Captain Kirk Douglas has one of those careers that already sounds like a punchline: guitarist for The Roots, nightly house band for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and now a solo artist hiding behind the name 100 Watt Heart. It’s the kind of résumé where you wonder how the guy even has time to sleep, let alone write a record. But with Turbulent Times, his first solo album, Douglas makes it clear he’s not content to just coast on Fallon skits and Questlove grooves.
“It feels weird calling it a solo album,” he says. “I played it with a band. I didn’t cast characters, but I did write the songs and sing them. So I guess… yeah. For all intents and purposes it’s mine. But it still sounds weird.” That hedging explains why he avoided slapping his actual name on the sleeve. “To hold a record that says ‘Kirk Douglas’? No thanks. I didn’t want people thinking it was Spartacus with a guitar. A band name just felt right.” Hence 100 Watt Heart: “Music coming from my heart, amplified, loud.”
The record’s opening salvo, “I Used to Be in the Circus,” draws straight from his life as both a touring musician and a TV entertainer. “We’re in your living room every night, but we still bring it live on the road,” he says. “Years from now I’ll look back at that song and know exactly where I was—smack in the middle of that circus.”
The title track, though, digs deeper. “It’s like when a child hears their parents fighting in the other room,” Douglas explains. “You can’t imagine why it’s happening. Then you grow up and look at mass shootings, terrorism, racially motivated violence… and you still can’t imagine why it’s happening. The lyric is, ‘We could all become more wise if we saw through each other’s eyes.’ It’s simple. Preschool rules. Treat others like you want to be treated.”
It’s not lost on him that topical songs can split an audience. “You’re not always preaching to the choir. Sometimes you’re singing to a brick wall. But there are no small actions. Whatever you can do in your immediate surroundings—that accumulates.”
Prince makes his way onto the album too—both as subject matter and ghost in the machine. Douglas still tells the story of the night His Purple Highness borrowed his prized Epiphone Crestwood on The Tonight Show… and snapped it in two. “I went to Prince after and said, ‘You broke the guitar, could you at least sign it?’ He said, ‘I haven’t signed anything since the ’70s.’ Insult to injury.”
But here’s the twist: Prince reimbursed him, other legends like Jackson Browne and Elvis Costello reached out with replacement tips, and the repaired guitar ended up sounding better than before. “At first it felt awful, but then I realized—this is my Prince story. He gave me that. Maybe he even knew exactly what he was doing. And honestly? In the grand scheme, it’s just wire and wood. The guy also paid Clyde Stubblefield’s medical bills. He did so much good. I can forgive a busted guitar.”
There’s a philosophical streak running through Douglas’s anecdotes, whether it’s about Prince, politics, or just the job of making noise five nights a week on NBC. “Music is more than flesh and bone. It’s spirit work. When you make somebody feel accepted, you’re doing something for their soul. That’s real magic. That’s why we still hold artists up, even when the human being falls short.”
For now, Douglas is content to let 100 Watt Heart roar, even if it took him years to finally finish something outside The Roots’ democracy. “If one person listens to this record and it makes them feel a certain way, that’ll never get old for me.”
And before you ask (because I obviously did): a new Roots album is coming. “Within the next year,” he promises. Which, in Roots time, practically counts as breaking news.
Listen to the interview above and then check out "I Used To Be In the Circus" below:
