Fred McKinnon has been playing piano since he was old enough to climb onto a bench. He says, “I was one of those young boys who survived the teasing about playing piano, and took private lessons from Kindergarten all the way through high school. I continued to chase music and attended Georgia Southern University on a music scholarship.” Fred graduated with a Bachelor of Music, double-majoring in both Piano Performance and Theory/Composition. He released a few instrumental albums in the 1990s, and then, he says, “Life happened.”
For those of you who know the McKinnon family, you know by “life” Fred means marriage to his beautiful wife Joy and then the growth of their family with four children. He was working full time at churches and also “stumbled into” an e-commerce business that grew into a side-hustle with his own employees. That didn’t leave him much time to pursue music beyond church services.
Fred McKinnon
Over the past few years, Fred felt a pull to return to the process of creating piano music. In February 2017, he started a podcast of soothing and peaceful piano works (with no talking) called “Worship Interludes.” He explains, “I wanted to create a soundtrack that people could use during their quiet time, prayer time, and meditation, because our culture is not conducive to give people space to just be still, breathe, and listen. And I knew that instrumental music could transcend language barriers, cultural barriers, religious barriers, and even physical boundaries.” For the podcasts, Fred was sitting down at the keyboard and improvising what he was feeling. “Many times the music that came forth was an interpretation of my own struggles and experiences. I wrote about those and the inspiration behind the episodes on my website.”
Then, people started to listen. Fred received an email each day from the podcast provider showing him the number of downloads. He laughs, “I remember being excited when there was more than five downloads, because that meant there were more people subscribing to the show than my parents, wife, and siblings!” In January, Fred’s podcast passed one million views and is being played in hundreds of countries. He has added a YouTube channel for access to additional content, and it has more than 1100 subscribers.
Worship Interludes
After two years or so, Fred adding a soft-spoken greeting to a few episodes each month of the podcast, which has always been a free resource for people anywhere in the world who can access the Internet. “I encourage listeners to let me know where they are and how they use the music.” In response Fred now gets frequent emails, messages on social media and reports from people listening all over the world. He states, “One of my favorites was a listener in Seoul, South Korea, who said he listens at night to relax and fall asleep. In broken English he said that he used to have to take medicine to sleep, but now this music helps him feel at peace and fall asleep. I hear from kids who use this to study. It’s streamed as background music in spas. People tell me that they play back-to-back episodes during extended times of prayer or meditation.”
It’s been an exciting journey for Fred. He created a compilation album in 2017 that included some of his favorite episodes. He also released a new Christmas piano instrumental which charted on Billboard’s New Age chart. ‘This was a really cool accomplishment to chart on Billboard and I honestly thought it was a hoax when they first contacted me,” he shares.
Fred also released a new single “Here I Am To Worship,” from an upcoming album that will feature his arrangements of popular praise and worship songs. He’s also working on new compilations of his favorite Worship Interludes and an album of original compositions.
“Really,” Fred says, “this story is about the power of the internet. From my little home studio on St. Simons Island, I can create music and distribute it to the entire world with a few clicks. I find that exhilarating and inspiring.”
You can learn more about Fred and his music and purchase his releases at FredMcKinnon.com. He’s on YouTube as Fred McKinnon Music and also has artist profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music and more. The Worship Interludes podcast can be found on iTunes and Spotify. Listen and you may find yourself inspired too!
