WHO IS ANDY FRIEDMAN AND WHAT DOES HE DO FOR A LIVING ?”
Andy Friedman is a painter, poet, songwriter and performer touring the nation with what he calls an “Art-Country˜ performance. Since 2002, Andy Friedman, 30, has been widely credited for inspiring a new role for the visual artist. The self-proclaimed “painter with lyrics˜ has also been referred to as “The Johnny Cash of Painting˜ and a “Country-Singer-Conceptualist,˜ setting projections of his paintings, drawings and photographs to interact with music from his band, The Other Failures, and his original songs onstage. Andy was a staff member of the New Yorker magazine’s Editorial Department from 1998-2002, where he is a frequent art contributor. His two books of art and poetry, Drawings & Other Failures (2001) and Future Blues (2003), were published by City Salvage Records, a label and publishing house founded by the artist in 2001. Andy’s work has appeared in numerous other periodicals, newspapers and literary journals including The New York Times, New York, Esquire, Pindeldyboz, Bomba
The songs on Taken Man, the first studio album by Brooklyn-based country artist Andy Friedman, boast the kind of lyrics that you have to pay attention to. They don’t so much demand your ear as draw you in and make you eager for what he’s going to say next. Literate, world-weary, and a little sardonic, and set off by stark, simple arrangements, the songs on Taken Man have lead to Friedman being described as a “Hillbilly Leonard Cohen” and an “erudite redneck.” And Friedman is hardly complaining. “I think the association with The New Yorker and also someone playing country music, you put those two together and ‘erudite redneck’ or ‘hillbilly Leonard Cohen’ might be fitting,” he says. “The perceived high falutin’, highly academic with singing rowdy country music, but I’m not The New Yorker.” Association with The New Yorker? Yes. See, Friedman’s other gig is as an illustrator/cartoonist, where he’s placed work with some very high-profile publications — The Los Angeles Times, a few covers o
