For the Fridley brothers, music is in their blood

Oct. 17—MANNINGTON — On any given day, you might find brothers George and Roy Fridley playing music at a nearby tea shop in their little town of Mannington.

That would be after school, of course, because these young musicians still have some time before they finish high school. At age 12, Roy still has two more years at Mannington Middle School, and George, 14, is a freshman at North Marion High.

One look at their family tree and it's easy to see how the brothers got started. There's a musician on every branch. But still, at their ages, it's remarkable to see kids who are so comfortable in the limelight.

The Fridley brothers recently performed at Mannington's Octoberfest, where they easily owned the stage and entertained the crowd with their own mix of favorites.

"My biggest influences are the Beatles, Mumford and Sons, AC/DC, the Davisson Brothers," Roy said, adding that there were many, many more.

"I like the Beatles, Michael Jackson, David Bowie, Juice Wrld, DaBaby, Queen," George said.

"They have always had a musical aptitude," their mother Stacie Fridley said. "From the time George was very young, I tell people, he sang before he talked. Before he said words, you could hear him singing."

"There's a lot of love of music in our family," Stacie said. "I had grandparents who played on the radio back in the day. They played live radio shows."

So, of course, the boys turned to music. Finding a guitar around the house was no problem as the family had inherited a number of instruments from relatives over the years. Yes, it was easy to pick up a guitar. But to become good, or even great, that's a different story.

"Since I was little — like 5 or 6 — I started listening to the Beatles around that time. I think that's when I started to figure out music notation," Roy said. "My dad would play a chord on the guitar, and he'd say, 'What chord is this?' and I'd be like, 'That's an A minor.'"

"He does seem to have what they call perfect pitch ability where he can hear a tone and relate it to the musical scale," Stacie said. "I've been around a lot of musicians and he's the first I've known that does it."

"When I was in the second grade — I think it was the second grade — I was thinking about taking guitar lessons," Roy said. "I asked if I could take lessons from my cousin Kyle — he was at Fairmont State."

Guitar instructor Kyle Stevens is a graduate of the Fairmont State University music program, and, yes, is a relative of the Fridleys, which is further confirmation that the boys indeed have music singing through both sides of their family's bloodline.

"I was teaching guitar at Fairmont State Academy for the Arts, and Roy's mom contacted me and asked if he could get lessons," Stevens said.

When Roy started his guitar lessons at 8 years old, the only thing he knew was that he wanted to learn to play.

"He started from scratch," Stevens said. "With kids, they have to want to do it. The majority of kids just want to strum out some chords, but Roy was a lot more involved."

"On my first day it felt kind of weird, just first doing it, but over time it got easier," Roy said.

"I remember I had some other kids his age," Stevens said. "They would just go through the lesson. But Roy wasn't like that."

"The lessons from Kyle, that was when the spark took off," Stacie said. "He always had the aptitude, but [taking lessons] gave him that foundation, and he just ran with it from there."

Roy was 9 when he made his first performance in front of a non-family audience.

"Roy got to do a solo in his third grade music program," Stacie said. "He played a Christmas song. I guess that was his first live gig."

"I played 'Feliz Navidad' on my first real electric guitar. It was kinda cool," Roy said.

Even today, Roy practices "at least an hour a day, sometimes as much as three hours," Stacie said. "They both play and sing every day."

"Here, a few moments ago, I was practicing with my brother George," Roy said.

"I play the piano," George said. "A little bit of guitar but not that much. I like folk, bluegrass, rap, pop, rock, classical and [film] soundtracks."

"George does a lot of orchestral stuff," their father Ben Fridley said. "He'll sit down and figure out the parts of a movie score. He'll go through it on his keyboard until he figures it out."

George is also in North Marion High's performance ensemble.

Recently, Roy's parents helped him purchase his first electric guitar. "We went to Fawley's music store — it's a really cool place," Roy said. "I bought a Tobacco Burst Fender Squier Stratocaster electric guitar."

"We helped him for his birthday, but he paid for most of it with money he had saved himself," Stacie said. "It was his first big guitar purchase."

Already, Roy can tell the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between guitars. "If you plug in a Strat, it will have that clean, bright, blues tone," Roy said. "And if you plug in a Les Paul or an SG, it will have that hard, heavy tone."

He also recently inherited an acoustic guitar. "It's an Epiphone acoustic, like a rockabilly acoustic. It's a hollow body, arch top guitar," Roy said.

The guitar is definitely Roy's chosen instrument. "Yeah, it's a pretty good fit," Roy said.

While George is still trying out different instruments, it's clear that he loves to sing. As the brothers sat on their family's front porch, Roy played the guitar and George sang, one song after another well into the night.

To reach Lori Riley, email lriley@timeswv.com.