Phil Keaggy

Philip Tyler Keaggy (born March 23, 1951) is an American acoustic and electric guitarist and vocalist who has released more than 55 albums and contributed to many more recordings in both the contemporary Christian music and mainstream markets. He is a seven-time recipient of the GMA Dove Award for Instrumental Album of the Year, and he was twice nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rock Gospel Album. He has frequently been listed as one of the world's top-two "finger-style" and "finger-picking" guitarists by Guitar Player Magazine readers' polls, and due to his complex and virtuosic playing, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest guitarists of all time.

Biography

Early life Keaggy was raised Catholic in a small farmhouse in Hubbard, Ohio, with nine brothers and sisters. He went to high school at Austintown Fitch High School in Austintown, Ohio, graduating in 1970. He is missing half of the middle finger on his right hand due to an accident at age four involving a water pump. Keaggy reflects on the incident:

Initially, it was not the guitar that attracted Keaggy to playing music. "I asked my dad for a set of drums for my tenth birthday but he came home with a Sears Silvertone guitar."

1960s Keaggy was a member of a mid-1960s garage rock band called the Squires; one of their songs ("Batmobile"), which he co-wrote, appears on the compilation album Highs in the Mid-Sixties, Volume 9. In 1966 he joined Volume IV, which in 1967 became New Hudson Exit. The band appeared frequently in Youngstown clubs and also released a Keaggy composition, "Come With Me", as a single on the Date label. At one point, New Hudson Exit had considered Joe Walsh as its lead guitarist. Walsh later established himself as the guitarist for The James Gang before embarking on a solo career and work with the Eagles.

In 1968, Keaggy and longtime friend drummer John Sferra, along with bassist Steve Markulin, formed the band Glass Harp. The band gigged in and around the Youngstown, Ohio area and found work at school dances and clubs. The incarnation of the band recorded several demos, and released the single "Where Did My World Come From?" on the United Audio label in 1969.

Markulin left the group to join his cousin Joe in another successful Youngstown band, The Human Beinz. Keaggy and Sferra then recruited bass player Daniel Pecchio. Pecchio, formerly of the band The Poppy, was also a flute player, a talent which later was showcased on several Glass Harp's songs. After recording a new set of demos and signing with new management, the band set out to polish their live act and shop for a recording deal.

A major turning point for the trio was their winning of an Ohio area's "Battle of the Bands", One of the event's judges happened to be an associate of producer Lewis Merenstein, whom he alerted to the threesome. Merenstein was persuaded to fly down from New York to listen to the band in concert. Upon hearing Glass Harp perform, Merenstein's enthusiastic report resulted in Decca Records signing Glass Harp to a multi-record deal.

1970s Reflecting on 1970, Keaggy recalls: ...the 18th year of my life was very dark; I was into drugs by now....back in '69 I was experimenting with LSD. I had done some trips and it was terrible, I thought it might enhance my creative ability in music, but it didn't. I once heard a tape of me playing when I was high and it was awful. I sang weird and I played badly. I thought I was doing such a great job, but it was a deception. People I was supposedly very close to, who were close to me, were turning on me. It seemed really strange...I was experiencing such fear...it was just...terrible...During these days I would take naps in the afternoon because I'd be so tired playing at night, staying up till 4 in the morning, getting up early and napping again in the afternoon. I'd wake up having nightmares...I had "Peace" written on my wall and I went around giving the peace sign, but I didn't experience peace in my life. I didn't know what peace really meant; it was just a cliché. He performed all the instruments on the album. The title track is a staple of Keaggy's concerts up to the present day.

Keaggy married his wife Bernadette in the summer of 1973. He took a brief hiatus from recording on his own and only toured in support of other artists like Love Song, 2nd Chapter of Acts, Paul Clark, and Nancy Honeytree. Years later, Amboy Dukes guitarist Ted Nugent was quoted as saying "I don't know what happened to that Phil Keaggy. He could have saved the world with his guitar."

Keaggy and his wife moved to rural Freeville, New York, to participate in and become immersed in the discipleship program of Love Inn Community led by Scottish-American disc-jockey Scott Ross. Ross affiliated himself and Love Inn Community with the Shepherding Movement, which progressively took on many characteristics of an authoritarian cult. Not until Keaggy extracted himself from the group and the menial labor to which they had largely confined him did he once again begin to record significant music.

In late 1974, Keaggy played guitar on Joe Vitale's debut solo album Roller Coaster Weekend produced by The Albert Brothers. The album featured guitarists Joe Walsh and Rick Derringer. Keaggy returned to the studio in 1976 with Love Broke Thru, an album which included his version of a song which has become a classic in Christian music: "Your Love Broke Through". It was written by Keith Green, Todd Fishkind, and Randy Stonehill; the song later became closely identified with Green, yet it was at Green's insistence that Keaggy's rendition be the first released recording.

During the summer of 1977 Keaggy went on an eighteen-city tour of the western United States with 2nd Chapter of Acts and "A Band called David". The tour was filmed for the live triple-album How the West Was One, a collection which featured concert renditions of "What a Day" and "Your Love Broke Through". In the same year the Phil Keaggy Band was formed. Composed of Keaggy, guitarist Lynn Nichols, keyboardist Phil Madeira, bassist Dan Cunningham, and drummer Terry Andersen, the Phil Keaggy Band released their only album in 1977, Emerging. The band was featured as Love Inn Company on an album of songs by Ted Sandquist titled Courts of the King, and as the backing band for Nedra Ross on her Full Circle album. The title track was re-recorded by Keaggy in 1981. Song in the Air., a Glass Harp compilation album was released in 1977.

In 1978, Keaggy released his first critically acclaimed instrumental album entitled The Master and the Musician. It is the best-selling album of his career. A 1989 reissue of the album included a new track, "Epilogue: Amazing Grace".

1980s The Keaggy family moved to Leawood, Kansas in August 1979; their first daughter, Alicia, was born there in March 1980. They left Leawood in 1983 and lived in Costa Mesa, California. Their second daughter, Olivia, was born on February 14, 1984, and their son Ian was born on June 16, 1987.

Keaggy's record label during the early part of the decade was Sparrow Records. 1980's Ph'lip Side features "Sunday School" and the gentle "Little Ones", an early anthem for the pro-life/anti-abortion movement. Town to Town, was released in 1981; it is noted for what has become a concert staple "Let Everything Else Go". It included his arrangement of "Rise Up O Men of God". A trend was begun in which Keaggy frequently featured a hymn on his albums. In 1982, Keaggy released Play Thru Me, known for its upbeat classic, "Morning Light" as well as the slide-guitar instrumental workout, "Happy".

In 1984, Keaggy and Randy Stonehill co-wrote and sang the duet "Who Will Save the Children?" for Stonehill's album Celebrate This Heartbeat. The duet became a theme song for Compassion International, a Christian child advocacy ministry. Both artists remain avid supporters of the ministry. The next year Nissi Records released Keaggy's next studio album, Getting Closer. Keaggy would later re-record two of the album's songs: a rearranged version of "I Will Be There" appears on 1993's Crimson and Blue while "Passport" received an update for the 2009 Christian Progressive Rock compilation album CPR 3.

Way Back Home was released in 1986. The album has quieter acoustic numbers including a new rendition of 1981's "Let Everything Else Go" and "Maker of the Universe", a ballad about the incarnation of Christ. The album also emphasized one of the prominent themes in Keaggy's music: family. The next year Phil Keaggy released his second instrumental album, The Wind and the Wheat. The album reflects the "new-age" instrumental sounds of the day. The Wind and the Wheat won the guitarist his first Dove Award, an honor that he received in 1988. Also in 1988, Keaggy and Stonehill would team up with singer Margaret Becker, former Wings drummer Joe English and others as the Compassion All Star Band. The group released a subsequent live album One by One.

In 1988, Keaggy collaborated with Randy Stonehill, vocalist Russ Taff, bassist Rick Cua, Derri Daugherty, Mark Heard, Steve Taylor and other musicians to create Phil Keaggy and Sunday's Child. Lynn Nichols, guitarist for the 1977 Keaggy Band, produced the Sunday's Child project. The title track in particular recalls the sounds of the 1960s, and that along with an album cover which resembles the classic image of With The Beatles, has sometimes seen the Sunday's Child album referred to as a tribute album of sorts to the 1960s. Referring to the Sunday's Child album cover, Keaggy said, (The idea) was the producer's. I actually had a different cover in mind...It was...a black and white [photograph] of my daughter Olivia sitting on a guitar case, with this Gretsch anniversary model standing up behind her against this concrete wall, and she's got a little white flower wreath in her hair. She's about four years old, and...I just loved that cover. So when the album came out, I wasn't really knocked out by the Beatles thing, because it didn't look like the Beatles to me! It was my goofy face and then these three guys in the background, one of which was Lynn Nichols, the producer. And I thought, "Oh, I don't care for this." I wanted to have the other cover. I wanted it to say "Phil Keaggy and Sunday's Child," and to me, that was Olivia, being as she's my daughter. So my nephew works in a printing place, and I created this cover that had all the same photos and information inside the CD insert, but I had him make 500 of these new covers, and we took the shrink wrap off...500 CDs, and...inserted these covers that I wanted and took them on the road and sold them, and we mailed them out through the fan club, since we didn't have a website in those days." About the music on the project, Keaggy says,

I feel the album, as a good collection of songs, is really listenable...I feel that folk who want to listen to an album are more interested in good songs than merely the guitar player. For Sunday's Child, not only did we resort to using vintage guitars and amps, but I resorted back to old ways of playing. The rock leads are shorter and more precise. More to the point, feisty, and a little bit more dangerous. What you get is more incisive work. It's something that fits the song rather than trying to create a song around a riff or guitar figure...What I think comes through this album is that sense of longing, of love, of suffering and in all of this there can be hope. Everyone has to find their way to God and I hope people will see Jesus in my life and this album as a guide along the way."

1990s Keaggy followed Sunday's Child in 1990 with an all-out rock album Find Me in These Fields. The project was produced by Lynn Nichols and received a Grammy award nomination. In 1992, Keaggy released what has become a landmark acoustic instrumental album, Beyond Nature. His third instrumental project reflected a Celtic-influence and earned the guitarist his second Dove Award in the "Instrumental Record" category. The album's title, Beyond Nature, was derived from a quote in C. S. Lewis' book Mere Christianity. A long-time fan of Lewis' work, Keaggy also referenced the author in several song titles ("Brother Jack", "Addison's Walk" and "County Down").

In 1993, Keaggy worked with a group of talented musicians on a project. The recording sessions reunited Keaggy with former Glass Harp bandmate John Sferra on drums. Keaggy said, "I started Crimson & Blue with a two-fold purpose: To record something more aggressive and to work with John again. We recorded all the basic tracks together and most of the leads were recorded live. It's just your basic four-piece group." The band that toured in support of the album featured Madeira on Hammond B-3 organ, Sferra on drums, and Wade Jaynes (of Chagall Guevara) on bass.

In June 1994, Keaggy released a heavily revised version of his 1986 album Way Back Home. The 1994 edition featured new recordings of ten of the original album's eleven songs, including the moving classics "Maker of the Universe" and "Let Everything Else Go". The updated version also included four brand new tracks: "It Could Have Been Me". "She's a Dancer", "Father Daughter Harmony", and "The 50th". Keeping with the album's family motif, "Father Daughter Harmony" was a moving duet with daughter Alicia while "The 50th" features Keaggy's guitar playing over excerpts from a vinyl record of his grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary in 1948.

In 1995, Time: 1970-1995., a two volume compilation project was released. The anthology has selections from throughout Keaggy's career, including several classic instrumentals. Several unreleased tracks are featured, including a live version of "Do Lord" with Glass Harp, a live version of "Shouts of Joy" from the Crimson and Blue tour, and "We'll Meet Again", a song he wrote and recorded as a teenager. An alternate version of "Time" was also included as was a new solo recording of the Glass Harp song "The Answer". Also in 1995, he was voted by Guitar Player Magazine readers as the No. 2 Best Acoustic Fingerstyle Guitarist.

That same year, Keaggy released what has become one of his best-selling albums, True Believer. The title track was written by producer Alan Shacklock and reached number one on the Christian radio charts. It won Shacklock the EMI Songwriter of the Year award. Shacklock's production work on the album was a departure in style and sound for Keaggy. It proved to be Keaggy's lone work with Shacklock. Years later, in reflecting on the album, Keaggy said that True Believer "is really the most unlike me of any album I've ever done, in my personal opinion. It was more of a manufactured concept: "We're gonna make a pop album for you that's going to launch you into the next ten years". I don't know if it did. It's an unusual album to listen to for me, but there are a couple of good songs on there, though." On the Fly was also released in 1997, arguably his most ambitious instrumental project to date. Released through Canis Major Records, highlights are Spanish-flavored "Praise Dance", the hypnotic groove "Firewalker", and the six-part epic, "Way of the Pilgrim". Also in 1997, he teamed up with Wes King and Out of the Grey's Scott Dente for the mostly instrumental album Invention. The album would win a Dove Award the following year. Keaggy would then go on to sign with Word Records.

Phil Keaggy, Keaggy's last vocal album of the decade came out in 1998. Lacking the slick production style of the previous vocal album, True Believer, Phil Keaggy was a strong return to form for Keaggy in terms of recapturing his usual organic, live sound. Several songs reflected a Beatles influence, including "Days Like You", his last single to receive considerable airplay as Christian radio seemed to move towards a more youth-oriented format. He also appeared as a guest singer on the Ragamuffins' "All the Way to Kingdom Come", on his friend Rich Mullins's last original work, The Jesus Record (which contained demo tracks recorded by Mullins just before his 1997 death, and renditions of those songs by the Ragamuffins and other artists).

In 1999 there was a flurry of Keaggy instrumental releases. The double album Premium Jams is a stunning collection of previously unreleased electric instrumentals dating back to the recording sessions for Crimson and Blue and 220. Majesty and Wonder, a Christmas album featuring the London Festival Orchestra, includes Keaggy's take on standards such as "Oh Holy Night" as well as a three-part original, "Nativity Suite". Majesty and Wonder garnered him a Dove Award. He later released the four-disc collection Music to Paint By. The project was composed of Still Life, Electric Blue, Splash, and Brushstrokes.

2000s

Re-Emerging, Keaggy's first album of the new millennium, came out in April 2000. Describing the concept of the project, Keaggy says, "I've always loved hymns. They're great melodies that still stand on their own, and are still sung, even after centuries have passed... those melodies are even more appreciated when you know the lyrics. The writers of the hymns were great wordsmiths; they could be so concise and so eloquent in their expression of truth... theirs is music that speaks to every generation". Yet Keaggy's label at the time, Word Records, did not share his vision for the project and asked for it to be an instrumental album. Keaggy said, "It's the oddest thing...to me, hymns should be really sung. I had a conflict with it because, here I am, I can sing, and yet they didn't want me to sing...I offered--I went to management about it and it was pretty much, "No, don't do that. That's not want they want.""

Phil Keaggy and guitarist Mike Pachelli released an acoustic instrumental project titled Two of Us. Also in 2006 Phil released a vocal album, Dream Again. It includes his son Ian, who co-wrote, sings and plays guitar on "Why" while his daughter Alicia sings a duet with her father on "Micah 6:8". He also released Acoustic Cafe, an album, that with the exception of "You Have My Heart", is a collection of covers ranging from Bob Dylan ("If Not For You", "Make You Feel My Love") to Cyndi Lauper ("Time After Time"). Many of the songs are duets, such as the Beatles' "In My Life" with Randy Stonehill and the Everly Brothers "All I Have to Do is Dream" with Jeremy Casella. Later that year Keaggy released another acoustic instrumental album: The Song Within. Recorded using a McPherson acoustic guitar, the album revamped two Keaggy classics, with "What a Day" being transformed as "Water Day" and "Noah's Song" undergoing significant revision as "Noah's Shuffle".

2007 also marked the 30th anniversary of the landmark instrumental album, 1978's The Master and the Musician. The album was re-released with a bonus disc of outtakes, alternate versions and a recent interview. Keaggy also toured in support of the album's anniversary with a band that featured Glass Harp drummer John Sferra. The tour was chronicled on the subsequent live DVD: The Master & the Musician: 30 Years Later Tour. The next year Keaggy released the album Phantasmagorical: Master and Musician 2, the sequel to his 1978 masterpiece.

In 2008, Keaggy received the Gold Level Award as the "Best Spiritual / Worship Guitarist", as voted by readers of Acoustic Guitar Magazine, as well as appearing in the form of vocals and lead guitar on the Richard Cummins CD, Moments, which was nominated for "Best Pop/Contemporary Album of the Year" by the Canadian GMA's, Covenant award.

In June 2009, Keaggy and Randy Stonehill released a new studio album titled Mystery Highway. In support of the album, the two musicians, along with guitarist Mike Pachelli and Glass Harp's Daniel Pecchio and John Sferra, played several concerts as "The Keaggy-Stonehill Band". The year also saw Keaggy contribute a soaring re-recorded version of "Passport" on the album CPR 3; a compilation of musicians from the Christian Progressive Rock (CPR) scene. The original version of "Passport" appeared on Keaggy's 1985 album Getting Closer. In October, Keaggy released an instrumental album with pianist Jeff Johnson titled Frio Suite. December saw the release of the guitarist's third Christmas album, Welcome Inn. Featuring mostly original compositions such as the title track, Welcome Inn also includes the classic "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and an acoustic instrumental version of "In the Bleak Midwinter". The project also includes a new recording of "On that Day", a song co-written with Glass Harp drummer John Sferra for Keaggy's True Believer album in 1995.

On March 27, 2010, Glass Harp released their fourth live album: Glass Harp Live at the Beachland Ballroom 11.01.08. The ten-song project included material from Phil's solo career: "Sign Came through a Window" and "John the Revelator". The album is a recording of a benefit concert that Glass Harp headlined for Roots of American Music (www.rootsofamericanmusic.org), "an organization dedicated to the preservation, performance and education about traditional American music in our schools."

Also in late 2010, Keaggy did some session work with former Monkees member Micky Dolenz for Dolenz's solo album King for a Day.

In addition to recording and touring regularly, Keaggy is currently working on a record with former Living Sacrifice and P.O.D. guitarist Jason Truby.

In 2024 Keaggy collaborated with fellow Christian musicians Neal Morse, Byron House and Chester Thompson to form the band Cosmic Cathedral. Their debut album, Deep Water, was released on April 25, 2025.

Rumored comments by Jimi Hendrix and others For decades, rumors have circulated which say that many guitar icons have made comments regarding Phil Keaggy. The most common rumored statements are attributed to Jimi Hendrix.

In a February 5, 1971, feature on Glass Harp in Cleveland's The Plain Dealer, the paper's rock music critic Jane Scott cited unnamed "record people" who recounted a story of Hendrix saying (in 1970) "That guy (Phil Keaggy) is the upcoming guitar player in the Midwest".

In later years, rumors became stories of Hendrix appearing on various television programs where he mentioned Phil Keaggy. A common variation says that during an episode of The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson asked Hendrix, "Who is the best guitarist in the world?" Hendrix is said to have answered, "Phil Keaggy." Since then it has been proven to be untrue, as evidenced by the available audio from Hendrix's (only) appearance on The Tonight Show on July 10, 1969, with guest host Flip Wilson. No mention of Keaggy or Glass Harp is made.

Another version has Hendrix being asked, "Jimi, how does it feel to be the world's greatest guitar player?" Hendrix supposedly replied, "I don't know, you'll have to ask Phil Keaggy!" The account is sometimes attributed to a magazine interview in either Rolling Stone or Guitar Player. Occasionally the story has the setting for the question being a Hendrix appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, which is also untrue, as the clip from the show (in 1969) contains no mention of any other guitar players.

Other variants of the urban legend exist with Hendrix answering the question with Rory Gallagher, Terry Kath, Billy Gibbons, or John McLaughlin in place of Keaggy. Other variants have the question being answered by Eric Clapton. A more recent variant has Eddie Van Halen being asked the same question by David Letterman or Barbara Walters, usually answering "I don't know, you'll have to ask Randy Rhodes."

Keaggy has continually insisted that such stories are completely unfounded, noting that "it was impossible that Jimi Hendrix could ever have heard me... We... recorded our first album at Electric Lady Studios two weeks after his unfortunate death, so I just can't imagine how he could've heard me. I think it's just a rumor that someone's kept alive, and it must be titillating enough to keep an interest there... I don't think it was said."

In a July 2010 interview, Glass Harp bassist Daniel Pecchio commented on the ongoing Hendrix rumors saying, "It's a true urban legend. I still have people coming up to me claiming to have a Dick Cavett Show tape where Hendrix says that. We never pushed that rumor, you know, but it didn't hurt us."

Personal life Phil Keaggy's son Ian was the bass player for the band Hot Chelle Rae, which had a Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2011. Ian left the band in 2013 to pursue a solo career.

Phil Keaggy's nephew was married to contemporary Christian singer songwriter Cheri Keaggy.

Phil Keaggy's sister is former American television and film actress Mary Ellen Kay, who died in 2017. Keaggy credits her for introducing him to the Christian faith, although he was raised Catholic.

Discography