Honest to Andy

Photo Credit Joe Damone

ROXBURY — Honest to Andy. In order to speak to the Catskills, and thrive, an artist needs to be honest and haven't a hint of pretentiousness. Moreover, you have to know what you claim to know. Andy Cahill is such a performer and radio host.

The Andy Cahill show is on Sunday, on WIOX Community Radio here in the Catskills. On her show she exhibits her extensive knowledge of the history behind the music, as well as a knack for stringing songs together as if they were elements of a bejeweled necklace of sound and story. Andy came to this expertise the old fashioned way, she worked and worked hard. 

She is proud to say that few people set out to be a singer in small venues, pubs and bars. She studied theater in college. Life intervened. She went from being a married actor with a child, to a single mother with a child, and being remarkably sensible realized that acting was not going to provide the dependable income needed to raise her child. On the other hand, singing in clubs in Chicago meant immediate pay for work done, and she loved performing the songs she loved. Life does tend to be harder than the film version, so she waited tables as well. Then again, so did Frank Sinatra in his first years performing. 

She also loved the people she worked with.and the places she worked. As Bette Middler did in New York City’s West Village, Andy sang in a gay bar in Chicago, "The Trip." It was her first time associating with a crowd of gay people, and she says of the audiences "They got my sense of humor, and were so giving." Being in a supporting environment, Andy "learned to take chances."

I would say that her openness to take chances makes her shows live the way they do. It is not an "American Songbook" show, or Rock and Roll, or folk. It is a show which presents songs that Andy finds are good music. When asked what makes a song good, Andy explains that it must be performed in such a way that it honestly tells its story to the listener. The range of her presentation of good music brings together Leon Russell, Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald and Irving Berlin, to hardly scratch the surface of the mix. Where else could you find a radio show that runs the gamut from Alexander's RagTime Band to I Should Have Sent Roses, by Leon Russell and Bernie Taupin. But it isn't a grab bag or a jumble. There is a medium which binds it all together, and that is Andy's life in music and understanding of musical worth. 

Her first job as a singer in small venues brought her to an understanding of what she was looking for in music to present to her audience as honest, good songs. Andy became a talent coordinator. That job helped to populate her inventory of performers to send out over the airways or back her singing in venues, her live performances in the Catskills.

A talent coordinator puts together the artists for performances at corporate shows, parties and events. Putting together the talent for the shows and having performed a variety of musical genres, Andy unconsciously gathered in the unique background to do this radio show that touches almost everyone who tunes in or stumbles upon it on the radio dial.  It is more than something for everyone, it is music of nearly universal quality. 

Andy discovered the Catskills many years ago. She and her husband, Ron, were in high pressure jobs. They were lucky enough to find themselves in a canoe race from Oneonta to Delhi. As they drove home to the city, down Highway 28, Andy realized she had found the place she had been born to live. When she returned home, she took out a map and decided she wanted to live between Binghamton and Kingston. She stuck her finger in the map and found there was nothing. And that settled it. She knew she had found a home.   

"The Catskills is one of those places either you belong here or you don't, and the people who don't, get out." Andy speaks about how she came to know this was the right place for her. "I was up in New York last year, on the Upper West Side, and I noticed two things, the stress on people's faces, I didn't notice it when I lived there, a fish never notices that his fish bowl needs cleaning... and the lack of sun." She notices that we see the sun more than in New York, where buildings obscure the view, and people let the other person get ahead of them when they are in an obvious hurry. "You learn that being kind is more important than being first." 

 "I'm always interested in the back story," Andy admits, as she begins to talk about Irving Berlin. Andy states with authority that he, a German immigrant, is the founder of the Great American Songbook, with Alexander's RagTime Band, in 1912. "He loved America with every fiber of his being..." The conversation slips seamlessly from a German Jewish immigrant's belief in the beauty and potential of this country to Abel Meeropol collaborating with Billie Holiday to write  "Strange Fruit".   A White Northerner wrote a poem which speaks honestly to the condition of Black Americans in the Jim Crow days of the South. I believe there is an underlying hope in these songs that they express the love and honesty behind the film "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."   

Andy waxes poetic about Ann Hampton Calloway, as both a singer, writer and interpreter of the work of others. She speaks of the irony in her voice as she delivers the great line from the Joni Mitchell song, "A Case of You," "You said, 'I am as constant as the Northern Star,' Constantly in the darkness, where's that at, if you want me I'll be in the Bar." Hearing Andy describe Calloway's performance of this song, makes me want to go out and find the recording. I did. The recording with her sister Liz is magnificent, and exactly as Andy describes it. Andy would book her in corporate shows, where Calloway would take suggestions from the audience and write a song off the cuff, and it would be musically good. 

Andy has a unique expertise in the history and the reality of the music venues and musical culture of the Catskills from Jay and Molly Unger to Blossom Dearie. The venues and festivals are a hub for Upstate artists, such as Jamestown's great Natalie Merchant, who certainly has her roots in the music scene here. 

Nancy Lamont singing "Waters of March," a bossa nova to; Leon Russell and Elton John singing "I Should Have Sent Roses;" a rock song; followed by a selection of Glen Miller songs for his birthday; then Mel Torme. A typical lineup on Andy's show, carrying the listener along through ages of great songs. 

But if you love great songs and great singing, catch one of Andy's live performances. She often plays with Joe Damone and Loren Daniels. She can be heard at the Andes Hotel, the Union Grove Distillery in Arkville, and at the Print House in Fleishmanns.