“Yesterday we played in a church basement, it was awesome! There was this huge fat guy in a G-string with glitter all over him, jumping up and down. Our back stage was the sanctuary, and we were drinking tons of beer and whiskey. We could have been really blasphemous and done something like spill pig’s blood everywhere, but I think God would have been happy with what we got up to.”

Chatting on a cellphone while burning rubber through the back streets of Philadelphia, King Khan is laying down the nitty gritty details of the last 24 hours on tour with his backing band, the Shrines. For the flamboyant frontman, the previous evening’s debauchery sounds pretty much par for the course. On album and onstage, his modus operandi is offering up shamanistic garage rock that’s as freaky as it is fun.

“I grew up loving people like Little Richard, Chuck Berry and James Brown, who all had these outsized personalities,” Khan says. “That’s what’s missing in the world nowadays.”

Tearing a page from the Godfather of Soul’s songbook, the Shrines are a bombastic and (literally) brassy big band, featuring such luminaries as French rockabilly veteran Big Fred Rollercoaster and saxophonist Ben Ra (a.k.a. Germany’s John Coltrane).

“I found people in different places, and they’re all just amazing players,” Khan explains. “We’re all kind of freaks, and we’ve grown together. I prefer things made from scratch than Duncan Hines.”

“It’s amazing that it actually functions as a good band,” he continues. “There are no sore thumbs that stick out, and it’s all about spreading the good word. If you can deal with the smell, you’re all right.”

Looking back to his predominantly Christian upbringing in Montreal in the late 1970s, it’s clear that Khan has always gone his own way. An obsession with horror movies and the shredding sitar skills of his great grandfather led to Khan’s recruitment as the bassist for self-described “international underground legends” The Spaceshits. Following a tour to Berlin at the end of the 1990s, he never returned home, instead forming the Shrines.

“I fell in love, and love works in mysterious ways,” says Khan. “In my wildest dreams, I never thought I’d end up in Germany, but it’s a beautiful place. You can take a bus, and within 24 hours end up in a completely different country.”

Following this tour stop, Khan will return to Calgary for the upcoming Sled Island festival to perform with his fellow Montrealer and former Spaceshit Mark Sultan (a.k.a. BBQ). This will be Khan’s first trip to the fest, but he does have an opinion on the city’s current musical landscape.

“We just played a couple of shows with Women,” he says. “Those guys are great, and I really like their music too.”

In the end, what’s most refreshing about Khan is his disregard of embarrassment and maintaining a “cool” image. While today’s mainstream pop stars are continually hyper-sexualized, the underground often provides the antithesis. Khan, however, flips this phenomenon on its face with his unabashedly bawdy songs and by regularly stripping down to his skivvies.

“I think that people should be a lot more at ease with their sexualities,” Khan concludes. “In everything we do, we strive to promote procreation.”