A woman who’s called one of the world’s greatest living guitarists will bring her eclectic show to central Iowa later this month. Kaki King‘s solo performance entails projecting images onto her guitar using an elaborate computer rig that’s connected to her six-string, her drum, lights, sounds, video and more.
“I’m using this system that I’ve set up to really open up what is the guitar and how the guitar is, for me, very much a window into the soul and so showing that both figuratively and literally,” King says, “it’s just as much a visual show as it is an audio show.”
King’s technique involves not just strumming, plucking and bending the guitar’s strings using a modified bridge she built, but also using its body as a percussion instrument. “I’m using as much of the guitar as I can at one time to really make as full of a sound as possible,” King says, “but I’m also a composer, so I’m writing fast songs and slow songs and songs that have a lot of emotional, interesting content for some people.”
Reviewers have called King “visionary,” “a guitar god,” and place her among the world’s top virtuosos of this instrument, but she says she tries not to let it get in her head. “It’s just an absolutely ludicrous thing, and I always try to take a compliment graciously, but I do not pay it much mind,” King says. “What I do feel that’s important is to continue to be creative and to continue to experiment with the guitar and see how far it can be pushed and what door or window or rabbit hole can be opened up next.”
King was introduced to the guitar at age four and quickly started adapting the neck and body to become a new type of instrument. Of her musical style, Rolling Stone said she’s “a genre until herself,” that’s not exactly rock, pop, jazz, folk or anything else you might hear on the radio.
“I didn’t have an outlet that was not learning someone else’s music, until I discovered this finger style, D-tuning, playing around with the guitar, changing the strings, putting the strings in the wrong order, putting elements on the guitar that weren’t supposed to be there,” King says, “and that freedom and practice led to that freedom of exploration — and it’s kind of gotten me to this point.”
The 44-year-old Atlanta native is making one stop in Iowa on her world tour, at the Temple for Performing Arts in Des Moines on October 16th.
Hear Matt Kelley’s full eight-minute interview with Kaki King below: