It’s tough getting hold of any touring act on their day off, and King Khan is a particularly tough cookie. But as precious as an artiste’s morning (well, afternoon) huevos-­rancheros time is, the EYE WEEKLY presses do not stop. After several phone calls to a road manager in vacillating states of consciousness, Khan is finally tracked down in an Atlanta restaurant. Ushered to a cellphone, the frenetic and decidedly distracted Khan apologizes.

“Sorry,” he says with an unnerving cackle, “I’ve got Drano in my veins.”
Ah, if only all interviews started that way.

But this truly is a busy man. With the release of The Supreme Genius of King Khan and the Shrines — a collection of rare nuggets and rave-ups by the singer and his numerous back-up musicians, compiled by Vice Records — Khan is hitting the North American trail again, promising what he calls “a classic soul show that turns into a space jam. Like Mardi Gras, but where all the jocks are hot people.” And with a pair of Horseshoe Tavern appearances and a Sonic Boom in-store booked, Toronto can look forward to three sweaty, beer-soaked extravaganzas (plus attendant hangovers) from an act that mines the over-the-top showmanship of James Brown, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and even Sun Ra.

Of course, Khan is no stranger to Toronto. The Berlin-via-Montreal native appeared here last winter with his doo-wop-oriented group King Khan & BBQ Show duo. Some may also remember a period in the late ’90s when Khan, then using the moniker Blacksnake, was bassist for the frequently blacklisted Spaceshits. Perhaps you were even struck by one of their beer bottles? But never fear, Khan insists he’s a peaceful man now.

“I’m more of a lover than a fighter,” he replies when asked who would win in a fight between Montreal and Berlin. (Granted, it was a stupid question, but ice is made to be broken.) Khan’s claims of increased mellowness, however, seem more dubious the longer he speaks.

“We’re currently travelling across the land, getting our friends fired from jobs,” he says. “My friend was working as a bouncer in the club last night. There were a whole bunch of overflowed toilets, and we were wrestling in it — it was disgusting. Then he got thrown out of the bar where he worked. But we showed him a good time.”

One can only wonder what a bad time would be. But even without Khan’s assurances that he only practices voodoo in a “lighthearted, non-demonic way,” and despite him being a lifelong member of an organization known as “The Death Cult,” Torontonians should still feel safe. After more prodding, Khan agrees to elaborate on the shadowy secret society he helped form.
“The Death Cult is basically a little family we created back when we were juvenile delinquents,” he explains. “We’ve got little tattoos. It was originally a pentacle of rock ’n’ roll — King Khan and BBQ, the Black Lips, Demon’s Claws, The Gris Gris and The Spits. And the Shrines, of course. That was the core. The whole idea was I wanted us all to put up a couple of grand each and buy a house in Brazil. Kind of like Jonestown, without the killing and Kool-Aid.

“Back in the day,” he continues, still trying to dispel rumours of public menace, “we toured with the Black Lips, and we’d show up to sound check in face paint. People were like, ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ They’d be pretty intimidated. I remember one show in Jackson, Mississippi, or some crazy southern place, there was this indie-rock band playing next door. We jumped in while they were playing, shot firecrackers at them and left — we had the car ready to get away. But the funny thing was that the drummer had good reflexes and he shot the firecrackers right back at me. They landed right at my feet as I was videotaping it — the only thing I actually got on tape was me screaming. But I guess the Death Cult is just our family — those elites who record this music.”

And speaking of elite clubs, what’s with the strange exodus of Canadian music weirdos to Berlin? Peaches is possibly the best known in this group, but other freaks, from Mocky to Taylor Savvy, have also made the Teutonic town their base. Khan also recently herded many of his Death Cult cronies onto the soundtrack of the dark kraut-comedy Schwarze Schafe back in ’06. What is it about Germans — Berliners in particular — that makes them so alluring to us Canucks?

“I find them very sexy” Khan says. “I married a German and I love the way she talks sometimes. She speaks a lot like a Vulcan. She’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s not logical’ — it’s just so cute. Also, German humour is very funny. You have to get into it, but it’s very dry. And sometimes when they talk, they sound like they have an Indian accent — except it’s with a German accent.”

Odd. And yet there must be something more to this Canadian-German exchange than foxy logic, funny intonation and über-straight-faced jokes. When pressed, Khan muses further on his adopted home.

“I actually ate ribs with Peaches at a movie premiere recently,” he says. “I think there’s something about Berlin that feels a lot like Montreal, in terms of its relaxed-ness. Also, you don’t have to pay up the ass for an apartment. It makes me so sad when friends tell me they pay three grand for a bathroom-sized place in New York. They have no time to think because they have to keep working and working — it’s insane. They’re slaves to their city. In Berlin, I can raise my family and live off the money I make from music. We’re not rich, but that’s why I go for free ribs.”

Unfortunately, most of Khan’s lengthy and poisonous tirade about maple-leaf-patch-adorned Canadian backpackers (“Canadians shouldn’t come to Berlin,” he spurts, “because Canadians are a bunch of idiots who only talk to Canadians”) can’t be reprinted here due to hate-speech laws, legal ramifications and the like. But Khan again apologizes for his emotional outburst — it’s clearly just the Drano talking.

As for having to live in a post–Bo Diddley world, Khan remains resolutely optimistic.
“It’s a sad loss,” he says of the recently departed rock ’n’ roll legend, “but on the other hand, my sister had a baby on the day Bo Diddley died. Rock ’n’ roll is going to get better from here. It’s reached a renaissance level with the Black Lips, Jay Reatard and us — people are finally paying attention. And we’ve all known each other forever — we’ve been rolling around in the dirt long enough.”