Live with ‘Where’s all the love gone? With the Incurable Romantics at the Narrowboat Sessions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lnoGct7-o
Alan Dearling enjoyed listening to, then chatting with Andy at a live UK Americana gig at the 3 Wise Monkeys bar and Thai restaurant
Andy really looks the part. A genuine Outlaw Blues kind of look. His gravelly voice is particularly suited for what has been described as, “Alternative Country with Menaces!”
On this occasion Andy was joined by Danny Bourassa on guitar and Michelle Turnbull on vocals and percussion. They were promoting the triple volume: Country Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘n’ Durty Blues albums. The evening started mellow and then, in the second set, it got lively and rockin’.
Andy was extremely kind and he spent a while telling me about his life in music, starting way back when in punk times and then bringing his story up to date. He’s previously released , ‘Walking in Familiar Footsteps, featuring Mick Taylor and Paul Jones (2004), and ‘Dirt’ (2009) with the Smokin’ Jackets.
Alan: Hi Andy, I believe you started out in the days of punk, around 1976. Tell me a bit about those early days…
Andy: Hi Alan, well my ground zero for punk was Patti Smith, I absolutely loved ‘Horses’. I was living in a commune in Rochdale at the time, quite a bit younger than the other inhabitants, and I had ‘Horses’ on heavy rotation. I lived in an attic room which was accessed by stairs, and suddenly my good buddy, Dave Edwards, appeared at the top of the stairs and screamed, “… if you don’t take that off now, I’ll come over there and throw it out of the window.” I thought, “Wow, what a response” to this amazing powerful music. So when the punk scene exploded proper with The Sex Pistols on The Bill Grundy show I was in the front line. I was still in my teens at the time, so I cut my waist length hair, shaved my beard off, made all my jeans drainpipes and embraced it full on. I had a disco called Andy Sharrocks’ No Crap Disco – If you want it straight don’t book me. I played mainly Punk and reggae, and because reggae was fairly new at the time I turned a lot of people on to it. I saw all the new bands coming through at The Electric Circus in Manchester, The Clash, The Damned, The Stranglers, The Jam, all of them except The Sex Pistols, although I did have a ticket to see them at The Champness Hall Rochdale before the whole tour was cancelled.
There was a common conception in those days that hippies hated punks and punks hated hippies but it wasn’t like that in the north, they lived in harmony, all of them sticking it to the Man, just with a different dress code. I don’t think it was like that anywhere, all the tribes were just a part of the large umbrella called the counter-culture, it was just a story for the media to get their teeth into.
For me personally it was great because it introduced the whole DIY ethos of putting out your own music, without having the say so of an A & R man. My first single was ‘We Want It Legalised’, which opens with the line: “It’s been fifty years since the prohibition.” Well almost another fifty years have passed since then, so although I don’t smoke anymore, I truly stand behind my words.
I put out another single on my own label, Roach Records, then in 2004 I released ‘Walking in Familiar Footsteps’ on my own label and again in 2009 with ‘Dirt’, and recently with my triple vinyl album, so I am carrying on the punk legacy to this day. None of them have been commercially successful, but to me, getting them out in the universe was my number one priority.
Alan: Later you are on record as saying you got into Americana via Steve Earle’s music and others, and wanted only to work with your own songs. Has that been a good decision?
Andy: That’s right, Steve Earle was my ground zero for my love of Alt-country, or New country, as it was called in the mid-80s. I had got turned onto country via The Stones, Dead Flowers, Wild Horses, Sweet Virginia etc, but Steve had a rawness which really appealed to me, and it was only three chords which resonates with me. I love raw passionate music, hence my love for Iggy and The Stooges, The New York Dolls and Patti Smith.
To only do my own material hasn’t been a good decision commercially, and continues not to be easy. When I said that about cover songs, what I meant was I didn’t want to be in a covers band, I didn’t want to be a cabaret artist or a pub singer, playing music just to get paid. I am and always have been a song-writer, and that is so important to me. I have been writing poetry since I was twelve and that developed into lyrics in my late teens. It’s not something I want to do, it’s something I have to do. I write a lot about people I have known or crossed paths with, and events in my life. Not all the time, but a lot of the time. I make people immortal by writing a song about them, and most of them were such tragic figures that they are no longer with us.
Alan: I believe that you played at the new Traveller festival at Deeply Vale. What are your memories of that?
Andy: I was one of the first organisers of The Deeply Vale festival. It all came out of the commune I talked about earlier. Various members spent the summer of ‘75 and ‘76 just travelling from one free festival to another, one of them was in Rhayader in Wales, but someone had put a poster up in Stonehenge saying it was Rhyd-Ddu also in Wales. Dave Edwards drove us to Rhyd-Ddu in his brother’s van, and of course it was deserted. Dave Edwards said to Dave Smith, put your own festival on, and that thought germinated in his head, until we came back from Rivington Pike festival near Bolton, and he galvanised us into action (Dave Smith and Dave Edwards were residents in the commune). He then got Chris Hewitt on board who ran the Tractor Music shop in Rochdale and had a PA system. I was the DJ on the first festival playing sounds from morning till night in between bands. It was a great place for a festival, completely off the beaten track and once you got to the site it was a natural amphitheatre.
Alan: On your first solo album, ‘Walking in Familiar Footsteps’, you were joined by Mick Taylor who played with the Stones and Paul Jones from the Manfreds and the Blues Band. How did that come about?
Andy: I used to be a tour manager. The last tour I did was with Errol Brown. He had as support Ray Minhinnett, who used to play with Frankie Miller. Ray had a partner Hilly Briggs on keyboards. After the tour finished I got offered a job as production manager for the company in London, but was living in Manchester at the time, so I spent three months crashing on the floor of Errol Brown’s rigger in Watford. Hilly Briggs rang me randomly one night and he lived just round the corner. He had a studio in his house and we started working together on what would be ‘Walking In Familiar Footsteps’. What I didn’t know was he had just produced Mick Taylor’s album, ‘A Stone’s Throw’. Half-way through the project Hilly said why don’t you ask Mick to play on the album, and I was like “Don’t be silly, why would Mick Taylor want to play on my album?” The upshot was I plucked up courage to phone him and he agreed to play on four tracks. I had worked with Manfreds through the company I worked for, we toured them many times on The Maximum R n B Show. That was them with three or four guests, like Long John Baldry, Colin Blunstone, Chris Farlowe, and they would back them too, so I had got to know Paul Jones very well. From the positive result of my call with Mick, I thought why not ask Paul, and he readily agreed. I played many gigs with Mick Taylor as support, and he also played in the band at the launch gig for the album and at The Harelbeke Blues Festival in Belgium. I have haven’t seen him for a while now, he doesn’t really gig anymore
Alan: You’ve just released a triple vinyl set, ‘Country Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘n’ Durty Blues’. How’s that going?
Andy: How is that going artistically? Great. How’s it going spiritually? Great. How’s it going commercially? Not so great. The drawback of putting your own product in the market place is that you don’t have a marketing budget, or at least I don’t and never did have. But I am very proud of the album, 36 tracks, recorded live in the studio as a band in 8 days with a couple of days overdubbing, but it’s about as live and fresh as you can get, which is exactly as I wanted. The reviews I got for the album were phenomenal, with many comparisons to people like The Band, Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance, Steve Earle, even Eddie and The Hotrods for the rockier numbers, and even Bob Dylan, which is going a bit far really, but I couldn’t ask for better reviews.
I just hope some kid in fifty years’ time picks up a copy of the album, plays it, and thinks wow these songs are great… I’m going to form a band and cover these songs. A bit like the Stones and Cream did with Robert Johnson.
Alan: Recently I’ve written articles about two unusual musical enterprises. One is the Narrowboat Sessions and the other is Mr Wilson’s Second Liners. What has been your involvement?
Andy: I came across The Narrowboat Sessions though another Americana band, West On Colfax, who posted their session on Facebook, so I asked them about it. I contacted Mark Van Juggler last year and recorded my first session solo in Glasson Docks near Lancaster on a rainy night after just returning from The Magpies Festival near York. This was very lucky as he had a cancellation, and asked me if I would like to do it. I saw his post this year just after Easter saying he starting the sessions again in May, so I contacted him immediately and got the whole band down to Chirk in Wales where we recorded three more songs, ‘Where’s All The Love Gone’, ‘What Did You Say’ and ‘Country Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘n’ Durty Blues’.
Mr Wilson’s Second Liners played on four tracks on the album. What a gas playing with those guys. They came through Danny my guitarist, he worked at Johnny Roadhouse for 23 years and met most musicians in and around Manchester. Will Lenton, one of Mr Wilson’s and the guys who put the section together for the album plays Johnny Roadhouse’s old bass sax, it’s a monster. So Danny rang Will who was on board immediately. It amazes me how totally brilliant musicians say yes without hesitation. Victor Brox was also due to play on the album, I knew Victor from when he played Deeply Vale. I was thinking of keyboard players and I thought of course Victor, so I rang him and he was on board straight away, but the recording kept getting put back for various reasons and unfortunately Victor left us on the day he was due in the studio to lay his tracks down.
Alan: Folk have had a good lively night of rock ‘n’ blues in the company of you and your band. What are your current musical plans?
Andy: Thanks Alan, they did seem to enjoy it didn’t they? My next musical plans are getting as many gigs as possible, playing at The Big Tree in Todmorden on November 2nd for an Alzheimer’s charity event, I think that will be solo.
HMV Manchester with the whole band at 2pm on October 26th.
I am just starting to apply for the festivals next year, hopefully we get a few, and I am forever writing new songs. That will never stop. So will be demo-ing those with Danny before long. Getting my songs out is of prime importance to me, what good are 400 songs sat in various books. There’s only me who knows the melody, so if I pop my clogs I will have spent my life writing songs only to have less than a quarter released.
Alan: Many thanks for your time and company!
Andy: Many thanks to you Alan, great to meet you, and hope to do so again in the future.
