HAVE GUITAR, WILL TRAVEL

 

     Doug Andrews is a 21st-century incarnation of a 12th-century idea--that of the wandering musician.  His career path happily slips right into that noble tradition, more recently followed in the 1960s through 1990s and up until today by such singers/guitarists/songwriters as Jim Croce, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Greg Brown, Tim O’Brien, and recent influence, the late Jeff Buckley.

     "I love the way Jeff Buckley owned his songs," Doug says. "He becomes the song and draws the listener in so there's a shared experience."  Andrews aspires to take it a step further by “creating an experience in which artist, song, and audience become one.”

     Born in 1979 in Sheridan, Wyoming, and raised there, with the Bighorn Mountains, the apostrophe mountain range of north central Wyoming, gleaming to the west, Doug sings in a pleasing baritone and it's no accident.  He studied voice at Ohio Wesleyan University and, later, The University of Montana, where he earned a B.F.A. in vocal performance, spending a lot of time performing opera and musical theatre, as well as straight, non-musical theatre.

     "The highlight of my college experience," he says, "was a European tour by the University of Montana Chamber Chorale.  We sang in Vienna, Budapest, Florence, and Venice."  So taken with Vienna, Doug later returned to live for nearly a year in 2004 where he experienced international cafe culture.

     "You just sit for hours, buy your coffee, people watch, maybe set up a base of operations, meet locals and travelers alike, all the while being exposed to a multitude of new experiences," he says.  Although Vienna, which offers every kind of music--from classical to jazz--continues to resonate strongly for him, he couldn't get Wyoming out of his system, and so he keeps coming back home.

     He's been performing around Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain region for the past few years, and in the spring of 2008, released his first CD, Absaraka Runoff.  A self-produced album of eight original songs, recorded during two months of snow-bound isolation in a cabin on the T Bar T Ranch at the foot of the Bighorns.

     Doug's songs depend heavily on two of his beliefs:  the universality of the power of music and the power of now, as in the lyrics for "Right Now."  He writes unfrivolously but not too seriously about life experiences with clarity, irony, and urbanity and sings in a rich voice with a rich combination of polish and bluesiness.

     In addition to Jeff Buckley, Doug has drawn inspiration from Bob Dylan, Greg Brown, Josh Ritter, and, he says, "probably everybody I've ever listened to."  But his original inspiration, he says, comes from his father, whose “uninhibited exuberance would echo through the air ducts from his basement workshop” in the house where Doug was raised.

Although Andrews has returned to reconnect with his roots, he by no means has abandoned his deep desire to expand his horizons and experience.  With a cross-country tour in the works for the Spring of ’09 followed by a 3 month return to Vienna, there’s no settling for this tunesmith.  “I’m just getting started. Why not be it all,” he says, and “if I keep making music for music’s sake and not my own and along the way I inspire others to create, I’ll die a happy man.”  After years of back up plans and leaving songwriting on the back-burner, Doug is on his way to being exactly what he wants to be.  He says:

A recent shift in perspective of what life and music are all about has launched me into a new sphere of creativity.  What I’m writing and sharing now is not just for me.  It’s not “my music.”  It’s “music.” Drop the “my” and it’s a whole new feel.  It’s for everyone.  One of my favorite artists, Josh Ritter, couldn’t have said it better in one of the lines from his song, “Snow is gone”: “I’m singin’ for the love of it, have mercy on the man who sings to be adored.”

I’m not here to sit back, be a silent observer, watch the world unfold, and simply comment on the whole ordeal.  I recognize there is great change that needs to be made on our planet.  It’s my deepest hope that I can use the music I create to help catalyze this change with the depth and breadth that is needed and, along the way, inspire others to do the same.