Guitarist Kaki King in sync with CD, film projects

By Erin Parker

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Guitarist Kaki King's first three studio albums put her firmly on the radar of adventurous rock listeners, but she's drawing wider attention with recent contributions to a Grammy Award-nominated album and two Academy Award-nominated films.

The diminutive King's guest turn on Foo Fighters' 2007 disc "Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace" and her work on the scores for "August Rush" and the Sean Penn-directed "Into the Wild" are formidable boosts as she launches her fourth album, "Dreaming of Revenge," due March 11 via Velour Recordings.

Foos frontman Dave Grohl gushed to Billboard last summer about how King "shredded" him while they recorded the acoustic instrumental "The Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners," and Penn personally invited her to work on "Into the Wild" after sound designer Martin Hernandez introduced him to her music.

"I'd very much like to become more visible, but I also love film scoring and sitting in on other people's records, helping people write songs or anything where I get to be creative under pressure," King says.

Her new album's distinct melodies and catchy pop choruses should make traditional promotion less of a challenge than it has been for some of her past work, and King says she'd welcome radio exposure. But she admits that she's still finding the balance between the creative and business sides to her career.

"The industry is so different now. Everything that is cool and great kind of has legs through a very different source, so I certainly don't think (of radio viability) when I'm writing," she says. "Mostly what I focus on is trying to make the music sound really good and going out on the road, which is the domain that I can control."

Touring remains key to King's fortunes. She usually performs solo, exhibiting the kind of dazzling fret-tapping techniques that have drawn her favorable comparisons to the late Michael Hedges.

King will be ubiquitous at South by Southwest, where she will play no less than five shows during the concurrent film and music festivals in Austin, Texas. North American concert dates follow through mid-April.

Her bubbly personality is captured in a series of Web vignettes about the making of the new album that were posted to blogs and on King's MySpace site. Velour is also going against the grain with claymation and stop-animation videos for the "Air and Kilometers" and "Pull Me Out Alive," respectively.

"I love the idea of traditionally promoting this album, and I'd love to do a world tour," King says, "but I also have another world of people who are interested in me for different reasons. I love the fact that I can go play with the Foo Fighters, go do a TED Talk (at the annual Technology, Entertainment, Design conference) and then go on tour with a band."

Reuters/Billboard