MacD on Music: In A White Room, With Black Curtains, In Sandino’s

As you may remember, last week, when writing about Cool Discs, Andy White was quoted as calling it “the coolest record shop in Ireland”. As you may further remember, I said that Andy White would be gracing these fine pages later this month. Well, after seven whole days, later this month has finally arrived.

Andy White has been on the scene now for forty years, releasing his first album ‘Religious Persuasion’ in 1985 on Stiff Records (home to The Pogues, Ian Dury, Elvis Costello, and some other artists who didn’t have the honour of playing Derry). Now, he’ll be returning to Sandino’s on May 11th in support of his new live album ‘The Night Is Approaching Though Some Would Say It Was Morning’. The album was recorded in Abbey Road Studios for a small group of family and friends and features Andy playing solo with no band and no overdubs.

I caught up with Andy in the downstairs bar of Sandino’s to talk about the album: “I’ve never had a live album out, and I’ve also never had a solo album where it’s just me playing the guitar. What happened was, this producer friend of mine, John Leckie [producer of such albums as the Stone Roses debut and Radiohead’s ‘The Bends’] said ‘Andy, I like the records you’ve put out with the band, but after seeing you on your own, I want to buy a CD which is just like that’. I said, ‘What are we going to do?’ and he said, ‘We’ll record it in the best sounding room in the world, Abbey Road Studio 2’, where he worked as a young man. It’s coming out now at the end of April.”

“From the time we got the tapes, I realised it’s got a very special sound, that room. You go in across that famous crossing, there’s crowds of people outside the gate, writing stuff on the walls, and up the stairs, that you’ve seen in loads of photos. When you go in it’s all pretty modern. I was with John and George Martin’s son was walking out. It’s quite modern, the control room, but if you go downstairs, it’s not really changed since the Beatles recorded there. John said that in the sixties it smelt the same, all the fabric’s the same, it sounds the same. It’s preserved within this very modern building. It’s very beautiful.”

“I had some friends and family who came. We couldn’t make it a concert and I didn’t want it to be one, so we just had everybody come and it was a beautiful day. It’s really the only live album I’ve done, even though I’ve put out lots and lots of records.”

READ MORE: MacD on Music

Next, I asked him about playing here: “I played Derry for the first time in years at the very start of 2024, and I always knew Sandino’s is the place where the revolution has already started. The first track on the last record (‘Good Luck I Hope You Make It’) is called ‘The Revolution’.

"It’s like an homage to ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’. The whole record, it’s like when I started, ‘Rave On Andy White’ and ‘Religious Persuasion’ were real statements of what it was like growing up at that time. I went right back to that mode. I went back to spoken word, break beats, before I used a drum machine and bass guitar and just wrote a whole spoken word record, starting with that song ‘The Revolution’ and Sandino’s is exactly the kind of place I’d want to play that music in.”

Andy then went on to talk about the Derry crowds: “If you’ve got Mickey Bradley in your audience, and he’s one of the people who inspired you and told you, you could do it yourself if you wanted to, because the whole punk thing, if you’re my age, one of the main things they told you was that you can do this if you want to do it. You don’t have to be the Eagles. You don’t have to sing in a perfect voice, you can just use your accent. So, to have Mickey in the audience was great. Paul McCartney [the real one, from Bam Bam And The Calling] was there, he’s a great guy.

“I really hope it does well this time. Sandino’s is unusual, there’s not lots of places like this. We’re on the same wavelength.”

And that’s it from Andy White. He’ll be in Sandino’s on May 11th and his live album is out on April 25th.

Now, onto other business. This Saturday (April 19th) Our Space is taking part in the Triumph of Music event in the Guildhall. The free gig features some of this town’s finest up-and-coming artists, including Disarm, Pseudonym, Intuition, The Backroom Bandits, Seventh Heaven (who have also recently released their brilliant debut single ‘Another Girl’) and Sunset Theory and starts at 12pm.

Finally, time for the socials. Disarm can be found on Instagram @disarmedinderry, Pseudonym @pseudonym_band_derry, Intuition @intuition.band_, The Backroom Bandits @thebackroombandits, Seventh Heaven @seventh_heaven_b4nd, Sunset Theory @sunset_theory_doire, Sandino’s @sandinosbarclub and Andy White @andyohyeah.