We recently connected with Andrew Grossman and have shared our conversation below.

Andrew, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Curiosity has been, and continues to be, the driving force in my creative life. It has been the primary motor in the accumulation of skills and knowledge in my craft. “I wonder what this will sound like,” or “I wonder how the audience will react to this” has pushed me to try so many different things. Sometimes those things don’t work, and it pushes me in different directions. Sometimes it works really well, though.

In hindsight I could have reached some conclusions sooner by asking for help. I was very stubborn in my twenties. The thought that I would ask for help for anything was anathema to my conception as an artist, which in hindsight is enormously stupid. I took myself way too seriously. I think this lack of humility was a big obstacle to me, one which I think I am much better off for having rid myself of.

Andrew, 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?

My name is Andrew Grossman and I am the singer, songwriter, and band leader for the experimental pop collective The North Country. I fell deeply in love with music ever since I got a guitar for my 13th birthday and have dedicated my life to songwriting and musical performance ever since then.

We make conscious indie rock and indie pop, blending the sounds of Talking Heads, LCD Soundsystem, and Arcade Fire into an original sound with an energetic live show and well produced records.

Our new album The Future’s All We Need is out now on House of Joy.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I’m enormously proud of our ability as a band to stick together and persevere during the pandemic. We had a tour scheduled for March 2020 to South by Southwest in Austin, TX, and then you know what happened.

Despite not being able to function as a normal band we stayed creative and wrote and recorded a brand new record completely remotely from our respective homes, sending files back and forth to each other.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

That bubble appears to have burst. Do people still buy those?

Those sorts of things feel to like a glitch in human psychology. They’re celebrated for their immense monetary value for a period of time, but their monetary value is something that happens in spite of having any real value.

For something to be really good it requires some one, or a group of people, to just work really really hard on it. There’s no way around it. Fads that celebrate something that appear to fast-track their way to greatness through some kind of get rich quick scheme are almost always doomed to fail.

Tale as old as time. I generally avoid those types of fads.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thenorthcountrymusic.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thenorthcountry/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thenorthcountrymusic
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/THENORTHCOUNTRY
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@thenorthcountrymusic?si=zMha8OMZgz6J0PD0
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/thenorthcountry

Image Credits

Photos 1, 2 Mike Kimchi
Photos 3, 4 Mauricio Castro