Keith McCulloch Music Autobiography

My family was non-professional musical. My Dad played guitar and sang allot of great songs from the fifties and sixties. My grandmother on my moms side moonlighted as a church organist. My Dad's father Bill who lived just down the road from us was a drum major in high school and won some awards. In his mid thirties he taught himself piano completely by ear. Bill couldn't name the notes on the piano but he could play songs all night from the WWII cannon. Songs like Blueberry Hill, Carolina in the Morning, Scotch and Soda, and Dream a little dream of me were always ringing through the house. I started playing guitar at 11 with no idea what I wanted to play.
My first guitar teacher, Tim Haden ,was a local Jazz notable and after a year of lessons learning Led Zeppelin and the Beatles heard him playing Jazz and thought it was pretty cool. Some of the guitarist he was into had allot of appeal to me because they played fast and had a modern edged sound. Tim opened my ears to guys Like John Mcglaughlin,Al Di Meola, Pat Martino, and George Benson. This was not my grandfathers jazz although I did come to appreciate the more traditional styles. One of the the seminal recordings that really sealed the deal for my life in music was the recording by John Mclaughlin, Al Di Meola, and Paco de Lucia "Friday Night in San Francisco" . It was a dazzling Spanish infused virtuosic jazz escapade and it elevated the guitar to an almost magical instrument.
Check out a song from "Friday Night in San Francisco" called "Mediterranean Sundance "



I went on to study Jazz at the Greenville Fine Arts Center, the SC Governors School, and by the time I was a senior in high school I was already getting paying gigs around town. I went to Anderson college and studied classical guitar for a year before leaving for Los Angeles to Study jazz at USC. I left USC after a year due to financial considerations and transferred to the College of Charleston where I completed my degree. While in Charleston I further pursued an interest in world music I had developed much earlier. Some of my favorite musicians had done some great cross over work with various artists from India, Morocco, Spain, Ireland and Asia and I was intrigued by the same exotic qualities in these musics that they were. I got a chance to study Hindustani north Indian classical music from an adjunct professor Guy Beck. I made didgeridoos from PVC pipe and bees wax and learned to circular breathe. I got a inexpensive sitar for Christmas one year and stayed up all night with a friend re stringing it after a dozen or more of the twenty one strings had broken in the first few hours. I played it for weeks until my fingers bled. While I was working at a record store I was in charge of the world music section. There I discovered more exotic music. I even taught my self tuvan throat singing. another great experience was in Atlanta where I spent a year of Sundays playing guitar in an Nigerian Church. They really got in to their music during a service and we often played for two hours non stop. Once a month they had a traditional african music service with talking drum and guest artists from Ghana, Nigeria, and Congo. I learned allot about Nigerian culture first hand and made many great friends.
Over the years I've developed some of these skills but have yet to put them to some kind of use. I'm hoping at some point I will put together a fusion music group if I can find the right players to make it happen. I'm looking for folks who are willing to play freely and happily with out regard to fitting a certain style. Anyway that's it for now.
Here's me playing Linus & Lucy on 7 String Guitar