ON SONGWRITING
T
he meteoric rise of “Drifting” will
forever be a part of Andy McKee’s
story. Tapping the fretboard and
slapping the body, this 2006 video of
him playing solo acoustic earned over 55 million
views and established the Kansas picker as a
fingerstyle sensation literally overnight. The
instrumental itself was wonderfully melodic and
entrancing, bringing to mind the best of acoustic
aces like Michael Hedges and Pierre Bensusan,
but also wholly unique. With the body taps, it
even sounded like McKee had a percussionist
hidden off screen, but no. It was all Andy.
Over a decade later, McKee has grown into a
wildly busy artist touring heavily and bringing
his acoustic magic around the planet. Along
the way, he’s reinvented fingerstyle guitar with
a strong combination of rhythmic and melodic
ideas, tapping and thumping, and new open
tunings using a partial-capo that only covers
half the strings. One good example of the latter
is the sweetly-textured “Rylynn,” another of his
astounding YouTube videos.
We caught up with Andy fresh off a European
tour. Our focus was on influences, valuable
playing, and gear tips. He was happy to oblige.
PLAYING TIPS & INFLUENCES
Despite his talents for fingerpicking, two-handed
tapping, artificial harmonics, and percussive
body thumping, fans are also amazed to learn
that Andy started out as a rockin’ solid body
player with surprising influences. “Early on I
was really into electric players like Eric Johnson,
Joe Satriani, and bands like Metallica. My first
guitar was a nylon string so some of the first
tunes I learned were fingerpicking tunes like
‘Fade to Black,’ ‘Unforgiven,’ and ‘Nothing Else
Matters’ by Metallica. But I got an electric later,
so I was working on both fingerstyle and pickstyle playing from the get-go.”
“Eric Johnson is still my number one guitar
hero. His sense of melody and musicality just
resonates with me like nothing else. So, I would
say that Eric’s melodic style definitely influenced
“Rylynn” by Andy McKee
DECEMBER SPECIAL
DIGITAL EDITION
GUITAR TRICKS INSIDER
43