{"id":20800,"date":"2021-04-06T05:30:06","date_gmt":"2021-04-06T09:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=20800"},"modified":"2021-04-07T09:07:30","modified_gmt":"2021-04-07T13:07:30","slug":"kirk-fletchers-pathway-to-and-through-the-blues-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/04\/06\/kirk-fletchers-pathway-to-and-through-the-blues-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Kirk Fletcher’s Pathway to (and Through) the Blues, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a> …<\/i><\/p>\n

Even as he grew to adulthood and launched a career as a professional musician, Fletcher would remain in California \u2013 not in Compton, though \u2013 for many years. When he wasn\u2019t touring, he could be found back in the Los Angeles area; his daughter was born and grew up there. But today Fletcher lives in R\u00fcti, a small town 30 minutes\u2019 drive outside of Z\u00fcrich, Switzerland. When his daughter left for college, it seemed as good a time as any to relocate from California.<\/p>\n

But it was love \u2013 not of music but of a woman \u2013 that brought him there. \u201cWe met many years ago when I was playing with Nick Moss,\u201d Fletcher says. \u201cWe met then, and got along a little bit, but it was obviously not meant to be. Many years later, we reconnected, and we\u2019ve been together ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n

And having spent an extended period touring throughout Europe with pop star Eros Ramazzotti, moving to Switzerland didn\u2019t seem like that much of a cultural change anyway. Before the pandemic, Fletcher returned to Los Angeles every three or four months, and expects to do the same once it\u2019s responsible to travel again. \u201cI\u2019m American,\u201d he asserts. \u201cAnd my family, my daughter, is there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Though he was born in California and is now settled in Europe, Kirk Fletcher\u2019s true roots are back in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. \u201cI was raised almost as an only child,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause my brothers were so much older than me.\u201d Even though the family had moved west, life remained characterized by what he describes as \u201ccountry values, those Southern things. My mom stayed at home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yearly trips to visit family and friends in Arkansas were an important part of the family’s routine. And those trips highlighted the contrast between Southern ways and life in California. \u201cA city boy got to see some country living,\u201d Fletcher says with a chuckle. Trips to the South reminded him of \u201chow it was back over in the woods.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back home in southern California, it was in his father\u2019s church where a very young Kirk Fletcher first began playing electric guitar in public. He quickly took on a schedule of playing there two or three times each week. \u201cI almost had a whole other career before I started playing blues; I played gospel music for quite a few years,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I listened to a lot of gospel music because my dad didn\u2019t want any secular music \u2013 blues or anything \u2013 in the house.\u201d<\/p>\n

The experience of playing in front of people in church \u2013 not an \u201caudience,\u201d exactly, but people nonetheless \u2013 was something Fletcher enjoyed. \u201cIt was always fun, and I always had a good time,\u201d he says. He followed in the tradition of his older brother, Walter Jr., who would play in the church as well. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t really an organist or a drummer or anything at first,\u201d he recalls. \u201cIt was just people clapping their hands and singing. That\u2019s how I started playing.\u201d<\/p>\n

And from the very start, Fletcher was playing electric, not acoustic guitar. \u201cOtherwise,\u201d he chuckles, \u201cyou wouldn\u2019t hear it over the crowd!\u201d And though he\u2019d go on to play in full bands, the stripped-down approach that got him started is something that has stayed with him. \u201cPeople would start screaming or singing; it was so spontaneous. Hearing that three days a week was embedded in my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Fletcher started playing guitar outside his family\u2019s church, it wasn\u2019t about earning a living. \u201cIt was merely for the love of it,\u201d he says, explaining how his schedule of commitments grew. \u201cThey would have an extra church service, and you would go to another church and you would play. Then, a little while later, they liked the way you played or accompanied \u2013 or the happiness that you brought the congregation \u2013 so they would say, \u2018Hey, come here!\u2019 And it really started to build up from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were things happening in gospel music that made a lasting impression on the young musician. Fletcher recalls that one of the first guitar solos he learned was one by Howard Carroll of the Dixie Hummingbirds.<\/p>\n

\"\"By the time Fletcher entered his teenage years he began to branch out musically, thanks in large part to his brother, Walter Jr., nearly a generation older than him. \u201cThat\u2019s really where I picked it up from,\u201d he says. \u201cI was just enamored by his guitar playing, and his sound.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having an older brother and \u201cstarting to spend more time with him, spending the night at his house, opened me up to his record collection,\u201d Fletcher says. Walter introduced his young brother to \u201ceverything from Jimi Hendrix to B.B. King to Van Halen to George Benson to funk,\u201d he recalls with visible pride and admiration. \u201cAnd I really paid attention to all of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

When MTV launched in 1981, Fletcher tuned in; that expanded his musical world in even more directions. \u201cI was able to hear a lot of great guitar players like Prince,\u201d he says. And he continued to absorb it all in ways that would help him to develop his own approach to guitar, one centered on the blues but unencumbered by any arbitrary stylistic boundaries.<\/p>\n

TV and radio provided connections to the wider, secular world of music. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to stop a kid who\u2019s hungry to hear music,\u201d Fletcher says. \u201cEspecially when you have older brothers who buy you a Walkman for a Christmas gift. So from about 1985 to \u201890 I was just constantly playing, and constantly listening \u2026 to everything<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the \u201880s, Los Angeles radio station KLON-FM\u2019s programming featured a show called Ain\u2019t Nothin\u2019 But the Blues<\/i>. Hosted by Bernie Pearl (who owned the famous Ash Grove club with his brother Ed), the show made an indelible impression on the very young Fletcher. \u201cThat was a really lucky break for me, because he played everything from Mance Lipscomb to Howlin\u2019 Wolf,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m like 8 years old, thinking \u2018This is the most amazing thing ever in the whole world!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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

Continued from Part One … Even as he grew to adulthood and launched a career as a professional musician, Fletcher would remain in California \u2013 not in Compton, though \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20812,"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-20800","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\/20800","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=20800"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20832,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20800\/revisions\/20832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}