On Tuesday, April 1, guitarist and singer-songwriter Kaki King will perform at Chicago’s The Empty Bottle ($15, 21+). Her current tour, which kicked off last Wednesday in Jackson, Wyoming, runs thru mid-April.
King’s music has evolved since her first two releases. Once a strictly solo acoustic musician, her last two albums have ventured into more electric territory, drawing upon influences such as post-rock and shoegaze. Nevertheless, King insists her songwriting process hasn’t really changed: “I still write songs the same way I used to. What I do to them in the studio, that changes.” She further discounts the notion that there’s a huge distinction between her earlier work and her more recent output, because, at their core, her songs still contain “catchy, strong melodies.” Listening to a variety of both instrumental and vocal music, King says she doesn’t “think of it as one or the other.”
How does a person even get into that style of guitar music? In her early teens, King started listening to artists like Red House Painters, Nick Drake, Michael Hedges, and Will Ackerman. At that point, King says she had reached a point in her guitar playing where she was “competent enough to go into new territory and didn’t really feel the jazz guitar route or the metal guitar route.”
Still, how exactly does one begin to play music like that? Don’t rush to get lessons. King says, “Initially, you have to venture on your own. Everyone has an instructional book, and there’s a lot of tab out there. You just have to let go. If you’ve taken many guitar lessons, it’ll be hard to do that.” King maintains that, for this type of music, “Pedagogy is not the way to go.”
Recently, King has collaborated with other musicians, notably appearing on the last Foo Fighters album and on Tegan and Sara’s The Con. For the latter project, King’s involvement wasn’t a huge formal undertaking — she has been friends with Sara for years. King explained to me these types of collaborations are “kind of an excuse just to hang out.” She notes, “It’s best when you’re friends, and you’ve been in touch. It’s so much easier when you’re not worried that, ‘Oh, my name is going to be attached to this project.’”
Before she made music for a living, King was a student, just like you and me. She studied music at NYU, focusing on what is perhaps better described as a literature-heavy “philosophy of music.” At the time, though she had been playing guitar, she never thought “this is the life for me.” On the topic of graduate school, King reveals that, if she hadn’t become a musician, she would have probably gone on to law school, following in the footsteps of her parents: “When you’re raised by two lawyers, your brain gets shaped a certain way.” In another life, King sees herself as “cuddled up somewhere, poring over books and research.” Lesson: if your band doesn’t take off, don’t dismiss law school.
Luckily for listeners, King’s music career did blossom. Check her out next week in Chicago and pick up her latest album, the stellar Dreaming of Revenge.
