In the early days of his career, Andersen gathered plenty of attention for performing covers, including a version of Bill Withers’ Ain’t No Sunshine that has more than a million views on YouTube. Despite the video’s lingering imprint, he’s been focused on original material for the last half a dozen years, gradually honing his creative identity. On Weightless, Andersen visits various stylistic ports: there’s the reggae-tinged opener I Lost My Way, anthemic gospel number My Last Day, country slow burner So Easy and upright soul ditty, Weightless.
“The more you write the better it gets,” he says. “Sometimes going with first instincts is a good way to go, but you should also be open to changing things. For me it works best, I learned, if I have an idea for a song but don’t limit myself to just that idea. If it happens to take a complete right turn half way through then I follow that.”
While Andersen commonly takes the stage alone, an extended cast of musicians helped assemble Weightless. Picking up where 2011’s Coal Mining Blues left off, the record features elaborate full band backing, including vocal choirs and additional guitar work from Neko Case’s sideman Paul Rigby. Andersen wasn’t the record’s lone creative force either. Rather, each track was co-written with one of several established Canadian songwriters, such as Joel Plaskett, David Myles and Tom Wilson.
“I don’t have a lot of time to write because I’m on the road so much,” Andersen says. “I’m writing three or four songs in a short period of time, but I find if I do that too much I kind of start to rip myself off a little bit. I start to sound too much like myself, so I wanted to avoid that.
“I definitely thought two heads are better than one when it comes to songwriting,” he adds. “So I picked some of my favourite writers and just hooked up with them. We didn’t try to focus on what the songs were going to sound like – just wrote the best songs we could.”
Andersen’s nothing if not a seasoned traveller. He customarily plays around 200 gigs a year and he’ll sneak in another Australian visit before the year is out. 2014 has been an especially busy year for the travelling crooner and the hard work’s starting to pay off.
“It was January 7thwhen we first started touring,” he says. “I’ve probably had about four or five weeks off in total. It’s been a lot of travelling, a lot of new places. The size of the crowds I’m playing to [has grown], especially in Canada. The last time I played Toronto it was probably about 900 people and the show we had this time was 2300. So I’ve seen a lot of growth and a lot more attention. It’s definitely been my biggest year to date.
“For the last ten years or so [I’ve been] playing as much as I can, travelling as much as I can and doing a lot of live shows. It’s a very grass roots way of doing it, but it’s definitely worked in my favour. I don’t have any overnight fans. All the people have been with me for years. It feels really good.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
