If you are unaware of who Andy Z is, he is one of the most heavily booked and requested children’s musicians in the San Francisco Bay Area. For the past 10 years, Andy Z has entertained, engaged, and energized children and parents from San Francisco to San Jose and every place in between. Whether his stage is in a children’s library, a preschool, a mall, or outside under the sun, Andy Z’s highly contagious personality and amusing giggle grips all those who watch and listen.
How long have you been performing children's music?
I tell everybody I started doing children's music about 10 years ago, but this time I decided to check my gig calendar to confirm, and I'm pretty close! I started playing at Angelina's Daycare in San Francisco on March 26, 2002. So it looks like I just passed my ninth anniversary of playing for kids and families, although the seeds were planted a year or so earlier I believe. I began mixing children's songs into my sets at local farmers’ market shows. It was the kids who stopped their folks to watch me, so I thought I'd start playing specific songs for them. Kid's are so much fun to play for. It made those 4 hour famers market gigs a lot more fun for sure!
How does performing live make you feel?
Like I'm truly connected and living in the moment. That's how kids are naturally, and I'm just following their lead.
What does it take to be a successful children's musician?
Well, the first thing I needed to do was take the leap of faith. There are many who do what I do who are much more established on the national stage than I who still have a day or night job. When I decided to go into family music, I had just gotten laid off from my IT support job a year earlier, and had already decided I was going to make a go of doing music only.
What I found is, whether you have another job or not, but particularly if you're doing music and nothing else, you have to learn how to run a business and how to balance that with being creative. It's not an easy thing sometimes, at least until you have a team of people doing the business stuff for you.
Speaking of being creative, you have to lose the shyness and don't lose your self-esteem just because you have a "bad" gig. Musicians of all types can identify with that. This is key with kids especially, as the are already "open" for the most part, and the more you put yourself "out there" for them, the more they will respond in a positive way. So the clichè saying is true, "Be yourself!"
Why do you perform with a 12 string guitar?
I've always loved the sound of 12-string guitar, so full, so harmonically rich. The tone is mystical to me. There is a practical reason too. From the time I was doing unplugged gigs indoors and outdoors, I found that the 12-string provided much stronger accompaniment to my voice when performing solo. Once I went with12-strings, I couldn't go back!
What has been your biggest success as a children's musician?
This might sound canned, but it's so true. A show where I'm able to reach kids and folks, get them up and moving, laughing and playing is the biggest success for me whether it's 20 or 2,000 plus, making the connection is the biggest reward, however, playing for 2,000 plus is quite a rush!
I suppose one big success in regard to my music getting recognized was receiving the Disney Family iParenting Media Award for two of the three albums in the Andyland series. At the same time, my feeling of success wasn't so much because of the awards, but more that it prompted me to reflect on the accomplishment of successfully creating an "imaginary" world with music and characters, and being able to see that accomplishment as a culmination of musical adventures contributing to the whole.
What has been your biggest flop as a children’s musician?
My biggest flop was a private party I did when I was still doing many of them. It was one of those "setup for failure" type scenarios. The kids were hugely apart in age range and many were hecklers, object tossers and puppet grabbers! I could have used that chicken wire in front of me like the Blues Brothers had in that country bar! But even that gig had a positive ending. More than one of the kids came up to me "in secret" after the show and said they liked it. It wasn't "cool" for the older ones to say that around their peers.
What are some of your sources of inspiration (other than the kids)?
Other than the kids and the things they say and do, my inspiration comes from many places and many influences. I'm into everything from jazz standards and big band to The Beatles and Gustav Holst, and classical music to seventies funk. Beastie Boys to European folk. You get the idea!
Where do your song ideas come from?
I do believe that I draw from my influences when coming up with new songs, but many of them come to me in the morning when I'm halfway between asleep and awake. I guess that's when the muse can reach me.
What do you think about the current state of kid's music, as compared with 20-30 years ago?
As compared to back when Raffi was the most well-known children's troubadour, there are a lot more artists playing family music, and getting recognized for doing so, at least it seems that way. I think it's great that most contemporary music artists writing songs for kids write songs that are enjoyable for the adults to listen to as well. After all, the adults are also the ones who have to listen to track nine on Return To Andyland one hundred times during a car trip!
What is something you might like to change about the kid's music biz?
More national and television exposure for the many independent kindie musicians that are every bit as good as the signed musicians who have been created to fill a time slot. I'd love to see a national kindie music program or even an entire channel on cable. There's already a national kindie music conference called Kindiefest devoted to developing and supporting these artists.
I'm going to Kindiefest this year for the first time, and I have another connection there, the cofounder of the Kindiefest conference and Grammy-nominated producer Tor Hyams who is producing my fifth studio album, a Halloween adventure scheduled for release October 1, 2011
Where can you see Andy Z live?
If you would like to see Andy Z live please visit www.AndyZ.com to see his performance schedule.
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