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Home  Random Extras Know Your Song Well
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Know Your Song Well |
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Written by B. Noel Barr, The Music Writer Dude
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Saturday, 06 June 2009 |
“I'll know my song well before I start singin'”
Bob Dylan, from A Hard Rain Is Gonna Fall
Random Lengths News sat down with Andy Hill and Renee Safier at her home in Redondo Beach, shortly after last year’s "The Lobster Festival" in San Pedro.
Andy Hill is originally from Burnaby Canada, a suburb of Vancouver. As a child, he loved to listen to Credence Clearwater Revival. Referring to John Fogerty’s singing, Andy said, “I could never do Fogerty’s voice, it is very high, powerful and metallic. My life was a little hard in the eighties when all the bands sounded like girls. It was a tough time, I was in a top forty group, we were covering bands like Styx, Foreigner and Journey,” Andy added, “Nobody in the group at that time could sing that high. I have deeper sounding voice, so I tend to gravitate in tonality toward male singers who sound like men.”
As a pianist, Andy listened to lot of Elton John music in his teens, he would also buy many records by Dylan and Springsteen and Jackson Browne, artists who have an influence on him to a certain extent. “I don’t listen to a lot of records now, when a song really moves me, I listen for every little detail.” When you hear Andy’s originals or even his covers, he plays with the conviction of a man with a very personal passionate vision of possibilities, while lamenting the sorrows of the misbegotten.
Andy’s long-time singing partner, Renee Safier, hails from San Antonio Texas by way of Washington D.C. - Georgetown Virginia. Random Lengths News inquired about her singing style, Renee said, “The Luck of the draw I guess.” Renee and Andy laughed; she went on to say, “I listen to a lot of jazz, Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Raitt and Tony Bennett I love. There is a broad range of singers that I like, but I don’t consciously try to sound like any of them.” Andy interjected at this point that, “Nobody has bought fewer records than Renee.” They both break out laughing again, Andy continues, “What influences Renee got, it was from her Dad, when she a young girl she would listen to the records that he had bought. Later it was the Joni Mitchell records she got in college; she is the least influenced performer I know.”
They both attended The University of Denver, “That is where I met Andy. It had a really good hockey program. Andy was there on a hockey scholarship from his home in Canada. I got a scholarship to go there from where I lived in Virginia. I did the high school thing. I went there just to do something totally different.” When Renee got to the university, she met a couple of guys who played guitar and they would play around Denver as a trio called “Sierra.”
“Then in the summer we go to my parent’s home in Washington DC and play around Georgetown area.” Renee added speaking to Andy, “You lived in the same apartment building that one of the two guys in our trio did?”
Andy said he thought one did, there were a lot of young men there. His whole Hockey team lived in the basement of two apartments right next each other, then added, “It was my girlfriend at the time who took me to see Renee’s trio play. I don’t know why I thought it was O.K. to get up and play a couple of numbers with this group, but they were nice guys. Therefore, we hit it off and we did a couple of shows together during the last few months of college.”
It was then decided to put on their version of Cal Jam except, “We called it Towers Jam because that was the dorm that I lived in.” Renee said, “So for the last performance of this band we were going to an electric show, we were quite popular on campus with a good sized following. Andy played drums and Mike Tanner on bass guitar, he co-wrote the song “Outside Looking In” with Andy" (On Hard Rain’s CD Hurricane of the Heart).
After college, the two went their separate ways. Renee joined an all-girls group touring all over America. Andy returned to Canada and was playing top forty bands. Both would end up in L.A. around the same time. Andy picks up the story here explaining, “My band in Canada had broken up on my 25th birthday, so I came down to L.A. and was visiting a mutual friend who is in the music business and our friend asked, ‘Whatever happened to that girl you used to sing with?’”
As it happened, Renee had decided to move to L.A. Renee was first going to visit with her uncle for his birthday.
“I gave her a call and Renee just was packing up to move here, I pulled out a Thomas map guide and her uncle lived one block up right around the corner.” Andy returned to Canada but had decided to permanently move to Los Angeles, he called an old friend who he had played hockey with, and was also in a band with him back in his hometown Burnaby.
“On that trip I wanted to get a hold of an old friend mine that lived here, actor Michael J. Fox. I told him I had thought about moving here and he said, ‘I did and it worked out for me” At this point in the interview everyone in the room broke out laughing.
Andy and Renee went on to form the first of several groups they would find themselves in as the primary focal points. They also went out playing dates as a duo and as solo artists.
Andy noted, “By the time we had come to L.A. we were not of the mindset to stay current with what’s going. There is nothing wrong with that. That is how you learn how songs are connected. Renee joins in saying, “That’s where you develop a work ethic, when you are on the road you are not only performing every night, but you are rehearsing every day as well.”
They have remained true to each other in this musical marriage, but stayed true to their music and their core beliefs. Renee indicated, “That out of this whole experience of playing together for all these years is we have a community that grown out of all this.” Andy adds that, “People who have seen us here for a while move away and invite us to have a house concert, we can play in places outside of L.A. because of this”. Andy and Renee write very well crafted songs and express them in an authentic, emotionally connected way. They do this with the obvious ease of professionals, but more striking than professional polish is their ability to strip the song to its essence, presenting the music and lyric naked to the truth.
In addition to performing and producing their own shows, Hill and Safier have also produced fundraisers for causes close to their hearts. Within three months they had produced three different benefits that had raised several thousand dollars for the Obama Campaign then turned around did one for a village orphanage in Laos where Andy’s girlfriend is from. Then early this year they did one for the L.A. Food Bank along with the group Dry September, also featured at this year’s Dylanfest. It’s just another facet of what they do—making community through music, a process as ancient as humanity itself.
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