| Tour 11/10/07 Theater de Uitstek Zwijndrecht 11/11/07 Thalia Theater Ijmuiden 11/12/07 Dekleine Comedy Amsterdam 11/13/07 De Oosterpoort Groningen 11/15/07 Zaantheater Zaandam 11/16/07 Stadsschouiwburg Leeuwarden 11/17/07 Theater de Tamboer Hoogeveen 11/22/07 Visy Theatre, Powerhouse Brisbane 11/23/07 Visy Theatre, Powerhouse Brisbane 11/24/07 Wah-Bar Adelaide 11/25/07 Wah-Bar Adelaide 11/28/07Clarendon Katoomba,New South Wales 11/29/07 Heritage Hotel Bulli, New South Wales 11/30/07 Studio, Sydney Opera House Sydney 12/01/07 Spiegeltent Melbourne 12/02/07 Elder Park, AIGF Adelaide Discography
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Kaki King is a five-foot guitar virtuoso from Georgia, and she has absolutely electric fingers. If you've listened to Tegan & Sara's 'The Con' or Foo Fighter's 'Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners' (which, as a side note, has a pretty awesome story behind it- wonder whether We♥Music might do a section on Disaster Songs soon?), that's her guitar work, but she has three albums of her own material out too.
She got her start busking in New York with an acoustic guitar after years of playing the drums, and built up a career as an instrumentalist; she only started using actual lyrics widely in her songs as of her last album, …Until We Felt Red, most notably on the song Yellowcake. …Until We Felt Red is a departure from her earlier purely guitar-based stuff, going for a more rounded sound with a backing band, electric guitars and vocals. It's more accessible, but you can still appreciate her skill.
If you're new to her, here's what you need to know: she's an explorer, investigating the guitar's full potential as an instrument, so be prepared for songs which, while they're smooth and calming due to their tendency to revolve around experimentations on a small handful of riffs, aren't no ways predictable.
Her music is navel-gazing and languid- think Sufjan Stevens, with a sharper, wittier and more concise sound- but I suspect a lot of her appeal as an artist is as a performer, watching how she works with the guitar.
She's Rolling Stone's first female 'Guitar God', if you put stock in that sort of thing, but her most distinctive quality is her complete utilisation of her instrument- plucking, thwacking, scratching, jamming on chords, fret-tapping and bass-slapping, a bit like Preston Reed. That, and apparently she never writes music; she just makes it up as she goes along, and if she likes what she hears she remembers it for next time. Perhaps that's an urban myth, but it's a pretty damn good one.
Apparently she's finished her new album, though it won't be released till next year. She's touring northern Europe at the moment, and will be in Australia in late November (though I couldn't get tickets, bah humbug, and think most of the shows may be sold out).
Website: www.kakiking.com
Myspace: www.myspace.com/kakiking
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