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| Chris Padgett |
Sometimes parents are right. When Chris Padgett's mom and dad decided he needed a hobby to stay out of trouble, they stuck a pawn shop guitar in his hands and sent him on his way to his room. The 16-year-old plopped down and tried to figure the thing out, which led to him questioning everything he knew about music up to that point.
Now a touring musician with the North Carolina-based duo The StereoFidelics, that introspection gifted by his parents turned into a full-fledged journey. "I realized that the music I was listening to at the time wasn't all there was," Padgett says. "It was a symbiotic relationship. I had the desire to play and get as good as I could. It was a happy accident."
Padgett threw himself into playing and learning everything he possibly could about the stringed instrument. His obsessive nature is obvious from the first note at a StereoFidelics show. The StereoFidelics are a guy-girl duo (along with drummer/electric violinist Melissa McGinley) with an unusual third member—a Moog Taurus pedal that sort of steals the show. Padgett performs double duty, and both share vocal duties.
Here's a story I wrote about The StereoFidelics for IE Weekly:
