Spotlight On ANDY WHITE

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Andy White

Andy White, Belfast singer-songwriter and one time member of alternative folk supertrio ALT, returns to tour Canada in Summer 2004 with a new album boy 40 (True North) and a new home phone number.

With 11 internationally released albums, Ireland's top songwriting award (he beat Bono and Van Morrison to the prize) and a book of poetry to his name, Andy moved to Melbourne in Australia last year in search of music, inspiration, and four seasons in one day.

Andy had been introduced to the southern hemisphere by Neil and Tim Finn, and made the move after the success of a song of his called 'Coz I'm Free', written about the Olympic 400 metres champion Cathy Freeman.

Andy arrives in Canada to find he has two songs co-written with his buddy Stephen Fearing on the Juno-nominated Blackie And The Rodeo Kings album ‘BARK’, riding high in the rock charts.

One of these, ‘If I Catch You Crying’, is featured on boy 40, along with another Stephen and Andy song ‘Trying To See God’, the final cut on the album and the climax to a lot of its themes.

Andy started writing boy 40 on Stephen Fearing’s back porch in the summer of 2002, and the lives and loves of their social scene at the time are woven into many of the album’s more personal songs. These contrast with global themes based around Andy’s experience of growing up during a very real ‘war on terrorism’ in Northern Ireland during the 70s and 80s, and the move to Australia last year.

From his very first release 'Rave on Andy White' (MCA) in 1986, Andy was always going to be trouble. The title was a reference to a W.B. Yeats poem or a Van Morrison song - take your pick. The cover showed a Belfast punk folk singer with an acoustic guitar in the backseat of a VW Beetle. The song 'Religious Persuasion' was a slap in the face for Bible-bashers everywhere, not just those in Andy's home town. Melody Maker's album review proclaimed "Yer man's a genius" and Andy White had arrived.

"I grew up hearing folk music dividing people into one tribe or the other. I wanted to say it like I saw it, filtered through all the books I had read and the records I had listened to. I started off writing poems and picked up an acoustic guitar when I heard John Lennon sing 'Give Peace A Chance'. Put them both together, that's all.”

Andy went on to play with the great names of Irish music, write songs with the likes of Peter Gabriel and Neil Finn, and his last album was produced by John Leckie (Radiohead, Pink Floyd).

Boy 40 is a breath of fresh air blown from the sunny southern hemisphere. Recorded by the sea, Andy’s lyrical strength is at full power, along with his acoustic pop sensibility. There is an offbeat quality to recording which comes from Andy playing all the instruments himself – just as he did on ‘Rave On’ at the very beginning. Boy 40 – it’s cool to care.