To answer your question: My music and science preoccupations seemed to work in blissful harmony within the boundaries of The American Analog Set. This may be a topic for another interview altogether. I can draw parallels all night…some profound and some barely interesting. Advancements in molecular biology in the late ‘70s and ‘80s were to biology what digital technology and non-linear recording were to music in the ‘90s and early 2000s. My love of recording music and my appreciation for the methods of science have a lot of overlap.
CRANE SONG PHOENIX VS MCDSP ANALONG CHANNEL FULL
I was working on a Biochemistry PhD at Columbia when I decided to leave and make Set Free, the last AmAnSet full length. you were pursuing, and do you feel that experience fed into your songwriting? How? Either something is there because it’s crucial, or it’s not.
You really have to have your shit together to pull off an album with just 8 channels to work with. Also, I hadn’t made a true 8-track record since The Golden Band in 1999 and I missed that process. I guess there were always songs that didn’t make sense as AmAnSet songs, and over time I realized they had a lot in common with one another. This project has been in the back of my mind for a while. How did The Wooden Birds begin? How long have these songs been cooking? Did you always know these songs were not AmAnSet songs? But I gained my enchilada weight when I came back to Austin for sure. Brooklyn is the land of the proper cheese slice and I’m sure missing that now. I know it’s simple but it’s my favorite and it doesn’t really exist in Brooklyn. I also missed Mexican food, or Tex-Mex I should say. We’re just older and we have a lot going on in our lives. We hang out now and almost never talk about music.
Ok, maybe we haven’t all been there, but that’s where The American Analog Set’s Andrew Kenny has been, and now he’s back, a in Texas and on the indie music scene, with Magnolia, the debut release from his new band, The Wooden Birds.Īndrew Kenny: I missed my friends the most. We’ve all been there: you’re the frontman for a popular indie rock act, but you leave your beloved home state of Texas to pursue a PhD in Biochemistry at Columbia.