A Girl and her Guitars

I had a day of today from school, because it is Liberation Day. So I went to the "Amsterdam forest" which isn't really a forest and isn't in Amsterdam. It is a lovely park however, located in Amstelveen. I spent most of the afternoon and evening there, strolling under the trees and lying in the grass and trying to explain to my boyfriend how flower pollination works. Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera with me, but I made this one somewhere in January 2006:

My yesterday was a lot more interesting though. My parents took me to a surprise concert.. of Kaki King!

I had seen her before, in Paradiso in 2009, but this was so different..

Back in 2009 I had only listened to a few of her songs on youtube when my best friend asked me to come with her to the concert. The songs I had listened to all sounded quite tranquil and slow, with just her and her guitar, but when we got there it was more like a rock concert. Flashing lights everywhere, heavy drums and hoarse singing. I was pretty surprised, but I still liked her, bought some CD's and listened to them occasionally.

When my parents said she would be playing in the Bimhuis, which is a kind of jazz and improvised music club, I was pretty surprised again and kind of afraid my parents would be blasted out of their socks, but all my fears were unnecessary.

This concert was what I expected the first time. Just her with her guitars, quietly playing her amazing songs. Her music is the kind that fills you up and makes you just stare at her, being amazed at how fast her hands move across her guitar and how she makes all the different sounds.

One of the most beautiful songs she played was with Dan Brantigan on trumpet. It's called Zeitgeist.

The song actually starts at 1:40

She brought four different guitars, including the second and last one in the picture below.

The first one is -according to her blog- a harp guitar (which I'd love to have seen in person), the second one is a 7 string fanned fret nylon (which gives an extra cool extra low note and has the fanned frets because it makes sense, having in mind the way your hand moves across the neck of the guitar but looks really psychedelic from above, according to Kaki), the third one is a high tuned 12 string and the last one is her favorite guitar, which I think is also the prettiest.

After the concert I took my chance to have a chat with her and have my new cool Kaki King t-shirt (with a kind of guitar-squid-spinelike design on it) signed. She seemed like a really cool person (while I was being all nervous and awkward) and even did an extra crazy crab face something when I took a picture of her.

I will definitely go to any concert she gives around Amsterdam in the future. And if you live in Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany or Portugal, be sure not to miss her! You can find the tour dates here!