John Andrews & The Yawns: "There've Been Some Artistic Decisions That I've Made That I Wish I Had Another Person To Bounce Ideas off Of. But You Live and You Learn and You Grow as an Artist"

Draped with the unshakable pop purism of '60s troubadours — like Harry Nilsson, Emitt Rhodes, Colin Blunstone, and The Shangri-Las — John Andrews & The Yawns returned in the spring of 2023 with Love For The Underdog, the fourth catalog entry with the Woodsist tribe. The latest LP was tracked live to tape in various studios and apartments across the Empire State with help from his bandmates in Cut Worms' touring outfit — Max Clarke, Keven Lareau, and Noah Bond. Whereas Andrews' previous LP Cookbook was guided by his freewheeling piano playing, Love For The Underdog exhibits a certain sonic cleverness with its kaleidoscope of sunny swath melodies, angelic string arrangements, and songs tied to cynical heroes and troubled lovers.

Shortly after the album came out, I had the pleasure to chat with Andrews all about how it was made, his hand-painted animations, being an all-around journeyman for other musicians, and what it was like once recording for the late David Berman.

This interview occurred July 25, 2023. Here's an excerpt, but read the full interview in Golden Chode #5.

Paperface Zine: Aside from The Yawns, you keep yourself incredibly busy playing on other people's records and making animations. What can you tell readers about your work outside of The Yawns? 

John Andrews: Around the time I put out the first Yawns album, Bit By The Fang, in 2015, I was dedicating my time to playing in other bands like The Woods, who I still play with. I also play in Cut Worms and Widowspeak. You learn a lot from playing in other people's bands so I continue to do it. 

PZ: What do you recall playing organ on David Berman's final LP Purple Mountains? What was it like working with him? 

JA: I only met him once and it was the one day that I was in the studio late. They had already tracked most of my parts while in Chicago, but they called me in while doing overdubs in New York. It was really nice getting to meet him and he was super friendly, but he was really tired though when we were there. I remember when I was tracking my piano parts, he went down into the tracking room and took his backpack off to use as a pillow. He fell asleep right at my feet under the piano — it was just a really special thing. When I finished, he'd wake up slightly and say, "Oh that sounds beautiful" then fall back asleep. I recorded a lot on that record, but they only ended up using the parts I did for the song "Storyline Fever." It's a really great album and it was such a pleasure to be part of it. 

PZ: Let's dig into your new record, Love For The Underdog. What can you tell readers about its recording sessions and how the eight songs came together?

JA: I started working on that record pretty much immediately after Cookbook came out. I had a couple of songs that I felt pretty confident in and I booked some time at my friend's studio in Albany. It was real simple tracking — just drums, bass, and keyboard. After the first day of tracking and listening back to the rough mixes, I instantly knew that I wanted strings especially after listening to the rough mix of the song "Fourth Wall." With that, I knew that maybe this would be the record where I'll save up some money and work with a string quartet, something that was sorta on my bucket list. I wanted to focus more on lyrics on this record, as opposed to records in the past, where lyrics were kind of secondary. I also wanted to focus a little bit more on storytelling with songs.

PZ: How did your friend Simon Hanes help out with the strings and what exactly were you aiming for with those arrangements? 

JA: I've known him for a long time because I used to live in Boston and play in some bands. He lived up there at one point and he did string arrangements for one of my old bands around 2015, so I was always very impressed by his ability to write string arrangements. And he's kind of the only person that I know in my circle of friends that does that. I mean, he's a total madman and a complete eccentric. Sometimes he'll disappear for a couple days or weeks and I won't hear from him at all, but I very much enjoyed working with him and was really impressed with what he came up with. We would hang out in his apartment and I'd play him some recordings of Vince Guaraldi and Evie Sands and I would just try to explain what I was looking for. I would send him voice memos of me singing and playing parts on my Mellotron and he would transpose them. He's a type of musician that works late into the night, like really late. I once stayed up on the phone with him until 3:30 in the morning working on strings together. He's just one of those eccentric musicians that works until the wee hours of the night. 

PZ: What inspirations did you draw from when writing the album? 

JA: Lyrically, I was really inspired by Bob Dylan's Desire and Blood on the Tracks. I was also listening to Cut Worms a lot, specifically the song "Sold My Soul" and that song wasn't even out yet, I just had a demo of it. I was really impressed with Max's ability to tell a story within a song. It's a really hard thing to do and not make it cheesy or unrelatable. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Most of the time when it doesn't, no one will hear that song. But then once in a while, it doesn't really work, but you still end up putting it on a record by accident or something. I'm not proud of everything that I've made [laughs]. There've been some artistic decisions that I've made that I wish I had another person to bounce ideas off of. But you live and you learn and you grow as an artist. 

Love For The Underdog is out now on Woodsist.