Time and money can lead to many bad decisions. And I’m not talking about those that blow their savings on, well, blow, or blow (shut your mouth). I’m talking about those bored athletes and actors that decide to ride their image into the music industry, or to Samuel L. Jackson’s scorn, those rappers that want to be actors without ever reading Shakespeare. Such musical efforts often land flat, or as pro snowboarder Trouble Andrew says, ‘I think in some cases it works, but in most cases it’s corny.’
Corny is something that Andrew hopes to avoid as he preps for the release of a new LP in the fall, and is currently on the road promoting the re-release of his 2005 self-titled debut. The pro snowboarder sort of fell into a musical career, literally. After a gruesome injury that sidelined him for 9 months, he did what a lot of people would do. He holed up for 9 months at his girlfriend’s house and messed around with musical instruments. His girlfriend just happened to be Santigold, who grabbed his tapes while he wasn’t looking, brought them to Shitake Monkey, and boom, a recording career was born. But Trouble Andrew doesn’t want people to think he’s just a snowboarder trying to cash in on a large fan base ready to follow him into Tower Records, er Coconut Record, er Itunes. “The most important thing to me as far as music goes is to make real music,” he said via phone while on tour in Minneapolis. “I’m not trying to make songs about snowboarding and skating, that’s not my thing. I think it’s actually cool when people don’t know what I have done in snowboarding and find out after the fact. I think it’s automatic for somebody to feel like, ‘ah man, that sounds like a gimmick.’”
In this exclusive RH Interview, Trouble Andrew speaks snowboarding vs. music, his music influences, just messing around with 4 track recorders, the Hot Sauce Committee, and more. Read the full interview below.
RubyHornet: It’s a pleasure to talk to you today, I want to thank you for your time…Let’s start by talking a little bit about your snowboarding in relation to your jump into music…Music fans are very fickle. They hop on and off artist’s bandwagon very fast. I’m not familiar with the snowboarding community or the fans. How would their fickleness compare?
Trouble Andrew: I don’t know. I definitely don’t feel that my fans are really fickle at all. I think that with everything, it’s just a growth and change all the time and kids are finding out about new stuff. Especially now, the accessibility of everything is just so easy. Kid’s attention spans are just different nowadays. There’s always something new to get stoked on. As far as my community goes, the people that I looked up to as a kid snowboarding are still my heroes. I think with sports maybe it’s a little more dedicated. I don’t know well enough with music cause I’m just getting in the game.
RubyHornet: From what I read, the record label certainly believes that the fans you’ve amassed are going to follow you into the music. Do you agree? Is there anything you want to make sure to do or not do musically to keep them?
Trouble Andrew: I’ve already seen how much my fans are already supporting the music project. I think that just comes from kids just relating and understanding that I’m just like them. I’m a fan of music too, and a fan of snowboarding and skate culture and I just grew up in that. That’s where my sound comes from. I think nowadays a lot of kids skate and snowboard and surf and that gets pretty deep. The most important thing to me as far as music goes is to make real music. I’m not trying to make songs about snowboarding and skating, that’s not my thing. I think it’s actually cool when people don’t know what I have done in snowboarding and find out after the fact. I think it’s automatic for somebody to feel like, ‘ah man, that sounds like a gimmick.’ I’ve heard so many times, ‘this famous person’s doing a music thing…’ I think in some cases it works, but in most cases it’s corny. For me, I don’t really have to worry about my fans, cause people that live within the culture understand that skate and snow and surf culture breed art. You live in that culture you know about dudes like Mark Gonzales or Jason Lee, these people who are artists who have taken it somewhere else. If you live in that community you check it out and you think, ‘that’s dope.’ But for people on the outskirts, it’s hard to understand if it’s told in that light like, ‘he’s a pro snowboarder…’ That’s not what it’s about. I’m just making music. I’m a person already within our culture that did my thing on my snowboard, but with this music it’s about music. It’s not like the snowboarding has anything to do with it, except that’s how I grew up and that’s what influenced me. The skate videos I grew up on with all the indie bands and friends of skateboarders…it’s a tight community of artists.
RubyHornet: Speaking of the skating videos and music. Do you get any s**t for being signed to Virgin Records, or putting your music out on a major label?
Trouble Andrew: I don’t think so. I haven’t heard anything negative. It’s more like ‘congratulations, take it to that next level.’ I’ve been doing it on an indie level and I took it pretty far by myself and using the fact that I’ve been traveling around the world to get it out to the kids. I think that it’s all good. I don’t think that anybody sees that as a negative. Why not take advantage of a situation and try to do something big? We can still keep it cool. The label has nothing to do with the music that I create. I’m the artist and I 100% have control over my vision. Thankfully the president that signed me gets what I’m about and he’s not trying to change me coming in. He said, ‘I appreciate what you do, let’s take it to the world.’
RubyHornet: Let’s talk about the album…The songs on this album were written while you were rehabbing from a serious injury. Do you think that the injury and rehab put you in a certain mindset or gave you an outlook that played a role in the subject matter of the songs? There’s a lot of reflecting and quizzing on the record.
Trouble Andrew: I’d say definitely it was a time that got me open. I’m pretty much always thinking and questioning things. It was an opportunity to actually stop for a second from what I’d been doing for ten years up to that point non-stop. I was more just using music to fuel me and to fuel the fire to get me to do crazy stuff on my snowboard. When it came to, ‘oh damn, I’m actually out for like 9 months what am I gonna do?’ I was really just using it to kill time. When I wrote those songs I had no boundaries. I never came into making music like, ‘I need to make a hit song and transform my career into a music career.’ It was just me sitting there board making songs and really just experimenting and killing time. I thought, ‘I’ll play it for my friends’ and once we got it to that level Santi (Santigold) actually snuck the tapes out of the house, cause I didn’t want anybody to hear stuff, and she brought them to the Shitake Monkey. They called me and said, ‘come in and talk to us about it and let’s really do this.’ Even when I made that first record I was like, ‘dude, I’ll just put this out in my community, I’ll never even do a show.’ Then it just snowballed into what it is now. I just grew into loving it all the way around, performing, I love the alone time of writing songs and creating new sounds. I just really grew into loving it. It wasn’t my dream. I’d already been living my dream.
RubyHornet: The song “Young Boy” repeats, “hey young boy, you don’t know what you got young boy, so keep your head up top young boy, and don’t you ever stop young boy.” It seems like you’re talking to your younger self on that track.
“Young Boy”
[audio: http://rubyhornet.com/media/rh/music/young_boy.mp3|width=180]Trouble Andrew: That’s exactly what that was. The funny thing about that is that some of the lyrics in that were like a journal entry. It was me reflecting on my youth and being like, ‘damn, some of the things I wasted time worrying about is not worth it looking back.’ It’s me giving me, and hopefully somebody else, just that ‘keep your head up, I know it’s crazy when you’re in the midst of something, but when you’re on the other side of it and you do get through it you’re like, damn, good thing I did keep my head up.’
RubyHornet: The song takes on an added meaning if someone knows that you dropped out of high school at 15 to pursue pro skateboarding on your own. Was this a happy decision, or one you came to after a lot of struggle?
Trouble Andrew: By the time I left school I was winning like, ‘I got this, I’m really going to do this.’ I was on the road since I was 12, going on road trips with older snowboarders and going to contest, so I was missing school. At first my parents said, ‘we’ll let you skip school, but you got to do well and we’ll give you a shot, but if it doesn’t work out you have to focus.’ I tried to do the home schooling on the road, but it was just impossible cause I had nobody there to force me to do anything. By the time it was done, my guidance counselor at school was like, ‘you know what, if you want to do something with school you should just stop cause your grades are so bad cause you’re barely getting by…’ I was just like ‘f**k it, I’m out of here.’ I knew it was my only opportunity too. And that’s what my parents were saying too, ‘you only got one shot, you gotta make it happen or it’s not going to happen.’ So I just decided to make it happen cause that’s where my heart was and I got so much education out of it just traveling the world. It wasn’t too much of a difficult decision. I was 15 and if you talk to any kid at 15 and say, ‘do you want to be a pro snowboard and just travel around the world and get paid?’ It’s pretty easy.
RubyHornet: People that know you or your music know that you are engaged to Santigold, and you credit her with really inspiring you to make music and go with it. Is the advice and support she’s giving you now musically different than back then, being that both of you have see a tremendous rise in your musical careers?
Trouble Andrew: It’s been amazing the whole way. I was there when she was doing Stiffed and watching her do her shows. I grew up listening to punk rock and in the early 90’s I really started listening to rap music, that was the new punk rock to me. When I met Santi, it was awesome because she opened my mind back and got me stoked on it again. She was like, ‘you remember this band? You know the Descendants?’ She just got me excited again and seeing her do shows was just amazing. Really, during that time of me hanging out at the house she had guitars there and I would just strum something, like little riffs on one string and she would come in humming a melody and I would say, ‘oh my god that sounds perfect.’ She used like 6 of my riffs on the Stiffed Burned Again record. It really kind of opened my eyes to, ‘oh, I can really write songs.’ I never thought about it for myself. I was thinking, ‘maybe I could be a songwriter, or make beats for other people.’ Then she got me a four track recorder and that’s when I was home alone and making all this stuff…I was so inspired by punk rock, and hip hop, and the down south stuff that I was just messing around and then I did it and she was the one that snuck the tape out of the house and took it to producers. She’s just a great friend. She’s such a great support to so many people. As much as when I wrote those songs I thought, ‘this is cool and it’s different, and there’s nothing that sounds like it,’ she was the one that really was like, ‘you need to take this serious. Let’s get this produced. These songs are dope.’ She totally gave me that encouragement to be like, ‘ok, I’ll take this for real.’ Santi is a business woman, she is a hustler, she makes it happen. She grinds so hard and that in itself is an inspiration, just how hard she works and how on top of her business she is. It was cool for me, I was just killing time and had these songs. I didn’t really look at it like a business situation. It’s great cause now I’m supporting other people and I’m like the team manager now. I get to take my band all around the world and do fun stuff and continue the same life I was living with snowboarding with more responsibility.
RubyHornet: She recorded a track with the Beastie Boys for their new album, and I know you list them as one of your influences. Were you there for any of the recording process, and have you heard the song?
Trouble Andrew: I heard the track, it’s crazy. I’ve actually heard some of their record. I wasn’t there when she recorded that for them, but I actually went in and hung out with those guys a couple weeks ago just on my own s**t. Those guys are the s**t, just what they did in music and they’re all really nice guys. They were real welcoming and nice people.
RubyHornet: Can you give any insight into the record?
Trouble Andrew: I can’t speak on it man, haha…I don’t want to make any street beefs. I don’t want them to call me like, ‘what’s up?’ I think everybody’s gonna be excited. I haven’t heard the whole record, I heard a couple cuts on it, the s**t sounds crazy. There’s a lot of just Beastie Boys. It’s straight Beastie Boys. There’s a lot of classic feeling in there for sure.
RubyHornet: Word, I don’t want to create any street beefs for you. You have a follow up album coming out soon, which is going to be new material. Can you tell us any info on that, a possible release date, title etc?
Trouble Andrew: There are a couple different title options, and I’m going to wait until the record is completely finished and then call it. I think it should be coming out some time in October-Novemberish, I’m not sure. I’m still really in the middle of it. We have about 70% of it done right now. All the songs are written, I got two albums written and a couple mixtapes. I have so much material since that last record. But, we just are trying to tightened it all up and there’s 3 songs I haven’t recorded vocals for. I’m just grinding it out on this tour and as soon as we get back to NY, I’m back in the studio.
RubyHornet: While the albums are coming out relatively close to each other, they were actually made years and circumstances a part, what are your thoughts on the albums being so close together as far as when they’re released, versus being recorded so far away.
Trouble Andrew: As far as that record, once I had a label deal it was really just, ‘in the meantime, let’s get this to the rest of the world lightly and get a sample out there.’ The record’s been out since ’05, but it didn’t reach the world. The people that know about it, know about it and that’s the point of having a label to take it to the next level…It’s a little sample of what’s coming next. I’m proud of that record for a lot of reasons. I didn’t even look at it as being a record, it was just a bunch of songs that I had written and was like, ‘we’re putting out a record…boom…’ This next record is really what I look at like a record. I’m making an album and I’m taking the best of all the songs that I’ve written over the last couple years and making a story for it. I’m really excited to get this record out to the world and start playing the new songs. I just like keeping it moving and continuing to record cause I feel different ways all the time, and I have so much stuff I just want to keep it moving. It’s nice to have that machine to make things a reality a lot faster and keep pumping that s**t out.
