From Topeka, KS To 61 Million YouTube Views | Andy McKee

I actually uh played with print. What yeah?

Then you wrote this in your 1819 and it had 61 million views on YouTube.

You never would have imagined it. I released my first album in 2001. I went and toured in Taiwan. Josh Grovin wanted me on his Christmas album.

This podcast was made brought to you by Choose Topeka. If you're thinking about making a move, Choose Topeka can get you up to $15,000 to relocate.

Whether you're buying or renting, Topeka and Shawnee County are ready to welcome you. Apply now at ChooseTopeka.com. Welcome to Topeka Insider. Today we've got an incredible guitar player named Andy McKee in the studio with us. Let's get it.

Thank you for joining us, man. It's my pleasure. Thanks for the invite.

We have a new level, I feel like, of celebrities on this show. With Andy McKee thing into the C list again.

Yeah, we're scraping them up. No, no, that's not true at all. That's not true. I've actually I've had you on my list since we started this podcast. And I'm just like, I don't even know how I would reach out to this guy. And then uh a few months ago found your website, just emailed the website, it connected you with like your agent who forwarded it. And uh miss, it's been great. So we're really excited to have you on. Uh you kind of play, you're telling us like a modern style of finger-picking guitar. Yeah.

Yeah, man. Um, you know, I started out really into the electric guitar um as a teenager, you know, as most of us uh do, I guess, when we're teens, we get into the electric, maybe, but um treading like crazy training. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, totally. Inner sandman metallic, you know, yeah, stuff like that. Um, but uh I switched over to the acoustic after seeing a a guy here in Topeka uh come and do a guitar workshop at the Classic Bean uh for Washburn guitars. His name is Preston Reed, and I was just absolutely blown away and never seen anything like it, you know. And um I'd always loved instrumental music as a young kid, even so really yeah, strangely enough, you know. Um the first album I ever bought was the soundtrack to Rocky Four. Okay, because I love that music when he was training. Yeah. This music is awesome.

Has the uh has the the lifting logs also translated with the soundtrack? Are you really into that? I well, a little bit.

You mean lifting weights or something?

Yeah, lifting doing some music. Training in the woods.

I guess not as much, but it was more the music, you know. But uh, but yeah, so you know, seeing this guy doing instrumental acoustic guitar and and he was really covering like rhythm and harmony and melody all at once. I was just like, this is so cool. Um, so that set me on the whole path of you know trying this solo acoustic guitar stuff.

Give us a little bit of your background. Are you you're from Topeka? Where'd you go to school? How'd you get into guitar?

Yeah, so I was born here in uh 1979, April 4th, um, and uh grew up here. I went to Bishop Elementary School. Uh but uh when I was I guess it was 1988, um, we moved to New Mexico for a little while. Uh and then we moved back up here. That's the year I was born, by the way. Yeah, let's go. So yeah, it was a good year. Um yeah, when we moved back though, um, I was up in uh the Washburn rural district, so they they had just built the new middle school there and uh started going there, and they actually had a guitar class. That was really my first uh guitar anything. Yeah. Um, so you know, took these guitar classes at the middle school, and I was like, Yeah, this is great. And I just heard this guitar player Eric Johnson on the radio, and um, I was just amazed at what he was doing. It's instrumental electric guitar mostly, really, really tasty melodic stuff. And you know, I was uh 12, 13 years old. Asked my dad for a guitar, so he got me uh a used nylon string guitar from uh pawn shop, and that was what started it for me. But uh um yeah, so you know, I I played with bands for a little bit, um, got into electric guitar and then switched to the steel string after a few years and do the solo thing.

Um are we talking like in high school? Like you're in bands in high school and okay, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Um even when I was actually 14, I was I was playing a lot, you know. I I sometimes I'd skip school to be honest. You know, I wasn't the the best student, but I'd be playing guitar and um I had a sister, she would sneak me into the there was a a bar on College Hill called Quincy McGoo's, and I she would sneak me in and I'd get to play with some of the bands. Wow, you know, yeah, I felt like a rock star already. I was like 14, had long hair, you know. Amazing. So that was kind of uh how that yeah, and I had the band with the guys. We play the battle of the bands at high school, and we play stuff like Rage Against the Machine and Corn and all kinds of stuff like that.

So but dude, Rage Against the Machine had the sickest guitar riffs.

Oh, so good, so iconic man, yeah, yeah. I love the that's uh one of the favorite things about uh Did Guitar Hero? Do you ever play guitar? Yeah, I play guitar hero.

You know, you know at least one or two Rage Against the Machine songs from Guitar Hero. Yeah, not off the top of my head, I don't.

But I'm glad you guys are bonding over this. Keep counting.

Yeah, this is great. Yeah, I mean, really, I've I also found myself really drawn to like the rhythm guitar players as well as the lead guys. So like Tom Morello, you know, and uh like the riffs from James Hetfield and Metallica or um Dimebag, Daryl and Pantera, just all kinds of the guys that could write the cool riffs. It was like that's really where it's at. Yeah.

So yeah, man. That's awesome. So, how did you shift from that to what you're doing now into this kind of more rhythmic where it's kind of the both ants, the rhythm and the lead, like on acoustic guitar?

Yeah, well, going back just a minute to the that first guitar that I had was uh, you know, a nylon string guitar, so you can't really play Metallica or Raging's machine on that. So when I first got that guitar, I was like, Well, what can you play on this kind of thing? You know, what's more sounds appropriate or whatever? And I remember the tune Dust in the Wind from Kansas, you know, and uh it's like, oh, maybe that's a tune I should try to learn on this. Another group from Topeka, right? That's totally which is crazy. Yeah, the guy that wrote it, Carrie Limgren, still lives here. Yeah.

Um, so if you know him by the way, we we I've been trying to get him on too. So oh, sure.

Yeah, well, uh yeah, I think I knew how to get a hold of his own. Okay, let's go. My plan is working. Let's go. Yeah. So um, you know, that but that tune is finger-picked, you know, you don't play it with a guitar pick. So I was just trying to get started with that. And uh I had a cousin who uh went to Washburn here across the street, um, and uh he he took some classical guitar lessons, and so he'd be like, Hey, you want to learn these duets together, these Bach duets we could try to play. And so starting to try to learn some more classical guitar type stuff. But um, you know, it was it was kind of on the side. I was really trying to do the electric thing there for a minute, but uh seeing Preston Reed, you know, do the workshop here, and and you know, you he was using different guitar tunings, so you change the pitch of the strings, so you know, all the chords that you normally know don't work anymore. Um, but you've got this new sort of palette to paint with. That's like how I like to think of it. So I like to use altered tunings, you know, on the guitar as well. Um and and so I tried to learn a bunch of his tunes and and some other players that I started to find in the finger style world and got me going.

What are some of your favorite alternate tunings?

We're really branching out to go around from just the uh for getting too geeky for people that aren't guitar players or anything, but uh but yes, um, you know, one of my that I've used in a few tunes um is dadgad. It's kind of a common altered tuning. That's just the name of the case. Like open D or whatever. It's close to open D. Oh, okay. It's not exactly yeah. Uh an open D would have an F sharp on the third string. This one has a G, so it's uh technically a D suspended fourth chord. But uh it's uh Write that one down. Yeah, write that down. Dad Gad. Dad Gad. Favorite. Yep. It's uh yeah, it's a cool tuning. I wrote actually one of my my tune that really went viral and launched my career in a big way on YouTube. Uh a tune called Drifting is in Dad Gad.

Yeah, okay.

Um, but another one that's kind of unique to me that I invented uh is E C D G A D from Low to High. Uh I wrote uh a couple of my other tunes that were pretty big on YouTube on that um for my father and Ryan are both in that too. Cool.

Yeah. Speaking of YouTube, you have you have immersed quite quite the following on YouTube. Well, how did you first get into YouTube? When did you start posting content? And what's that kind of been like?

Yeah, man. So um that was, you know, back in 2006 uh was when the first videos uh of mine went on there. And at that time I was with this new independent record label uh out of Milwaukee called Candy Rat Records was the name. And they were focused in this kind of uh guitar playing, they were really into it. So um they had this idea, you know. I just released an album with them called Art of Motion, and they're like, let's use this new platform called YouTube to see if we can get some new new fans or whatever. I was like, okay, so um I was on the on the road at that time and had some days off in Milwaukee, so that we shot about 10 videos or something in one day, something like that. Yeah. And uh, you know, he started to put them up. And uh when I came back home here to Topeka, you know, I was teaching guitar lessons at that time at a music store called Steam Music. And I I think I had a a student that missed his lesson, so I was just chilling at the front desk and got on the computer and went to YouTube, and I saw that drifting was like on the front page of YouTube. And back then it was completely different. You know, nowadays it's all kind of tailored to whatever you might like, the algorithm or whatever. Yeah. Back then though, they were just like, Oh, here's what's trending right now. Wow, yeah. What? It's on the front page, and I got it. That's crazy. Yeah, I was like called the guy at the label and was like, man, go to go to YouTube, man, and uh drifting's on the front page. And it just took off. And um, they had it like on CNN.

I was on gosh, who was it? Super cool.

The guy that did the uh New Year's stuff. Oh, Carson Daly? Yeah. That's wild. Never would have imagined all of this.

So you're saying this isn't the first interview, the biggest interview we've ever done.

I mean, all of I think all of those are really building to this moment. It's it's culminate, your career's culminating right here.

I don't know if you know this, Andy, but right now you're speaking in front of 196 subscribers that we have.

That's right. That's all good, man. Wow, man. It's really it's it's uh I enjoy getting to talk to people about it. They're dedicated, though. Oh, they're very dedicated. Four of them play guitar. That's right. Four of them know what you meant when you were talking about the tunings.

Right.

That's funny. Yeah, man. So, but to be honest, you know, when all that stuff started to blow up, I didn't really uh pursue or chase the online thing that much. I it wasn't really at that time, even like uh something that could you you would think would be like a job, you know, or something or like a way to make money. Uh, they didn't even have monetization on YouTube at that time. So I was just, you know, like, oh man, well now it's time to go do shows. So yeah. That's really been kind of my focus ever since is performing.

What are some of your biggest uh YouTube videos that have uh with the most views that you have?

Um drifting is the biggest one. It's got like 61 or 2 million, something like that. Whoa, yeah, it's nuts, man. And um, not far behind that is probably Africa. We were talking about that earlier. That's right.

I know that song.

And um, you know, probably Rylin and For My Father and Into the Ocean. I I play this uh kind of unusual instrument called a harp guitar as well.

Uh I saw that when I was stalking you preparing for this.

I was like, I don't know what that is, but yeah, pretty visually uh yeah, uh captures your attention. But uh so that one's had quite a few views too. But wow.

So can you break down maybe for uh our non-musical followers? Uh you play a style of guitar where you're playing the lead and the melody at the same time. Yeah. What what does that mean?

Well, uh maybe a good way to think about it is like a piano player, you know, who has usually chords and a melody at the same time. So um that's what I'm trying to do with my tunes as well. Just have a sort of full piece of music there on the guitar. Um so you know, chords are when you have three or more notes at the same time, and then the melody is sort of the what you think of on jingle bells when you're singing jingle bells, you know, that's the melody. So you have something that stands out as the melody, and then the accompaniment stuff is the uh the chordal stuff.

Yeah.

And then sometimes I like to use the guitar body as a a rhythmic or a percussive instrument. So it's uh it's a hollow, you know, uh body. So you've got sort of a drum there, yeah. You can get different tones, kind of a bass drum or a clap sound or a snare kind of. Um, or sometimes if I'm not getting too wild with the percussive stuff, sometimes I'll just use the guitar strings as a kind of a click sound. You can kind of hit them with your thumb and get this click when the strings hit the fret wire, makes a click sound.

Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. I remember my freshman, we were talking about this off the air, but my freshman year at KU was 2006. I didn't realize was the year you started posting. My uh just a good friend introduced me to some of your stuff on on YouTube. He's like, dude, you gotta listen to this guy. It's crazy. And I was just like a year or two into getting into guitar and kind of what you were describing earlier about like getting into like, you know, the 80s metal riffs. Like I was learning all of those, my freshman year. I was learning crazy train and learning, you know, that I would never learn sweet picking.

Uh, you know, I can't even do that.

Halfway through the crazy train soul is like, this is where I'm done. I will not not do any more of this. Uh but you know, then he showed us your stuff. And and at first we're like, maybe we could learn that. And it was like, I don't think so. I don't think we're ready for that yet. Uh but we listened to a lot of your stuff. And there's some other guys kind of with a sort of similar vibe that kind of came out around that. Uh, but man, it was just it was really, really cool, man. It really inspired just kind of our, you know, guitar playing and just like interest in music and you know, things like that, which is really fun.

Thank you, man. Well, you know, it's uh it's been it's been uh an honor of my life to be able to, you know, inspire people or you know, have people tell me that kind of thing, you know, because I've I still get inspiration from all my heroes, you know, and I know what that feels like. Um so to be able to do that for people is awesome. It's awesome, man.

Who are some of your uh your heroes in the music world?

Well, you know, I started out um with the electric thing, and so you know, I mentioned Eric Johnson. Um he's I still love his playing, and we've got to tour together, you know, since then. And is he the like coasts of something?

Something Cliffs of Dover. Cliffs of Dover, yeah. That's it. Yeah, it's a good thing. It's another guitar hero song.

Yep, yeah, you're right. Yeah, it's awesome. Yep, you're very right.

It's like I think it's known as like one of the hardest songs on Guitar Hero, I think.

Yeah, it is. Yep. I was actually at David Buster's down in Phoenix, tried to play that with my friend. We did a let's try and do Cliffs of Dover, failed. Yeah, but um professional guitar player. Yeah, can't do it. But um, yeah, man, uh so I still love his music, his playing. Um, John Petrucci from Dream Theaters, big influence. Um, Joe Satriani. But you know, when I when I got into the acoustic thing, um, that was really where I found my my my passion, I think, the most. And so um Preston Reed's a big influence, the guy I saw here in town, you know. Um, and uh my really my biggest musical influence as far as the guitar is a guy named Michael Hedges is his name. Okay, yeah. He he uh grew up in Edid, Oklahoma, and uh just revolutionized acoustic guitar in the early 80s. Um doing, you know, the stuff that I do, it's all inspired by him, you know, in a big way. Oh wow. Um so using altered tunings and uh different techniques to compose solo guitar music. And uh yeah, he was like the Jimi Hendricks of acoustic guitar. It's a really good way to think about it. Is he still like he passed away, sadly, yeah, uh in 1997 in a in a car crash? Uh wow. But that was the year I discovered his music. And oh man. So you never got to meet him or anything. But I've met all of his family. Um it's been cool to have that connection.

So yeah.

Okay, so you brought up guitar hero. I feel like I have to ask this question as a non-musical guy. I know enough to be dangerous, John. But does guitar hero or playing the guitar, is there any overlap there? Like, you know, you're being a professional guitar player, like you're good at guitar hero? Or is that like uh no?

I actually um we used to play rock band, which was kind of the same, real similar. Yeah. Um, but I would always play the drums on it. I loved I loved the drums, you know. And that was really the first instrument I wanted to play as a little kid. But um, but anyway, I think there's a little bit of crossover because it your sense of timing is the main thing, you know. But you've only got what four or five buttons down there, so it's uh kind of limited in that sense. But just your ability to play on time, it's which is hugely important. Yeah, you know, a lot of people get all into the fast stuff or complicated things, but if you can't play on time, right, then who cares? Yeah. So that's good, that's a good thing.

That's amazing. Do you feel like if someone were to get really good at guitar hero with no actual musical knowledge or skill, does that translate into like, could they learn guitar more quickly than the average person? Just off top of your head, what's your you know, your impulse?

No, not necessarily. I don't know if it really, I don't know if it really translates that much. I mean, just that that feeling of timing, you'll have that a bit, hopefully. Yeah. But you know, playing with actually holding down strings, you know, that's kind of tough at first. Your fingers like uh you're getting all hurt trying to hold down the strings and all. And so that you know, all that stuff takes time and uh getting comfortable with it. So I think it's the same for everybody. Yeah.

If you had to uh if someone was wanting to learn to play the guitar, just getting going, or maybe they have a kid who wants to learn how to play, what kind of piece of advice would you give how to get started?

Uh well, I I used to teach for a decade, you know, uh from the time I was 17 till 27. So uh and I I still think a good approach is kind of, you know, what kind of music do you like? Um let's try to learn something that you like, you know, because I think a lot of times kids and people in general just might get bored with it if you're sitting there, let's do sure scales or here's you know, let's let's do something musical.

Yeah.

And what do you like? Yeah. And let's learn that song, you know. So that was what I used to do a lot of. And we would also have uh, you know, books as well, like here's a bunch of chords, or if we want to get into jazz, you know, or whatever. Um, but I would also intersperse, like let's learn a new tune and see how they're what they're doing in it, and that kind of thing.

Yeah, okay. So that's a great question. My son, my oldest is seven, and we're starting to teach him some things. He was doing piano lessons, and we have a ukulele that he's like learning to kind of do. The and I remember back when I was taking piano lessons as a kid, it the it was just brutal being like, you know, kind of forced to sit there and like learn all the notes and you know, the staff and all of that stuff, which is I feel like generally is helpful. Like maybe you do want to understand how music works, but it's not the most fun to learn as a seven-year-old.

Yeah.

What have you seen helps? Do you is it just kind of like, hey, at least if you know 50% of it is you're learning something you actually really like, then that kind of carries over. Yeah. Is that kind of what you're saying?

That's yeah.

That's true. But you still have to just kind of dig in for the annoying stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. Like learning, you know, chord construction or you know, different scales, like what what notes out of this scale make that chord. That kind of theory stuff is is good to teach along the way. And so but you know, you mentioned the staff. Actually, I can't really read music that well. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. So you don't need that's not necessary. Not really. Unnecessary skill for playing the guitar. Yeah.

Piano and stuff, yeah. I and yeah, maybe the guitar. It just depends on what you're gonna go after. You know, you want to you want to play like uh be a studio musician where you can just sit down with anybody and they put music in front of you and you can just boom. I mean, I can't do that. That'd be like, give me an hour or two, or tomorrow I'll come back and actually get through this thing because I can't just sit there and be like Yeah, yeah. So, but you know, if you just have a passion for it or something and and you just I you know, I just wanted to learn how to play so many tunes. That was a big thing for me early on. Like, if I could learn how to play cliffs of Dover or you know, whatever, Crazy Train, uh, that would just work. Through fire and flames. Yeah, yeah. Oh man, I'm too old for that. Do you do any vocal stuff or is it just instantly? I don't yet. I don't know if I ever will, but um, you know, I I I I tend to really focus on the guitar thing so much. And and like I said too, I've I've always just loved instrumental music and something about the power of to me, the way I feel it, um, it's just almost magical. Something you're like, how do why do I have this feeling about yeah, you know, yeah, building up in me just hearing this music? There's no words telling me anything, it's just there's something a feeling, yeah. The sound, yeah, with this sound, there's a feeling. Uh, I love that. And so kind of focused on that the whole time.

Yeah. Yeah. That's so so cool. Wow. I want to get more nerdy, but I don't think we should already hunt too many. Thank goodness. I have more musical questions, but I think I'll just wait. Uh man, so tell us what it was like. Uh as a as a young guy in 2006, you know, you're kind of blowing up. Um, what did that feel like? What was that experience like? Um, it sounds like you were already kind of touring by that point. Like, what did that change about your career? Um, yeah, tell us about that.

Sure. So that's 2006, yeah. Um I released my first album in 2001. Um, and it was just I was teaching guitar here, you know, and the guy at the front counter was like, you should really record some of those original tunes you're doing. And so I did that, and yeah, I would play here in town at the coffee shops like World Cup or uh Classic Bean, and then you know, and would play at uh St. Gregory's downtown every other Wednesday, stuff like that. Um, but you know, I didn't really know uh what to do exactly, how it could maybe get a career going. Uh I tried a uh International Finger Style Guitar Championship that's held in Winfield, Kansas. Um, there's this really big bluegrass festival there. But they have all these championships. Championships for sort of bluegrass type instruments. They got auto harp and fiddle and uh mandolin and banjo, and they got flat pick guitar and finger picking guitar. So I thought I'd try that out. Um I got third place in the year 2000 uh one. Um, and that was you know kind of cool. I won a nice guitar and and put that on my website, you know, um, and had that album released finally. Um, and then you know, I still was really just teaching guitar, you know, private lessons was my main thing for a long time, but I would occasionally get these opportunities and uh I went and toured in Taiwan in 2004, I think was the first time. Wow, yeah, this the guy heard about me there. And um, and so I was like, I gotta get a passport. Like, I've never even been out of Topeka hardly. I'm going to Taiwan. That's awesome. Yeah, so that was a real trip. Um, and then I also ended up trying this uh guitar competition in Canada called the uh Canadian Guitar Festival, and they had this similar finger style guitar championship thing, and I did well there. And one of the judges at that was uh one of my biggest influences, uh guy named Don Ross, great acous acoustic guitar player from Canada. So he really liked what I was up to. And he said, You want to come up to Canada and open shows and do stuff with me? Sure. So that was like 200 uh four and five. And that was when um this record label heard about me, Candy Rat, and we shot those videos. Um, but still, you know, all those little things were just kind of little opportunities that pop up. But I was just coming back home teaching guitar lessons. I was still living with my mom, you know, and trying to figure life out a bit. Um, but when the stuff started to blow up like that, um suddenly, you know, it was uh Josh Grobin wanted me on his Christmas album. Whoa. Yeah, that was uh uh an album called Noel. So you're on it. Yeah. They wanted me to play on Little Drummer Boy because it was. Come on. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, doing percussive stuff on the guitar. Yeah. Um Little Drumming Guitar Playing Boy.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was that was cool. One thing that was a little bit of a bummer about that is they went on the Oprah Winfrey show later, and they had some guy acting like he was playing my parts rather than like, dude, I would meet you there. Dude, I'll buy my flag. Come on, come on. Dang it. So that was a bit of a bummer, but so he wasn't even playing, he was pretending. He was pretending to play, yeah. It's still on YouTube somewhere, but uh that's brutal. Like, but uh, but no, that was still the opportunity was super cool. I actually uh played with Prince. What? Yeah, he wanted me to start at the end of the stage, play some guitar, and then start walking forward, and I was gonna have this 50-foot cape. Yeah, yeah, and and on the back they were gonna project like flames and the universe and stars and all this stuff. And uh and then I would go off under the stage and then the band would start something like that. But I didn't end up doing that. I felt like really weird about wearing this huge cape. But um, what they did do is like bring me up on elevator though and just play some acoustic uh purple rain and then went down.

Was the cape it was your veto, or they were just like hey.

I was like, I don't, I can't I this is too much for me, man. I don't know, I'm I'm too down to earth. Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah, and at the end, you know, I felt like it just wasn't even a very good fit. And I told him, like, if you ever want to do like an acoustic album or something where like purple rain or like a whole album of your tunes where it's acoustic and you sing over or something like that, you know, maybe that would I could I I would be a better fit, you know.

Yeah.

And I just figured I'd never hear from him again. But uh it was uh in December before he passed away, like four months later. I got another email talking about doing that. Wow, never did.

He's a really good guitar player too, right?

Incredible, yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything, man. He really he uh during the concert, he could go to any instrument and wow just crazy, unbelievable. Wow, super talented, creative, you know. Yeah, it's cool. Wow, it's really cool. Um, and uh, you know, yeah, it's starting to I got like a uh a manager and a booking agent and just been doing it ever since, you know. Just uh ended up, you know, marrying my girlfriend at who I had at that time. We're still together and got two boys and stuff, and she's been with me through the whole thing, you know. Wow, yeah. Um and uh shoot, you know, just I just go and and uh do do shows that that get booked and come on back home to Topeka. And it's just it's been great, man. And you know, I've always wanted to have a good family life thing too. So, you know, balancing the you know, rock star or whatever thing, you know, trying to be uh in the public eye and and all that, but then also just come home and disappear and make lunch for the kids before they go to get on the bus. You know, it's awesome. Yeah, I love all that.

I imagine being a full-time musician wasn't always, you know, you you decided to do it and you know you hit it big and it's always been great. Walk us through maybe if you have any advice or your experience. I'm sure it wasn't easy. Probably days where you felt like quitting or I need to go get a job, a real job, and uh but then you know, making it. What was that experience like? You have any advice for musicians out there trying to make it? Put videos on YouTube. No, yeah.

That's it. No, find new up and coming social media platforms. Right. Get in early, yeah. But um, you know, I'm I was fortunate that you know, my uh my mom was supportive, and you know, like I said, I was living with her for a while there trying to figure out what I was gonna do because I I didn't uh I thought I was gonna go to KU and and and maybe do music, but they didn't really have a guitar program uh so much. It was really just like if you want to do some guitar lessons, you know, you couldn't major in guitar. So I was like, oh shoot. Um so I I came back home and started teaching the lessons again. And you know, I just I didn't know exactly what was gonna happen, you know, with me and and music, but I I knew that I wanted to I had to really do something with music, whether it was just teaching lessons here at music stores for the rest of my life, and hopefully my wife gets a decent job or something, you know. Uh or yeah, she's a brain surgeon and play guitar. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but um, you know, but I was I was definitely trying to take opportunities wherever I could. Um, you know, these guitar competition things, which you know, helped at least it one of the main things they got out of that was just connections from other other guitar players like you know, making friends that I still have to this day. And we sometimes do show shows together. I got a friend up in Canada named Antoine Dufour. He organizes a festival now up there at a guitar festival and played at that a couple times. So, you know, just trying to make connections and and uh you know, but the I guess the main thing above all of it though is if if you're gonna try to have a career in music, original music, you just gotta stay focused on, you know, saying something with your music. Um, and if it resonates with you, it'll probably resonate with other people in some way. Um and just try to be persistent and and take all the chances you can.

Yeah. That's cool.

Yeah.

Um so what's it like now in terms of your career? Have you kind of pulled back and slowed down a little bit, like with your family and things, or are you still kind of running pretty hard?

Yeah. I mean, ever since I had kids, which my oldest son now is 14, um, I I kind of eased up a little bit. You know, I just told my agency uh back then, like, you know, I really don't know if I want to be on the road for longer than a couple weeks at a time. Like if you go out a couple weeks on the West Coast or wherever. I'll make some exceptions on that, though, like if we're going to Europe or something, you know, because you don't want to go all the way there for two weeks and then just then go back again for two weeks.

So I'm just gonna jet lag. Now you're going home.

Yeah, right. So I I'll uh I've actually here this month, or not this month, this year in the spring, I'll be heading over there for about a month uh doing some shows in uh Italy, I Italy, Ireland, Germany, and the UK.

What kinds of shows are those? Like what does that look like?

It's uh I usually play, you know, kind of not huge theaters, but like maybe two or three hundred seats. Um I actually just heard this morning that the show in Cologne, Germany sold out. So that was a good one. Let's go ahead.

That's awesome. Are you generally playing with a few other musicians as well? Or it's just me. Okay, come on.

Yeah, just doing doing my solo acoustic thing. Dang, man.

The Andy McKee headline tour.

Yeah, yeah, dude. That's kind of that's really what I've mostly done, man. Um uh like an evening with Andy McKee type thing. So it's like like two hours of me doing my thing, you know, with a break in the middle.

Um are you talking as well? Okay, you're interacting.

Totally, yeah. So as I mentioned, you know, I like to use these altered tunings. So I'm I'm in between songs, I'm like, and so I've like, well, I've got to say something here. I don't want to just be tuning the guitar. People are like this is boring. So I've usually got you know some stories about the songs or you know, if something might have happened that day that's kind of funny, try to bring it up on stage or whatever.

Have you had to practice so like a lot of your life has been practicing the instrument? Have you had to kind of work on like stage presence and crowd interaction and stuff like that too? Definitely.

What's that been like? Well, that was um those early years here in Topeka, man, just doing these coffee shop things. You know, I was I had played with you know some of the friends in high school, like I said, um at battle of the bands or little shows and here and there, but you've kind of got a group entity on stage and going to like, oh, I'm just alone up here. Uh what am I gonna do? But you know, I've I've always been tried to be fairly uh uh charismatic or funny or whatever, try talkative with people. And so try to do that on stage too, you know, just um uh yeah, the the whole trying to relate to people a thing, I think is a big part of my music, even you know, just finding the humanity that we all share. And so I just try to talk that way too on stage, you know.

Yeah.

Um, but it was it was kind of yeah, I was pretty quiet, some of those early shows for sure, just going through the tunes.

When you're uh doing a a tour or show like that, is there a percentage of the songs you're playing that are originals versus covers? Are they all originals? What does that split look like?

It's mostly originals. You know, I've got a I've done a few arrangements like um some of the 80s tunes. Uh I do a Tears for Fears tune, uh Everybody Wants to Rule the World. I did that arrangement for that. Oh, that's cool. Africa. And um, but sometimes I'll do covers of the players that inspired me who I've mentioned on the show too. You know, I just um it was funny, you know, having my thing blow up and maybe even a new generation of people, you know, seeing this kind of style for the first time. And so I like I feel a bit of a responsibility to say, well, you you should also know about Michael Hedges. Here's one of his students in school. Yeah, yeah. You should know about Don Ross, here's one of his. So I'll do a few like that too. But um, probably, you know, 75% of it's my original stuff. Yeah.

Do you have any jokes that just slap every time, no matter where you're at?

Oh, yeah. It's probably gotten so old people are like, uh, here he is with that joke again. But I still sometimes pull it out. Like I had uh I wrote a song and didn't know what to call it. My sister had uh walked by and heard me playing it, and she said, Hey, what do you call that? And I'm like, I don't have a title yet. And she's my older sister, and she's like, Well, it's pretty cool. Why don't you dedicate it to me and just title it after me? It's pretty arrogant, dude. So I decided to call it Heather song. And uh, but then I'm like, Yeah, but her name's Sarah, you know? So that one usually gets a good laugh, but uh yeah, yeah, it's wait, is her name actually her? Okay, so she's pretty cool. She got me into Iron Maiden when I was like seven years old. So that's awesome. I I order a tune, I guess.

That would be hilarious, just name it after some random you should name it after me. Sure, okay. Yeah, right.

We'll see. Maybe switching a little bit to Topeka, because you still live here, you have family here, you said you're up in the semen district. Yeah. What's what's kept you here? I mean, if you've been all over the world, is there a reason why you decided to stay? Um, yeah, I mean thinking about a move, choose Topeka, and you can get up to fifteen thousand dollars to relocate. Whether buying or renting, Topeka and Shawnee County are ready to welcome you. Apply now at choose topeka.com. Now, back to the show.

Probably the biggest component of that is like family. Like, I I love my mom and brother, and they're both still here. My sister's over in uh Kansas City, so not too far away. Yeah. Uh my brother and I um we get together every weekend to play disc golf. You know, yeah, we love love to do that. So yeah, a lot of fun. And uh so we're real tight, and uh it would just be tough to be like, Oh, I'm not gonna see him every weekend, you know. Right. We're just close like that. My sister or my sister, my um my wife's family is uh is is here too. So, you know, we're just just stuck around, you know. Yeah, yeah. That's cool.

You have a favorite disc golf course in Tobeka?

Uh Crestview, I think. Uh it's it's just kind of a classic. We used to drive by it as kids and we see people throwing these discs like super far. We're like, see how far that guy, that guy just threw that frisbee? Yeah. And just and so, yeah, my brother's really, really into it. He's way better than I am. And I I seem to have stopped progress like 20 years ago. Still like one over par, one over par. But uh yeah, Crestview's fun. Like the variety of the course there. Yeah, that was a good one. That's awesome.

When you think of um all the places you've been, you know, uh where you're traveling from, what do you like about Topeka? What brings you here? And you're like, I really love this about my hometown.

Uh I mean it's it's pretty laid back and it's it's uh it's got a lot of amenities, it's not too small, it's not too big. You know, uh sometimes I go to big cities and you're like in traffic for two hours trying to get somewhere. Yeah, it's like I could never be in this situation, I would lose my mind. Um, you know, it's uh I like that, and yeah, it's got kind of everything you might want, you know. I'm not don't feel like I'm looking for anything outside of what's here.

So traffic is the number one thing I hear of when I have a so I work as a full-time realtor, and when I someone's relocating here, that's the number one thing they always say is like I need to be within 25 minutes, 35 minutes, 45 minutes of my work. Yeah, where can I live? And I'm like literally anywhere, anywhere. You know, here's the big circle, you know, all the way to Lawrence. You know, you can you can live wherever you want. 35 minutes away, you can live in Lawrence. Yes, and they're blown away. Way out in the country if you want. Yeah, they're blown away because they're coming from a big metro or something, and you know, it takes an hour to get across town during uh during uh traffic time or whatnot, and it's like we don't really have that here. Yeah, we can kind of take it for granted.

Yeah, it is that's very true. Sometimes the uh the construction stuff's been slowing us down lately. But yes, it does. They're getting that through. I live up north um and they they just opened up uh 46, which has been good because that's kind of my yeah, it's kind of our main thoroughfare to get onto the highway there, and so it's been nice, and they got a new roundabout, and so it's a lot smoother.

That roundabout was shut down for a while, yeah.

Yeah, it was, man. It was nine months or something, or something like that. But hey, these things take time.

I had a friend who lived right like a mile from that roundabout, and getting to his house is difficult. Yeah, yeah.

It's been been tricky, but uh yeah, but they're they're getting stuff opened up again. That's awesome. It was good.

Come on, man. Let's do it. So you brought your guitar. Yeah. Um see something over there. What is that?

Do you want to maybe you want to just tell us about it first? Like this is a special kind of guitar. It is, man. I'm glad you asked that. Yeah. Well, this is my signature guitar in fact. Yeah. So um uh I had mentioned the Canadian Guitar Festival earlier, and um, I met a uh a luthier, is what you call a guy that person that builds guitars. There was a few luthers showing their guitars, and and I saw this guy, his name's Michael Greenfield. Um, he had his guitars on display, and I was like, that looks like a work of art. Uh that doesn't look like a regular guitar off the shelf there, man. That looks really incredible. And he I played it, it was just blown away. Um, but then I looked at the price tag too, and I was like, okay, well, I'm a guitar teacher in Topeka. We're gonna have one of these. American Dream. Yeah, someday. But um, you know, that was like 2004, and so you know, a few years later, career started to pick up. We got in touch again, and um, I've been playing his guitar since about 2008. Uh, and so just a few years ago, we we we collaborated and made the the signature guitar. Wow. So yeah, it's uh it's a jumbo size, so it's kind of bigger than uh a normal uh guitar, a normal sort of shape that most people think of is a dreadnought, is what you call that shape for a guitar, acoustic guitar. And so this one has a really big kind of lower bout, which is like the lower half down there, uh, which helps with the response, the bass and having that kind of warmth. Um and it also has slightly fanned frets on it. Yeah, I noticed that. Yeah, and I was wondering if my eyes were tripping. Right. Yeah, so that's uh that's an idea that uh a guy named Ralph Novaks came up with to uh help help with intonation. That's what uh is what you call when when you're in tune up and down the entire fretboard. So sometimes you might be sounding perfectly in tune here, but then when you get up to say the ninth fret or something, you might hear that G string sounds sharp or something, a little bit. So and that's because the guitar, the normal guitars are are are uh equal temperament, is what you call it. And so all the frets are straight and they're all the same like that. But what this one tries to do is uh you have the nut angled this way and then the bridge angled that way, so you have a longer scale length for the bass strings, and then a shorter scale length as you get over to the first string. And uh that's uh more appropriate for the pitch that it's tuned to. So you open up a piano, you see the bass strings are like whoa, super long, yeah, and then the treble strings are short, or a harp, or uh, you know, any of the any instrument really with strings. So this tries to emulate that, having the right scale length, uh, and then it's more in tune everywhere on the fretboard.

Well, I'm I'm nodding my head like I'm understanding all of it. That's cool.

Uh yes, Andy, yes, all in-depth there, man. But yeah, so that's what the fan fret thing is. So it's supposed to help with the intonation. And um, it's got Macassar ebony back and sides, uh, yeah, real beautiful and great sound.

And so can you so the style of music you play, could you play that on a standard like dreadnought style guitar? Oh, yeah. That's still conducive.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I would just have a different, you know, tone to it, um, by the body shape, and then you know, the the back and sides, uh, the type of woods you use, all those things affect the the sound, of course. Okay, but you can play it on any old guitar. My first real steel string guitar was a 12-string um that we got, and uh, we took off six of the high string ones, and I would play it like a regular six-string guitar. Um, but uh that was what I started on. And yeah, yeah, you can you can play this stuff on anything. That's awesome.

Yeah, sweet. Well, what do you what are you gonna play for us today, man?

Okay, man. Um, well, I figured I might as well play you uh drifting. Uh it was the uh the big viral hit for me, and uh I I wrote it, I think I was either 18 or 19 here in Topeka, you know, and living living with my mom and trying to figure out what was up with my life. And actually that's where the title came from. Um, I didn't know my direction, so that's where the title drifting came from.

Yeah, so you wrote this when you were 18, 19, and it had 61 million views on YouTube.

It does now, yeah. Crazy. Yeah, 2006 is when it went up and started to climb the charts there.

People pay to listen to this, John. We're getting a treat here.

Yeah, I'll send you a bill for whatever the YouTube equivalent of 61 million views is.

Cool. Stage is yours. All right, I'm not gonna do that.

Wow. That was amazing. Wow.

Holy smokes, man.

Dude, so good.

I'm telling you right now, if someone's listening to this episode, they need to hop on over to YouTube and re-listen and watch what you just did. Yes. Yeah. Listening to that does not give it justice to what you just did.

Watching it is incredible. It's kind of wild seeing it this close, too. Yeah, it's a good thing. Yeah, it's really different. It's so cool.

I I actually I know how to play the guitar. Not that. What you just did is not playing the guitar. You were doing things I didn't even know that instrument can make the noises of. Yeah, man.

Well, we were talking about that earlier a little bit, and it's really just a different way, you know. I mean, it's um it looks really hard. I mean, I mean, it's got some difficulty to it, but it's just a it's such a different way of playing, I guess. You know, you're doing these hammer-ons and uh taps and and uh harmonics and things. But uh, you know, that that that feeling is what I had when I saw Preston Reed, and I was just like, what on earth? Yeah, you know, I gotta figure out whatever that is and pursue that and try to follow that path a bit, you know.

That is just that is a whole nother level of playing the guitar. You know, someone's like, Oh, I play the guitar. No, you don't. Yeah, that's insane.

Yeah, you know, and hearing it acoustically, like you guys are saying too, something what's special about that is you can, you know, you can hear the dynamics and the the you know, if you play something quietly or or hit it harder, you know, there's just so much control you have when you're playing finger style, you know, yeah over over the expression of every note. You know, uh that's another thing that drew me to it.

How do you um try to ask this in a way that isn't too like in the weeds, but you're obviously you're not just playing like standard guitar chords you learn in a book. You know, obviously you're playing some different tunings and things. You're not just learning like, you know, this is G and D, and I can play Wonderwall now, you know. Like how did you like gain the understanding to build what you just did? Like the chord structures and things like that, you know what I'm saying?

Sure, sure. Um well that goes back to the altered tunings and and um how for me what I really like about it is um a couple things. One is that you you suddenly have these new chord voicings possible, just new textures, you know, things you couldn't play in a standard tune guitar. But also what I really like about it is that you're almost resetting your brain to beginner in a way, which sounds counterproductive. But um since you don't know like what is this is a C chord, right? Well, it's not anymore. Sounds like this. Right. So you're like you're exploring, you're using this like explorer type brain. Right. What can I find here? You know, like this, this, you know, these different chords or where you know, where are these things? You know, I always like the the sound of open strings as well, you know. So the altered tunings lend themselves to that. Uh, and then these harmonics, you know, I like to do these slap harmonics you saw there. So that's just creating a harmonic by hitting it at a harmonic node, these different kinds of sounds.

So a lot of it is just exploring, figuring it out just by ear, what sounds good. Yeah, all that sounds nice, I like that. Exactly.

Every every piece of music I've ever written was made that way. Really, I mean, I wasn't like, okay, I want to play a C chord and then a G. It was just like, what can I what am I feeling? And if I did, if I hear something in my head like melodically, find that. Um, but it usually begins with just exploring around and and then finding something interesting, and then I'll build that into something.

And so you wrote that when you were 18. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Justin, there's there's gotta be like a leadership principle in there somewhere that translates like something about like getting beyond what you know and are comfortable with, and just kind of like exploring and trying things, and you know what I'm saying? Like there's there's something there, like getting kind of I don't know, maybe you know, beyond kind of brain plastic plasticity, or you just like trying new things.

Yeah, you don't learn how to do that by reading about it. Yeah, you just you just have to practice. There it is, you just have to do it. I always think about that in uh in a correlation like push-ups. How do you get better at push-ups? Not reading about them, right? Not not talking to people who are really good at it. You just do push-ups.

Yeah, same thing that's that's a good point, man. Yeah, I yeah, and that reminds me of a dear friend who I think will watch this because he's the friend who showed me uh you when I was in college. So we're just gonna shamelessly call him out. We were really into skateboarding too at the time. And he uh we were at the skate park in Lawrence, and he's like teaching a friend of ours how to Ollie, and he's like, he's like, This is what you do. And he's like got his hands on the skateboard, you know, like you push here, you slide your foot up, and the friend's like, okay, I think I get it. Can you just like do it for me? And my friend's like, Well, I can't do it. He was like, I just I understand how it works, I can't do it, you know. It's like that, it's like, no, no, you gotta you gotta just get in there and try stuff. Yeah, cool. Yeah, it's cool.

Well, I think I would be I would be mad at myself if I didn't ask you to do this. Can you, Gabe, can we move that back over? Could you do Africa for us and show us maybe show the audience what you mean by you know the lead versus the melody? Sure. Because I totally saw your Africa video online and I know exactly what you mean, but I didn't at first. I think that's really cool.

Sure, yeah. Let me grab a I need a capo here.

Oh, yes. See at my extent of playing the guitar is I know six to eight chords, and when I was introduced to the capo, it changed my world. It's like, oh my gosh, I can do so much more. Yeah.

Yeah. I like to uh use capos sometimes. Um I I've actually got a banjo capo in there. Oh so what I like to do with that is just cover some of the strings and then have some open and do some different stuff like that. Wow. Speaking of that though, uh shamelessly plug this this company. This is these are uh shub capos that I like to use. And um, I was just at the NAM convention yesterday in the last weekend. Uh, and we're gonna do a signature capo, custom like uh. Oh, that's cool. We're gonna yeah, we're gonna we're we're incorporating actually Kansas stuff into the capo. We're gonna have on the bottom here like a the uh the river, like maybe Kansas River here cool, and then a sunflower with some petals going onto the river, and the the stem of the sunflower turns into a treble clef.

Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah, that's sweet.

Yeah.

Who do like who designs that?

Like, is there an artist you're working with or something?

Uh there's a they they actually have uh uh some different artists on on staff, I guess. You know, and they they made these mock-ups, and I was like, man, that looks awesome. I love that idea. And I've got a little logo which they'll put like on this little button. Sweet. So pretty cool. Yeah, so um Africa from Toto, that was uh something that that uh wanted to do early on. I think it was on my 2004 album. And I'd heard people do solo guitar arrangements of like Beatles tunes and things, but I kind of grew up as a kid listening to 80s music, you know, so I I just loved that. And um and I was practicing some uh percussive ideas on the guitar, and uh it just kind of accidentally did the rhythm. I was like, man, that kind of sounds like Africa. Do you have perfect pitch? No, uh pretty good relative pitch though, so like tuning, I can hear the vibration when it's gets together. But uh, if somebody just plays it, don't I don't necessarily know what it is. Um but yeah, so you know, I just I had this like that intro rhythm. I was like, okay, that's kind of like you know, the Africa rhythm. Um and I had my guitar in dadgad tuning at that time. Dadgad. And uh I put the capo on to get the the right key. So I started out with like that, like and then I was coming over, and at the time I had dad gads, so it was the it actually was uh it was that note. So I I had this bass note, and I thought, well, I can hit these two at the same time because they're the same pitch, like octa different, and then I tuned the A on the fifth string down to G so I could get these two. So I was like, okay. I wrote out the rhythms, you know, and was like, where do they line up? That's wild. Trying to get it uh synced up. And then there was that little keyboard pattern of like five notes. I was like, what is that? I gotta I was just listening to it over and over, trying to hear the notes. It's these five notes, and you just kind of repeat them. And you make that pattern. Just casual, just like that. Like you do. And it's like, so how am I gonna get that? I was like, I'm just gonna strum it, you know, and try and get those harmonies.

I guess you're getting the lead and the harmony, yeah, the vocal parts and the guitar and the drum. This is crazy. So awesome is so crazy.

Oh, it so when I was looking at your YouTube page before this, I was watching this video that you did. You posted this 16 years ago. And so someone 10 years ago, six years later, they go, Okay, step one, learn guitar. Step two, watch Andy do this cover. Step three, look up the song tab. Step four, smash the guitar in frustration because it's so hard. Quit and then just go get a job. I mean, if you're listening to this, that is not doing it justice. That is so cool.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, seeing it in person or hear it in the room is really always pretty magical. Yeah.

I think one of the sorry, go ahead.

Oh, I was gonna say that you know, the guys from Toto saw that kind of early on. Uh, and I I got to become friends with Steve Lukather, the guitar player. No way. Yeah, yeah. We we recorded on uh an album together called uh Six String Theory, uh, which was uh Lee written our project. He's a great jazz guitarist, but we did um we actually did a version of Drifting together. No and then Shape of My Heart by Sting. If you know that tune, we get a cover of that. But anyway, yeah. Wow, it'd be cool to become friends with those guys.

That's so cool. Yeah, Toto is iconic, it's so iconic.

Rosanna and Hold a Line, and so many good tunes.

Yeah, it's so good. But one of the things I love about that song is it's obviously its own very unique style and rendition of the song, but you can just hear it in your mind as you're playing it. Yeah, and it's so faithful too. There's just the energy of it, you know.

Yeah, that's that's I sometimes I I teach a lot actually still. I have a guitar retreat that I do every year called Musicarium. And uh one of the you know, sometimes I'll talk about arranging, and it's like you really just want to capture the the energy in the different parts, you know, the iconic things that people are like, oh yeah, chorus. So like trying to get that energy in the in the in the uh chorus.

You can hear the guy singing it.

Yeah. As you're playing, I can hear it.

Oh, it's so good. It took everything in me not to start singing it myself. I'm gonna ruin anything out here. I just don't want to get into it. Almost started clapping, I'm like, he's already doing it.

And it's such a great song, too. Just on its own, Africa is such an incredible song. It is, man.

It's really incredible. Nothing like it. There's not another song that you're like, oh, it sounds like Africa.

Yeah, Africa. There's not one song. It's so I mean, they were just they were so creative, too. Yeah. And like, I don't know if they got enough credit for just the incredibly skilled musicians. Yeah, they were all uh studio musicians, you know.

There's three brothers in the in the group, too. Uh the Bicaro brothers were just the drummer. I mean, they were just unbelievable. Yeah. And they and Steve Lukather and um David Page, they wrote like Human Nature on you know, thriller. A lot of the thriller is is like Toto with Michael Jackson. That's that's pretty much that album. Yeah, yeah. All just unbelievable musicians.

Yeah, even like Rosanna, like on the surface, sounds just kind of like a pop hit. But if you just listen to it, it is not a simple song. And it's not an easy song, like musically, like there's a lot going on. Like you can tell, these are skilled musicians. Like it's wild.

The drumming is so cool on that.

That drum shuffle that that's on there is just so after watching you play both Drifting in uh Africa. It felt like a stupid question that I asked him off air. I was like, Do you play any other instruments? It's like, well, you percussion, you play three different versions of the guitar all at once. It's like, oh you're like, yeah, I dabble. I was like, oh, okay, he just plays the guitar, sounds good. It's like, no. Yeah, I do.

I dabble a bit with drums and keyboards and you know, bass. Um, but uh yeah, uh there's something about the maybe I'm a control freak or something. There's just so much you can you're in control of when you're doing this finger style thing. Every note, you know, you can shape it, color it how you want. And like you can get the melody, and and you know, it's real special about the guitar is that um you can manipulate the string in so many ways, you know, as opposed to like a violin where you have a bow or you know, or a harp where you're not fretting stuff, you know. With with the guitar, you can do bands or you know, with the left hand or you know, with the right hand stuff, you can grab chords or you can play with a pick, you know, it's just so much so.

That's so cool. Man, well, thank you so much. That was incredible.

Certainly my pleasure, man. I love talking music and uh uh nice to be here, do something here with Topeka, and I can talk about you know classic bean and people like, oh yeah. Oh yeah. If I'm doing an interview with like guitar player magazines or like they wouldn't know what that is, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's cool. That's that's really cool to hear. I mean, we those are places that I visit all the time. That's where you got your start. That's super cool. Yeah, yeah.

We like to kind of end with just some rapid fire, just life in Topeka, things you like, you know, all that kind of stuff.

So okay. Uh go to date night in Topeka. Go to date night. Um, I'm gonna say the Shack.

I like it. Oh, yeah. What are you ordering at the Shack? I got really into their wings. As far as like Buffalo wings, like authentic buffalo flavor, they're the best for me. They're just incredible. And I've been to Buffalo. Yeah, played there a few times.

So yeah, they're really good. I don't think I've had the wings there. We'll have to have to try it next week. A lot of people don't know. Yeah.

They're really good.

All right. So you're a coffee guy. Yes. Do you have a favorite coffee place or a few?

I do. Um PT's uh is is my classic go-to. Actually, I get a shipment every month from them. Uh yeah. And I actually have my own coffee even with a company called Acoustic Coffee, which is nice that I saw that. Plug it a little bit. What is that? Well, it's a cool company called Acoustic Coffee, and um they they love acoustic guitar and they love coffee, and so they they uh they they do a few brands with uh different players. Tommy Manuel, um Joe Bonamas has got one, and I just got one this summer.

And so do they play acoustic over the beans as they're being roasted? This this these beans are infused specifically with Andy McKee's music.

24 hours of art of motion on Reaps.

How many potholes did you hit on your way over here? Oh, I think only three. There you go. Only three.

But they are like he knows. Like they were in his. He didn't have to think very hard. He knew. Yeah. Those were memorable three potholes. Um do you have any favorite local I mean you basically hit at the shack, but do you have any other favorite local restaurants or anything like that?

Uh let's see. Where else are we? Oh, um Jong's Thai. Gosh, have you guys done it?

I haven't never been.

90% of our guests say Jong's Thai. Yeah. And they're the only place I've reached out, I've probably, you know, how many interviews have we done in the last year and a half? At least 50, 75 now. Uh I don't know what is that? No. No. 30, 35. 30. 40. That's because we do every two weeks. Uh my math is way off. So 35 to 40. I have never been rejected. Uh, you know, I've had people ghost me and just not respond when I'm trying to set up interviews and stuff. The only person to ever say no, we're not interested, is Jong's dog kitchen.

Oh no, really?

Well, I think it's made because of language, maybe barrier, uh and just kind of some nerves. But we we have a friend who knows them and we're working on it. Oh, man.

The joke is we're just gonna bring our stuff and just go get dinner there since we can show up.

You just do it.

Hey, what can I get? You guys uh sit down for a second. How many potholes did you hit on the way over here?

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And also Indian bistro, I'll give a shout out. I'm really really a fan of theirs too. Love it.

That's awesome. Yeah.

Um, are you a golfer? Disc golfer.

Disc golfer, okay. You said your go-to course at uh Crestview.

Crestview. Every Sunday, pretty much, yeah.

Now they have multiple courses there, right?

There's a couple of yeah, there is. There's one uh kind of in the woods along the creek a bit. I think it's Crestview East.

Do you play the woods one or do you play the open one? The open one more. I like that one too. So the open one is nice. Yeah. You can just rear back and just throw it and you have no repercussions. That woods one, not great at that point. Yeah, you got it in a tree every time. Yeah, actually, you have to be good to do that one.

Except for the, is it it's like one of the first couple holes that's like right next to the baseball field? It's like technically out of bounds to go over the fence, which would be like feels like it'd be an easier throw. Uh-huh. You know, it's like bend it around, but it's like technically out of bounds.

Yeah, there's like a Mando sign.

You have to go this way.

I've ended up in that ball diamond like so many times, and then you gotta walk all the way around and come get brutal.

Brutal. That's awesome, man.

Um what what are I think that? Oh, we're missing one. Yeah. You're doing a home project.

Oh, yes, here we go. Home project.

Okay. Home depot, Menard's Lowe's.

Where you go? Man. I guess we tend uh to go to uh Home Depot more frequently. My man. My man, let's go. I mean, I like the blue of Lowe's, though, and uh Menard's got some good ribs.

Well, let's ask one more question.

See if our We have a running kind of feud. Uh, and I'm Team Home Depot. He's team he's Team Menards.

Yeah, we have a feud and a theory. Do you actually do home projects fairly? Yeah, I do, in fact. Oh man, I actually our theory is that because it's it's probably 50-50 split people who go to Minards, Home Depot based on what we ask. But our theory is that the people who actually do home projects are the ones that go to Home Depot. The ones that like hire people to do Home Projects go to Menards.

So far, it's probably like 80-20 true. Yeah, I think so. Like it's pretty accurate, I think.

Yeah. My my wife and I actually uh she she does a lot of the research, and she just a lot of times we end up at Home Depot. So I'm not I don't really have any allegiance, but um, but yeah, replaced like three toilets and a dishwasher and a ceiling fan. Yeah, come on. I'm kinda kind of doing it.

This is one of those things we were talking about this last time in our last episode that like I really didn't have like the strongest opinion about this. I was like a five out of ten, maybe on this. Maybe uh probably slightly higher, maybe six out of ten. Because I really don't like menards. Yeah, but it's not that I'm like so pro Home Depot as much as I really just don't like going to Menards. But this feud has developed where like the the battle lines are drawn now. Like I can't, this is now my official uh standing, you know, for all time.

So whatever. Uh finally finally, where can people find you at? If they want to follow your music, if they want to, you know, download, buy your stuff, where can they uh where can they find you at?

They can find me on all the social media platforms. A lot of times it's under the real McKee. So uh uh Instagram and and uh Facebook and YouTube. Um I've got my website, andymackee.com, you know, tour dates and stuff on there. I don't play enough around here. I wish I did, like even Kansas City or Lawrence or something, but hopefully we'll get some more shows in the area soon. But uh yeah, those are the places. Um and you can find And my music on Spotify and in uh iTunes and whatever. Heck yeah. Andy, thanks for being with us, man. It was such a treat. Cool. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, man.

Really?