Kaki King - everybody lovesyou

Wed 3rd Jan, 2007 in Features

Consider the guitar. A hundred years ago it was regarded as a quaint, rustic echo of the 17th Century. Then, over the last handful of decades, it has undergone such a massive renaissance that today it seems every house-party is obliged to have a couch full of crooners fumbling their way through Green Day’s Time Of Your Life. Guitars are inescapable, and being such a ubiquitous part of day-to-day life you probably wouldn’t bat an eyelid to see or hear one being played.

But if you think you’ve heard all the guitar has to offer, think again. Prepare your peepers and prime your ears, because US guitar-playing phenomenon Kaki King is coming down under. And she does things a little differently.

Like a knife in the hands of a master-chef, King takes the everyday guitar and makes it do things you never imagined were possible. Her signature style sees her move both her hands over the neck of the instrument and play it like an awesome hybrid of piano, percussion and guitar with such fluidity and technique it takes your breath away. And now, for the first time, Australian audiences will have the opportunity to catch the 27-year-old performing in their own backyard, as King tours Australia over the new-year period to promote the local release of her first album Everybody Loves You.

King has been playing the guitar since she was five. “I was a precocious and naughty little girl,” she says. “My dad gave me a guitar to keep me occupied. My little sister sang in musicals and went to church and I listened to The Cure.” As an adult, King was determined to make music her life. Her meteoric rise to fame has seen her move from busking in the subways of New York to performing live on Conan O’Brien and Letterman, not to mention touring around the world with three critically acclaimed albums to her name, all in a few short years. It’s the stuff dreams are made of. For King however, the point at which she realised she’d achieved her dream was when she could afford health insurance of all things, “which was way later than you might expect. At that point I realised that I could do music and have a reasonable standard of living, which I’m very lucky to have”.

Her sound is remarkable in its versatility, encompassing everything from thumping rhythm to lush, sweet melody, wrapping the whole thing in so much energy and life that one could believe that she’s making it up on the spot. In truth, King approaches her music writing with a combination of spontaneity and serious consideration. Initially she avoided improvisation on stage, saying that the complex harmonies she is famous for were too involved to wing it. These days however, it’s a different story. “I’m a much better guitar player than I was, so making things up as I play live has played a more important role in how I compose these days. Sometimes pieces write themselves in an hour, but some of them take months of writing and thinking about to fully reveal themselves”.

As a public figure, it would be tempting to think that King’s sexuality would be bandied about as point of difference from other musicians. Happily, it would seem that the public consider it a non-issue. As King puts it, “Being gay is nothing special anymore. Thank God.” Nor does it seem she has been forced into the relative obscurity of being an esoteric gay-icon, having been embraced by music lovers of every scene and generation. “My fans rock. They are unbelievably diverse, but the common thread is that they’re all total music freaks.”

Despite all the buzz King has remained humble about her talents, and only recently began to feel she was a composer in her own right, rather than being constantly compared to those who came before her, something she called the ‘sounds-like’ phase. “I think I know myself as a musician much better these days, and I’m actually proud of what I’ve accomplished instead of being unsure of myself. I’m beginning to realise that lots of my songs really do sound like only I could write them.”

She’s absolutely right – the world is full of hundreds upon thousands of guitarists, but there are not many that are as unique as Kaki King.

Kaki King is performing around Australia throughout January. Click here for tour dates.