Jeff Andrew Interview: of Blood Moon, Todd Serious, and the Spell of the Numinous

Jeff Andrew by Mary Matheson

Vancouver songwriter Jeff Andrew has a new album, Blood Moon, with an album release coming up June 30th at the WISE Hall and tour dates around the province throughout July. Andrew is one of the most interesting songwriters in Vancouver, a natural storyteller, fine lyricist, and keen observer of human nature; while none of that has changed, the new record heralds a significant shift in direction. People who have seen Jeff live will be used to him performing solo, self-accompanying on either a fiddle or guitar, singing topical folk songs with a strong connection to history, place, and to themes of social (in)justice. Lately, he's taken to having a full rock band backing him, singing songs about monsters, murderers, and surviving the apocalypse (some of which we spoke about for the Georgia Straight back in pre-pandemic 2019, somewhat as a preview of this record; Andrew had started playing some of the songs discussed below before COVID hit, so there is a bit of overlap, here). The songwriting is no less serious and the songs no less moving for having slightly more fantastical themes, though it's a shame that (late Vancouver punk and frontman for the Rebel Spell) Todd Serious isn't around to offer his opinions about it, since the subject matter is a bit different from what Todd was used to...  

In fact, Jeff Andrew is one of a few musicians - along with Drum and Bell Tower and the punk band the Fight United - whose music I was introduced to by Todd (who died in a rock climbing accident back in 2015). He had recommended I check out the album Hobo Postcards, initially, long before the two had collaborated on a song, "The Tsilhqot'in War," about the hanging of the Tsilhqot'in Chiefs and the history of indigenous struggle in BC; I have an interview with Jeff Andrew about his work with the Rebel Spell here. I actually didn't get around to Andrew until his next album, Tunnels, Treehouses and Trainsmoke, but "Professional Asshole" on that would be pretty much the only song I'd want to play Phil Ochs if I could travel back in time, just because I think Phil would have dug it.  

Anyhow, it is fitting that Todd's all over the first few questions about Blood Moon, the bandcamp page to which includes the note that "this album is dedicated to Todd Serious Jenkins and The Rebel Spell family" (including the Rebel Spell's guitarist, Erin, now with Alien Boys; more on her below). I am in italics, Jeff is not.

Allan: Am I correct in thinking that "Sacrifice” is directly related to the Rebel Spell's "Last Run”? How did Todd’s lyrics for that song inform your own? I think we may have talked about this before, but I was troubled by Todd’s suggestions in "Last Run" that if you need a sacrifice, you could "take me," particularly since he was taken not too long after that song came out...

Jeff: That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought of it as directly related to “Last Run,” but there’s a lot of parallels. Many people’s lives are softer and cushier than they’ve ever been. Tremendous things are possible now that were beyond fantasy only a few generations ago. But the cost of living such easy lives is that we’re destroying vast swathes of land and ocean, sacrificing animals at a prodigious rate, and potentially making the planet un-livable. Something is wrong with the equation.

“Sacrifice” is about that. The cost that we’re all supposed to pretend isn’t there. We look down on ancient cultures that supposedly practiced human sacrifice as a way to appease the gods, and tell ourselves we've evolved from that - but we're still doing it, or at least letting it happen. Towns burning down in raging fires (when I wrote the song, it had already happened to several towns in California, and then in 2021 it happened to Lytton), people dying from toxic air and water, kids getting shot at school, disasters like the Brumadihno dam collapse in Brazil in 2019 - similar to what happened to the Mt Polley dam in BC in 2014, except the one in Brazil killed about 300 people.

These things are the inevitable by-products of our systems. They’re sacrifices to feed the machine. It’s nothing new. We don't make an event of it anymore like a priest sacrificing someone on an altar, but people seem to accept it as the cost of living the way we do. You just hope you’re not the one holding the shortest straw.

I can’t remember if I was thinking about that line in “Last Run” (“if you need a sacrifice to your God of greed, take me…”) when I wrote this song, but it seems like we’re talking about the same thing. “Last Run” has a line about “massive dams and their floods of death” (which he wrote before both of the dam collapses I mentioned - a lot of things he sang about are coming true now). There’s a lot of Todd on this album.

I notice that 1, 6 and 10 all have guest vocals from Erin, is that a clue that the Rebel Spell have more of an impact on those songs? Also curious about "Murderers," which is also the title of a song off It's a Beautiful Future, but it seems to be a different song…

Well, she demanded a cameo on the album, and she got it! I loved the way they did backup vocals, especially on “Beautiful Future” - the “whoa whoa” parts. I wanted some of that on these songs, and I was listening to Rebel Spell a lot when I was working out the arrangements, so it just got stuck in my head. I’d never really worked with backup vocals before, and it was a new thing to explore. Plus we’re good friends, and I wanted her to be in there.

That song “Murderers” on my album (which is different from their song - I tried a few different titles, but that one made the most sense), there’s an echoing vocal part in the pre-chorus where I was trying to do something like the Rebel Spell song “Dec 8, 1980.” The part “You use fear! You use hate! You use terror! You use pain!” where it sounds like an echo, with different words and more voices added each time - I love that kind of thing. There’s a song by Dr. John called “I Walk On Guilded Splinters” where they create an echo by having different singers sing the same line, each a little quieter and further away from the mic, so it sounds like one person in a big cavernous room. It’s spooky.

A lot of the backup vocals on “Blood Moon” are Adam Farnsworth harmonizing with himself. He’s really good at that. I think we did all his vocals in an afternoon, just working things out on the spot.

Courtesy Wretched Erin: "the crew from our last show, new years 2015. Travis, Elliot, Jeff, Todd, Stepha, Ronnie, Erin"

Of the things that really struck me when I talked to Todd about "I Heard You Singing" was that he had no interest in, no sense of, not even any real patience for a sense of the numinous, and had no interest in looking at that song as describing a mystical experience. But I would have, and often did use spiritual/ mystical, when it came to mysterious experiences in the forest - the feeling of connectedness to a numinous unknown, a beyond pulling at me (mushrooms aided there, as well). There seems to be a patience for or interest in the numinous on Blood Moon, more of a wiling to “believe.” So do I take it you're not a materialist in the way Todd was? That you DO have a patience for the supernatural or mystical or "religious experience?" Was this ever a topic between the two of you, an area of disagreement...?

Yeah, that would be something we disagreed about, though I don’t remember talking about it too much with him. I’ve always been interested in what’s on “the other side” - if there’s more to reality than we can see. There’s gotta be. I love folklore and mythology, ghost stories, faerie stories. The idea that there are parallel worlds alongside ours, overlapping with ours, is fascinating to me. Partly it’s wanting to escape this one, and partly it’s wanting to see meaning and magic in what we have here.

A lot of people who reject the idea of religion - of a hierarchical power structure which tries to force you into a certain belief system - seem to end up rejecting anything to do with the mystic along with it. Which is understandable, but I think it’s unfortunate too. A lot of the richness of existence is in the mystery, at least for me. Plus, a lot of the mystic strains within the major religions - like Gnosticism in Christianity - were sources of resistance to the church’s power, and were persecuted for it. Like the Cathars in southern France in the 13th century. They didn’t believe they needed to submit to a bunch of corrupt priests, because they had their own direct knowledge of God. The Catholic church launched a Crusade against them, and wiped them out.

So there’s a lot of interesting history there. It’s not unlike the Diggers movement, which The Rebel Spell sang about (their version of “The World Turned Upside Down” by Leon Rosselson). 

Jeff Andrew by Mary Matheson

How many shows did you do with the Rebel Spell (including the posthumous ones), doing “The Tsilhqot’in War?” Did playing with the Rebel Spell live have an impact on your decision to move into electric band mode? Were there other factors?

We did a couple shows together before writing that song, and then I think I sang it with them twice onstage (would have been at the album release at 333, which is also where I remember meeting you, and then the New Years show at the Wise Hall, which I think is the last show Todd did). Then the tribute shows. So about half a dozen?

Definitely playing with them had an influence on me wanting to do more electric songs, though I did some on my second album (Hobo Postcards) too. I learnt to play guitar from metal and classic rock, so it’s always been there.

Tell me about your collaborators? Any that you have particular history with? I have seen Kenan with a couple of different projects, particularly Red Herring; he seems affable and able but I don’t know everything he’s done... I also love Leo D.E. Johnson's vocal contributions, and wonder what your history with them is?

We’re all friends that have been playing music together for a long time, and it just feels right to have them on here. Kenan and I played in the Joey Only Outlaw Band (in fact we all lived together at the time), and Leo played with him in High Society. Kenan is one of the unsung heroes of Vancouver music. He's played with more bands than anyone can count, he's had a show on Co-op Radio for something like 18 years, he's always down to help with projects like this, he records, plays drums and bass really well, he's a tireless performer at the festivals...it just goes on. His main project right now is Babyface Brass.

Leo is another fantastic musician that I'm really glad to call a friend. We lived together at one point too, about ten years ago, when I wrote “The Lonesome Death of Jack the Ripper.” I was trying to get better at singing, and they’d given me a list of soul songs to work on. So it partly came out of that - using a bigger vocal range than I normally did, and really pushing the high notes.

They loved the song after I wrote it, and I think we’ve sang it onstage a few times. I always knew when I recorded it that I wanted to have them sing on it, and now it's one of my favourite parts of the album.

Tell me about "The Lonesome Death of Jack the Ripper," the song Leo is on? I thought it's interesting that you used a black, non-binary trans musician for a song about victims striking back. But as I remember, there was an early version of that I saw you do at the Heatley, that you said you might still tinker with. What happened there?

Oh yeah, I think I was trying to change the perspective. I like writing from a character’s point of view, 'cause it can really bring you into the world of the song. But it felt awkward singing “I” and “he killed five of my sisters,” when it’s such a heavy subject and it’s so far outside my own experience. I tried changing the whole song to 3rd-person, so I could be the storyteller instead of the woman in the song, but it just didn’t work for the verses. The chorus is in 3rd-person now, which I like - it gives me a bit of distance, and also the changing perspective makes it feel kinda cinematic.

Or maybe it’s just confusing now, I don't know. I hope people get it. Someone else could sing it differently if they want.

Is there a connection to the Pickton pig farm? I recall there being suggestions of official complicity in those crimes, as well.

There’s a double meaning to a lot of the lines in that song. I wrote it in 2012, when the Oppal report on Missing Women was coming out. It’s historical fiction about Jack the Ripper and the London slums, but it could also be about Robert Pickton and the DTES. Or any number of similar stories. It was a quick one, I wrote it in a couple days. The verses haven’t changed at all since then, but the chorus has the perspective change, and also the line "stolen from a hard life of dirty tricks” used to be ‘harmless little girls out turning tricks.’ But I thought that didn’t give these women enough dignity, which was kind of the point - everyone knows the name Jack the Ripper, but the victims are forgotten.

At least now their names are in a song.

I guess the song I have least understanding of here is "Deus Ex Machina." It seems inspired by stories or movies I mostly do not know (tho' I note the Morlock reference and the time-travel element, and I do know the literary term you're using, but not quite how to apply it - who is the God in your machine?).

Not just HG Wells, but also The Terminator! (“Come with me if you want to live”). It’s kind of an action movie love song. I’m not sure who the Deus is, but the plot device is the sudden, unexpected romance that comes out of nowhere and changes everything. Love becomes a wormhole through which you can escape the boring reality you’ve been trapped in. A person you’ve never met (unless it was in another world), but it seems like you’ve known forever, and a new adventure starts. Like breaking through the pages into a totally different story.

At the time I wrote it I was fascinated by tunnels and walkable storm drains in cities. ‘Morlock holes’ is about the underworld - it’s also a sly Stephen King reference. That’s what Ben Hanscom calls the sewer drains in It, which the kids go into to fight Pennywise.

 

Jeff Andrew by Mary Matheson

Aha! Okay. But speaking of HG Wells, after my tongue cancer surgeries and given the impact the have had on me, I took a much greater interest in Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau, watching four different film versions and reading the novel for the first time. Your aesthetic and some of your song topics - like Jack the Ripper – sometimes have a Victorian feel to them, or at least a sense of having a connection to past history; I'm wondering if there are works of horror or SF from the 19th century or early 20th century that had an impact?

HP Lovecraft and Weird Tales. Not much from earlier than that, it’s more mid-20th century and onward. Ray Bradbury (‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’). Stephen King, and then Neil Gaiman a bit later on. Clive Barker. There’s a great book by Susanna Clarke called Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, that turned up a fair bit in my earlier songs. Dune and the influence it had on sci-fi, and I think also the post-apocalyptic genre. Ursula K LeGuin (who I only recently started reading - The Left Hand Of Darkness - but I think her ideas had already gotten into my mind through osmosis).

In "The Last Wild Werewolf," there's a reference to St. Petersburg, which seems very specific; is there a relevant werewolf story (or wolf cull story?). There are also wolves in "Shadow Figures" and "Wounded Wolf" - is this a connected narrative? As someone who travels in BC, do you have any actual encounters with wolves to speak of? Any favourite werewolf movies or novels or so forth?

There’s just something about wolves. About werewolves. The transformation, the crossing over from human to animal and back again - are you escaping yourself or becoming yourself? What does it mean if the animals we hunt (or who hunt us) are also human?

The cover of the album seems to have a monstrous you who is in ambivalent relation to a monstrous female across a body of water. Then there's a little centaur family in the corner (?). I am not sure what to make of the centaurs but the main transaction reminded me of my time on Plenty of Fish, I must confess - "sure, I'm a craven misfit myself, but holy shit, get me outta here!" What's going on out there?

Nah, it’s not me on the cover. If I’m anywhere in that painting, it’s the little figure flying in the sky above the tree. The werewolf and the cyclops I saw as having more like a mother-son relationship. I like that it’s ambiguous. I gave a bunch of ideas to Oliver (aka Miccaotli - he did the covers of the last two Rebel Spell albums, and some of their t-shirts and other imagery), and that’s what he came up with.

I love the layering of worlds. There are these giants, and these massive trees erupting out of the ground, but there’s also people (centaurs in this case) going about their tasks in a normal-sized world, all in the same landscape.

What rock bands are revelant to the music on Blood Moon, besides the Rebel Spell? I find myself thinking of the Blue Oyster Cult's "Sole Survivor" and maybe "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" in the song "Survivor." Are they a band that mean anything to you? If not... who?

I dug into my teenage guitar nerd skills (which have mostly lain dormant since then) for this album. The harmonized lead guitars on “Murderers” - definitely having an Iron Maiden moment there. The beginning of “Deus Ex Machina” is an attempt to combine the drone sound from Metallica’s “Orion” with the arpeggio lick from Pink Floyd's “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.”

Blue Oyster Cult could be in there. The Cure definitely are. The first riff in "Survivor" makes me think of “A Forest.” My guitar solo on “Wounded Wolf,” I was thinking of Robert Smith for that. 70s and 80s sci-fi movies, all the synth sounds - Vangelis’ soundtrack for Blade Runner. Stadium rock from that era, and then all the early 80s post-punk and pop music. Movies like The Warriors.

There’s something spooky to me about the music from that time. The way cities looked in movies. It was right before I was born, and then it was my early childhood that I vaguely remember, so it all has this dream-like feel to it. People were so confident that they were living in the future, and now it all seems so dated. Like they were reaching for a world that never happened. Somehow nobody predicted touch screens.

Jeff Andrew's bandcamp is here, his Instagram here, his Spotify here, and the link to tickets for the June 30th record release is here!