Andy McKee
American musician
Andy McKee (born April 4, 1979, in Topeka, Kansas) is an American fingerstyle guitar player who has released six studio albums, three extended plays, and one live album to date. A number of YouTube videos featuring McKee's highly-technical guitar performances have achieved viral fame, garnering hundreds of millions of views collectively.
Life and career
McKee played his first guitar, an Aria nylon string bought by his father, at age 13. Initially underwhelmed by his guitar lessons, McKee began teaching himself how to play guitar. He began learning shred guitar music, including songs by Metallica, Eric Johnson, and Joe Satriani. McKee's electric guitar-playing cousin inspired him to continue learning, taking him out for his 16th birthday to see a guitarist named Preston Reed perform live at a clinic. McKee later bought an instructional videotape from Reed and began to learn many of his acoustic guitar techniques from it. Later that year, with his mother's permission, he obtained his GED in order to quit attending high school and play more guitar. He began to be influenced by primarily acoustic guitarists such as Michael Hedges, Billy McLaughlin, Pat Kirtley, and from Passion Session by Don Ross, as he continued studying the instrument on his own.
Nocturne (2001)
In 2001, McKee independently released his first album, Nocturne.
The public source identifies “Andy McKee” as american musician. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Andy, McKee and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q526710. VIAF identifies the subject as 7161082. The Library of Congress control number is no2007014618. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1979 and 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “Andy McKee” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.