Kaki King is back on the road doing what she does best: dazzling her fans with virtuoso skills on any instrument with strings.
Her latest album, “Glow,” is a departure from her last two — 2008’s “Dreaming of Revenge” and 2010’s “Junior” — both of which found her exploring her desire to channel her energy performing with a rocking backing band. But the out and recently married singer-songwriter said that after she was done touring for her last album, she experienced an “existential crisis” and was unsure what she wanted to do next. “I had been doing these really fun rock shows with a band and my goal is to play every fun rock club in the world or die trying,” she said. “And I accomplished it but I nearly died trying. I think that once that tour was over, it was over for me. I had loved it up until the minute it was over. I don’t think I can do that kind of show forever. I was like, OK, what’s next? I’ve done five albums and I guess I didn’t know which direction to turn. I guess I had lost touch with the guitar and the intimacy I had with it. I was ready to throw in the towel but I just didn’t know where to go after it.”
Her response to that uncertainty was to go back out on the road performing solo acoustic shows, which she said helped to inspire her new album.
“That was part of it,” she said. “I did this ‘Freak Guitar Show’ [tour] and that was fun but it was a way to get me on stage with a bunch of guitars with no expectations, I suppose. I wasn’t making any conscious decisions. I was just saying, let’s not decide. Let’s just keep doing what I know how to do, which is to play guitar even if I’m not in love with it at the moment. That’s the most familiar point of reference for me.”
“Glow,” described as an “artistic reboot,” is an instrumental album full of mesmerizing and brilliantly lush tracks. When asked about the difference in styles between her previous two albums and “Glow,” King said fans know she is an artist who is always changing things up.
“I think if anyone had learned anything from me, it’s never to have any expectations. I think I’ve done a lot of things outside of my own records and I think that anyone that knows me would expect something different every time. If you have too much vision, that is an obstacle. I’ve learned the hard way that going into a project with fewer expectations is always going to help because, otherwise, you miss all this fun stuff. I think with this album I wanted to do something really beautiful. I wanted to make ear candy. I wanted something that people that have really nice headphones can put on and listen to with total stillness with only their mind on the record. I think I did that. As far as expectations, it’s always I want this person to come jam with me or I want this song to have some kind of different instrumentation. That’s something you just have to let go of.”
She added that her solo acoustic material will be the focus of her current tour.
“I’ll be performing solo,” she said. “I’ll be singing a little bit. The new album is mainly instrumental so I’ll be playing a lot of stuff from the new album.”
When not performing on her own projects, King often finds time to perform and record with artists ranging from the Foo Fighters and Eddie Vedder to Timbaland. She has contributed to a variety of film and TV soundtracks including “Into The Wild” and “August Rush.”
King said she finds it easier to work with other people on a recording project compared to her own.
“Even collaborating, when I have input from other people or other creative venues, it is so much easier,” she said. “It’s almost like I’m being posed a musical question. And to me, there is only one answer. So, if I hear someone playing something, for whatever reason, I’ve never had a huge amount of options. It’s like, oh, this is what I’m going to play on this. It just makes sense as opposed to when I’m doing my own thing and I’ve got a gajillion options and ways to go and do things. So, I like collaborating whether it’s film or TV or other people’s records because it’s simpler for me. I don’t know why. Everything I’ve done as far as collaboration ended up at the end of the day feeling like I was doing something with a friend. I think that that’s what makes stuff sound good if it’s more like, hey, we should make some music together. It’ll be cool. I try not to professionally approach someone with a formal letter and say, ‘Would you like to come guest-appear on this record?’ I just try to be friends with someone.”
When asked what musicians were the most challenging to work with from a professional standpoint, her answer was surprising.
“Timbaland,” she said. “That dude, he’s a genius. You can see it in everything he does. I was in Miami, and I didn’t know why I was there. I didn’t know what he really wanted from me. I think at the end of the day I realized you have to find creative people and have them come and do their thing. He just kept saying, ‘Do what you do.’ All I did was do what I do and came up with a bunch of different riffs and helped him create a new sound library. But I had no direction whatsoever. I witnessed that man come in around midnight to the studio and I was playing something and he started playing something; it was like he completely left the thread of what we were doing, found a beat on his keyboard, sampled it. He goes in the vocal booth and sings this melody. Then he comes back and tells his keyboard player to play the melody he just sang. And it was all of a sudden we had gone from tinkering around to making music. But he was struck by inspiration and went for it. I think that’s how he works. It was really cool to watch.”
Kaki King performs 8 p.m. Nov. 14 at World Cafe Live, 3025 Walnut St. For more information, call 215-222-1400 or visit www.kakiking.com.