King Dude makes smouldering melodies that are rich in fear tinged with gospel and situate themselves somewhere between dark folk and rock ’n’ roll. The music strikes at a deep and human level. When talking to TJ Cowgill the Seattle-based King himself it’s apparent that his music and his performances are as genuine as they come.
Around 2006 King Dude began as a bedroom project between Cowgill and one of his roommates. At the time he was in a metal band and didn’t take the King Dude project seriously. In 2010 he released a 7-inch and now has four full-length records under his belt and shows no sign of slowing down. “There’s an arc to the whole creative process within King Dude now” he says. “It’s not too meticulously plotted out but I feel as though I know what the next three or four records will be like thematically based on a larger arc. All the records when listened to in sequence should make some sort of an over-reaching sort of statement.”
His most recent album is called Fear. As he explains in the liner notes the record deals predominately with the fear felt during adolescence but touches on other themes like mirror reflections and the separation of mind and body experienced through telephones. But why did he choose fear as the theme for this one? “I didn’t really have a choice” says Cowgill. “The next one I wanted to make was Fear and it seemed like the right time…. And honestly I was so into the psychology of fear at the time that it seemed the most logical subject to base the songs on.”
Even though fear can be a sullen topic King Dude’s music has never shied away from darker themes. “I think I’ve always been interested in darker traditions of storytelling but it’s not always dark with me” says Cowgill. “Sometimes it’s real regular. It feels like real life to me. Especially on the newest record I’m trying to be really honest and even talk about things that really happened in my life which is terrifying.”
Listening to any of his albums with their dark folk treatment plain acoustic guitar and gravelly voiced lyrics there is a palpable honesty to his work. In our conversation he scorned “sugary” pop explaining “That false sweetness that people put into their music a lot nobody wants that…. It’s like junk food for music so it does need to have a rough edge.” And “rough edge” is an apt description for King Dude but Cowgill supplies something even better. “The Japanese call it the wabi-sabi. It’s a concept in Buddhism where you find the beauty in the rough edge. You know how you can see something like a photograph of a decaying animal and you can find it beautiful? That’s wabi-sabi. If my art is anything it’s got a fair portion of wabi-sabi to it.”
At his live shows he takes “wabi-sabi” to the extreme. “I don’t like being too rehearsed. I want it to feel like a real unique experience so I try not to be too prepared” says Cowgill. “I’m pretty comfortable up there even if it’s train-wrecking I feel pretty good about it. It’s sort of exhilarating when it does (train wreck).”
No matter how the show turns out Cowgill wants people to walk away happy. “I want to make people feel lifted up and feel a spirituality or connection to something greater” he says. “I think that would be nice.”
KING DUDE performs on Thursday January 8 at Broken City.
