Larry Keel is an award-winning innovative flatpicking guitarist & singer/songwriter hailing from Appalachia and currently residing in historic Lexington, VA. Raised in a musical family steeped in the mountain culture of the region, Larry began from an early age to forge a distinctive sound, taking bluegrass & classic country music and infusing those styles with a rock edge and elements of improvisational jazz. With the acoustic guitar he has brought the flatpicking form to its highest level of sophistication and sonic power with his muscular yet refined style of playing. As a songwriter with a catalog of nearly 100 original compositions, Keel integrates raw honesty and charming grit to create music filled with reality, imagination, imagery & vibe. He has appeared on over 20 albums, 12 of which he produced, and has written songs that have been recorded and performed by distinguished artists including Grammy-award winners Del McCoury and The Infamous Stringdusters. He has performed at iconic venues including Tokyo Disney, Carnegie Hall, Town Hall NYC, Red Rocks Amphitheater, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, LOCKN, High Sierra Music, Bonnaroo, Del Fest, Hulaween, and countless more. He has inspired and merged creative forces with some of the greatest artists in modern roots music such as Tyler Childers, Billy Strings, Greensky Bluegrass, Keller Williams & Sam Bush, to name a few. Larry Keel is revered by critics at Relix, JamBase, Bluegrass Today, No Depression, AXS, & Rolling Stone, who dub him “one of the finest flatpickers around” and describe his unparalleled live performance “taking songs up a notch with psychedelic hillbilly shredding.” While C-ville Weekly claims, “Keel is doing for bluegrass what Hendrix did for rock, what Miles did for jazz- exploring the unchartered possibilities, defying the limitations of a deeply established musical form.” The energetic & interstellar project, “Electric Larry Land” presents Keel’s simultaneously gritty and suave original music applied to an electric format, creating what he calls a “sonic groove-and-vibe machine”. With this unit, Keel gives rein to his innate drive to expand his songs and playing style with this high-powered, highly creative and highly accomplished 4-piece band comprised of electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass and drums. It’s dynamic Acoustic Rock at its finest.
I had the pleasure of catching up with my friend Mr. Larry Keel ahead of the April 16 event at the Stoughton Opera House. Larry and I spend some time going over just who is in this new project and what the sound and style will be like in a live setting. Each member of this group (now minus the mighty Jenny Keel), seems to fit riGht on in to what he hears and envisions to make this music come alive. Speaking of the music, there is new music coming out with this group so we talk about how it is getting released and how listeners will get to spend time with this new music as well as new tunes he is writing alongside friends of this proGram, Del McCoury and Sam Bush. We chat about recent Keller & The Keel shows and shows of the future for them as the album Grass celebrates its 20th ear with a tour. You can easily tell just why I dig on the person that Larry is almost as much as the artist he is as we get our hands dirty talking about the upcoming garden [plans and what’s already getting started in the greenhouse. Great people = great art.


















