Jeff Andrew’s songs create a world parallel to our own, like a cracked-mirror reflection of the one we know. It’s a place where gritty, character-driven travelogues and twisted love stories live alongside weird visions of ghosts and monsters in a post-apocalyptic future. On his new album Blood Moon, he explores this dream-like landscape through an electrified patchwork of folk, rock and post-punk, with echoes of old-time Americana and 80s horror movie soundtracks.
Jeff learnt his craft over a period of years spent traveling around North America, where he supported himself by busking and tree planting. His music career began in 2007 with the release of Truck Stop Wall, a 7-song EP he recorded by himself in an attic in Victoria. In 2008 he hitchhiked across Canada with poet shayne avec i grec as the folk/spoken word duo Ghosts Of The Highway, playing over 50 shows between Vancouver Island and Newfoundland. He also joined Vancouver’s country punk outfit the Joey Only Outlaw Band on fiddle.
Blood Moon mixes keyboard synths, orchestral instruments and tight vocal arrangements with a full-band rock sound, and features cameos from longtime friends and collaborators like Leo D.E. Johnson (Old Soul Rebel, High Society), Jack Garton and Martin Reisle (Maria In The Shower, The End Tree) and Ryan Boeur (Fish & Bird, Jenny Ritter). Jeff’s songs have always been rich in imagery and stories (drawn from his love of classic literature), and this album is their most fully realized rendering yet, inspired by the sonic landscapes of bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and genre-crossing artists like Neko Case, Tom Waits, Bjork and Nick Cave.
Between 2009 and 2013, Jeff released 3 self-produced, full-length albums of original songs to airplay and critical acclaim in North America and western Europe, and toured extensively. In 2014 he collaborated with Vancouver punk band The Rebel Spell on their album Last Run, and took a break from the road to study music full-time at Vancouver Community College. After graduating in 2017, he started work on the songs and arrangements for his 4th album Blood Moon.
Recording sessions began in March 2020, with engineer (and Coax Records recording artist) Corwin Fox and a band composed of drummer Denver Venoit (Party On High Street), keyboardist Adam Farnsworth and bassist/percussionist Kenan Zeigler-Sungur (both from High Society and Babyface Brass).
Work slowed to a crawl during the pandemic, but the album is now complete, and will be released digitally and on vinyl in spring 2023. The cover, a commissioned painting by visionary Mexican-Canadian artist Miccaotli, reflects the album’s themes of fantasy, survival, our connection to Earth, and mythological worlds overlapping with dreams of home.
Jeff has been a featured performer at over a dozen festivals (most recently at the inaugural Ignite The Arts festival in Penticton, BC) and has toured Canada multiple times, playing hundreds of shows between Vancouver Island, Newfoundland and the Yukon. His live shows range from solo acoustic performances to loud, effects-driven electric guitar and fiddle, all spun together with his folksinger’s baritone voice. He currently lives in Penticton with his partner, the multi-disciplinary composer Danielle Savage (Loon Town, Migration Parade) and teaches guitar and fiddle at the Penticton Academy Of Music.