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.”
