Our story starts in a hire car on a far-off freeway, skidding round a bend as it hits a patch of red dirt. An amp, an acoustic guitar and a drumkit career from side to side in the back of the wagon as Andy cranks the stereo. It's sometime after the end of the last album 'Songwriter', and it's still to be seen whether our driver has learned the lessons contained in his book '21st Century Troubadour'.

Driftin'

The night is approaching
though some would say it was morning
the cassette clicks
the wind blows through the walls …

Vision Of You was track two on Andy's debut album Rave On Andy White, and the follow-up single to Reality Row. Someone called it "the finest moment of bedroom listening since Pale Blue Eyes" which did it for Andy.

Written travelling between Belfast and Cambridge a couple of summers earlier, the candles are from a Hiroshima commemoration, the casement from Keats poem and the vision herself … well, that's another story …

The car's a beetle and the cover shot by Pennie Smith, somewhere on page 74 of the London A-Z.

Engineered by Enda Walsh and produced by Andy and Rod McVey, Rave On Andy White was originally released by London Records in 1986 and MCA Records in North America in 1987.

Vision Of You

Protestant or Catholic cried a voice from the crowd
'Not you again St Peter' I was thinking aloud …

This is the original version of the song which started it all for Andy. Released on Stiff Records in 1985, Janice Long played it every night on her BBC Radio One show, then Whistle Test filmed Andy singing it - and getting arrested - on the top of Belfast's tallest building. It soon raced up the UK indie charts.

Andy wrote it as a poem, and the lyrics are now on the teaching syllabus in Northern Ireland. Written as a kick in the teeth to Bible bashers in his native Northern Ireland, its relevance grows stronger and more universal every year.

Engineered by Mudd Wallace and produced by Andy and Rod McVey.

Religious Persuasion

Blurred and beautiful, rushing past
They're a metaphor for things that never last …

From the Boy 40 album, this song was written when Andy first played WOMAD Palermo. Arriving in Sicily, just a young Irishman with a crazy dream of perhaps catching a glimpse of one or two beautiful Italian girls on Vespas, he looked outside his hotel window to see forty or fifty speeding through a red light.

Engineered by Simon Polinski and produced by Andy in Melbourne, Boy 40 was released on Floating World in 2003.

Italian Girls On Mopeds

Spent too long in 99
thinking 'bout the future
now it's come, nil and one
I'm staring at computer …

Too much screen time during a move to Europe saw Andy writing his 'red' album. Self-titled (he asked Lloyd Cole if it was a good idea - he wrote back saying "well, it worked for The Beatles") it was his first independent release on the ALT Recordings label in 2000, then picked up by Floating World and re-released the following year.

If much of the album was written in solitude, the recording back in Dublin was a celebratory homecoming. Kieran Kennedy from Andy's live band produced, John Leckie mixed, Kieran's wife and Andy's sister sang.

I Want It Straight is at the very heart of the album.

Engineered and produced by Kieran Kennedy and mixed by John Leckie in Temple Bar, Dublin.


I Want It Straight

In brisbane I write poetry
in LA I dream of books

I want to dream of you 
but this is not possible
so I dream of books

At home my dreams are
terrifying and cruel
but in LA I dream of books …

Released on Andy's 'album of the book' double CD set 21st Century Troubadour (Floating World), In LA I Dream Of Books is on the second 'stories' CD, which is mostly taken up with passages read from the 21st Century Troubadour book (Lagan Press, Belfast, 2009). The first 'songs' CD is a compilation of album tracks written during or about the events in the book.

In LA I Dream Of Books is actually a conflation of four or five poems from Andy's second volume of poetry 'Stolen Moments' (Another Lost Shark Press, Brisbane). Both this and Andy's album came out in 2011.

Engineered and produced by Andy in Melbourne.

In LA I Dream Of Books

They're burning the cars, Shankill tonight
the petrolheads are here
outside your house they scorched the grass
and you turned to me and laughed about it …

Teenage was the first album to be recorded in Dublin. In a basement studio in Temple Bar he brought master tapes from a writing session in Melbourne with Tim Finn, and recorded new songs in crazy late night sessions with Pat Donne, Kim Fowley and Ingmar Kiang. 

Jacqui is Liam from ALT's ex-mother-in-law. Andy and Tim employed their time-honoured failure-proof 'write about the other member of the group' tactic, and the song has grown through the years. This one is the original version from Teenage released on Cooking Vinyl in 1996.

And the radio's playing Fever at the start, in case you were wondering.

Engineered by Simon Polinski with additional engineering by Pat Donne, mixed by Ingmar Kiang, produced by Andy and Tim Finn.

Jacqui

They're getting ready for the motorcycle tightrope riders tonight ...

Originally released on Andy's award-winning album Out There, this album track was written on tour in Vitoria, North West Spain.

Amazingly enough, the real-life Susana wrote to Andy on Facebook and asked for a copy of the song. She broke up with Fernando many years ago, and is living in Goa, India.

Engineered by Mudd Wallace, produced by Andy and Rod McVey, recorded in Randalstown, Northern Ireland, Out There was originally released on Warners in 1992.

The Colour Of Love

When I wrote this I could feel the Celtic Tiger's demise coming. Stepping over people sleeping in boxes on the way to the studio in Temple Bar. When I was a kid St Patrick's Day was not a big deal - the best thing was getting the day off school. Oh yeah.

St. Patrick's Day

Australia is a beautiful country whose right wing Prime Minister - elected September 2013, deposed two years later - had an anti-immigration anti-environment pro-big business agenda. Cutting foreign aid, education, health, social services and intent on taking apart the national broadcasting stations. Promoting the use of brown coal, removing allowances for the unemployed, buying fighter jets no one wanted, replacing social workers in schools with chaplains, introducing charges to see the doctor, de-regulating colleges to put higher education out of the reach of the less well-off, reintroducing Dames and Knights into the honours system. The list is endless and their right wing agenda relentless.

We weren't going to take it.

Promises Broken

Getaway (Jessica Says)

Baby That's OK

Johnny Depp's Dogs

Dignity 
Jesus was a refugee
Give them dignity
In the name of you and me

Don't give up (don't give up)
Don't let go (don't let go)
Which one of us (which one of us)
Can really know (can really know)

Come on now (come on now)
Let them on our shore (let them on our shore)
Bring the boats (bring the boats)
I want more and more (more and more)

Dignity
Jesus was a refugee
Dignity
They're the same as you and me

(Oh ... )

Dignity (dignity)
To fill this land (fill this land)
With happiness (happiness)
On the golden sand (on the golden sand)

Dignity
Jesus was a refugee
Give them dignity
Have you forgotten how it should be

(Oh ... )

Dignity
Forget your racist lies
Dignity
Forget your foolish pride

Dignity
Jesus was a refugee
Dignity
Gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme 

Dignity
Jesus was a refugee
Gimme gimme gimme gimme
Gimme gimme gimme gimme
Dignity

Dignity

Sebastian arrived in The Growlery one winter sunlit afternoon and I played him this song. We looked at each other. This is our music. We can do this. And after all, Everybody Wants Somebody. I was moving on, and there’s a message hidden in the fade.

Imaginary Lovers

Everybody Wants Somebody

The time they need has gone
You took the time they would grow old
The time to heal has gone
You do not understand at all

With your faith
And your bombs
And your gold

Misplaced faith
Home-made bombs
And foreign gold

You cannot read a holy book
You cannot build a border wall
You can't give back the time you took
You do not understand at all

With your faith
And your bombs
And your gold

Misplaced faith
Home-made bombs
And foreign gold …

Photos of smiling kids
Taken down from Facebook walls
Frozen for evermore
We cannot understand at all

Your faith
Your bombs
And your gold

Your misplaced faith
Home-made bombs
And foreign gold

Your misplaced faith
Home-made bombs
And foreign gold

Give them the peace they need
May they have the peace they need

*

With love, Andy 
26.5.17

manchester song

Jeremy 
He is who I wanna be
Jeremy
He's so old and so free

Early in the morning
Talking on the stump
20 minutes later
He got Trump

Jeremy 
He is who I wanna be
Jeremy
He's so old and so free

He went to Tranmere
They're singing his name
The very next day
The polls went up again

Jeremy 
So reckless and free
Jeremy
He is who I wanna be

We care where you're going
We don't care where you've been
Come on down
Come what May

We've left our belongings
By the side of the road
The rich getting richer
Today

Jeremy …

He got a tie
He got a pen
If he don't win
He'll be back again

Jeremy 
He's so old and so free
Jeremy
He is who I wanna be

Jeremy 
He's so reckless and free
Jeremy
He is who I wanna be

Jeremy 
He's so old and so free
Jeremy
Jeremy

------------

Andy White 
4 June, 2017

Vote Labour on Thursday!

jeremy

Belfast-born Melbourne-based singer-songwriter Andy White has guitar wants to travel. New album Good Luck I Hope You Make It January 2024.

Throughout his 20-album career, starting with the release of Religious Persuasion in 1985, Andy has combined poetic lyricism with a pop sensibility, political outspokenness with folk authenticity and wit. 

Take a listen to the Young Person's Guide playlist. Andy tends to put rare or hard-to-find tracks here on Soundcloud as well as a selection from his regular releases.

-------------------

 FULL BIO

Andy's career started with the Stiff Records EP Religious Persuasion. Championed by Janice Long and Whistle Test, Andy was signed to London in the UK and MCA in America, and his debut album Rave On Andy White was released in 1986. Melody Maker review headline was 'Yer Man's Brilliant' - Andy had arrived. Combining an acoustic guitar with an attitude from the Belfast punk scene of the 70s, along with a sharp wit and poetic sensibility, he was quite happy to be the new Bob Dylan, if only to see how far it would take him.

Looked after by Billy Bragg's manager Peter Jenner for much of the time since then, he's toured the world many times over, was one of the first artists on premier UK roots label Cooking Vinyl, and is best known for songs such as James Joyce's Grave, Street Scenes From My Heart, Italian Girls On Mopeds and If You Want It - literate pop songs as close to Lloyd Cole and Mike Scott as Bragg and Dylan. He has co-written with the likes of Peter Gabriel and Neil and Tim Finn, won Ireland's top songwriting awards and been inducted into the Irish Music Hall of Fame.

An invitation to Australia by Tim Finn led to Andy writing 'Coz I'm Free' for the Olympic Games in 2000, signing for Mushroom Music, and eventually moving there a few years later. This hasn't stopped him touring, however, and he's built up a loyal following in the UK, Europe and North America over the last ten years of hemisphere-hopping.

Andy's poetry and lyrics collection The Music Of What Happens was published by Lagan Press in 1999. His first book of prose, 20th Century Troubadour, came out in 2009, followed by second poetry collection Stolen Moments in 2011. 

Having looked over the shoulder of some of the world's finest producers, he's engineered and produced his two latest albums at his studio, The Growlery, in the hills outside Melbourne, using a collection of microphones and equipment he gradually built up from a shopping list given to him by old friend and producer, John Leckie.

Playing practically everything on Imaginary Lovers and How Things Are, in this respect they are a return to Andy's very earliest work. Guest musicians on the album are Andy's son, Sebastian, on drums, making his album debut, and one-woman string section Domini Forster on violin.

With the help of his UK record company Floating World, Andy has enjoyed an artistic freedom which has allowed him to concentrate on building up a body of work second to none. Each album has a specific theme, and scanning the track list of How Things Are will let you know this one's subject matter quickly enough.

In October 2016, the 30th anniversary of his debut Rave On, Andy's UK record label Floating World released a 12 CD box set containing all 11 studio albums plus brand new album Imaginary Lovers, which is also available as a single CD.

This was followed by an overt return to political engagement with The Guilty and the Innocent in 2017 and Time is a Buffalo in the Art of War in 2019. In 2020 Andy released a second compilation of rarities, Rarer, followed by career highlight This garden is only temporary in 2022. Listen to Another Sunny Day and I Miss You on this page.

Following the release of 'AT' a duo album with ALT bandmate Tim Finn, Andy has written and recorded his first spoken word album, Good Luck I Hope You Make It, on release from January 2024. Things are getting interesting.

Popular tracks by andy white