Andrew Jones of Berkley’s early interest in music led him to understand that songwriting was a viable way to express his feelings. He explains “When I was really young, I would hear music that made me feel things I didn’t understand, but I loved that experience. I didn’t comprehend at the time that I was learning about life through the radio.” Strengthening his sense that music was a more complete way to express himself was Andrew’s exposure to Punk during his adolescence. Andrew says, “that led me to learning how to play guitar and other instruments, bands, basically the rest of my life.”
Feeling obliged to the Punk ethos, Andrew cites Descendents as a huge influence on him and what he describes as the “DIY aspect of getting something off the ground.” Andrew discusses a formative time in every musician's life when what they are listening to just becomes embedded within their musical experience. He admits “I probably am unaware of where Weezer lands in my thinking, but I was obsessed with them when I was 15 and 16 so they’ve got to be in there somewhere.” Other musical influences for Andrew include a time he recalls as “this year when a bunch of singer-songwriters entered my world at the same time, and it was stuff like Pete Yorn, Rufus Wainwright, Aimee Mann, Elliott Smith, a lot of west coast singer-songwriters or people on Dreamworks. Pete Yorn and Aimee Mann were big ones because I had been listening to all this music with singing that I was just never going to be able to comfortably mimic or naturally sound like.” Andrewadmits that when he heard Pete Yorn and Aimee Mann, he heard people that had a vocal timbre like his own. He also says, “Rufus Wainwright was a similar experience, but his music opened me up to a new world of influence that still fascinates me.”
When explaining what drew him as a performer to his particular genre Andrew details that “Learning how to play guitar sort of drives you into this area of music that’s on a spectrum of attitude, and it’s all pretty masculine. Guitar music starts aggressive when you’re young and then gets mellower as you get older, indie, I guess is what it is, but it’s still typically a guy with a guitar. You can see this in all the alt country bands that have members of punk bands from the 90s, or how some punk guys have solo projects that are them and an acoustic guitar. I really resisted that for a long time, but I had to accept this was where my roots are. I feel that you have to make something to evolve and that’s what this album now feels like creatively, like a way forward toward new ways of making music.”
Having been in several bands and after performing a lot around Pueblo, Colorado, where Andrew grew up, he went on to touring throughout the state. Following the touring he co-founded a band in Los Angeles which would be the last band he would belong to. Taking a break after the band dissolved Andrew found “All that writing and performing developed these agile songwriting muscles that got soft during that time off, so I had to spend a lot of time rediscovering my passion and purpose for writing to get to a point where I was satisfied with what I was making. That was all on my own and developed naturally into a solo career. But there’s a lot of collaboration that goes into that as I make records.”
Andrew says although he is still trying to figure out a “sustainable approach” to songwriting, he likes to draw on nostalgia and memory. He explains in regard to his latest album “this album came from examining the feelings I had when I was younger with the perspective of someone older, so it all had this coming-of-age feel to it. I’ve said all I need to say in that respect with these songs, so I want to do something different for the next album, and my early writing for that still has some pangs of nostalgia or looking back and seeing things a little clearer. I think I’m finding out that I’m always going to be writing about the continuum of time and memory. We seem to try to segment time and mark its passing with rites of passage. But something this album taught me is that you can feel like something that happened 20 or 30 years ago happened yesterday. Where it gets interesting is when you try to recall the details. You might be able to embody a feeling exactly but what led to it gets cloudy as soon as it happens. All this stuff that’s just below the surface can be so old. There’s a lot to explore there for songwriters!”
When it comes to the aesthetic for Berkley, Andrew likes to collaborate with other creative people, giving them a seed or a full vision of what he would like. He does however explain that “there are other things that sometimes time necessitates I do myself, like a lot of the videos for the singles from Pueblo. I’m always involved to some degree, though, and establish the direction and know when we’ve reached the end.”
In order to stay creatively inspired and continue to grow musically Andrew says “Before Berkley I was engineering and producing in north Texas for a while, and that kept me inspired. Working with or for other musicians will really keep you sharp. In that time, I also fell in love with electronic music, especially the pioneers like Mort Garson, Suzanne Ciani, YMO, Tomita: the greats. That’s just an extension of what I love about recording music. All the dials and switches and stuff, harnessing voltage and translating that into something you can hear. That will never not be interesting to me. Moving to Portland, Oregon has been great for my songwriting. There are so many active, good songwriters who are really open to talking shop and playing together. Getting involved with some songwriters here instantly pushed me forward in my writing.”
Although he felt he had to train himself to get excited about performing live again Andrew admits he does enjoy it. He reiterates that “Sometimes it feels like work, like this is something I have to do if I want this other thing, like to make the money back on records I made or whatever, but once the set has started and you’re talking with the audience and they’re reacting and it’s all interactive — when you’re in the flow of it — it’s exciting. I know I’m still into it because when I get home from the gig I need to come down before I can even think of going to bed.”
Andrew believes that he could connect better with fans but it's not something that he enjoys, he explains “It’s not making music most of the time, all the posting and making little videos that take 10 times the amount of time to produce than it does to consume…I’d rather just play live more often. I could spend less time on my craft and fight with an algorithm that does not have my best interests in mind, or I could play live and get the same amount of followers at the same rate. When I’m there with people in the same room, I can be real with them, and we can have an exchange. You learn something about me, and I invite you to share what you want with me. Online, it’s so one way. I’m not really at a level where that’s appealing to a lot of people, and if I were at that point where people couldn’t wait for my next post, I would really have to consider what I was contributing: music or social media content?”
In terms of where Andrew sees Berkley heading in the future he says “We haven’t started the tour yet but I’m already in this mode of thinking that the album is very much done, I’m just reproducing that for people now, so what am I doing for me? I keep refining my songwriting, so that will always be in development, but how I deliver that on a record is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I want it to sound different than Pueblo, less obvious in where the music is coming from. This is a pretty traditional album: guitars, bass, drums, keyboards. I want to push myself to make different sounds in the context of some things that “feel Berkley” as my next frontier. I think everything you do is contributing to a larger goal, so I focus on the little things. There are a few venues in town I want to get into, I’d like to see another couple tour legs in the near future. Basically, I want to make the money back on this record! After that, I know I can make another one.”
For those new to the music of Berkley, Andrew thinks that “If you like to drive at night, this is music for you.”
Links:
Pre-order Link: https://bigsecretrecords.com/pre-order-pueblo-now
Bandcamp: https://alwaysberkley.bandcamp.com/album/pueblo
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