Drifting

Andy McKee (andymckee.com)

I’ve played guitar for the last 15 years or so and I’ve never once owned an acoustic guitar.  I’ve been an electric guitar/rock/power-chord-your-face-off style player the entire time.  It’s not too often I get wowed by someone on an acoustic guitar that’s not my son Braeden, he constantly wows me when he plays.

I give kudos to Preston and Steve on WMMR for turning me on to Andy McKee.  He’s been releasing albums steadily for the last several years but this was the first I’d heard of him.  On February 24 this year he was on the P&S show in Philly and they had him perform his original song “Drifting” and his arrangement of Toto’s “Africa”.  Yes, it’s the “Africa” song from the 80s you are thinking of and you’d be right to assume his arrangement of it is just awesome.

He’s instrumental acoustic guitar but not in the sense you might think.  He plays in the most non-traditional style I’ve seen.  It’s like finger picking on steroids with percussion, if you can imagine such a thing.

From his website, www.andymckee.com, his album releases began in 2004 with Dreamcatcher followed by 2005′s Art of Motion, 2008′s The Thing That Came From Somewhere, with Don Ross, 2008′s Gates of Gnomeria, 2009′s Common Ground and his latest release from March of 2010, Joyland.  All are available on iTunes and even if you were not to buy an entire album, grab one or two songs just at random and you’ll be impressed.  I was.

It’s all acoustic and all awesome.