Guitar Tricks Insider December Issue | Page 43

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