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Listen to Andrew Osenga’s song “After The Garden.”
On With The Interview
Andrew Osenga is a husband, father and singer songwriter from Nashville,TN. He is a founding member of the band The Normals and is a current member of Caedmon’s Call.
He has also released three independent albums, the most recent of which, was named by ChristianityToday.com as one of the Top Albums of 2006.
How did you get involved in Caedmon’s Call and what is your role?
I met Derek Webb years ago, when I was still in my old band The Normals. We became friends and he invited us to open a leg of Caedmon’s “Long Line of Leavers” tour. That’s where I met the rest of the band. A few years later, Derek was leaving Caedmon’s and The Normals had just ended. They wanted to have somebody to fill in who wasn’t a hired gun, to keep it in the family, so to speak, and they asked me. Derek actually told them to call me when he left, knowing that I was needing a job. I filled in for a year or so and we had a good time. They asked me to join officially somewhere in that first year, and it’s been just over four years now.
What challenges have you faced balancing your solo career with your position in Caedmon’s? How have you handled those challenges?
It hasn’t been too bad balancing between the two. They actually help prop each other up quite a bit. I don’t make a ton of money off of my solo stuff, definitely not enough to support a family, but it opens doors with producing and session work. Caedmon’s helps with the bill-paying and the song-writing publishing and stuff like that. I couldn’t afford to do either one by themselves.
Also, having my feet pretty squarely in both worlds allows for some unique opportunities. If the band has a show in California I can then afford to do a really low-paying solo show while I’m there, since travel costs are already covered. And the band obviously helps to raise my profile and people’s awareness of what I have going on. Very helpful. On the other hand, me having the “artsy” solo stuff helps give Caedmon’s a bit of “street cred”.
Tell me about the Square Peg Alliance.
The Square Peg Alliance is just an official name for something that’s been happening unofficially for years. It’s a gathering of like-minded artists who care about each other, and are fans of one another, and lets us attempt to share our fan bases. If making a website and playing a couple really fun shows gets a fan of mine and Andrew Peterson’s to fall in love with Eric Peters then we’ve succeeded. It’s pretty much what it’s all about.
When and why did you start blogging? Do you think blogging has impacted your solo success? How?
I started my blog over on caedmonscall.net in May of 2005. I had an accident and was laid up for a couple weeks and I thought I’d give it a shot. It quickly became an active place and I realized that people really enjoyed hearing from me regularly and that I really liked writing. After a couple months I rebuilt my website, which had fallen into decrepit disrepair, around the blog, letting it be the hub for the rest of the site. It’s been a good move, which I’ve now seen other artists doing. I like to think I started something.
Anyway, it’s been great for the contact with the people that like my music and keep me supported. I’ve really, really enjoyed watching the community form around the site. It’s been awesome to meet people at shows who read regularly. I don’t feel that my life is very extraordinary, but I recognize that I’m a part of a community and an occupation that a lot of people both admire and aspire to, and it’s really fun to get to share those aspects of my life with those who are curious. As well, getting to talk about my family and my theology and the things that crack me up allows people to better understand the music that I make. Hopefully, through getting to know me a little, people become more involved in helping me keep doing what I do. In the aftermath of the major label, these folks are what allow me to keep making music, and for that I’m incredibly grateful.
What are some challenges you face as an indie artist?
Money is always the biggest challenge to an indie artist, I imagine, especially one with two kids and a mortgage. Every month is an exercise in trusting that God wants me to do this and that He’ll provide for us.
What are some advantages of being indie?
I don’t have to worry about what radio will or won’t play, or what some store will or won’t carry. I can play a long guitar solo on my records if I want to and I can write songs about whatever I want. My experience with labels has been very stifling in those regards, to the point where I felt like being a “christian artist” meant I no longer had room to talk about being a christian, cause they tried to censor so many of the things I wrote about. Also, I can be a lot more free with trying crazy ideas for marketing. Or with scrapping my website and building it around a blog. Or with giving some music away in hopes of getting people to pay for more of it.
What are your 3 top marketing vehicles/tools for your solo career (i.e. Myspace, Purevolume, your blog etc.)? What has given you the best response?
My main site has been huge. I enjoy having full control over it, and being able to change it as new things pop up. I have a MySpace page, but I really don’t like it. It’s pretty much just a jr. version of my regular site. It’s such an awkward process to doing anything with it. The system is always maxed out and pages don’t load and I feel like the only people left on it are three friends from high school and bands who leave HTML everyplace they can on everybody else’s page. ANYWAY...my main site is a major part, as well as playing shows with Caedmon’s and getting my music in front of their much larger crowd. Those are the main things, really. I just depend on word-of-mouth for getting more people to my site or my shows. Also, I play guitar on a lot of other artist’s projects, and a lot of times those folks appreciate my work and send their fans my way. I know I’ve gotten a lot of traffic that way, which I appreciate.
Where do you get inspiration for the songs you write and what is your songwriting process?
I get a lot of inspiration from my own life, whether it be my marriage, my baby girls, my friends or my wrestling with my faith. I also get a lot of ideas from novels. I love Hemingway and Steinbeck and I have written more songs than I can imagine based on their books, though you’d probably never recognize them by the time the song is finished. I’m a storyteller, so anything that sparks my imagination and puts a story in my head can find its way into a tune.
I write mainly on guitar, but I’m dabbling more and more on the piano and with drum loops. I’m not very good at those things so my options are a lot more limited, which helps. The better guitar player I become the harder it is for me to just work on the song and not end up jamming on some riff for an hour. And I don’t really like riff-y songs, so I quite often need to add the guitar stuff later.
What is inspiring you right now?
Randall Goodgame and I are hard at work writing for the next Caedmon’s project, and it’s been one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had as a writer. We’ve been working on songs about who we are as members of families and communities and as believers who wrestle with doubt and who have run to God almost as much as we’ve run away from Him. Songwriting is such an intimate process and to be in the trenches with a good friend has been a wonderful thing.
Are there any music business resources you’d recommend to other indies?
Hmm...I don’t know of many, other than some friends I’d recommend them talking to. Pretty much everything I’ve learned that has worked has been an idea I’ve been given or I stumbled upon by accident. I feel confident as a writer, player and performer, but I feel I’m a pretty lousy businessman. Without being surrounded by friends with good ideas and fans who have been unbelievably willing to help (with databases or web design or artwork or video feeds, etc.) I’d be going door-to-door with a resume and a high school diploma looking for a job.
Name one artist the folks reading this really need to know about.
Oh man, there are so many. I became a musician because I’m a music fan. Every month I have a new infatuation. Right now it’s Michael Penn and (I know, I’m the last on Earth to find out) John Mayer. As far as artists who most people don’t know about, I have a few friends who need to be heard: Jason Feller, Emily Deloach, Ben Shive, Kevin Lawson, Nick Flora, the list could go on for a while…
What’s the deal with Clay Aiken?
Ok, so here’s the deal. A couple weeks ago I made a little joke about how I hope my daughter doesn’t become a Clay Aiken fan someday. Why him? No clue. Just popped in my head and I thought it was funny. WELL, apparently Clay’s fans surf the internet like nuns smelling for liquor, just waiting to pounce on any troublemakers. I got a number of very long, passionate comments from people who were pointing out every decent thing Clay had ever done and how I was a terrible person for despising him and calling him gay and wanting kids to join gangs and kill people. At least that’s what they read into my little joke. So I decided I needed to keep it going for a while, just to get a rise out of those people, and hopefully get a few chuckles from my regular readers. I’m not very funny in person, but I think I can be a pretty witty writer sometimes, and I had a good time with this one.
If you want to hear more from Andrew, check out his blog and be sure to download his FREE single ”After The Garden”.
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02/05/07 | Artist Interviews | Permalink | Comments (8)
