Excerpts from Radio Interview With Guitarist Andy McKee
Feb 23rd, 2008 by Guitar MX Admin
Andy McKee is an acoustic guitar player who’s videos are very popular on YouTube. Andy recently made an appearance on WMFO 91.5 FM radio in Boston. Here are some of the highlights from the interview:
On his early influences:
I started out with the electric guitar primarily and was into Metallica and Pantera and Dream Theater … really hard core kind of rock. When I was about 16, I heard an acoustic guitar player called Preston Reed, and he just blew my mind.
On his song writing process:
usually it takes me a couple of months. I’ll come up with some ideas and then hit a block maybe, pick it up later on, come up with another idea … it’s usually like that … usually it’ll come in different times. Occasionally it’s all in one day you’ve got a tune, but that’s pretty rare for me. [Most of the time] you have to keep coming back to it, bringing fresh ideas.
On why he prefers finger picking over using a guitar pick
I just really loved the sound of it and the fact that you’re playing with your fingers … you can do so much more with it … whereas with a pick you can only do one [note]. It makes it possible to have individual baselines and melodies and chords all at once.
On his YouTube fame:
Rob, the guy who runs Candy Rat Records (the independent label I’m with), [wanted to] shoot some videos on my day off and put them on YouTube, which was still relatively new at the time. I had maybe been on YouTube once or twice. But then it really took off and [the video] was on the front page … the one video, the song “Drifting” of mine, has had like 11.5 million views.
Here is a video of Andy playing ‘Keys to the Hover Car’ during the radio appearance.
You can read the full interview here.
Andy is one hell of a guitar player, so much technique and feeling at the same time. I have listened more finger style guitar players and some didn’t move anything inside me. Not Andy McKee, he has talent and he seems so happy to play the guitar, I guess this is what gives him the feeling.
Question: Why the long explanation of the song’s title and meaning? The song has NO LYRICS.
Okay, I’ll agree that he is talented guitar player, much in the same vein as Kaki King. However, with Andy I find the songs to have an incredible “sameness” to them, song to song. They seem to not have a real direction. (Kind of like my lame guitar scale practicing.)