Kaki King contemplate more than rock
'n' roll
Chad Berndtson - The Patriot
Ledger, 30 January 2004
When Kaki King play guitar, a picking performance becomes an exercise in percussive
histrionics. A diminuitive and modest performer, she lets her intensely honed technical
prowess and penchant for writing inspired instrumentals form a stage personality
that suggest a rock 'n' roll education but also brims with a contemplative, Pat ;etheny
- esque feel.
"It's all really just me," king said, as modest talker as she is effusive
a player. " I spent many years learning a different style of guitar playing
and other instruments, and finally putting all togheter". Twenty-four years
old and originally from Atlanta, she's an unassuming dazzler, and her Wednesday night
appearance at Harper Ferry in Allston will no doubt drop a few more jaws from those
who aren't converts already. Her instrumentals range from the Michael Hedges - like
freewheeling found in "Night After Sidewalk", to "Kewpie Station",
a fast -paced exercise that recalls similar virtuosos lik Leo Kottle and Keller Williams,
and funky innovators like Preston Reed. Both tunes appear on King's 2003 debut release
"Everybody Loves You" - as engaging a solo guitar album as any to appear
in the last few years. king's inflences are appropriately ecletic and she draws inspiration
for her songwriting that's as varied, she said, as The Smiths and Stravinsky.
"Musically I'm all over the map" she said. "You find it in a weird
places and strange parallel chords that might sound simple for that genre, but when
you put it on a guitar, it's like, whoal!" |
