Brandon Keller

Having a love affair with the guitar ever since he could remember, Brandon Keller would “lip-sync” and play the “air guitar” for his mom’s friends as early as 3 years old; “I just loved the spotlight, however it came and wherever I could get it.” With a passion for music (all music), it wasn’t long before he knew that’s what he wanted to do. But it wasn’t until Brandon was around 13 that he actually started working on it. “I got a guitar and just started messing around; before long I had all my fingers in gear playing along with my favorite songs.” (To this day, Brandon admits not being able to read a note of music. He says, “I played then with my ear, I play now with my guts.”)

“I’ve grown up with so much music in my life…so many flavors;” everything from the early rock & roll of The Doobie Brothers, Deep Purple and Nazareth…to Motown, Rick James and The Sugar Hill Gang…the gospel soul of Andre Crouch and the country twang of Carol King and Ronnie Milsap. As a young kid in York, Pennsylvania, Brandon also found motivation in heavy metal acts such as Metallica and Slayer as well as 80’s icons R.E.M. and The Cure.

The late 80’s brought Hip Hop into Brandon’s home and his heart. By 1990 he was writing rhymes and in ’91 had his first show. But like so many other young kids in the hood, Brandon found himself living what the artists were merely rapping about. Fast forward to ’98, having been in and out of juvenile detention centers, and serving a 5 year adult sentence upstate at SCI Coal Township; Brandon found that so much of the emotion and experiences balled up inside him weren’t coming out in the raps he spent most of his days and nights writing. It was this realization that brought him back to the guitar and in a way that he’d never played it before. What at first seemed to be an awkward trip down memory lane soon became the best therapy. Hip Hop gave Brandon his words and the guitar allowed him to get out the feelings that inspired those words; and in the process, give it to others.

However, 8 months and 40 songs later, Brandon’s music took a backseat entirely.

“I’d buy a guitar, and then feel foolish for spending money I didn’t have; so I’d sell it. I didn’t believe in it enough to take it seriously. And I couldn’t write, PERIOD, and that got me thinking if it wasn’t all some fluke; so I let it go. Three years later, I’m back upstate.”

It was then, after losing what he couldn’t bare to lose again, another family, that Brandon found the words again. He found those emotions inside and how he got them out the first time. And so it was on borrowed guitars, if only for minutes at a time, that he would write, play, and for the first time, really share his feelings. “The yard in the penitentiaries is hardly a private place, and so I shared. It was in doing so that I saw the power of this music. I connected with someone else and it clicked that this is what it’s all about. It’s what makes everything else up until now make sense. And I’ve been writing and playing ever since.”

Brandon Keller believes things happen just as they’re meant to; that all he’s been through has simply been the map to getting to where he is today. And we have a feeling that this is just the beginning.