Instagram — 1955 Chevy

Found my dream car, a 1955 Chevro­let Bel-Air coupe with a mod­ern LS2 Corvette motor under the hood. This was tak­en yes­ter­day at “Amputee Appre­ci­a­tion Day” (yes that’s a real thing) held at Sky­land Pros­thet­ics and Orthotics. I was play­ing with Russ Wil­son, Jason Krekel, Ben Hov­ey and Kevin Kehrberg, in a 5-piece we call “Cham­pagne Wil­son & The Wrong Crowd.”

Solo Piano Vol. 1

Last year, due to the gen­eros­i­ty of Alis­tair and Helen Hyatt I was able to spend two hours record­ing my first solo piano album in superb Echo Moun­tain Record­ing Stu­dios. With such lim­it­ed time, I sat down and played for about an hour straight and record­ed almost all of these songs in a sin­gle take. The sec­ond hour I spent with engi­neer Josh Blake doing mix­ing and mas­ter­ing, and was able to come up with 12 tracks out of the ses­sion that I want­ed to release. Since it’s been almost a year, I’ve been think­ing about my next solo album, which I may be able to record at home. I’m also con­sid­er­ing putting out an album where every track has a dif­fer­ent singer, or small com­bo with it, a “Fletch­er & Friends” sort of con­cept.

Take a lis­ten, and if you dig it, order a CD or spend some mon­ey on the digi­tial down­load. Below is the entire album embed­ded here, or you can find my record­ings at music.andrewjfletcher.com

Here are the lin­er notes:

Dear Lis­ten­er,

Thank you for buy­ing my CD. Your sup­port means that I get to con­tin­ue my work as a stride piano play­er and keep the tra­di­tion alive and vital for the next gen­er­a­tion. My approach to this record­ing was to show you on a CD what I do at my numer­ous solo per­for­mances in Asheville and beyond, but with a more relaxed and thought­ful sen­si­bil­i­ty at the piano. I sound the way I do thanks to my men­tor Reese Gray and my teacher Pam McNeil, as well as the excel­lent edu­ca­tion I got on the job with my first band, Fire­crack­er Jazz Band. Come out and see a live show some­time and make sure to intro­duce your self.

Cheers to you!

Instagram — September 5, 2016


Thanks to John Gell­man for includ­ing me in his pho­to series of buskers. Check out his work and the many oth­er Asheville buskers that he’s pho­tographed at jgphoto.com.

In addi­tion to being a semi-retired busker, I advo­cate for street per­form­ers rights (a 1st Amend­ment con­sti­tu­tion­al issue) with the Asheville Buskers Col­lec­tive. The rea­son I don’t busk often any­more is sim­ple: I’m play­ing about 200 gigs a year in venues. But I tru­ly val­ue the expe­ri­ence of busk­ing and I think it’s been a major part of my devel­op­ment as an enter­tain­er. I sug­gest all musi­cians, no mat­ter the lev­el of your expe­ri­ence, to try street per­form­ing at least once. It can be a hum­bling, thrilling, infor­ma­tive and, many times, even lucra­tive expe­ri­ence.

via Insta­gram http://ift.tt/2cuH609