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09 October 2010
Albuquerque based Nels Andrews (www.nelsandrews.com) received the “NewFolk” award at 2002 Kerrville Folk Festival, to join a select group of winners which includes the likes of Lyle Lovett, Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle, but any comparisons with any of those would be wasted, as he is an artist with his own distinctive sound and his own voice. “Sunday Shoes”, is Nels’ dark, brooding and compelling debut album. Co-produced with Jeffrey Richards (Hazeldine) the album is sparse, inventive, tasteful, shows rare maturity, and is already a contender for album of 2004. Barry Jones spoke to Nels about the album and his visit to the UK planned for December 2004. Interview date: 3rd November 2004
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Hello Nels, you’re the first person I’ve spoken to in America since the election. How does it feel over there today? OK, on to other matters, I read a glowing review of the album on Rockzilla.net which seemed to place great store on the sense of place, New Mexico and Albuquerque in particular. How important is the place where you are living now in terms of your songwriting? You’ve moved to Albuquerque fairly recently I think. Where do you actually originate from? In your biography was a reference to your fine woodworking sensibilities. Is that your trade? Do you not do that at all now? I thought you might be making guitars, like Guy Clark, he makes guitars these days doesn’t he? Yeah it sounds like a nice thing to do, these sort of daydreams, I don’t know how much of a living there is to be made out of it, but… I think you’re right. You were “NewFolk” winner at the 2002 Kerrville Folk Festival. It’s a nice thing to have, but I was wondering how any particular benefits from that manifest themselves, have you seen any fallout from that? To me, your album doesn’t really fall into what I’d call a folk category. I mean do you feel that yourself? Yeah, I really do like the album, it’s a great atmosphere, and I love the trumpet on “Lilli Marlene”. I think the setting’s great, but it’s not really what I’d consider to be a folk setting really, is that maybe indicative of the sort of direction that you’re going in? You were showcased at the Americana Music Association just recently; first of all, how did it go? And what form did it take? What were you doing there? Was it the full band? With so many people from the conference there, is there much of a market there for other people covering your songs? Do you get any of that sort of approach? You were hoping so though, maybe? You mention about Albuquerque, and I know that you’ve got Brett Sparks on the album, and I spoke to Brett there, about this time last year, and so you might not think that it’s much of a community, but from over here it looks like there’s quite a lot of you? (Well 2 anyway! Ed.) You were saying that you are over in the studio, are you actually doing some more recording? Have you got more things in the pipeline? And is the EP for general release, are you going to bring it on tour with you? OK, that sounds good, what covers are you doing? That’s great. On to the tour, you’re actually got some European dates, you’re doing some stuff in Amsterdam. Have you toured over here before? Have you been over here? It’s good. It’s the wrong time of year to be coming mind you, it’s fairly miserable in December, but I’m sure it will be very nice in the concert rooms. You’re not actually coming near Liverpool, which is a bit disappointing for me, but… That was going to be another one of my questions, what are you planning for 2005? Who’s coming over with you this time? Is the EP going to be the start of another album? Or is it just going to be a project on its own? OK, and what have you been listening to yourself? I was wondering if they were your shoes on the album cover? They’re a nice pair of shoes, I have to say. Oh no you’ll have to keep them. You’ll be able to sell them on e-bay, when this album has gone platinum Well it’s been really nice to talk to you.
Sombre mostly, I think that’s the word. I’m just over here at the studio with Jeffrey and we’re trying to kind of hash it out, but no one really has a … it’s hard to say… there was a suspended disbelief this morning, and I think we’ll see what happens.
Well, I think on one level y’know we are kind of removed from a lot of other influences…so we’re on our own to create images and textures, and all of our thing, I think it really showed… I don’t think I noticed it until we put it in context with other bands, or we travelled, got on the road and put it out, but having a sense of space and place is definitely very important I think.
Well I originally was a navy brat, so I moved around and I ended up in New Mexico in 1990. I’d been here… I was out in the sticks, actually up in the mountains, for about eight years and then moved down to Albuquerque about six years ago, so I’ve been here about fifteen years
Yeah, that’s what I did for the first half of my adult life. I was a woodworker, a fine woodworker, I apprenticed with a woodworker in El Rico, New Mexico and then I moved to town and was a furniture maker for years in town. In fact I thought that’s what I was gonna…keep doing, y’know have a series of shops. And I always wrote songs, but the music thing didn’t really pop up until I pushed about thirty, the possibility for actually doing it.
Well, I do, I do work construction, but I work a construction job that allows me to come and go. The woodworking thing is more of a…y’know I had clients and I had to keep up. It was much more steady. And now I work in construction when I come back, and fill in from the music, which is becoming the much more full time thing.
Right, well yeah, I worked for a guitar maker actually when I was really… about seventeen or eighteen… and would love to get back to it, and have a shop and stuff.
It’s as much of a dream as songwriting I think (both laugh)
It’s an honour. It’s really an honour, and it introduced me to a lot of the folk community especially there in Austin, and other people who have won the award over time and such. I think… yeah, it introduced me at the Kerrville Folk Festival itself, which is really an amazing thing. You can’t really explain who comes out of the woodwork to come camp down there for a couple of weeks at a time, and it becomes this nexus of all these songwriters that have... and most of them come in just to be amongst each other and stuff. That was really the big thing for me, was being introduced to the whole “Kerrville”, and a chance to get down there and to tap in to all that kind of stuff, which is really amazing.
Yeah definitely, definitely, I feel like I’m coming… y’know I think I’m listening to all the same records as those guys were I think. I think my base of where I’m coming from is the same. I think that maybe what I’m looking towards is a little bit different.
Yeah, I think that it’s… y’know, you write the songs, and you try to make this manikin, and then you bring in these other people to kind of dress it up, and take it out on the town. So what I’m drawing from texturally is the people I’m playing with; we kind of threw out our pre-conceived notions of what we were going to do and we made the song. And it’s very home-made, I mean the whole album was recorded in a little… a living room…Jeffrey and I recorded on of these eight track kind of things, and we just kind of built it, and kind of created it as we went along I think, and then it happened that… yeah an old friend of mine had played trumpet with me a couple of times, and she went down, and that’s where that came from.
Well, we did… the actual official showcase was in the convention centre and that was Jeffrey and Michelle and I, as a kind of acoustic thing, and yeah, it was good. There was a very big room and we were the last ones kind of playing. It was kind of an odd venue to be playing to this big convention centre, but then the band came and played, and we played a couple of parties in Nashville at the time. That seemed more vital, the parties on the side, sees more of the energy than the actual showcase venue itself, it’s a little more static.
Er, I haven’t heard anything of it (laughing)
Right, it was just more to meet people, you know you meet people, you network, and you kind of meet your peers. That was really what it was about. It’s like South by South West, in that the showcase venues go on, and there’s all that hype, but really what it is, for the musicians, is you get to meet your peers and get to network with all these different people, especially if you come from a place like Albuquerque, y’know, you’re on the outpost there. Maybe somebody comes through town every once in a while, but it’s not like a big music town like Austin, or New York, or Nashville, or something like that. You just dip into the big pool really.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a great community; there’s just not much of a music scene. I think that’s the difference. I think that like what we have here is great, on any given night you’re playing with a real mix of stuff. Y’know we’re playing with an emo band, a punk band, and a bunch of different stuff, and there’s a real camaraderie, as opposed to when you go to LA, or New York, and everyone’s stabbing each other in the back, trying to get a piece of some kind of pie. Where, out here, we’re so isolated that everyone’s pretty supportive, amongst all the different stuff, and it is a community, that’s true, that is true.
Yeah, we’re working on… Jeffrey and I are working on a little acoustic EP, and …like a couple of covers from different friends, and some new songs. We’re just kind of tracking. Actually we’re in an old Airstream that’s parked next to the studios; it’s an Argosy trailer, and we’re actually tracking all the acoustic and vocal parts in this old trailer, and then piping it over into the studio. The studio is just like a little adobe house, and all the recording gear is kind of in the kitchen, and stuff like that, so we’re trying to track. It’s got a nice sound without the hard edges; we’re trying to track vocals and guitars in the Argosy.
Yes that’s the idea, it will something that we just kind of sell from the stage I think.
We’re doing a guy named Sean Hayes, he’s a San Francisco guy, and plays with…Jolie Holland sings all over his record, a great songwriter out of San Francisco that we’ve been touring with, and we’re going to do one of his songs. And another guy by the name of AJ Roach, another San Francisco guy who I … I really, really like his stuff. Another local guy here, another big songwriter guy, Cole Mitchell, a local Albuquerque guy, so we’re trying to do some of our friends’ songs.
I never have.
I’ve never been over. Jeffrey’s been over a bunch you know with Hazeldine, and I think once with Vic Chestnutt before, but I’m kinda green to the thing. I’m excited.
I think we’re coming back in April.
Yeah we’re trying to come back with the whole band.
Jeffrey Richards is coming over with me this time, and Jeffrey was in Hazeldine and Vic Chestnutt, so Jeffrey and I are going to do a duo kind of thing and then I come over in the spring with the full band.
I think, yeah we’ll see how the new songs evolve, and if we want to kind of work them over again, with different arrangements and stuff. It’ll be a real stark thing, this’ll be a real stark thing, and maybe I’ll get down with those songs, and maybe I’ll want to evolve them, but the next round of songs is coming up.
Let’s see I picked up that Solomon Burke album that Joe Henry did on Epitaph a couple of years ago, I’ve been really loving that, and I picked up the Gillian Welch “Soul Journey” finally after all this time, and like I said before, that Sean Hayes album, and AJ Roach also. Also Japancakes, that instrumental stuff, that’s really been hitting me nice.
My shoes, and I took the picture (both laughing) and that’s my front porch actually.
They’re almost on their way out. I’ve re-soled them now about three times, and I’m debating if it’s worth a fourth.
Right, I should get dozens of dollars for that (both laughing)
Yeah, thanks for calling, sorry we’re not coming through Liverpool.