one of contemporary folk's top songsmiths"
    Chicago Tribune

Some excerpts from Andrew's recent self-description...:


ÒAnd so one keeps on. And mainly because, well, it's fun. I've performed at coffeehouses, cafes, coffee bars, bars, clubs, pubs, corn roasts, festivals, nursing homes, reformatories, prep schools, high schools, colleges, house concerts, Renaissance fairs, Highland games, poetry slams, and on a float, sitting between the legs of a giant frog. It was to save "frog hollow," an undeveloped part of Palatine, IL, and the float won first prize. I received $50 and a sunburn. A few other performances stand out in my memory.

At the Sheepshead CafŽ in Iowa City in the mid 80's, I was playing in their outside seating area, a few picnic tables, a small stage. Toward the end of the night I played three songs in a row, "The Hanging," "Willie," and "You Will Know God/LaGrima" and no one applauded, they just listened. An older man came up to me afterwards and said, "so there's hope."

One night in the early 90's at Chicago's No Exit, I was singing with my eyes closed, and had the feeling I was singing to a spirit in the room. I opened my eyes and everyone in the audience had their eyes closed.

At Durty Dick's Pub on Chicago's West Side, I was finishing my third set at midnight, when someone sent up a schnappes. I downed it, and did a funny song. Someone sent another, and I did more funny songs, and comedy bits, and improvisations, keeping straight on until two AM. People were crying and holding their sides. I drank seven schnappes, and have never been so funny before or since...

" ÒLinda Black (now Maio, and living in Florida) and I went to Dunkin' Donuts and drank a lot of coffee afterwards.I don't drink schappes or coffee anymore, but still hear from Linda now and again.

I spent more of 2003 obsessively translating oral tradition ballads from old Scots dialect; the result is the CD "Telfer's Cows: Folk Ballads From Scotland," which came out way better than I'd hoped, and scored me some ink in Dirty Linen, from an interview with Pamela Murray Winters, one of the finest journalists in Folk. Well, there are only six, really, but she's up near the top. "Shadow of a Wing" followed, 18 songs which to me represent Andrew's stupid journey through the world of love; a look at the workings of idealization, betrayal, forgiveness and acceptance.

2004 saw the revival of the Waterbug label with a new team of artists, among them Jonathan Byrd, Anais Mitchell, Louis Ledford, Rachel Ries, Michael Troy and Karen Mal, and two new samplers, "Waterbug Anthology 7" and "Vote in November: Election 2004 Anti-Theft Device", our first political CD. Arie Koelewyn hand-printed a new collection of my poems, "Hay," released in April of 2005 on East Lansing, Michigan's, Paper Airplane Press. In 2005 I recorded "Staring at the Sun", a solo CD of songs I wrote between 1973 and 1981.Ó

---

Well worth the journey, I'd say!!


A