Fred Chester has been a singer, songwriter, and guitarist since the late 1960’s. Born and raised in Jacksonville Florida, he moved to Tallahassee where he worked with the FSU Baseball team and received a B.S. degree in advertising design from Florida State University. Early rock bands like Richard’s Weed and Daddy Twofoot allowed him a vehicle for perfecting his lead guitar riffs. After college he played solo for several years in folk clubs, while working with a concert sound company.

He soon began working at Norton Music, where he met Burt Norton, who ultimately built Sweetbay Recording Studios. While working as a session musician there he began learning the art of recording and recorded many of his own compositions during studio down time. This was the beginning of what turned into a career as a recording engineer / producer. He did early demos for Billy Dean, Gamble Rogers, and BB Jam to name a few. After recording and co-producing albums for Labamba and Flipside among many others, he became lead guitarist for the latter.

After Sweetbay closed he became chief engineer at Flamingo Studios for 6 years, engineering regional acts like Eli, Babe’ Blu, and Foghat. As mix engineer he has mixed live sound shows for Ray Charles, Judy Collins, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Bo Diddley, Garrison Keillor, and countless others. Since 1986 he has been chief engineer at ESP Studios, played guitar with Chuck Berry, and has opened up for acts like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Mothers Finest, Chuck Mangione, etc. He has been assistant engineer on recording sessions and live shows for Cyrus Chestnut, Wynton Marsailis and over 10 albums for world class jazz pianist Marcus Roberts. The most current being a collaboration project featuring Marcus Roberts Trio and Bela Fleck entitled "Across the Imaginary Divide". Playing lead guitar for the songwriter danceband Harvest Gypsies for 12 years was his passion till the band disbanded in 2014. He is now doing session work and focusing on songwriting and publishing.