Kaki King has been quite busy since her latest album, Dreaming of Revenge, featuring the single “Pull Me Out Alive,” was released in March. The out musician has toured with the Foo Fighters (Dave Grohl‘s a fan), scored music for CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute toured like crazy, recorded The Mexican Teenagers EP for her upcoming tour of Australia/Europe tour and just collaborated with mega-star producer Timbaland.
King must not sleep much, because during all of that, she’s also been working on doing an original score for an upcoming documentary on religion and homosexuality, called Fish Out of Water.
While she’s no stranger to providing music for films, (two of her songs were featured in the 2007 Sean Penn film Into the Wild, and she was also Freddie Highmore‘s hands in August Rush, playing the guitar parts), this is the first time there’s been a personal connection to a film project.
Somewhat of a rarity, King is known as simply a great musician (and “guitar virtuoso,” “indie songstress, Rolling Stone‘s first-ever female “Guitar God”, etc.) as opposed to a great queer musician. Though she’s out, her talent transcends label and sub-genres. So it might seem odd that she’s chosen now as the time to tie herself to such a gay project.
“It didn’t take much convincing,” she told me, adding that it was the Chicago-based filmmakers, Ky Dickens (director/executive producer) and Kristen Kaza (producer) that inspired her to get involved.”It’s a project they’ve been working on so hard, for so long. They were just really inspiring. As well as the subject matter itself.”
King grew up in the south, attending Christian schools and Sunday schools, so she’s very familiar with religion and the skewed views many Christians have on homosexuality.
“I’ve had people call me a sinner, and I’m like, ‘I’m not a sinner, I’m a great person,'” she says. “I’m a big fan of Jesus, even though I’m not a Christian, but in his role as a philosopher. His message and the message of Christianity can get so twisted, and for such weird reasons.”
King wrote seven different pieces for the film, to tie into various scenes, including interviews with priests or other religion experts, members of the queer community as well as animated scenes. She said she’ll be wrapping up her commitment with the film sometime next month, and that the film should be released sometime in the next year.
In the next few months, King will be touring Australia and Europe — and definitely not watching The L Word.
“I will go on record just so every lesbian in America will hate me,” King says. “I don’t think The L Word has ever been a very good show. I don’t think the writing is all that good and i surely don’t think the directing has been all that good. And sometimes I think the acting has just sucked. … It’s a soap opera about lesbians and a lot of times it’s flat out terrible.”
If one thing’s for sure about Kaki King, it’s that she’s quite passionate about what she believes in (or believes totally sucks).
