Andy McKee

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Andy McKee (born April 4, 1979 in Topeka, Kansas) is an American fingerstyle guitar player who has released five albums and been featured on YouTube, with over 100 million views.

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Life and career

McKee played his first guitar, an Aria nylon string bought by his father at age 13. McKee began teaching himself how to play guitar after being overwhelmed by his guitar lessons. He began to learn shred guitar music, including songs by Metallica, Eric Johnson, and Joe Satriani. McKee's electric guitar-playing cousin pushed him to continue learning, taking him out for his 16th birthday to see a guitarist named Preston Reed perform live at a clinic. McKee acquired a Reed instructional videotape and began to learn many of his acoustic guitar techniques from it. Later this year, he obtained his GED in order to stop attending high school and play more guitar with his mother's permission. Although he continued learning the instrument on his own, Michael Hedges, Billy McLaughlin, Pat Kirtley, and Don Ross' Passion Session were all influenced by the acoustic guitarists.

McKee's debut in 2001 was released independently by McKee. He finished third at the National Fingerstyle Guitar Competition in Winfield, Kansas, the same year. McKee performed in Taiwan with Jacques Stotzem, Isato Nakagawa, and Masaaki Kishibe in 2003, winning first place in the New Jersey State Fiddling and Picking Championships with a Ron Spillers harp guitar he purchased from Stephen Bennett in 2002. There were only 1,000 copies of Nocturne ever made, and the album is now out of stock.

In 2004, McKee's second album, Dreamcatcher, was released. "Africa" and "Theme From Schindler's List" are among Toto's album covers, as well as "The Friend I Never Met" by Michael Hedges. McKee won the opportunity to perform with bassist Michael Manring, with whom he has appeared on tour frequently. This year, he came in second place in the Canadian Guitar Festival's Fingerstyle Guitar Competition. McKee's label re-released the album in reaction to the acclaim he gained on YouTube.

Art of Motion, McKee's third album, was released on Candyrat Records in November 2005. The majority of McKee's YouTube performances appear on the album, as well as a few that have been carried over from Dreamcatcher. Art of Motion was McKee's first album to be carried by Candyrat Records in late 2006 and early 2007, and it attracted the most mainstream attention as a result.

McKee returned to the studio to record his fourth album, The Gates of Gnomeria, after his success on YouTube and touring throughout much of 2007. The collection featured six new songs, four of which had been previously published on McKee's Nocturne album, as well as two cover songs. McKee spent the majority of 2008 on tour around the world, collaborating with other Candyrat artists.

McKee produced The Thing That Came From Somewhere, a collaborative album with Don Ross in 2008. He also released a split DVD the same year with labelmate Antoine Dufour; each artist contributed eight songs to the album; two McKee's from Gates of Gnomeria.

McKee produced an EP of two re-recordings of songs from his Dreamcatcher album as well as supporting his duo guitar artist Don Ross' release of a cover song by Japanese guitarist Masaaki Kishibe. The album was released digitally only, along with YouTube videos containing his appearances of his two compositions.

McKee revealed in May 2009 that he would stop touring in the second half of the year and concentrate on recording his forthcoming album. He said in July 2009 that the album would most likely be called "Joyland," the album's name, which previously appeared under the title "Music For A Vacant Amusement Park." Boyle's Joyland, an amusement park in Topeka, Kansas, was inspired by the song, which was open from 1951 to 1988. The album was released digitally on March 23, 2010, with a physical release following on March 30, 2010 via Razor & Tie. "I've branched out a bit and included some instrumentation on a couple of songs on this album," McKee says. In addition, there's a new harpguitar tune and a handful of newspapers like "Layover" by Michael Hedges and Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World." In addition, Andy McKee: Joyland and four new performance music videos directed by Jeremy Osbern, there's also a DVD full of 75 minutes worth of video content on the album.

McKee maintained a strong touring schedule for many years after the release of "Joyland," including tours with Antoine Dufour, Trevor Gordon Hall, Stephen Bennett, Jon Gomm, Eric Johnson, Peppino D'Agostino, Preston Reed, and others. McKee released "Mythmaker," a four-song EP of new original music that featured his first-ever solo piano performance ("June") and made use of electric guitar ("Lumine" on April 8, 2014).

McKee's first ever live show at The Melting Point in Athens, GA, the Red Clay Music Foundry in Duluth, GA, and Workplay in Birmingham, Alabama, which he edited together and released as his first ever live album entitled "Live Book" in December 2015.

McKee began livestreaming weekly concerts through Facebook Live (dubbed "McKee Mondays") and teaching online guitar lessons with TrueFire beginning in 2020. McKee's first live show since the pandemic in Nashville, Tennessee, in June 2021, and he announced the first public display of new music since 2014's "Mythmaker" in the form of a six-track EP "Symbol" on September 17, 2021. Michael Hedges' first single, a cover of "Ragamuffin," was released on July 15, 2021.

Career progression

McKee, self-described as "just this guy from Topeka, Kansas, who kind of blew up on the Internet a week before Christmas," became one of Candyrat Records' top-selling artists after their video of "Drifting" was promoted by Digg fans. For the first time, three of McKee's videos were concurrently the three most watched on YouTube for a time. He appeared on Woodsongs as well as Last Call with Carson Daly as a result of this exposure. He appeared on Josh Groban's 2007 Grammy-nominated Christmas album, No.l. Groban's album debuted as the country's best-selling CD of 2007, claiming first place on the US charts. Billboard 200.

McKee contributed to Lee Ritenour's CD 6 String Theory in 2010, which also includes guitarists Steve Lukather, Slash, Neal Schon, Tal Wilkenfeld, and Mike Stern.

McKee appeared on Prince Robert McKee's Welcome 2 Australia tour in 2012. During the festival on Purple Rain, he appeared with Prince's band, Sometimes It Snows in April, Mountains, Dance Electric, and Love, Thy Will Be Done. With Ebon Coast, Drifting, and The Friend I Never Met, he kicked off the Melbourne concert.

McKee began developing and coordinating a series of multi-day guitar workshops (also called "boot camps") in 2016 by Dreamcatcher Events. "Andy McKee's Musicarium," his first flagship boot camp, was hosted at the Full Moon Resort in Big Indian, New York, in 2016, with subsequent Musicariums held at the EarthRise Institute in Petaluma, California (2018-2019) and the Hyatt Regency Sonoma Wine Country in Santa Rosa, California (2021).

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