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 Kaki King is a feisty, five-foot, funny, outspoken Atlanta transplant
who now lives in New York, a city whose energy is almost equal to her own. She also
happens to be the most exciting solo guitarist/composer to have come along in decades.
On her upcoming album, Legs to Make Us Longer (Epic), she blazes through a set of
original works with an intensity that reflects her world -- the subway platform gigs,
the late shifts at the Mercury Lounge, the surreptitious intermission entrances into
Lincoln Center to catch some Stravinsky -- more than the new age stupor that most
solo guitar music seems to induce.
Her music is as contradictory as the city itself. On the first track, "Frame,"
her guitar tolls like bells beneath an iron sky. Right after that, "Playing
With Pink Noise" dashes in and out of traffic, with pistons pumping. On "Ingots"
a steady, four-beat thump keeps time, a pulse beating as she runs through vistas
of sound.
For King, the guitar isn't just a reverie machine; it's a percussion instrument,
just like the drums she played with her high school band. Sure, there were guitars
around the house -- her father, a lawyer, was a music lover who spotted his daughter's
talent early on. "When I was about four years old my parents wanted me to take
music lessons, and I chose the guitar," she says. "But I didn't enjoy it,
so when I was five I put it aside. Then I started playing drums when I was nine or
10. I still play them. That was how I got into playing pop music, and that feel was
a big influence when I did go back to guitar."
For the next several years, drums were her passion, but around age 11, King began
experimenting with the guitars that her father had collected. She spent a month or
so working through a Beatles songbook. A new Fleetwood Mac album would come out;
she would read the tablature and figure out its songs. Then she moved on to edgier
bands and their guitarists: Johnny Marr with the Smiths, Graham Coxon with Blur.
She was around 16 when she became aware of the fingerstyle giants -- Preston Reed,
Michael Hedges, Leo Kottke and Alex DeGrassi - but younger, somewhat darker players
seemed more intriguing: among them Nick Drake, Elliot Smith and Mark Kozelek of the
Red House Painters.
Yet when she left for New York to begin studies at NYU, King still thought of herself
mainly as a drummer. She played around the Village with various bands. "I thought
that if I ever was going to get a break, it would be as a drummer," she insists.
That break never came, but opportunities to play guitar began to materialize in New
York. "The first time I ever played solo guitar in public was at the end of
my freshman year," she remembers. "I got up onstage at this student forum
thing and played three songs. I was incredibly nervous. Then there were a few little
joints, like the Sidewalk Cafe, or Cinema Classics in the East Village. Or a party
would happen in Brooklyn and someone would say, 'Do you want to play some songs?'
And I'd be like, 'Sure.' It all happened step by step."
Her commitment to the instrument took a sudden turn a few months after graduation;
King had been wondering what to do with her life, but on September 11, 2001, circumstances
pushed her to take faster action. Looking for a way to support herself in the wake
of disaster, she took her guitar into the subway and began playing for tips. She
worked mainly at night at stations along the L or F lines in the Village. More than
anything she had done up to that point, these performances transformed her into an
artist of fierce and fiery originality.
"The subways gave me stamina," she says. "It's a workout in every
way -- mentally, physically. To play for two hours in an ugly environment is very
challenging. But soon people were coming up to me and saying, 'Do you have a record?'
And I realized that if I could sell a CD for 10 bucks every time someone asks me
for one, I could actually do all right for myself."
Soon King was hawking a compilation of demos. She picked up a job as a waitress at
the Mercury Lounge, long established as a venue for breaking bands. She learned there
too as she witnessed some of the earliest shows of the then-burgeoning New York rock
scene. King says, "Watching all these bands gave me a greater understanding
of what it takes to command a stage and captivate an audience. Since the Mercury
is a popular venue for showcases, it also gave me my first glimpse into the machinations
of the music industry."
By this time she was out almost every night: at the Mercury, in the subways, in the
clubs, or in New York's most elegant concert halls. All of it fed her creativity,
which was now evolving with almost alarming speed. "I started writing things
with a lot of dissonance or with dangerous chords that don't really resolve,"
she says. "I'd be floating around, not in any key, which is what composers like
Stravinsky, Debussy and Prokofiev did. Some of my inspiration comes from 20th-century
classical music, which I'd never even heard before I'd gotten to New York."
King continues, "However, you're just as likely to catch me listening to Bjork's
Vespertine or PJ Harvey's Rid of Me as you are The Rite of Spring.
In April 2002, The Mercury Lounge hosted a release party for her subway CD. A copy
somehow made it from there to the Knitting Factory, which contacted King with an
offer to perform at their Tap Bar one night a week for a month or so. "They
actually pay you, so I accepted," she laughs. "But it was really difficult.
I cut my teeth on that gig. It's a bar filled with televisions and people talking
while you play."
One night somebody did listen. He had come to check out a band in the main room,
happened to wander into the Tap Bar in the middle of King's set. This fateful meeting
eventually led to the April 2003 release of King's debut, Everybody Loves You. The
record inspired the LA Weekly to write: "King is the most striking young musician
to emerge in decades." It was during this time that King also became a part-time
band member of the New York production of the off-Broadway smash Blue Man Group.
Since then she's toured incessantly, opened for an array of headliners (Marianne
Faithful, David Byrne, Robert Randolph, Keb Mo, Soulive, Mike Gordon and Charlie
Hunter to name a few), played a set at Bonnaroo, performed on Late Night with Conan
O'Brien, hurried to engagements all over the world, and pretty much single-handedly
-- actually, double-handedly -- dragged the art of solo acoustic guitar back to prominence,
with an edginess that matches the temperament of her own generation.
"Touring, touring, touring. It's what I love to do -- the stage is where I'm
most creative." While audiences have come to expect her guitar prowess, King
nowadays also incorporates lap steel, singing and other surprises to match the broadened
palette of the new record.
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