World United Music: Andy White

About: Andy White

Irish singer-songwriter and author Andy White carries a 12-string guitar under his arm and wears his particular brand of charm on his sleeve, with the political edge of Billy Bragg, the romance of David Gray and the Celtic lyricism of the Waterboys.

Andy is a fully paid up 21st Century Troubadour (and that’s the title of his journal-memoir published by Lagan Press in Ireland and last year’s ‘album of the book’ compilation on his UK label, Floating World).

Belfast born and raised, now living in Melbourne, White has earned a global following for blending folk and pop stylings with a poet’s sensibility. Working with the great names of Irish music - Sinead O’Connor, Donal Lunny, Van Morrison - and writing with the likes of Peter Gabriel and Neil and Tim Finn, Andy has won Ireland’s top songwriting awards and toured the world many times over.

Since his first album Rave On Andy White, recorded in a field in Northern Ireland, Andy has been produced by top producers John Leckie and Kim Fowley, recorded in studios from Real World in the UK to Australia and Canada, along the way writing many songs engrained in his homeland’s psyche – including ‘Religious Persuasion’, ‘James Joyce’s Grave’ and ‘Street Scenes From My Heart’.

Andy’s latest release is his eleventh studio album How Things Are, on release in Europe this February 3. Recorded in The Growlery, Melbourne, with son Sebastian on drums, it’s an intensely personal collection of songs both celebrating and commemorating the end of a beautiful relationship which started around the time his fourth album.

Andy’s work and life have always been interconnected - his autobiography is in his discography, and the latest one is an apotheosis of sorts. He says he wrote the songs in an intense period of reflection, to answer the oft-posed question “How are things?”

Andy’s work as a writer and poet is closely linked to his songwriting output. He’s been described as writing in the tradition of the Spanish troubadour poets and the Beats, yet he retains a strong classical sensibility. Stolen Moments is his most recent volume, published by Brisbane publisher Another Lost Shark Press in 2011.

As a performer, as well as playing solo, Andy has collaborated with like-minded friends, musicians and writers both in the past – ALT with Liam O Maonlai (Hothouse Flowers) and Tim Finn (Crowded House, Split Enz) – and the present – Fearing & White with Canadian singer-songwriter Stephen Fearing.

Andy is a singer-songwriter of and for our times, documenting the world and its current chaos and beauty with remarkable insight. As he says in ‘I Decided To Fly’, wherever he is, with an acoustic guitar in his hand, he’s still “blowing bubbles on the Lisburn Road.”

Keep up with Andy’s world via his website, blog, and Facebook fansite:

ANDY WHITE DISCOGRAPHY

1985 – Religious Persuasion EP (Stiff)

1986 – Rave On Andy White (London)

1988 – Kiss The Big Stone (London)

1990 – Himself (Cooking Vinyl)

1992 – Out There (Warners)

1994 – Destination Beautiful (Warners/Cooking Vinyl)

1995 – Altitude (Parlophone) – as ALT

1996 – Teenage (Cooking Vinyl)

1998 – Compilation (Cooking Vinyl)

1999 – Speechless (WOMAD/Real World)