It’s hardly surprising that Kaki King was the first female artist to earn a spot on Rolling Stone’s venerable ”Guitar God” list. Through the years the 28-year-old Atlanta native has garnered favorable comparisons to such finger-style giants as Michael Hedges, Alex DeGrassi and Leo Kottki. Essentially self-taught, King burst on the scene with her debut album in 2003, unfurling a flashy, percussive, two-handed technique that she had been developing since adolescence. When you ask Kaki King about her album, Dreaming of Revenge, she’ll answer excitedly but if you ask her how being gay affected the creation of that album, her excitement is sure to be replaced by playful annoyance.
“Well, sometimes while I’m writing I’ll strum a chord and think Oh, that’s a really gay chord. Or I’ll strum another chord and think, that’s not gay enough,” the 28-year-old performer says in a smart-alecky tone.
“Sometimes I’ll write a straight, hetero sort of melody and then I’ll write a really gay melody,” she adds wryly. “I try to find a happy medium.”
On a more serious note she speaks about the influence or lack of influence being gay has had on the lyrics.
“They’re influenced by the fact that I’m human. I’ve never really written anything that I consider relevant to gay people or relevant to myself because I’m gay. Being gay doesn’t affect my music as much as it affects my life.”
When Kaki King went into the studio to record the tracks for her fourth album, Dreaming Of Revenge, her producer, Malcolm Burn (Dylan, Chris Whitley, Emmylou Harris), had one condition: "He said, `If someone can't be sawing a log in half and whistling along to the song, I don't want it on the record,'" King recalls with a laugh. And so the bar was set. Burn's mandate was just the push King needed to make her most accessible CD yet. "Even though half the tracks are instrumentals, I feel like I'm writing pop songs," she says. "We really concentrated on the melodies. Everything I write tends to be dense and cordial, but this time the idea was to layer the challenging guitar work under very simple, beautiful melodies. I really wanted them to be memorable." That strict attention to song craft is a logical step for King, whose previous album, 2006's, "Until We Felt Red" propelled this dazzling young guitar player and composer, known to instrumental music fans for her finger-picking, fret-slapping, and percussive thumping style, into previously uncharted indie-rock territory. Red found King branching out with songs that featured electric and pedal-steel guitar, horns and, for the first time, vocals. Dreaming Of Revenge picks up that thread, continuing her evolution from acoustic instrumentalist to full-fledged, multi-faceted songwriter. Previously, her whispery, ethereal voice was used as mainly another element in her sonic arsenal. This time around, King put more effort into both her vocals and the lyrics she wrote for such deeply felt tracks as "Pull Me Out Alive," "Saving Days In A Frozen Head," "Life Being What It Is," and "2 O’clock," the latter two of which she describes as break-up songs. “Well, I’m actually singing less on this record than I did on the last one. This time though, I’m not singing in such a falsetto voice, I’m singing in a much more natural voice. I think it just provides a different color to what I’ve been doing all along. The words mean something now," she says. "They're actually telling stories."
Kaki is open about her sexuality and it would be natural to question if this has posed a problem for her through her career with the fans and her label? “I think it’s a non-issue for me. I know it’s a big issue for a lot of other artists, who have been told at various stages in their careers to stay in the closet, but I’ve never had that problem. It’s absurd that in this day and age being gay is a big deal for a lot of actors, artists and musicians. It has nothing to do with their art. It’s so depressing.”
Being a musician is something that has been with Kaki since she was a small child. It is something she seems to remember as just something that happened. “I don't have a memory of first holding a guitar, but I know I was five years old when I started playing. I don’t remember not knowing how to play guitar. I wasn’t necessarily very good at first, but I do remember, not long afterwards, that playing felt very natural and normal to me. My formal learning mostly came from a year of instruction when I was five, plus, Beatles songbooks and my Dad teaching me a few things. From there, it was mostly a matter of learning by ear.”
On her latest album she handled most of the drumming as well which is a wonder, but how has it effected her guitar playing? “I’ve only realized recently that the impact is pretty basic. It has to do with the independence of the hands. Because I can do something with one hand while the other is doing something totally different, I can get twice as much done on the guitar. People sometimes see what I’m playing and go, Oh, my God!, while I’m thinking, actually it’s not that hard. But that’s really because I'm using techniques I learned through playing drums. I'm transferring that to the guitar.”
Guitarist and singer Kaki King leaves her audiences speechless. She uses every possible technique to get sounds -- from plucking, slapping, strumming and picking to percussion using the body of her axe. Her career has been great and is continuing to grow as her fan base continues to expand with her ever increasingly accessible music. M