Andrew Gregory is all about a good yarn. Ask him a question about anything - you won’t get an answer, you’ll get an anecdote. Why? Because he remembers just about everything.
The 26 year-old Radford native, who will perform at this week’s Fridays at 5 on the Sadler Center terrace, admits “I have a really good memory for stories and people and things that happen to me. And I have an uncanny memory for when I wrote songs. Like, ‘Oh, I wrote that the second week of August 2005’ or something. There’s only one song that I have ever completely blanked on; for the life of me, I can’t remember when I wrote it.”
The song to which Gregory is referring, “Please Stay”, is a plaintive and humbling track off of his third album The Color Red and Other Songs About the Power of Love. His music revels in the thoughtful simplicity of classic acoustic folk and simultaneously achieves the understated complexity of a tightly-crafted story. Released this past winter, the album has already been compared to Tom Waits’ early work as well as Bruce Springsteen’s “Nashville”.
The Brooklyn-based musician, who doesn’t own an iPod or a working car stereo, describes himself as “a songwriter’s songwriter who writes beautiful songs simply.” In the last year, he’s performed in approximately 150 shows. Despite a grueling tour schedule, which at one point called for as many as 35 shows in 31 days, the country-wide exposure has been a “dream” for Gregory.
He’s not doing it all alone; three consecutive months of the last year were spent touring with his two brothers, Evan and Michael, in a band appropriately titled The Gregory Brothers. Ultimately, the trio crossed 24 states and played over 80 shows, but initially it looked like the tour might not happen. At the offset, Michael still had a semester of college to complete before graduation, but after a series of what Andrew calls “professional but stunningly-worded emails” written by himself and Evan, the Dean agreed to let the three-month tour count as an internship.
One of his most notable collaborations, however, came this past year when he recorded background vocals for Sufjan Stevens at The Buddy Project, the same studio where Stevens recorded that sonic boom of an album, Illinoise. Gregory’s review of the experience is glowing: “I love his music. I think he has a brilliant way of underwriting details. In addition to that, I think he’s a musical genius, really. If anything was emphasized to me when I was in the studio, it’s what an incredible musical mind he has.”
This most recent solo tour for Love happily includes William and Mary (which Gregory almost attended), among other colleges and venues around the country. Some of Gregory’s favorite shows have taken place at colleges and universities. He praised the collective dedication and attention that college students pay to music. “People at college really know how to listen to music,” he said. “They’re always looking for new music. You get rushed off the stage in [places like] New York.” Students, he said, can expect to hear old, current and unreleased material this Friday.
Despite all his success, Gregory still gets his ass kicked on a regular basis by a group of old men back in New York City, an informal workshop group loosely referred to as the Jack Hardy Group (named for the founder). “Most of the guys there are seriously salty dogs,” he says excitedly, “[they] have never liked any of my songs.”
After playing “Please Stay” for the group, he expected more of the same.
“I felt like I’d written that song for one person in the whole world,” he said. “After I played, there was a long silence. Bruce, the saltiest dog, leaned in really close and his eyes turned from harsh to soft. He said, ‘Is it worked?’ It was so touching to me.”
If you miss Andrew on the Terrace, you can find his songs and biography online at http://www.myspace.com/andrewgregory and also at his official website, http://www.andrewgregory.com.