We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Andrea & Mud a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Andrea & Mud, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s jump right into the heart of things. Outsiders often think businesses or industries have much larger profit margins than they actually do – the reason is that outsiders are often unaware of the biggest challenges to profitability in various industries – what’s the biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?

Streaming is definitely the biggest challenge for indie bands right now. Artists have to make their music streamable because it’s how the majority of people listen but it’s proven to be [almost] impossible to make a profit. We all know about how Spotify treats artists and how they only let us have a fraction of a cent for streams. It’s arguably the biggest topic in the music industry currently. The only thing that would help is boycotting those services but most bands aren’t in a position to do that. It’s really a catch 22. We need bigger artists to stand up and make a difference for the whole industry.

Andrea & Mud, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Andrea & Mud is an indie band based in Atlanta, GA. We were formed in 2017 by Andrea Colburn and Kyle “Mud” Moseley and have been touring and releasing music ever since. We have two full length LPs out, a handful of singles and a new album coming out next Spring. Our live shows are high energy. Since we call our type of music Surf Western, a rhythm section is always necessary, and for us, a rotating cast of characters. People think we’re a duo a lot because we’re the main members, and if you’re watching online, sometimes the only members you see but we always remind folks that Surf music without drums and bass is S-A-D.

Things that set us apart are our sound and image. Andrea is one of the only people in the world who still plays a musical saw and we use the sound to enhance our Surf music typically. Mud is the lead guitarist of the band and has a delicious, vintage tone on his B-Bender telecaster that he’s worked years to achieve and leaves all the guitar players drooling at our shows. Usually during a set, he’ll whip out his double neck baritone guitar and that’s when you know things are about to get weird. That’s the sound you hear on our very dark, hip take on a classic Judd’s song. The comparison we get most, is not of another band, but of the greatest movie director of all time: Tarantino. So if you imagine what all of the songs that you hear in all of his movies sound like combined, you’ll understand where Andrea & Mud are coming from.

No one else sounds like Andrea & Mud. We feel very confident in that. We’ve been influenced by so many different genres in our lives and we could never pick the right box to fit into. So we made our own box. We think that’s why everyone that sees us live, loves us. There’s something in there for everyone and you don’t have to pick one style of music to enjoy. Most people that see us at first glance, see some cowboy hats and cowboy boots and think we’re a Country band and that could not be further from the truth. We will always play Classic Country music but we’re also going to throw in Surf, Blues, Bluegrass and Soul music even. Our records are slathered with horn sections turning up the drama on our Otis Redding inspired songs even more so.

We also have our hands in other arts as well. The nickname Mud comes from when Kyle went to college for pottery and use to show up to open mics covered in clay, or as some call it, mud. When we started playing together, it was his instagram handle, and we thought that worked perfectly for our band name. Kyle taught me how to “throw” in 2020 when we had some downtime and now we both make pottery. Most of it is functional pottery and we’ve been known to bring some giant, handmade mugs and sell them at our live shows. Our fans love them. What better kind of merch to buy from a band than art that was made, by the band themselves, that will last longer than all of us are here. As long as you don’t drop it.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

We have always stayed true to what we think makes us Andrea & Mud and that’s what people like about us. Besides Mud’s heavy tremolo on his B-Bender guitar and Andrea pulling out a 36” hand saw that she makes sing like a siren, people come see us because they like the stories that we sing about and they know that they’ll have the most fun they’ve had in a long time at our show. We always say that no one ever liked a band simply because they were reliable but that is also a part of it. We can count on one hand how many shows we’ve had to cancel in the last 7 years so people know that when we say we’re gonna be there and melt their faces, that’s what we’re gonna do.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Although we started out as a band, we are so much more than that now. We’re a whole team and there’s not much that we don’t do for ourselves to be honest. We handle all of our own booking, marketing, graphic design, promo, contracts, we make most of our own videos, take most of our own pictures, pretty much everything that you could think of that a band has to do. Unfortunately it’s taken a lot of the music out of it for us and solidified that we are, in fact, small business owners doing what we can to make our dreams come true. But because of this, we save a lot of money which we can then put into our new projects. Some days it would be really nice to just focus on writing new songs and recording them but a tour is not gonna book itself and we do what we have to do. At some point we hope to build our team and get some financial backing so we can focus on just playing music. That is why we’re doing this after all. And we still have so much to make for you.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://andreaandmud.com/
• Instagram: @andreaandmud
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/andreaandmud/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@AndreaandMud?si=FuCEJY4QL-JHMWC1
• Other: Email andreaandmud@gmail.com

Image Credits
Adequate Chad Stephen Crocker Andrea Colburn