{"id":20798,"date":"2021-04-05T05:30:57","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T09:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=20798"},"modified":"2021-04-06T09:46:24","modified_gmt":"2021-04-06T13:46:24","slug":"kirk-fletchers-pathway-to-and-through-the-blues-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/04\/05\/kirk-fletchers-pathway-to-and-through-the-blues-part-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Kirk Fletcher’s Pathway to (and Through) the Blues, Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"An edited version of this feature was published previously in <\/em>Living Blues.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Frequent Blues Music Awards nominee Kirk \u201cEli\u201d Fletcher is known as a lead guitarist, but he considers himself a \u201cborn accompanist.\u201d That perspective is in large part the product of his musical roots, playing electric guitar in gospel church services led by his father. But years of musical exploration \u2013 taking in myriad styles of music and lending his guitar magic to the work of artists in and outside the sphere of blues \u2013 has only served to enhance and reinforce his commitment to the blues. His sixth album, the newly-released My Blues Pathway<\/i>, is a statement not only of who Kirk Fletcher is today, but of how he got here.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs long as I can remember, I\u2019ve been in a love affair with the guitar,\u201d Fletcher says. And his musical foundation has two pillars: his church and his family.<\/p>\n

Kirk Fletcher\u2019s father Walter was born in 1931 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, a small town on the banks of the Arkansas River, today a 30 minute drive from Little Rock. At age 16, Walter Fletcher enlisted in the U.S. Army \u201cto get away from an abusive stepfather,\u201d Kirk says. Because of his young age, Walter had to have an adult sign for him before he could join up. Shortly after he enlisted, the Korean War broke out. But Fletcher served his tour of duty, and after a period spent at his uncle\u2019s home Los Angeles, he returned to Pine Bluff.<\/p>\n

Ogie Rea Avery was born in 1942 in the same small city. Her family knew the Fletchers; her mother \u201cknew and trusted Walter,\u201d Kirk says. \u201cAnd after my dad came back to Arkansas, he started to court my mom.\u201d The couple bonded over a shared appreciation of musical artists like Slim Harpo, Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke. Kirk says that many years later when his family would visit relatives back in Pine Bluff, \u201ceverybody told me about all of these guys, like Howlin\u2019 Wolf and Muddy Waters,\u201d Fletcher recalls. \u201cMy uncle would be playing [records by] Little Milton and Bobby Bland.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Kirk\u2019s mother would be his earliest musical inspiration. \u201cShe could sing, and she was a great dancer,\u201d Kirk says. \u201cMy mom was always the soul, the musical part of the equation. I talked to my brother a couple days ago, and he said, \u2018Man, everything soulful that you have \u2013 and everything that you can\u2019t explain about yourself \u2013 you got from your mom.\u2019\u201d Ogie Rea was 16 or 17 when she married Walter. Their first son, Walter Jr., was born in 1958. A second son, Cedric, followed within a year.<\/p>\n

In 1961, Walter Fletcher moved his young family to the Los Angeles, California neighborhood of Watts. \u201cIt\u2019s that classic thing for so many people from the South,\u201d Kirk Fletcher muses. \u201cSome went to Chicago. Some went to Texas, some to Oklahoma. My father already had family in California, so it was a natural thing for him to move to the West Coast.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father kind of tossed around for a while,\u201d Fletcher says. \u201cHe was just a young man with a family, and as he said, somewhere along the way, he got called to the ministry. \u2018God spoke to me,\u2019 is what he said.\u201d He became a minister in the Pentecostal Church. \u201cHoliness,\u201d Fletcher says with a warm, knowing smile. \u201cIt was super hardcore: fire and brimstone. No cussing, no drinking.\u201d And music other than gospel was considered the Devil\u2019s handiwork.<\/p>\n

That strict religion wasn\u2019t the only hardcore quality characterizing the Fletcher family. Kirk cites a recent reminiscing conversation with brother Walter. \u201cI told him, \u2018I know you guys lived in Watts,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cAnd he said, \u2018Yeah, we not only lived there, we were in church when the riots were going on!\u2019\u201d That, he says, helps illustrate the kind of man their father was: deeply religious, steadfast and resolute.<\/p>\n

Walter Fletcher Sr. \u201cwas an assistant pastor for a few years,\u201d Kirk says. \u201cThen, he built his own church\u201d in a three-car garage. Services were three nights a week, on Tuesday, Friday and Sunday. But shortly before Kirk was born, the family had moved again. \u201cWhen I was brought home from the hospital in 1975, I was brought home to Lakewood, California, to a middle-class, predominantly white neighborhood,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The Fletchers lived in Lakewood, not far from Long Beach, until Kirk was 12. \u201cIt was nice,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThere were hardworking people there. It was cool, and it was very safe.\u201d Then they relocated yet again. \u201cMy dad felt, how could he have a nice house in Lakewood when the Lord\u2019s house was not as good as it could be?\u2019 So, he made the sacrifice to sell our home. That shows you what kind of man he was, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Kirk\u2019s father, life was about ministry in the larger sense. \u201cMy father helped people get away from bad things in their life, whatever [those things] might be,\u201d Kirk says. \u201cYou could call him at four o\u2019clock in the morning, and he would come to the hospital. And that\u2019s the way I grew up.\u201d<\/p>\n

So the Fletcher family moved again \u2013 this time to Compton. \u201cAnd in 1987, Compton was the absolute top of the mountaintop of crime,\u201d Kirk says. \u201cThe crack epidemic and all of these things were going on; you could get shot because of whatever color clothes you got on. We would go to church and [we would hear] gunshots all the time. There were even church members who got caught up in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But his rock-solid family framework helped keep Kirk from straying in the wrong direction. \u201cIt was very easy to get caught up in that type of lifestyle, to get pressured into gang activity and things like that,\u201d he acknowledges. \u201cBut instead of going that way or being pressured that way, I just went deeper into the music.\u201d By age 15, he would isolate himself in his bedroom. \u201cI\u2019d create my own world inside the house and listen to jazz and blues, and just submerge myself in that. Music started to become my saving grace, in a way, too; I was so connected with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a> \u2026<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An edited version of this feature was published previously in Living Blues. Frequent Blues Music Awards nominee Kirk \u201cEli\u201d Fletcher is known as a lead guitarist, but he considers himself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20821,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,41,49],"tags":[4493],"class_list":["post-20798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-interview","category-new-release","tag-kirk-fletcher","cat-9-id","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20798"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20830,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20798\/revisions\/20830"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}