ANDY SHEARER Interview for Museboat Live channel

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05/06/2021 / TEXT CREDITS: ANDY SHEARER, Museboat; PHOTO CREDITS: ANDY SHEARER

Interview with ANDY SHEARER for Museboat Live Channel on Thursday, April 6th in Up In The Alley show with Alison Cowie

Museboat Hall of fame artist Andy Shearer has been composing music for over 50 years. He is a Singer/Songwriter from North Yorkshire, who writes, records and produces his own music. His main instruments are guitars, bass, piano, mandolin, bouzouki and keyboards.

At the beginning of 2021, his song Stretched to the limit, ft Rhiannah Warm became number 1 in the top 25 charts. Despite the great music and huge positive feedback in our broadcasting, it is generally a problem to find new information about this great composer, so I decided not only to find him but also to ask him a few questions.

Hi Andy. How are you?

Hi Alison. I'm good thanks. It's nice to be invited to join you for a cosy little chat.

You have been writing and performing music for 50 years now. What inspired you to start writing?

Well even before I started to write songs, I kept a journal in which I recorded my day to day life experiences and how they'd made me feel (happy,sad,angry or whatever), although I never intended sharing these personal experiences with anyone, let alone to use them as material for writing songs. However this changed after listening to records by artists such as John Prine, Neil Young, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and many others, who were all writing about their own personal life experiences. I wasn't even that interested in singing as a teenager, but whether sat at the piano or on my bed strumming guitar chords, I'd always find it easy to come up with catchy melodies to simple chord progressions, so I guess it was only a matter of time before I tried my hand at songwriting, and by the time I reached 17, I'd written about a dozen songs. By then, I was already performing as a solo artist, although this was as a fingerstyle acoustic guitarist on the local folk circuit (no singing). When I started writing songs, the personal content actually made me too embarrassed to include them in my solo performances and so I continued to perform instrumentals only, but i was lucky that the band I was in was keen on including original material in our sets as well as cover songs, and with me being the only songwriter in the band, this is where they first saw the light of day. Regarding my instrumental compositions, I think that they clearly show where my inspiration has come from. My influences are wide and varied and the number of different instruments I play has certainly helped me to become musically versatile, and experiment with different combinations of styles and genres.

You play lots of instruments. What was the first instrument you learnt to play?

The piano was the first instrument I learnt to play, and I was completely self taught. My grandma had a beautiful piano on which she allowed me to practise after she'd collected me from primary school. She didn't play it herself so it was just me on my own. I had an hour or so to wait before my mother finished work and came to collect me so it didn't take long before I figured out how to play a few simple tunes which I would proudly demonstrate to her when she arrived. It's strange that even though the guitar soon took over as my main instrument, I still tend to compose my music at the piano, and I usually build the rest of the instrumentation around that. 'Stretched To The Limit' being a good example.

Where was the first place you played your music? Was it a solo venture or as part of a band?

Don't laugh, but my first gig was a solo 20 minute set at a fund raising evening event for the local bassett hound owners society in my hometown of Middlesbrough. Thankfully the owners didn't bring their dogs along to the event. I was 16 years old at the time. That was shortly followed by my first gig as guitarist in a 4-piece band called Slack Wax. We played at a church hall in front of a lot of screaming teenage girls. Unfortunately the girls were mainly screaming at the singer who also happened to be the best looking guy in the band.

You say you create music as a way of capturing a mood, an experience, or an emotion. Do you think this is why the audience engages with your Music?

It means everything to receive a message or comment from someone who empathises with a song and feels compelled to let me know that it relates to them in some way. That is the whole point of writing songs in the 'first person' narrative, and it makes it all worthwhile for me. On that score, 'Stay Till The End Of My Dream' seems to be the song which my audience has engaged with the most, and it's my personal favourite for that very reason.

What song that you have written, have you found the hardest to write?

Last year I decided to try something new. Instead of writing from personal experience, I wanted to try writing a traditional-sounding folk-rock song with fictional characters that tells a dramatic story. That song was 'The Maiden's Tale'. The best traditional folk songs tend to be based on tragedy, a murder or other assorted types of skullduggery, so I choose a tragic love story with a touch of mystery for mine. I do find it easier to write lyrics that are based on personal experiences though, and especially ones that reveal strong emotions. It's a good thing that there's always been an audience for this type of song.

What are your plans with regards to your music moving forwards?

I have so many plans that it's hard to decide what to do next. I've got quite a few completed songs that are still waiting to be recorded, and I'm currently in the process of recording one called 'Steely Blue'. I've recorded all of the instrumentation for it already, and just need to tweak the lyrics a bit before I record the vocals. Hopefully you'll hear it on Museboat soon. I also love to collaborate with other artists and I'm keen to pursue that too.

Is there anything you would like to say to Museboat listeners?

Well I know that many of you listeners are also fellow artists and I'm sure that you're all with me in wanting to thank Museboat for supporting all indie artists and giving us a platform to get our music to a bigger international audience. Some of us have been unable to perform live because of lockdowns and restrictions, so hopefully this will soon change as the situation improves. Thank you for supporting my music and if you want to hear more, you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, Spotify and Reverbnation (where I have two accounts. One for songs and the other for instrumentals). Thanks again for listening.

Thank you for the interview Andy.

My pleasure Alison. It was great to chat up in the alley with someone from my part of the world. Thanks for inviting me to take part in your great show.

This interview was brought to you by
Alison Cowie
host to the Up In The Alley show