Andy Shauf

CANADIAN MULTI-INSTRUMENTALIST ANDY SHAUF ON THE CRAFT OF SONGWRITING, VINTAGE GEAR, AND HIS NEW ALBUM, THE NEON SKYLINE

- Grant Moon

“I’m always looking for something different,” says singer, songwriter, guitarist, pianist, drummer, and clarinetist Andy Shauf. “My hands want to go C to G to A minor and F, but instead if you think about it melodically there are so many ways you can go. Follow the melody and look at the chords later.”

Over the past decade the Canadian artist has built up a reputation with award-nominated albums such as 2016’s eclectic The Party and, the year before, The Bearer Of Bad News. The latter features his signature tune, the dark, eight-minute murder ballad Wendell Walker, and demonstrates his skills as a storyteller and multi-instrumentalist. Shauf plays all the instruments on his superb new record The Neon Skyline, a warmly down-home concept album that channel The Beatles, Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell, with hip echoes of Beck and the late Elliott Smith.

A self-professed gearhead Shauf recorded straight to quarter-inch tape via a vintage Tascam 388 eight-track machine, in the “super-tiny garage studio” he rents in his hometown of Toronto. Celebrating the everyday,