Andy Halsey - The Rock and Roller Coaster Ride of Life
Charles Paxton December 3rd, 2007
The Ups and Downs and Downs and Ups of Andy Halsey, Songwriter-SingerNow Director of the MusicLinks charity, Andy Halsey is a Song-writer Singer of distinction. A skilled acoustic guitarist with a broad vocal range, he works for charity by day and entertains and inspires where ever he plays. He’s played venues huge and tiny, “I don’t want to come with a price” he explained in interview after the Appleby gig. As such he’s no slave to any particular genre. He plays a broad range of music and as a songwriter is eager to find inspiration and experiment with new things. His answer to our query sums this up “My favorite song? I suppose that would be the next song I write.”To put that idea into perspective, I should say that he’s written some pretty good ones already, a lot in fact … about 60 per year!
On Friday, October 12, Andy regaled us with a superb acoustic set of 8 songs that briefly encapsulated the accumulated experience of his lifetime in the music business so far - a wild roller coaster ride that at one time saw him signed with RCA and published on labels such as Beggars’ Banquet and touring widely supporting a number of successful artists and at others serving as an inspiration and musical mentor in inner city schools and now as Director of the Cumbrian based MusicLinks Charity. Here he’s enabling greater public access to music and expanding opportunities for musicians.Andy performs ‘Beautiful Things’ at Centre 67 Youth Centre, Appleby.A musical sojourn with Andy provides a good ration of acoustic folk, alternative and blues. He’s a versatile vocalist - well in control at the extremes of his range, skilled acoustic guitarist and entertaining raconteur.This man is a practiced educator, he meets his audience eye-to-eye and respecting their intelligence, shares his own. I feel he would be equally at home busking to a small audience or centre stage in some enormous stadium. Either way, it would be an intimate experience. Andy opens himself up to his audience and an evening with him provides insights into his own life journey and also perhaps pause and cause to reflect on ones’ own. Andy may make live music performance look easy, but like everybody, he’s had his ups and downs. As a prolificly productive song-writer singer - his may well have been more intense than most. Here’s the juice …The Formative YearsGrowing up in Harpenden, Hertfordshire and schooled at St Dominic Infants, a glorious convent that had donkeys in the field out back, run by a lovely nun called Sister Mary Vincent, Andy had a good start. At Roundwood Primary Andy’s early scepticism emerged alongside an experimental light fingeredness in the tuck shop that got him in to a touch of trouble and proved educational in terms of hard knocks. St George’s Secondary School followed with a certain amount of suspension, six of the best, boredom and associated disruptive tendencies. He had a great bunch of mates there and couldn’t care less what the teachers said. Leaving school with a hopeless o’level count including art, music and English he was ready to skip some higher schooling, so …. at College level he ran away to Holland from St Albans Further Ed, then he never really turned up to St Martins, then followed Goldsmiths and he never really turned up there much either. Other loves in his life eclipsed academia well and truly.Andy had started writing songs at 15, and was amazed at the dramatic effect this was having on his life. Suddenly finding himself able to voice his dreams and take a fresh look at his feelings and attitudes was enlightening and empowering. Music brought him into contact with all sorts of new, and thankfully less macho and wayward mates. It also worked wonders with the girls. T’was amazing!He followed his dream of becoming the best songwriter in the world all around Europe, from the age of 16 he busked through France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Austria - what a trip! And for the next four or five years he spent months down in the South of France making a great living and sleeping on the beaches. The mold was cast. He has been obsessed with song writing ever since.Andy Halsey performing his semi-autobiographical ‘Give the game away’ at Appleby’s Centre 67 youth clubMusic Career Gaining MomentumSigning to Momentum Music at age 22 was a dream come true. Andy now enjoyed a regular wage doing what he loved most on a Development deal for a few years before being signed to RCA in New York. From there he flew back and forth playing showcases, industry trade fairs and plenty of gigs, and was wined and dined by the great and the good. Andy made his recording debut with the great man and producer, Paul Hardiman (The The, Kate Bush etc.)Fate Kicks Andy Where It Hurts, Twice, In Rapid Succession.Things were looking really good. Andy jammed with Mick Ronson (Bowie’s guitarist) and they were due to co-produce an album, but tragically Mick died before completion. Eighteen months later the album was recorded but unfortunately his current manager then died and relations with RCA broke down as a result. In spite of a new and highly regarded manager, a reconciliation with RCA was impossible and this effectively buried the “Walk The Big Circle” album. It was bitterly disappointing. The pre-release whispers had been great and it really was his “Portrait of the artist as a young man” - labour of love. Andy was pretty down at that point, but his new manager and soon to be new label offered some hope. It took another three years, two EP’s “In The Middle Of The Ocean” and “Swim”, plus yet another buried album “Periscopes” to bring Andy to a state of abject poverty with a massive debt to his publisher.Andy Goes AmphibiousAndy had managed to free up enough cash from his various deals to buy a narrow boat, and subsequently he adopted an amphibious lifestyle and went into hiding in Camden. There were some high points though, “there’s nothing quite like messing about in boats”, as Ratty put it and he had the peace and quiet required for the composition he loves. Around this time he was whisked off to MIDEM in Cannes by the PRS and the MCPS to headline the Best of British Acoustic Showcase. The response was great, but yet again his manager fumbled the ball by daring to be different. He decided that the best way to respond to the rush of interest after the gig was to throw his business cards on the floor for people to pick up if they were interested. This bold (and one off?) experiment in musician management predictably had the opposite effect. Sheer hard work and prodigious output was the order of the day.Andy writes around sixty songs a year and he was already the most prolific writer on Warner Chappel/Momentum Music’s roster by the time he was 25. They had around 200 of his songs by then and as his accomplishments mounted and fame and fortune continued to dance, tantalizingly, just out of reach he developed feelings of unbelievably intense frustration from a young age. This frustration at the lack of cohesion in his career still haunts him today. Andy’s nadir, at 32 came with his split from his teenage sweetheart after eleven years. Things are always darkest and coldest before dawn and you can’t bounce until you’ve hit the bottom. Yep, times were so hard that something just had to change. Change for the better, they did, at last. At this point Andy’s friend, Bobby mentioned that he was currently teaching a Music Tutor Training Course being run by CM in SE London. Andy’s ears pricked up at the sound of this, he fixed up his boat and sold it off.Andy Halsey performing one of his favorite songs, ‘Listen to the rain’ at Appleby’s Centre 67 youth clubBack to Earth - Andy Finds Success Through Service To OthersAndy started studying in 1998 and by 2000 he was running his own community project in Camden and teaching in six or seven schools a week. As a qualified music Specialist he could teach in Primary and Secondary schools and was also trained to set up community projects. The course changed his life. A year or so later in response to an advert in the Times Educational Supplement he successfully applied for the post of Music Development Officer with the Westmorland Music Council.Now working as Director of MusicLinks (Westmorland Music Council’s Contemporary Music Arm) Andy feels fortunate to be providing a wide range of opportunities for musicians of all ages throughout the County. The Music Bus, a mobile venue to enable access to remote rural communities has been such a great success that they are now following up with a new Digital Arts Van.Andy performing The Fugitive at Centre 67 Youth Centre, Appleby.Watch out for his forthcoming new album of the same title The FugitiveWith Andy at the helm they have also set up the CumBrio Music Network, The MusicShare Network and had a helping hand in getting Mostly Acoustic Cumbria established. Service to others has in no way diminished Andy’s obsession for music, and thankfully the songs have never stopped coming. He has recorded with friends in the meantime, resulting in an album called “Basement Snacks” and more recently his “The Fugitive” album project is in the last stages of completion. Another album, one that he composed for children, is called “The Washing Machine and Other Songs”.As a mature Artist, Andy has a lot to say and plenty of work to do if he wants to secure an audience for his music. He has overcome personal tragedy (he was alone when he witnessed his lovely Mum die suddenly at the age of 19) and has struggled with confidence and some of the other traditional music industry pitfalls along the way. Unlike some stars that have crashed and burned on the rock and roller coaster ride, however, Andy Halsey has bounced and he seems to have now found a surer footing in Cumbria.
Andy Halsey enjoying good times again in CumbriaPhotographs Courtesy of Andy Halsey.For more on Andy, see his Avenue 67 event review and his website