Between heading out on the road with Andy Grammer and Parachute and releasing a new album, Andrew Ripp is keeping busy. Just before the start of tour, Andrew and I spoke over the phone about the new music, touring and what to expect though the rest of this year.
Arin: What are you most looking forward to about the tour with Andy and Parachute?
Andrew: I’m just really looking forward to getting out and playing the new music. I mean, it’s been two and a half years since the last time I released anything. So, this is going to be a challenge since it’s been awhile since I’ve busted out new songs, but it’s really exciting. You spend all this time writing these songs and now they get to come have their own new life, and it’s also one of the scary things about being an artist. You sit in your room and you write these songs from your heart, and then you put it out on a platter and people get to critique [it]. I’m about to go into that season of life where it’s just laying it all on the line and that’s just part of my job though, and I dig it. I’m really looking forward to it. Also, I’m riding along with Andy and his band – I’m jumping on their bus – so I don’t have to drive alone which would just totally suck because the routing of the tour is insane. It’s like long drives, but he was kind enough to open up a bunk on his bus and that means I really get to hang out with those guys and really get to know them and that’s always a blast.
Arin: When you’re playing the new songs, is there one off the album that you’re most curious to see the response to?
Andrew: Well, being the first of three on this tour, I really only get to play like five songs [or] six songs, just depending on how much I feel like talking that night in between. So I’m planning on playing three off the new record and two off the old one. So, the three that I’m going to be playing off the new one are kind of the more uptempo / attention getting [songs]. Since I only have 25 minutes, it’s like play the fire songs, the ones that you know are going to turn heads, which are also ones that I’ve played before in these kinds of settings. So I know kind of what to expect with those songs, but there’s, like I said I’m either going to be playing five or six tunes, so I might have one slot to kind of change out a song every night and that’s going to be the slot where I try out this new thing. It’s weird because I record the record with a full band and then I go out on the road with my acoustic guitar, and it’s a whole different experience and I need to kind of revamp how I deliver the songs. Some of them work that way and some of them don’t, so I’m going to have to be picky about which ones I play.
Arin: You went through 70 songs to pick 12 of your favorites, but of the tracks on the album, which are your favorites of the favorites?
Andrew: I would say the second song, ‘Falling For The Beat,’ just because sonically I love the way it sounds. It’s about just my love for pop music. I moved to Nashville a few years ago and I really wasn’t into [it]. I thought pop music was cheesy because a lot of it is, but I realized just through meeting friends that write really great pop songs [that] I love pop songs. It’s just the majority of it is crap, so I wrote a song just about my love for it and falling for it and how there’s just something about a song that from the second it starts, you can’t help but tap your foot to it or move to it because of the energy that it exudes. That’s definitely one of my favorites. I would say a song called ‘Sooner or Later’ is one of my favorites because it’s more of a creative, artsy approach lyrically. It’s advice to myself when pursuing my wife before we were married. That one was really cool because I got to dig in lyrically and really tell a story from an interesting perspective, but sometimes those ones don’t really connect as well because they’re almost too ‘smart.’ I don’t know if smart is the right word, but just too much information. Sometimes the simpler the better, but I don’t know I really enjoyed writing that song. Those two songs are definitely standouts for me. There’s a song on the record called ‘Rescue Me’ that Vince Gill sang on and that is a really special song for me because it’s like a prayer, just me calling out to a higher power and saying, ‘man, I don’t have this figured out and I need some help here.’ That’s about as vulnerable as I get on the record.
Arin: You’re involved with Art of Elysium and Mocha Club, so how did you get involved with those and why?
Andrew: Well, Art of Elysium is the one that I’m really passionate about. I mean, Mocha Club is awesome too and I’m passionate about that, there’s just something about Art of Elysium. [It] is this organization that sends artists into hospitals to play music for kids that are sick and just stuck in their rooms and they’re just too sick to be in the public, and we go in and play for them [and] like stand by their bedside and just play them songs and just try to lighten their moods. That’s really spoken to me because you can see an instant result. You walk in and you just play this song that you wrote and it can totally change the day and the mood for a child that’s struggling and I think that’s really cool. That’s something that I’m really passionate about and I want to keep doing.
Arin: When it comes to playing live, do you have a favorite moment of being on stage?
Andrew: Yeah, the last few years after I put out the last record, there’s one song that kind of really speaks to what I’m all about and it’s a moment in the set where I can share a little bit of my story and why I play music and where I come from. It’s a song called ‘You Will Find Me’ and it’s this very hopeful, simple song that just speaks [of] life and hope and love in a way that there’s just something really simple about it. People can sing along and it’s just become a really special moment in my set.
Arin: You did a lot of co writing and writing for others before you had your own music out, so what’s it like when you hear one of those songs you had a part in writing?
Andrew: It’s just such a different experience. I find it so much easier to write for someone else than I do for myself because I don’t have to sing it and I don’t have to be the one that connects to the actual story. When I write for myself, I’m like writing from my own experience and things that I know that are true to me. So when I write a song for someone else, it can be total fiction, like, I can just put myself in their story which is just so much easier because I don’t really have to hone in on what’s true to me [and] I can just hone in on the story. It’s a whole different experience in the writing process, but listening to it, it’s fun. It’s just really fun to hear someone else sing your song. It’s a… I remember I had a song with a guy named Ryan Cabrera back in the day and they released it as a single, a song called ‘Shine on,’ and I was sitting in this restaurant – I don’t know what it was like an Applebees or something – with my girlfriend and we were just having a meal and we heard it for the first time, and it was just such a cool feeling knowing that I had something to do with that. Even though it wasn’t me, I felt really good.
