Andrew Combs

Andrew Combs is a singer and songwriter whose work bridges the freedom and possibility of his visual art with the influence of classic writing and storytelling. On his new album, Ideal Man, Combs worked with producer/engineer Sam Cohen (Kevin Morby, Benjamin Booker)  to achieve a more raw, direct sound.  The collection was captured live in Cohen’s Brooklyn studio, with compact, muscular arrangements fueled by taut, elastic grooves, and also featuring Combs’ longtime collaborators, drummer Dom Billet and guitarist/keyboardist/bassist Jerry Bernhardt. While Combs may be best known as a singer/songwriter in the classic 1970s Laurel Canyon sense of the term, he proves the true versatility of his work here, often setting his acoustic aside in favor of atmospheric synthesizers and distorted electric guitars. The songwriting for Ideal Man was partly inspired by Combs’ recent fascination with painting. Combs started painting when his wife was pregnant. (They welcomed a daughter in 2017.) “It really changed the way that I write songs,” he reflects. “When I paint, I might start with a very abstract idea or maybe even just a feeling, but from there I’ll paint and scrape and paint and erase and keep on painting until something starts to take shape. I just let nature play out.” 

Support act: Biography - Olivia Degen
Olivia Degen is a duo that was formed in '23 when composer and guitarist Benjamin de Raad (1998) and songwriter / visual artist Olivia Degen (2002) met during their studies for music and fine arts. With their common interests in analogue recordings and the process of writing text and music, the duo will be recording their debut album this summer. For the duo, close mic recordings are a form of expression in which they capture its isolated sound of both instruments and voice. Here, a value can be found in its directness and proximity of this sound. When the duo performs, this approach of recording translates into a serene set in which the music becomes a part of the space and its audience. This opens up the opportunity for melody and harmony to meet, take over the lead and move the audience into a warm setting. Artists such as Jessica Pratt, Sibylle Baier and Aldous Harding are musical references for the duo.