Project Description

Interview with

PAUL ANDREWS

of FAMILY FOLD

Interviewer – Vicky Hebbs

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Paul Andrews has a forthcoming Family Fold album, “Ashfield Skyline”, which comes out on 5^th October.

Paul is highly regarded in serious music circles through his band Lazy Susan (who broke up in 2012) and his follow up debut solo record “Lustre Glo” (2015), which received widespread critical acclaim.

This new album “Ashfield Skyline” was recorded in Nashville with producer/engineer Brad Jones (John Prine, Steve Earle, Missy Higgins, Bob Evans, Matthew Sweet).

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How did you first get into music? When did it become a serious concern?

I was always into music as a fan from when I was in single digits. The gateway ‘drug’ for me though – as it was for thousands of Australian kids in the 70s and 80s – was the music television show Countdown and then the rest followed.

I was fanatic about music and buying records first, and then graduated to playing – drums first, then guitar and singing – in my late teens and early 20s. 

The idea of actually making records didn’t properly enter my mind – I think because it just seemed so fantastically unrealistic – until my late 20s…which is kinda when I started to be writing songs that I think genuinely stood up. 

But even when the band I was in at the time (Lazy Susan) started making albums we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. We pressed 500 copies of our first EP and I think I’ve still got 450 of them in boxes at my place because we didn’t know anything about distribution or anything like that. We always struggled – as I still do today – to grasp the ‘serious’ side of making music. 

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What kind of music did you grow up on? What artists inspired you and which do you still look to now for ideas?

My family didn’t really play music purposefully – as in someone putting on an album or something like that – but we always had the radio on in the background, so whatever was on AM radio airplay in the 70s and 80s was what seeped into my head. 

I often do a cover of Romeo’s Tune by Steve Forbert and I think because it was a song that I heard all the time on AM early 80s Radio as a kid. 

I think that’s why Yacht Rock appealed to me so much.

Later, in late teens and early 20s it was MTV and Rage that fuelled my music knowledge.

I was initially inspired by the very predictable Beatles, Dylan, Pink Floyd, etc. But my local library had a cassette library (yes, cassettes!!!) and because I was reading lots about music and artists I had a whole heap of names to try out and discover through the library, such as The Clash, Pretenders, Blondie, etc when I was 15 or so. On top of those were Australian acts like the Hoodoo Gurus and The Church. 

My first proper album purchase was Adam and the Ants’ Kings of the Wild Frontier. I liked hooky songs with big choruses.

I don’t really go looking for ideas these days. Mostly they come floating towards me by accident. Like, today by chance I’m rediscovering Irish band The Thrills and their album from the early 00s, Let’s Bottle Bohemia. It’s close to a perfect pop record. But tomorrow it could be Neil Young, the day after Lene Lovich. Who knows?

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How did you get into song writing? Has it always been a part of you life?

It wasn’t until I was 17 or 18 or so, and just trying to teach myself guitar, that I considered the idea that I could maybe write songs. I had a close friend who was really encouraging and who was a sounding board to my first bad efforts at lyric writing and melodies (first song I ever wrote was a shocker called Kick in the Head…absolutely terrible). Over time, and with a helluva lot of hit’n’miss, gradually the songs became less cringeworthy and I was more confident playing them to a wider group of people. 

It’s been part of my life for close to 30 years now…I couldn’t imagine not doing it. It’d make me very sad losing the ability to write songs. 

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Your new Family Fold album “Ashfield Skyline” comes out on October 5th. How would you describe the album concept and the origins of the album? 

I was talking to a mate about starting my next record and he’d mentioned a few times that I should consider going over to Nashville and working with a guy he knew called Brad Jones. It sounded incredible but it also sounded like a dream, so I never thought about it seriously. 

But gradually over time things started to fall into place and I started to believe it could happen.

After 12 months of emails, Skype chats, and a brutal song elimination process that sometimes left me wondering if I was up to challenge, we decided on 11 songs and locked in a date for recording.

The way it worked was that I’d give Brad about 10 songs, he’d choose two. I’d give him another 10, he’d pick three more. It was bruising. But it pushed me harder than ever before, and I think the album is better for it.

Given the way we chose the songs there wasn’t any theme to them. I even reached back into decades-old boxes of demos to find half finished songs that I’d forgotten about but which had something going for them, enough for me to finish and share with Brad. 

I decided to call it Ashfield Skyline because I know going to Nashville and recording an album is a bit of a cliche, so I wanted a way to both take the piss out of myself and cement the songs in the listener’s mind as definitely being from my life, and about my home in Sydney’s inner west. 

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If you had to pick just one song from the album which you are extremely proud of creating or excited for people to hear, which would it be and why? 

There’s a tune towards the back end of the album called Young Gene Hackman which I think has some of the best lyrics I’ve ever written and musically I can listen to and get something out of, even though I wrote the damn thing. When the strings kick in and lift the song at the bridge, that’s one of the best musical moments I’ve ever been part of. I’m really proud of it.

When I hear my 10 year old – who really doesn’t like my music at all (he prefers Drake by a country mile) – singing the melody/lyrics to himself around the house, I know I’ve done something right. 

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Your new single Molly Meldrum’s Eyes is a really quirky, nostalgic song. Where did the idea come from? Or how you decide to write it? 

I actually wrote that song when I was in my mid-20s and forgot it for 20 years, only rediscovering it when I was rooting around old boxes of half finished songs looking for songwriting inspiration. So, clearly I was a nostalgic, sentimental bastard even when I was a kid!!!

It’s not really about Molly Meldrum as such. As important figure he is in Australian music, it’s not a tribute to him. It’s just about those bittersweet memories of childhood and youth and how music started to take over my life. About how music was probably more joyful and powerful then – when I was a kid and when it sounded like it was made by magicians – and before I was exposed to all the other stuff that goes along with trying to make a career out of music, which can suck some of the joy out of it. It’s about how I’d like to go back there, not to be a kid so much, but to tap back into that pure joy of listening to music for the first time.

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