Kaki King is a feisty, five-foot, funny, outspoken Atlanta transplant who now lives in New York, a city whose energy is almost equal to her own. She also happens to be the most exciting solo guitarist/composer to have come along in decades. On her upcoming album, Legs to Make Us Longer (Epic), she blazes through a set of original works with an intensity that reflects her world -- the subway platform gigs, the late shifts at the Mercury Lounge, the surreptitious intermission entrances into Lincoln Center to catch some Stravinsky -- more than the new age stupor that most solo guitar music seems to induce.

Her music is as contradictory as the city itself. On the first track, "Frame," her guitar tolls like bells beneath an iron sky. Right after that, "Playing With Pink Noise" dashes in and out of traffic, with pistons pumping. On "Ingots" a steady, four-beat thump keeps time, a pulse beating as she runs through vistas of sound.

For King, the guitar isn't just a reverie machine; it's a percussion instrument, just like the drums she played with her high school band. Sure, there were guitars around the house -- her father, a lawyer, was a music lover who spotted his daughter's talent early on. "When I was about four years old my parents wanted me to take music lessons, and I chose the guitar," she says. "But I didn't enjoy it, so when I was five I put it aside. Then I started playing drums when I was nine or 10. I still play them. That was how I got into playing pop music, and that feel was a big influence when I did go back to guitar."

"The subways gave me stamina," she says. "It's a workout in every way -- mentally, physically. To play for two hours in an ugly environment is very challenging. But soon people were coming up to me and saying, 'Do you have a record?' And I realized that if I could sell a CD for 10 bucks every time someone asks me for one, I could actually do all right for myself."

By this time she was out almost every night: at the Mercury, in the subways, in the clubs, or in New York's most elegant concert halls. All of it fed her creativity, which was now evolving with almost alarming speed. "I started writing things with a lot of dissonance or with dangerous chords that don't really resolve," she says. "I'd be floating around, not in any key, which is what composers like Stravinsky, Debussy and Prokofiev did. Some of my inspiration comes from 20th-century classical music, which I'd never even heard before I'd gotten to New York." King continues, “However, you’re just as likely to catch me listening to Bjork’s Vespertine or PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me as you are The Rite of Spring.

In April 2002, The Mercury Lounge hosted a release party for her subway CD. A copy somehow made it from there to the Knitting Factory, which contacted King with an offer to perform at their Tap Bar one night a week for a month or so. "They actually pay you, so I accepted," she laughs. "But it was really difficult. I cut my teeth on that gig. It's a bar filled with televisions and people talking while you play."

Since then she's toured incessantly, opened for an array of headliners (Marianne Faithful, David Byrne, Robert Randolph, Keb Mo, Soulive, Mike Gordon and Charlie Hunter to name a few), played a set at Bonnaroo, performed on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, hurried to engagements all over the world, and pretty much single-handedly -- actually, double-handedly -- dragged the art of solo acoustic guitar back to prominence, with an edginess that matches the temperament of her own generation.

Now with the release of Legs to Make Us Longer, King’s main focus is one thing: “Touring, touring, touring. It’s what I love to do -- the stage is where I’m most creative.” While audiences have come to expect her guitar prowess, King nowadays also incorporates lap steel, singing and other surprises to match the broadened palette of the new record.