Biography
Red Guitar is an American rock band based in Kansas City. The band began when singer/songwriters Nick Nave and John McKenna met in college. From these roots grew a now-14-year partnership that has yielded many different band names and lineups, culminating in Red Guitar, which was formed in 2003. Through it all, the foundation is, and has always been, insightful, inspired folk/pop songwriting and rich vocal harmonies.
Red Guitar's second release, "Beauty Will Save the World" (2006), offers a robust flowering of sonic delight that no doubt reflects their personnel expansion. The five-piece Kansas City outfit added several new members since their 2003 album, "Based on a Blue Story", and the musical evolution is evident. The alt-country feel that earned early comparisons to the Counting Crows and Neil Young has developed into a sound that defies easy categorization. Sun-drenched overlays of guitars and harmonies, drips of melting synth, and rhythmic variations pepper the attack of singer-songwriters John McKenna and Nick Nave. The result features tracks which first heard apart might seem dissonant, but the bands superior craftsmanship backed by a concise 10-song format creates a mysterious coherence that is rare among popular music today. From the marching cadence of opener V-Day, to the psychedelic soul of The Sting, Red Guitar has claimed their own musical territory that owes as much to U2 as to Springsteen.
2008 found the band whittled down to a four-piece machine, a mixture of The Fray and Coldplay and Ryan Adams, the best pop intentions mixing with their alt-country past sailing into the glorious future…
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