a new album, Renee’s birthday, and 25 years of making music
One can say this about Andy Hill and Renee Safier, they haven’t slowed down. The South Bay folk-rock duo continues to perform regularly – each Friday night at Delzano’s by the Sea – and their annual Dylanfest, celebrating the music of Bob Dylan, draws musicians from across the country. They’ve also just released a new album, their eleventh, and they’ve got a CD release concert next week that’ll announce it in style.
“Many Miles to Go” contains ten originals and one cover, and the songwriting – Hill composed eight tunes – is fairly impressive. Each track also features the album’s producer, multi-instrumentalist Marty Rifkin, while guest performers include several drummers who have played with Andy and Renee over the years.
Some of the material is recent, some of it not. Apparently this way of doing things is nothing new.
“With the song selection,” Hill says, “that’s actually been kind of the way we’ve done things for many years, the way it jumps around chronologically.” In part, this is because he’s not prolific even though the backlog is extensive. “If Renee has written anything, which she did for this album (“Stay Another Day” and “Way Back Home”), these will pretty much automatically go on [the record], and then we go back into the catalogue and we’ll say, ‘What songs do we like?’ Luckily we still have a lot of songs in the catalogue, and one of them that we’ve continued to play since I wrote it is called ‘The Fallen Man,’ from 1981, when I was in college.”
It was written, as Hill explains in the liner notes, after his brother-in-law witnessed a suicide (“From a bridge so high/ In the time it took to fly/ I wonder if he ever changed his mind”). It’s also the one song on “Many Miles to Go” that was previously recorded.
“It was on a cassette tape that we released the day of the first Gulf War, which I think was January 15, 1991, which is a day that will live in infamy for us, ‘cause me and our writing partner at the time, Adam, drove back from a duplicating company out in the Valley, and we listened to the cassette. It took exactly the length of time to drive home, and we were very happy that the album was finished. We walked inside and his girlfriend was watching the television; she was just pouring with tears and the bombs had started to fall on Iraq.” He pauses.” But that cassette is out of print.”
“And no one has a cassette player anymore to play it,” Safier adds with a big grin.
The feel or theme of the record is kind of about soldiering on through the highs and lows of emotions and relationships. Things are often uncertain. So it seems very authentic and sincere in that way, and I think a lot of people can relate to that.
“Since we have a lot of music that hasn’t been recorded yet,” Safier says, “our records can go in any direction depending on which group of songs we choose. The songs that Andy was writing more recently were sort of in that relationship [mode]. So we decided to pick some songs that fit in with that. The songs that I wrote for the record were also kind of in that vein, from observations of people who I know in my life and the things they were going through.”
Safier then mentions her song “Way Back Home,” which she says was prompted by the suicide of Mike Neal, who used to play guitar in their band, The Management, which was active locally in the 1980s and 1990s. Neal had type 1 diabetes for a long time, and apparently it simply wore him down.
“That song actually sounds like a relationship song, but for me it’s kind of an exploration of what he might have been feeling about his relationship with his own life. But you never know what the subtext of songs are, so that’s why it can be taken as a relationship song. I think that relationships are like that, they’re a journey, there are ups and downs, they’re hopeful and they’re sad, and they’re really unhappy and they’re uncertain.
“It’s our job to navigate through them,” she continues, “and what I really find enriching about a lot of Andy’s songs is that he’s really good at both sides. There’re a couple of songs that are a little more in your face, but that’s how you feel sometimes. Some of them are more introspective, and a listener can relate to them as well.”
The most recent song on the album is called “Insignificant Other,” and it got in just under the wire.
“We had actually finished the record and were mixing it,” Hill says, “and my relationship fell apart. That [song] was probably the one Renee was referring to, the one that was ‘in your face.’ I was really grateful to Renee and to Marty at this eleventh hour when I came in with a song that I’d just barely finished. Like I said, I don’t write very quickly, but this time I just stayed up a few nights in a row and hammered it out – I didn’t know the arrangement or anything – and asked if we could put it on. They were real open to that, and so it got on the album. And I think it’s pretty self-explanatory.”
Sample lyrics: “The times I’ve been most lonely/ Weren’t when I was alone/ No, you were lyin’ right beside me/ Glancing at your phone.”
“I like what you said, Bondo, about soldiering on,” Safier tells me, “because one of the reasons why we chose the title track to be ‘Many Miles to Go’ was sort of about that. Andy and I have been playing together for 25 years, which is kind of hard to believe but we have, and we’ve had a really great time with it, and it’s difficult, both. It was sort of a statement of ours that we’ve got a lot of miles behind us but we’ve got a lot in front of us as well.”
In the liner notes, Safier says: “I can’t wait to see what the next 25 bring.”
“25 years,” Hill says. “I think that’s possible; with technology you can play music with less effort, and I think it’s something we can do into our twilight years.”
The way he says this, we all laugh, but then Safier points out that last summer Hill played keyboards with one of the enduring legends of rock ‘n’ roll, Chuck Berry, who’s now 84.
It’s a sound comment about anyone who’s passionate about their creative endeavors. An artist isn’t necessarily going to be looking forward to when he or she can retire. That’s not something one focuses on. Instead, the artist just keeps on going as long as they have something on their mind that wants out.
“If you don’t have a gig it might make your bank account smaller,” Safier says, “but it also makes your opportunity for expression smaller. And to go and play a gig, whether in front of a small group of people or a large festival, it’s that desire to go play.
“We have an avenue we’re pursuing even more vigorously,” Safier continues. “We’re doing a lot of house concerts, locally and around the country, where people open up their homes. Andy and I come in with a small PA – but it sounds great – and people get to sit and listen to two sets of original music. We tell stories about the songs, and universally people really love it. And it solves that problem of not as many people going out to bars that are maybe in the demographic that we appeal to. Just because you’re older doesn’t mean you don’t want to hear music, but maybe you don’t want to go to a bar that’s full of much, much younger people who just have a different level of what they think is fun. So we bring the music to them, and it’s really rewarding for everyone.”
Another song of some interest on the new album is the very last one, “A Wish Into A Dream,” because it’s a bit unlike anything Hill and Safier have ever recorded. Two songs in one, sort of. But here, let’s let them talk about it.
“There are many songs in the canon of rock music that fall into the two-song format,” Hill says. “There’s ‘Stairway To Heaven’ and ‘Layla’ and ‘Hotel California,’ where they have a whole song, and then there’s this segment at the end. In ’96 we recorded a song called ‘The Night That I Left Town,’ where I got to do an extended guitar solo at the end, and it’s been one of our most popular live performance songs.”
Safier points out that it was written by the Tutor Brothers.
“I used to be in a band with them,” Hill continues, “and I took one of their songs. I picked one that had a recurring chord progression that I could build a nice long solo. I loved to do that, and audiences really like it.”
He not only wanted to add a song like that to his and Safier’s own catalogue, but he felt that every band ought to have one. “A Wish Into A Dream,” which eventually filled that need or desire, came about in a unique way, and over a period of several years.
“The first part of that song I began writing when we were on our way to Ireland in the late ‘90s, and I wrote the chord progression and one verse. And I never got any further. Then I got into a beautiful relationship and realized I had this piece of music with a nice melody, and it gave me a palette to finish it.” With the song written, Hill says, “I started to work on the outro, the second part. Initially it was going to be a long guitar solo, but Marty and I talked through it and it became an organ solo into a steel guitar solo into a guitar solo and became what it is. It’s the only song of its kind in our catalogue. We haven’t yet started to play it live, but we’re going to play it on the 12th.”
“We’re going to do the whole new album on the 12th, in its entirety, in order,” Safier says. “Then we’ll take a little break and do another set of some of our other songs.”
For both Andy Hill and Renee Safier, music is what they do fulltime. It’s not always just through performing or selling records, but sometimes supplemented by studio work or, in Hill’s case, by giving guitar lessons to a handful of people (the Andy and Renees of tomorrow).
As for side projects or concept albums, they point to “Blackbird Ballads,” the second of two collaborations – the first being “Midnight Tea” – that combined music with the spoken word poetry of Brian Michael Tracy.
But their main side project, “if you can call it a side project,” Safier says with a laugh, “is our annual Dylanfest. This will be the 21st year, May 14, from 12 to 8, and it’s going to be in the same place it was last year, at Saint Anthony’s school in El Segundo.”
Hill and Safier’s full-on band, Hard Rain, will perform, “augmented by a few other players,” Safier adds, “and then joined up throughout the day by about 60 different musicians.”
The Dylanfest is exactly what it sounds like, a multitude of musicians giving their interpretations of songs from Bob Dylan’s vast repertoire. And, these days at least, there’s never a lack of willing participants. With the Internet, word gets around.
“You know,” Hill says, addressing the topic, “we’re players and writers. We don’t really enjoy the idea of saying yes and no. Oh, we like to say yes to people, but we’ve started having to say no to so many people.” While it speaks favorably of the event itself, “it’s a weird position to be in. There’s only so many hours in the day and we have a lot of return acts that we’re loyal to.”
Highlights from the 2009 Dylanfest are available on DVD, and can be acquired through Hill and Safier’s website.
As for what’s next as they head into their second 25 years, Safier mentions that they plan on doing live webcasts.
“We have a lot of friends and fans all over the country who we don’t get to perform in front of,” she says. “So we’re gong to start doing probably at least one a month. You can go onto the website and maybe pay $8 to watch it, and then when people watch it they can talk to us via the keyboard and interact with us as we do the show. We can take requests, we can talk back and forth to people via the camera, and so we’re looking forward to that… It’s like the most intimate of all intimate house concerts.”
Andy Hill and Renee Safier’s CD release concert for “Many Miles to Go” takes place on Saturday, Feb. 12, at the Neptunian Womens Club, 920 Highland Ave., Manhattan Beach. (310) 374-9473. Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres are from 6 to 7 p.m., and then the music begins. Tickets, $20. All ages welcome. Call (310) 324-3663, go to andyandrenee.com, or e-mail andyhillmusic@hotmail.com. ER
