Larry Keel is an award-winning innovative flat-picking guitarist and 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, Keel began from an early age to forge a distinctive sound, taking bluegrass and classic country music and infusing those styles with a rock edge and elements of improvisational jazz.

 

With the acoustic guitar Keel has brought the flat-picking 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 and 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, Lockin, High Sierra Music, Bonnaroo, Del Fest, Hullaween, 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 and Sam Bush, to name a few. Keel is revered by critics at Relix, JamBase, Bluegrass Today, No Depression, AXS, and Rolling Stone, who dub him “one of the finest flat pickers 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.”

 

Keel’s latest single “Being Kind” is enjoying wide success by listeners everywhere, and he’s in production mode on an EP to be released in 2025.

 

Photo credit: Angel Hendrix