Andy Grooms

Andy Grooms has no biography. He isn’t definable.

Nor is he separate from those who know him or his work. He isn’t definable because Andy Grooms writes much as the great Werner Herzog directs and narrates: he takes the outward landscapes of life and proves that they are, in truth, our own personal monologues and interior landscapes. Like Herzog, any subject Andy touches becomes a part of Andy. Andy is the warzone journalist incapable of not crying or of joining up when the fighting becomes intense: he doesn’t attempt to be “objective” and in not doing so shows us the true horrors and, in equal parts, the beauties of our world through his music. He is too human to stand back and watch but too idiosyncratically thoughtful to blindly leap into the flames, even as he is doing just that. What we are left with is something bigger than what he witnesses yet much smaller, as well. We are faced with ourselves and our own world. We see Andy and, in the brutality of his honesty and observations and the severity of his love and disdain, we see our own faces. In it all, he shows us, there is good and bad and then there is all that’s locked up in between. His laughter is ours. His pain is ours. His confusion is ours. He is a conscientious objector with a gun and no bullets.

Andy has lamented, “There is no punk rock piano playing”, noting at the same time that “maybe that’s why all my friends play guitar”. Thankfully Andy never gave much time to the memorization of rock and roll history like a good little indie rock boy should… He was too busy pining over the “genius of John Prine” (as he says) and playing gospel music to do it. Even given the time to he would’ve ignored it all anyway. Strangely, though, it’s easy to imagine placing Andy Grooms; replete with a beat up Acrosonic piano and a Southern drawl (slow and mesmerizing enough to allow for, even demand, the two hours it takes for him to fully tell his detailed and uniquely observant stories) in New York City circa 1977. Not up on stage at CBGB’s or in the crowd at a Ramones show. That was never punk rock, anyway. Andy would’ve done as he does now. But he would’ve been tracked by those who understood what the punk rock ethos really was and made the music they made without regard for the standardized sounds associated with it; those like Tom Verlaine and Jonathan Richman. That ethos was upheld well before anyone donned a leather jacket and shredded jeans. Andy came by it naturally. Honestly. Just as he does his other roots.

Grateful To Burn was recorded over a decade ago.  Left by his wife and in love with an unattainable woman, these desperate songs, borne of immediacy and pain, were spilling out of Andy at the time. The songs and the production of the record went hand in hand: Andy was writing material and bringing it into the studio almost in desperation. Kevin Cubbins, who produced the record, picked musicians that would challenge Andy musically and personally; people he didn’t know well enough to resort to debate with. It was this brilliant plan that laid the foundation. It worked.

When the record was completed Andy did nothing. Literally. He drank. He slept a lot. He played shows sporadically but showed little interest in the promotion of Grateful To Burn. It sat. Those who played on it knew it was brilliant. Andy didn’t care. Finally, Memphis’ Makeshift Records and Brad Postlewaite attempted to rescue it from him. They released Grateful To Burn locally. With no money, publicist, distribution, and no help from Andy. They saw the beauty and tilted at windmills anyway. It was a failure. Everyone gave their all. Except Andy. He allowed it to fail. And fail it did: when something this good exists and then disappears, it takes a lot of doing nothing to destroy it.

Grateful to Burn will be released by Evangeline Recording Co in January of 2012 and finally see the true “light of day”. Because if it doesn’t reach out to folks and isn’t seen for the masterpiece it is, something is wrong. Something is bad wrong with the world.  So Andy’s Quixotic adventure can began anew with Evangeline Recording Co. as his Sancho Panza. Here’s to hoping the world isn’t so fucked it can’t find the brilliance. -  J. Murry

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