All White Now

It was Ian Brown, onstage at Spike Island, who famously and brilliantly claimed, “It’s not where you’re from; it’s where you’re at.” And while Andy White may agree with the sentiment – the refusal of hand-me-down kinship; the aspiration towards a more expansive sense of community – you get the feeling he’d also want to know why you can’t have fun looking at both.

The much-travelled songwriter has spent most of the last 20 years laying his hat (and drawing inspiration from) locales as disparate as London, Dublin, Cullybackey, Switzerland and Australia. But, despite the many stamps on his passport, like a Hitchcock cameo, Belfast makes its presence felt on each of his albums. Andy may have a well-qualified claim to global citizenship, but he’ll always carry with him the whiff of Lavery’s back bar.
On May 9, as part of this year’s Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, and inspired by a line from one of his best and most cherished songs (‘Get Back Home’), he has put together a show which will see him perform his first album, Rave On, and then follow it with tracks from his most recent, Garageband.
It’s an interesting idea: and one that, according to Andy, was inspired by the surprising symmetry that he sees existing between the two records.
“I finished recording Rave On with no thought of ever writing another album,” he says, from his current home in Sydney. “I put everything that I knew in there. All the books and poems and films and songs I loved are there in one way or another. The Troubles and girlfriends and not-girlfriends and the sash my Daddy never wore. I had no career plan – just a guitar and an attitude. How do you get that feeling back, that attitude? One way is to observe, twenty years and eight albums later, that you can never affect what other people think of what you do, by trying to do so. Be yourself, trust in whatever talent you may have been born with, and write it the way you feel.”
Which is the ethos that informed Garageband?
“Well, by 2005, I had co-written with people for ten years, and had had enough of that for a while. Spare me arguments over prepositions, whether there should or shouldn’t be reverb on the voice, or whether you should do this interview or that one. I discovered the ‘Garageband’ programme on my laptop and started to use it like I used the portastudio. Re-read Kerouac – believe me, it’s even better when you’re older – and wrote 14 songs in the same number of days. Not a preposition argument was heard (as a result, one title is grammatically incorrect) with lots of delay on the voice and, sure, I am up for whatever interview I am offered.”
Of course, such a blatant juxtaposition forces tough comparisons. White has, subsequently, looked on with interest (and, no doubt, some trepidation) at how the young Andy has measured up against his older self.
“I think the mixture of arrogance, ego and lack of self-confidence necessary for solitary writing coming up against the communal experience of playing and recording music is continually fascinating.
"The younger Andy knew a lot about the former and had to learn about the latter. The older Andy has found so much joy in his life from playing and recording music communally that he could tell the younger one a thing or two. The younger Andy was a lot more literate. Sometimes I wish I had it at my fingertips or neuron-ends like I did back then. Young Andy also had a better haircut and could wear any size of black trousers he wanted to.”
It’s somehow fitting that the gig will take place at the Oh Yeah Centre – and therefore under framed photos of everyone from Van to Rudi; Ash to Therapy?; David Holmes to Oppenheimer. White’s contribution to the story of Northern music is an important and sometimes undervalued one. And he’s happy to be written into the developing narrative.
“It feels good. I love those artists’ work and I’m proud that they’re from Belfast and that I may be found somewhere in a line with them - even if I am standing at the back trying to read the paper in the half-light. And pleased that at last we have a centre like the Oh Yeah building. It reminds me of the Factory in Dublin when it started, before it became such a regular capitalist money-making business. With Stuart Baillie in charge of Oh Yeah, and because he acknowledges its community function, I think it’ll be a huge success and remain aware of its roots. I remember when I was a teenager that the Crescent Arts Centre in Lower Crescent was important for me rehearsing with bands, going to indie shows... hippies and punks mixing... Looking back, this was a big deal. I think Oh Yeah will be like that writ large.”
White moved to Dublin in the early ’90s, feeling that in Belfast, “It was too solo and I wasn’t tough enough”. But he’s noticed a distinct change in the atmosphere of his recent hometown gigs (“I’ve started to return to play every year and feel closer and closer to the scene there. The shows have got better every time.”), and you can’t help but speculate if a man whose back-catalogue is studded by love letters to the city, will one day find himself following the advice of his own song.
“Yes, I do think of moving back,” he proffers. “Every so often, when I walk the streets of my town. And Belfast will always be my town, there’s never really been another.”

Andy White plays the Oh Yeah Centre, Belfast on May 9