Natalia M. King Releases New Album 'Woman Mind of My Own'

Today, Brooklyn-bred, Paris-based singer-songcrafter Natalia M. King celebrates the US release of her latest LP, Woman Mind Of My Own, via Dixiefrog Records. On Woman Mind Of My Own, King searches her soul and bares it all.

With original songs like "AKA Chosen," a foot-stomping, vibrant manifesto to honoring strong personal choices and acceptance of her sexuality, she declares, "What I am was meant to be." The slow and sultry slide guitar of another, "Play On," matches the soulful timbre of her bluesy vocals.

She also offers a hard look at American reality with her reimagination of John Mellencamp's "Pink Houses," featuring Elliot Murphy--its accompanying video receiving a "thumbs up" from Mellencamp himself. King also pays homage to George Michael with a reimagining of "One More Try," which premiered at The Bluegrass Situation.

"When 'One More Try' by George Michael came out back in 1988 I was an itty bitty youngster who could relate to the emotion of the song but not the experience," King told The Bluegrass Situation.

"All I knew in listening to him and feeling him was that something hurt, and it hurt bad...I was moved by his sadness and his necessity to be released, to be 'let go' from a love that was no longer serving his life or his heart. It was later on in life that his words were given sense and meaning with the different births of intense experiences of loves lost and found and lost again," she continued.

"The fact that I was also searching to define my sexuality at the time was a plus! His interpretation was so feminine! I was sure he was gay! With all that said and done, and to simply boil it down: 'One More Try' felt right! The timing, the knowing, the experience."

King's is the story of a pioneering musician with a powerful impact and a captivating voice who enters, for the first time, the ancient-almost sacred-territory of the blues, R&B, and American roots music. Through its nine tracks, all either composed by King or borrowed from others, there is a marvelous feeling of rediscovery of that magical style, unaffected by the wear and tear of time.

"One of the most interesting things about this album is that we really expect to hear and believe that this type of music can only be homegrown in the United States because it's truly got that blues/Americana/pop feel, but amazingly, it was all done by French men all from Paris!" she explains. "Goes to show that the blues is not a land, or a race, or a place...but a Spirit, an existential feeling."

Carefully orchestrated by guitarist and producer, Fabien Squillante, Woman Mind Of My Own is no exercise in retro-mania. On the contrary, it's very much a contemporary oeuvre, a holistic record that doesn't stop celebrating Love with a capital L, ever seducing like a magic potion. It's not just a self-portrait of an incredibly intense artist who has always presented herself exactly as she is, no-frills attached, but of a courageous, larger-than-life lady.

Born and raised in Brooklyn by a strong Dominican mother, King finished her studies and set off across the US in true beatnik style, hitching rides and taking Greyhounds, her sole baggage consisting of a notebook and overflowing courage. She got by doing different jobs; everything from delivering pizzas and working as a mechanic, to trying her hand as a trawler on an Alaskan fishing boat. Her vagabond life lead her to Paris, where, energized by the writings of James Baldwin, she arrived with her Ovation guitar, destined to become a blues singer.

King, who had begun her musical career wanting to take everything apart, found herself rebuilding on foundations established by the legendary players. "First, there was a Revelation, then a time of adapting, followed by the belonging which was through feeling. I didn't want to imitate," she explains. "I wanted to live this music in body and soul. The truth is, you don't get the blues; it's the blues that either gets you or not."

Watch a new "Pink Houses" music video here:

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