The King of Surf Guitar is coming to Ames.

Rumor has it that the Beach Boys used to open for him. He is said to use the thickest picks around and still manages to go through one per song. He invented the Marshall stack and influenced Jimi Hendrix.

He is Dick Dale, and he is a legend.

“When I play guitar, I don’t come to pose and play fancy pyrotechnic scales,” said Dale, who is known as the founder of the surf guitar music that came out of the late 1950s.

“I come to kick ass. I create sounds of frustration, sounds of Mother Nature, sounds of screaming and dying animals and sounds of happiness.”

Dale is bringing his kick-ass guitar playing to the Maintenance Shop tonight for what are bound to be two rockin’ shows. Rare is the show when Dale doesn’t break lots of strings.

Along with his latest album, Calling up Spirits, Dale has been in the spotlight for winning a platinum for the use of his classic 1962 recording, “Misirlou,” on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack.

And last year, MTV’s Beavis and Butthead aired Dale’s video for “Nitrus,” a song he wrote for snowboarders, resurrecting Dale’s name virtually overnight among younger generations.

Once opposed to touring, lately it seems Dale has been on the road almost constantly.

“I never wanted to tour because I never wanted to leave my family, my animals,” Dale said in a recent press release. “Now I can’t stop, and I bring my family with me. My wife and son often play on-stage at my shows.

“I stand on-stage and play for two hours until I’m ready to drop. I’m not going to retire to a rocking chair. When I do go, it’ll be up there on-stage…in one big explosion, in body parts.”

Dale’s history as a musician is long, if a bit touch-and-go.

He released his first album, Surfer’s Choice, under his own label in 1960. That album sold 88,000 copies.

Capitol Records signed Dale in 1963, offering him a $50,000 advance — breaking a record set by Elvis Presley in 1956. He made the token “Ed Sullivan” appearance, after which he hung low for awhile.

Dale revitalized in the 1980s, working with contemporary artists like Stevie Ray Vaughn and Paul Shaffer.

Considered a pillar of surf rock, Dale is now a concert attraction all over the world and has played shows everywhere from Britain to Japan.

Dale will be playing at the M-Shop tonight at 7 and 9:30 p.m. Tickets are still available for $12, $10 for students.