Phil Keaggy Christian rock performer
Phil Keaggy describes himself as having been a cocky kid back in 1970, a ”little hot guitar player” with a critically acclaimed rock band.
The guitarist and vocalist had leapt right from high school in suburban Youngstown to touring and recording with Glass Harp, a band that would open for the Kinks at Carnegie Hall before Keaggy even turned 20.
Then, with one tragic event, his world changed.
His mother’s car was hit head-on on Valentine’s Day, and she died several days later. During that time of anguish, his sister, Mary Ellen, led him to Christ.
It was an experience that transformed his life and his music.
Keaggy found himself on the vanguard of the emerging Christian rock movement. He left Glass Harp in 1972 to pursue a solo career that has resulted in more than 50 albums, including the one considered his masterpiece, The Master and the Musician.
That all-instrumental album from 1978, described in his press materials as ”worshipful without lyrics,” is being celebrated with a 30th anniversary tour that stops at Akron’s E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.
Akron is special to Keaggy. It was here he met Bernadette Markwell in 1971 at a Glass Harp gig at Odin’s Den, a University of Akron hangout at Brown and Exchange streets. And it was here they married in 1973 at St. Martha’s Church in North Hill. They now live in Nashville.
What’s more, Akron is part of the region that embraced Glass Harp and its progressive sound, he noted.
”That’s my home state, you know,” he said. ”There are people there who appreciate me.”
Keaggy, 57, spent his early years in Hubbard, then lived in Youngstown from age 6 until his family moved to California when he was in the fourth grade. The family went back and forth between the two states during his teen years, but he spent 10th and 11th grades at Austintown Fitch High School.
He started his senior year at Boardman High, but left for the road when the band got a recording contract. He ended up getting his high school diploma via a correspondence course.
Keaggy will be performing in Akron with six other musicians, including his Glass Harp co-founder and longtime friend, drummer John Sferra. ”They all have a heart for the music, and they put their hearts in it,” Keaggy said.
Keaggy’s own love for music was fostered by a family that appreciated a diversity of musical talents, and encouraged by the gift of a Sears Silvertone acoustic guitar for his 10th birthday.
He started by learning the surfing music popularized by the Beach Boys, he said, but his interests changed when the Beatles burst into prominence. He described his own music as still ”Beatlesque” and fondly recalled jamming with Paul McCartney after the wedding of McCartney’s sister-in-law (Keaggy sang at the wedding and the former Beatle was a groomsman).
Today Keaggy is praised as a great among guitar players, despite losing half the middle finger of his right hand in a childhood accident. Legend has it that Jimi Hendrix — or, in other versions of the story, Eric Clapton or Eddie Van Halen — once proclaimed Keaggy to be the greatest guitarist of all time, but he dismisses that as rumor.
Still, he chuckled at the story. ”Who knows? It might get me some gigs in the future,” he said.
Keaggy’s faith is central to his music. Christianity made him a free man, both spiritually and musically, he said, and ”it’s still the best news I’ve ever heard.”
That’s what he seeks to share with his audiences. He never tries to push his religion on people, he said, but rather he tries to convey something ”that might lift their hearts and their spirits.”
He said he finds that same comfort both through his own music and that of others. The Master and the Musician, in particular, was a cathartic work that helped him through the despair he experienced after he and his wife suffered several miscarriages and lost another child just three days after his birth.
Despite the strong spiritual and emotional elements of his music, though, he has difficulty defining it.
”I can’t describe it. It’s never fit in any niche,” he said. The best he can come up with is ”Heinz 57, with a little spirituality thrown in.”
And a whole lot of staying power.
Concert: Phil Keaggy’s Master & Musician Tour
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall, 198 Hill St., University of Akron
Tickets: $25-$35
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