton album.
A short time later, the two were introduced while Cotton was playing at the B.B. King Club in the Big Apple and the rest, as they say, is history.
"Let's just say, James Cotton is like a musical grandfather to me," Josh says.
The North Carolina native also plays a bit of guitar and piano, but the harmonica is his favourite, not only because it serves as a good lung exerciser (he likes to swim and it enables him to hold his breath longer) but also because of the effect the sweet harmonic sounds have on others.
"Every time my mom gets stressed out about something, it makes her happy," he says. "When I'm a little bit sad I usually play my harmonica. Play a song and it makes me happy. It makes everyone else have a feeling. Like, they're mad, it makes them a little bit happier and if they're sad it makes them a little bit happier."
Joy admits that Josh's playing can help her relax, depending on what he's playing. "Is it soft and slow and soothing?" she laughs. "Then yeah."
But the harp also allows Josh to express himself, she adds.
"He's figured out how to use that instrument to express how he's feeling, whether he's happy, or sad or anger," she says. "So sometimes when he's angry I don't want to hear it."
For better or worse, however, Josh has been bitten by the performing bug and there is no turning back.
"Let's just say I love being on the stage. It makes me feel like a star," he says, dropping his voice to a whisper.
And, as for the blues?
"Some people may say the blues is going to die. The blues isn't going to die until, like the end of the world," he announced.
