With the approaching release of his sophomore EP Running Stumbling Bumbling Bursting, Brisbane singer/songwriter Andrew Kennedy is the talk of the town once again. The true test of a songwriter is the ability to capture the intangible and to romanticise the commonplace. It’s with this that Andrew Kennedy delivers.
Whilst the EP draws it's title from lyrics in the track ‘Coming Home’, describing the excited way in which he bursts through the door to his wife after late night gigs, at the root it touches at something deeper. Says Andrew:
“The title also reflects the way in which I make music and the way that this record was made. The stop-start flow of creativity, going down dead ends and wild goose chases, wrestling with writers block and finally crafting something that you are excited for the world to hear. There's a precarious nature to the process, like watching someone lose and regain their balance.”
Running Stumbling Bumbling Bursting was produced by the award-winning Brisbane producer Caleb James. After the startling success of Andrew’s debut, self-recorded solo album Shrugging It Off – on which he played almost every instrument – his new six-track EP is a kaleidoscope of emotions and colours led by first single and QSong Finalist Suicide Tuesday. A bubbly song, like Lior meets The Cure, that might very well become a therapeutic anthem for the working class.
“Suicide Tuesday is a ‘let your hair down’ kind of track for people who's week oscillates between Friday peaks and Tuesday lows,” he explains.
Elsewhere Andrew bares his soul, touching on love, hate, and the gamete of emotions in between.
“Each track is very personal to me and represents significant experiences, feelings or reflections. Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet is all about attitude – it was actually inspired by a conversation with someone who implied I should give up music and get a ‘real’ job. Coming Home is about the heartache I feel doing so many gigs that keep me away from my wife, and the joy I feel when I can hop in the car and head home. Final track Numbers is about realizing how fragile and tiny we are in the universe, inspired from many nights starting up at the stars. It’s a bit of an introspective record.”
Running Stumbling Bumbling Bursting is only a small piece of his musical journey to date. After being exposed to music at an early age, Andrew’s music has gone through numerous transformations. Although early music lessons seemed more of a chore than a passion, he eventually found a love for music in high school thanks to a left-of-centre piano teacher who encouraged Andrew to be creative.
“I had this piano teacher called Danny who forced me right out of my comfort zone, making me improvise for the first time and create my own arrangements of tunes. Before then, I never knew I was allowed to play my own way. I thought that I was supposed to read the notes on the page and that was it”
From then on Andrew has continued to craft his own musical journey, which has seen him drift in and out of genres and musical circles. In 1997 he commenced studies in Jazz at the Queensland Conservatorium Of Music, yet quickly moved onto other pursuits, and by the following year was playing with fellow musician Mardi Lumsden in Brisbane band Pseudo Llama. The band continued to grow in size and stature, and by the time they released their debut EP Softly Spoken Lies in 2003, they were a five-piece.
Since the disbanding of Pseudo Llama, the last few years has seen Andrew establish himself as one of Brisbane’s finest solo artists. Selected to showcase on ‘The Music Train' at Brisbane’s annual Big Sound music industry conference last year, and with the pending release of Running Stumbling Bumbling Bursting, it’s lift off.
"Unlike your Murrays and Butlers, [Andrew] can tell his elbow from his funny bone"
Jeff Apter, Sydney Morning Herald
