{"id":3331,"date":"2011-08-10T01:00:25","date_gmt":"2011-08-10T08:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3331"},"modified":"2011-08-10T01:00:25","modified_gmt":"2011-08-10T08:00:25","slug":"kaki-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/kaki-king\/","title":{"rendered":"KAKI KING"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

KAKI KING<\/h1>\n

This \u201cmusician\u2019s musician\u201d intends to go where the music takes her<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Kaki King may be the world\u2019s most reluctant guitar hero. While she has been compared in the press to such fingerstyle giants as Michael Hedges, Alex De Grassi and Leo Kottke, King modestly brushes aside her reputation as a six-string virtuoso. \u201cCritics have been more interested in how I play,\u201d she says, \u201cwhereas my fans are more interested in the music I make and the songs I write. But I do understand that I\u2019m a musician\u2019s musician, and that\u2019s not going to change. Once you wear that hat, it doesn\u2019t go away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Essentially self-taught, the 30-year-old Atlanta native burst onto the scene in 2003,\u00a0unveiling a percussive technique rooted in her background as a drummer. While she became known for her fretboard-tapping skills, she\u2019s since focused her efforts in songwriting. Her 2008 album Dreaming of Revenge<\/em> saw her moving in a pop direction, crafting, in her words, \u201csimple, slow melodies on top of the crazy guitar playing I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

King\u2019s latest, Junior<\/em>, is in many ways cut from the same cloth as its predecessor. Both subtle and aggressive, the disc veers from celestial soundscapes to stormy,\u00a0riff-based maelstroms. Produced by Malcolm Burn, Junior<\/em> also finds King singing in an airy, ethereal voice perfectly suited to her\u00a0progressive-pop compositions. She spoke with us from her New York home about her\u00a0 music, her guitar style and her aversion\u00a0to practice.<\/p>\n

When did you first start playing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I learned to play guitar at age 5, but my interest in it waned. I focused on drums for a long time. But things stay with you. If you learn to swim or ride a bicycle at a young age, you don\u2019t forget that. The guitar was kind of like that for me. In my early teens I started playing more guitar\u2014as well as tons of bass and drums. But I had no expectations or delusions of grandeur. I just loved playing.<\/p>\n

Was there a moment when your playing went from conventional to something more avant-garde?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think of what I do as avant-garde. To the extent that my playing is unique, it\u2019s because I tune the guitar in odd ways\u2014and because I had the good fortune to be a drummer first. It\u2019s marked my music in an interesting and odd way. I\u2019m sure these things come directly from my background as a drummer. When I\u2019m doing something that involves an alternative technique for the guitar, the organization of my fingers and my hands feels very natural to me.<\/p>\n

Do you practice?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. When I\u2019m about to go on tour, or I\u2019m doing a gig, I\u2019ll have rehearsals and prepare. But I have a bit of paranoia involving the possibility of injury. I\u2019ve known many guitar players who have practiced incessantly, hunched their backs for ages and hurt themselves. There have been times when I\u2019ve given a hug to a guitarist friend at the end of an evening, and I\u2019ve detected that they\u2019re wearing a back brace. I never want to encounter that problem. My dedication to music takes a different form. I don\u2019t constantly go over the music I\u2019m making, which comes down to my not wanting to get hurt. That may seem ridiculous to some people, and maybe it makes perfect sense to others.<\/p>\n

What guitars do you prefer?<\/strong><\/p>\n

For acoustic guitars, it\u2019s Ovations. I actually have my own signature model. For\u00a0electrics I play mainly Hamer\u00a0semi-hollow bodies\u2014the Newport model. Hamer has been kind enough to send me three or four guitars over the years, and they\u2019re all different, very versatile and are great to record with. I also have a [Gibson] ES-345, from 1965. The only difference between that guitar and the Hamers is that the 345 has different electronics.<\/p>\n

What effects do you use?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I\u2019m playing electric I use a lot of delay, and I create swells with the volume pedal. I\u2019ll have some reverb and the delay pedal on, and oftentimes I\u2019ll strum a chord and use the volume pedal to create a particular sound. My rig is pretty simple. It consists of a DD3 Boss pedal, a great tremolo pedal called the Supa-Trem, an octave pedal and an OCD distortion pedal. I also have a loop pedal for randomly creating loops in the middle of songs. That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

Some songs on Junior<\/em> have lyrics, and some are instrumentals. Which <\/strong>comes easier?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The latter. There\u2019s something about the use of words that can diminish a song. [The\u00a0non-instrumental] \u201cSunnyside,\u201d for instance, from the new album, is almost too personal. You write songs for yourself but when you\u2019re putting something into the public arena you have to make decisions. In the case of \u201cSunnyside,\u201d I was worried that people might think, \u201cOh, Kaki is having a pity party,\u201d instead of thinking, \u201cGod, I can certainly relate to\u00a0this.\u201d It\u2019s a tough call. Hopefully people will think \u201cSunnyside\u201d is a beautiful song.<\/p>\n

Do you view the new album as an extension of Dreaming of Revenge<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not really. There are patterns that are similar to the last album but in terms of the way it was made and the methods we took, this album was very different from anything I\u2019ve done before. I usually write songs for an album over a period of six or seven months\u00a0before going into the studio. But this time\u00a0I wrote the songs very quickly, and worked\u00a0more closely with the band in the studio. I wrote all the material but the band certainly helped arrange things.<\/p>\n

Do you want to make your mark primarily as a guitarist or as a songwriter?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know that \u201csongwriter\u201d or \u201ccomposer\u201d is the proper term. But there are a lot of truly great guitar players out there. And I\u2019m not really one of those people. I play guitar in a way that caters to what I want to do,\u00a0and it\u2019s always a means to an end. But I\u2019m not the person to hire if you want crazy,\u00a0up-and-down-the-fretboard guitar solos. I\u2019m all\u00a0about my weird tunings, and my unique sort of approach.<\/p>\n

What are your plans for the future?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got a long tour ahead of me in the U.S.\u00a0and in Europe, and I\u2019m not looking beyond that. A lot of times it\u2019s not up to you. You don\u2019t always know where the music\u2019s going to come from, or what your inspirations will be. But then again, that\u2019s what makes this exciting.<\/p>\n

\u2013Russell Hall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KAKI KING This \u201cmusician\u2019s musician\u201d intends to go where the music takes her Kaki King may be the world\u2019s most reluctant guitar hero. While she has been compared in the press to such fingerstyle giants as Michael Hedges, Alex De Grassi and Leo Kottke, King modestly brushes aside her reputation as a six-string virtuoso. \u201cCritics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[49,970],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3331"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3333,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3331\/revisions\/3333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}