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A Musical Life: Grant Boesen

Grant Boesen is a member of the Wichita band Pretend Friend.

“As a child, I dreamed of rock ‘n’ roll, listening to my dad’s old Queen records and Boston records. The guitar solos just hit me. I had to play piano for a couple of years, my mom made me, before I could get a guitar, just so I’d learn how to read music and do all of that. Which was a good thing. I got a guitar when I was nine-years-old and tried to play rock ‘n’ roll ever since. The bluegrass has kind of been a new development. I was playing acoustic guitar so much, just for the purpose of writing songs. Then, I’d transfer all that to electric guitar. Eventually I think I became a little impatient and kept everything on the acoustic. It’s a lot easier to carry around. No amplifiers or anything.

“When I was starting, it wasn’t so much the creative process that made me want to do it. I wanted to emulate something I admired. It was a feeling, it was the energy of a guitar solo or these rock ‘n’ roll bands that I thought were great.

“My hope is always that my best show is the last one that I had. Those bad shows, you gotta put them out of your mind and get over them really quickly because there’s another one that has to be done.”

Jedd Beaudoin is host/producer of the nationally syndicated program Strange Currency. He created and host the podcast Into Music, which examines musical mentorship and creative approaches to the composition, recording and performance of songs. As a music journalist, his work has appeared in PopMatters, Vox, No Depression and Keyboard Magazine.