Kaki King

As the Melbourne spring swung backwards into winter I headed through the rain to see much lauded guitarist, Kaki King perform at one of Melbourne’s favourite live venues, the Corner Hotel. As a new comer to Kaki King, there was reason for excitement before the show, having read that she was added to Rolling Stone magazine’s list of new guitar gods in 2007- along with others including Jack White and Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello. In recent years she has also won over many rock star fans including such names as Eddie Vedder and Dave Grohl.

As I entered, support act Leeroy Lee was coming to the conclusion of his set. He seemed to have won over a good portion of the band room and was discussing which song he should do as a closer- a Nick Drake cover or an original? After a brief dialogue with the audience he decided on an original- a lullaby, which he admitted wasn’t a very manly thing to have written, but this fact made it a manly choice (it takes a real man to not need to be manly, you know). It was a sweet song and ended what he called “probably the best gig of my year”. This was probably a nice thing to say.

After a brief set up it was time for King and her band, comprised of drummer Jordan Perlson and multi instrumentalist Dan Brantigan (mainly the trumpet and an EVI- electronic valve instrument- which at times looked somewhat like he was smoking a bong). The set was lively and long- roughly two hours- and varied from King’s trademark slapping/tapping/fingering techniques to straight up pop rock songs off her most recent album, Junior. Set opener Falling Day fell into the second category and got the show going with a bang. Death Head was another track played from this group with a chunky riff that got the room rocking. Though the quality of her voice didn’t always match that of her playing, her presence on stage did- seemingly born to be a rock star.

The set was littered with anecdotes as King awkwardly charmed us through her travels around Australia (her sunburn was so bad that she “has skin cancers growing on her skin cancers” and apparently we talk funny though she admitted that while she was here, it was her that spoke funny). Guitar changes were also frequent. The anticipation of the crowd could be felt when an acoustic was handed to her by guitar tech Anna- everyone collectively stood on their toes to see how she was making ‘those sounds’. It would seem that these instrumental/acoustic songs were the ones that brought the people in.

King’s instrumental numbers were ultimately the highlights of the night, though the variations kept things interesting. Her tight fan based would have left pleased with a solid performance by a very gifted performer- as did I.

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