You can check in via this link and if you choose ‘set reminder’ you will be notified 30 minutes before the concert starts. Andy has posted one track, The Pale Moonlight, on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/
Andy writes,
It’s difficult to describe why Himself was such an important album for me. The third album is supposed be the difficult one, but I always thought of Himself as the lucky one. I was skint, living between a friend’s place in the countryside and my Mum and Dad’s in Belfast. Driving a beaten up Mazda 323 held together by paint and writing songs on my six string again. These songs.
Scraped together the money to record a demo in Donegal which turned into the album which Rod McVey and I finished in Homestead Studios, Randalstown, where we recorded Rave On. Terri Hooley at Good Vibrations in Belfast put out Six String Street, Cooking Vinyl the album, and I was back on the road again.
Going independent meant I started to tour Europe for the first time. I remember being handed the first copy of the album in East Berlin at the festival where I wrote Berlin 6 a.m., and hearing The Pale Moonlight on the radio on the top of a Swiss mountain where I was playing a show for Couleur 3. Skiers, snow, and the sound of a faraway Donegal recording studio.
That’s the story, but mostly it’s the songs which are written in my soul. So many words. I thought before this show that they might be gone, then they came tumbling out again. Freeze Out. Birds of Passage. The Whole Love Story. The mistakes and laughs we left in, a group of musicians doing what they do best, songs written because they had to be written.
Just before ’20 changed to ’21, my son Sebastian and I went up to the studio to play the whole album all the way through. He’s a great drummer and has grown up with these songs, although they are three years older than he is. We were going to play a special Belfast concert at the end of last year to celebrate the anniversary, but things got in the way. Rod joined us from his studio in Holywood. We recorded it and filmed it on our phones. This is the first time I’ve played all the songs from start to finish and it was an emotional experience. You can tell by the pauses. I get to see Rod and Sebastian’s beautiful playing the way I can’t on stage. And you get to see the bass pedals which I can hardly ever take on tour. Hope to see you next at the show.
