We were lucky to catch up with Andrew Morris recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Andrew thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

Pretty quickly after I started playing guitar in middle school, I always wanted to be a musician. I played in a couple different bands through high school in Warsaw, Indiana and dreamed of moving to Chicago to play blues in nightclubs. But as I was graduating high school, I felt that maybe music wouldn’t be the most secure path. I felt if I got a college degree I could always fall back on it if music didn’t work out. So I worked pretty hard at school and really wanted to be an academic. I tried to put the guitar away for a couple years, but I always wound up playing it. After a few twists and turns when I turned 23 was really when I decided to try giving music a go full time. It was a long hard climb up to what little bit of good repute I have now. I often wondered, if I had gone with my gut at 16 and ditched everything for music, would I have made it further in my music career. Maybe it would have been better. But I do still cherish the years I spent at the university and living in Germany even though they didn’t per se help my music career. I don’t think I’d be the artist I am now. And I’m proud of the work we do. It’s hard to say when is the best time to start your career. It’s one of those things that you are fully in control of, but at the same time it’s out of your hands.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I write and perform music mostly in an acoustic stringband setting. I got into the music seriously when I was living in Germany. I met a mandolin player who introduced me to Bill Monroe and it was a long, slippery downhill slope from there. Over the last decade, my partner Julie Bates and I have created a style that takes influences from a wide variety of American folk traditions. We also fuse music with some performance art elements. For example we did a space opera entitled “Bluegrastronauts”, I wrote a sci-fi dystopian podcast as a companion piece to my solo album “One Fine, Sweet & Sunny Day”. Our latest album “The Wishful Thinkers’ Hall of Fame” is coupled with a booklet featuring characters, stories, drawings and strange corners of the internet. While we do try to push the conceptual envelope when it comes to how bluegrass music can be presented, I hope that folks do know that I am first and foremost a musician. I love traditional american music and I feel that this is my way of contributing to and participating in music that I care so deeply about.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

It is seeing people smile, laugh or cry. I had to stop playing live music during the pandemic. I got a regular full time job to pay the bills. I’d come home from work exhausted and tired. Eventually, when things started opening back up Julie and I would go out to the Kansas City symphony or to some live theater. It was then, when I was tired from work and life and existing, that I would experience this great art and cry or laugh or smile. Very intensely. Unlike I had in a long, long time…. You know, when I was a full time musician, at times I felt like my art was a vanity project. Like I was just trying to get my message out into the world. Like I was trying to get people to care about me. But when I got a real job I realized great art isn’t about the artist. It’s about the audience. When the world or work or life has you beat down, that’s when you need art. That’s the most rewarding thing about making music now. It isn’t that people like me or my music. The most rewarding thing is making people feel.

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

When the pandemic hit I had to pivot fast. I wound up working on instruments full time out of our tiny apartment kitchen. I eventually got hired on at Krutz Strings working on violin family instruments. Now that music is coming back, I’m trying to juggle both, which is very challenging. But it has been very rewarding to learn new skills, keep my brain active, and have another revenue stream. The arts are financially finicky and having some other way of making some scratch is always good. It helps in many ways. You get introduced to different people, different experiences, different ways of life. Don’t ever feel like a failure for having to pivot and doing what you have to do to put food on the table.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://thematchsellers.com
• Instagram: @thematchsellers
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thematchsellers
• Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/thematchsellers
• Other: http://thematchsellers.bandcamp.com

Image Credits
Natalie Prauser