Andrew Bird
Andrew Bird
Andrew Wegman Birdis an American musician, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. He was initially known through his work with the band Squirrel Nut Zippers before forming Bowl of Fire, and is now best known as a solo musician. Bird's primary instrument is the violin, but he is also proficient at other instruments including whistling, guitar, and the glockenspiel. He wrote "The Whistling Caruso" for The Muppets and performed the whistling heard in both the film and the soundtrack. Bird composed the score...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth11 July 1973
CityLake Forest, IL
CountryUnited States of America
The instrumental record is a bit subtler. It's the kind of stuff on sound check, when I first pick up my violin and start to play, the kind of melodies that just pour out of me. Some of them sound very classical. Some of them sound experimental, polyrhythmic loops that I make.
I really like the sound of analog things where clearly there's something being touched. You can sense that something is handmade. So much with digital, there's a disconnect.
Some of your best songs come from a desperate attempt to escape, so sitting in an airport for hours I can just start pulling out little fragments of songs from my head. A lot of times a melody will just occur to me and be my companion for a couple of months.
I've always found that whatever you say about indie rock, it is the most inclusive genre or title for anything. It doesn't pin you down too much, like other labels would. It's just newer, it has less baggage.
I don't like to disappear between records. I like to play shows while I'm making the record.
I put a lot into my records, and I won't release anything I'm not totally thrilled with.
I can't relate to the process of just disappearing and writing a record, all at the same time, followed by the sort of drudgery of going out on tour and trying to recreate the record, playing the same 12 songs every night.
The orchestra's an amazing instrument, but I don't want to just arrange my songs for it. I think that might be kind of boring and a little bit overdramatic, perhaps. I'm still just having too much fun doing it my way, for the time being.
What's cool about indie rock is that one band can do effectively the same thing as another band, and one band nails it, and the other one doesn't. I like that elusiveness.
I think any songwriter or record, no matter how good it is, can become tedious if it's the same person's point of view. After four tracks, you start to get worn down no matter how good it is. It can be relentlessly good, but it's still going to wear you out.
In school I was painfully shy. But as soon as I had to get up in front of the class and give a book report, it was alarming - I'd suddenly be very articulate.
Usually bands with violins - it's this little, poorly amplified looking kind of futile on stage, and that's not the way that my music is put together.
I mean, you still can't jump offstage and go read a book. But I'm getting better at it. It is something you can manage. You can still give everything you have to the audience onstage, and have something for yourself.
I spend a lot of time working by myself developing songs, but I really need some other counterpart to help me pull it all together, because you go nuts working if I had to finish an entire project all within my own head.