Andrew Bird
Andrew Wegman Bird is an American singer, songwriter, and musician. Since 1996, he has released 16 studio albums, as well as several live albums and EPs, spanning various genres including swing music, indie rock, and folk music. He is primarily known for his unique style of violin playing, accompanied by loop and effect pedals, whistling, and vocals. In the 1990s, he sang and played violin in several jazz ensembles, including Squirrel Nut Zippers and Kevin O'Donnell's Quality Six. He went on to start his own swing ensemble, Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire, which released three albums between 1998 and 2001. Weather Systems was his first solo album after Bowl of Fire disbandment, and it marked a departure from jazz music into indie music. Bird's 2019 album My Finest Work Yet was nominated for "Best Folk Album" at the 2020 Grammy Awards. Beyond his own record releases, he has collaborated with various artists, including The Handsome Family, Dosh, Fiona Apple, Madison Cunningham and Nora O'Connor.
In addition to his music career, Bird has also pursued a film career. He appeared as "Dr. Stringz" in a 2007 episode of Jack's Big Music Show. In 2010, he appeared on a TED Talk performing his music. He wrote and performed "The Whistling Caruso" for The Muppets movie in 2011, and composed the score for the television series Baskets, released in 2016. In 2019, Andrew Bird was cast for the fourth installment of Fargo, playing Thurman Smutny."
Biography
Early life and the Bowl of Fire (1973–2002)
Andrew Bird was raised Catholic, attending the Church of St. Mary in Lake Forest, Illinois and attending Sunday school until he was "effectively kicked out of Sunday school for mocking God." Regarding this, however, he states "I was just misunderstood, I think. I wasn't a troublemaker, just a daydreamer." He is now a lapsed Catholic.Trained in the Suzuki method from the age of four, Bird graduated from Lake Forest High School in 1991 and Northwestern University with a bachelor's degree in violin performance in 1996. That same year he self-released his first solo album, Music of Hair. Vastly different from his later work, this album showcased his violin skills and paid tribute to his fascination with both American and European folk traditions, as well as jazz and blues. Following this, his initial commercial exposure came through collaborative work with the band Squirrel Nut Zippers, appearing on three of their albums between 1996 and 1998.
Taking on the role of bandleader, Bird released Thrills on Rykodisc in 1998 with his group Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire, shortly followed by a second album Oh! The Grandeur in 1999. Both albums were heavily influenced by traditional folk, pre-war jazz, and swing, with Bird relying on the violin as his primary musical instrument, as well as providing vocals along with his trademark verbose lyrics. The Bowl of Fire featured musicians from Bird's hometown of Chicago, including Kevin O'Donnell, Joshua Hirsch, Jon Williams, Nora O'Connor, Andy Hopkins, Jimmy Sutton, Colin Bunn, and Ryan Hembrey. During this period, Andrew Bird was a member of the jazz group Kevin O'Donnell's Quality Six, for which he was the lead singer and violinist and contributed to arrangements and songwriting for the albums Heretic Blues and Control Freak .
In 2001, the Bowl of Fire released their third album, The Swimming Hour, a dramatic departure from their previous recordings. It featured a mixture of styles, from the zydeco-influenced "Core and Rind" to more straightforward rock songs such as "11:11". Due to this eclectic nature, Bird has often referred to it as his "jukebox album". Although gaining critical praise, the band failed to attain commercial success or recognition, playing to audiences as small as 40 people. In 2002, Bird was asked to open for a band in his hometown of Chicago, but fellow Bowl of Fire members were unavailable for the date. The reluctant Bird performed the gig alone, and the surprising success of this solo show suggested potential new directions for his music.
Early solo career (2003–2005)
The Bowl of Fire unofficially disbanded in 2003, and Bird went on to radically reinvent himself as a solo artist. His two subsequent albums were released on Ani Difranco's Righteous Babe Records label. 2003's Weather Systems was a sparse record with a dramatic change in musical direction. It featured the tracks "Skin" and "I", proto-versions of songs that would later become "Skin Is, My" and "Imitosis". On May 10, 2004, Andrew appeared on the Woodsongs Old-Time Radio Hour where he performed "First Song" and "Action Adventure" both from the Weather Systems album. He discussed and demonstrated looping, which was how he could perform solo and still have a fully finished sound.The Mysterious Production of Eggs continued a progression towards an eclectic indie–folk sound, and both records formed a stark stylistic break with Bird's earlier work, swapping the lush backing of a full band for carefully layered samples of sound constructed using multitrack recorders and loop pedals. As his sound changed, Bird made increasing use of guitar, glockenspiel, and whistling in his songwriting, in addition to his traditional violin and vocals.
Bird is noted for improvising and reworking his songs during live performance, as can be seen in his series of self-released live compilations entitled Fingerlings, Fingerlings 2, Fingerlings 3, and Fingerlings 4, the first of which was released in 2002. Each Fingerlings EP was released prior to a studio album, and presented a mixture of live performances from different shows, including old tracks, covers, and previously unreleased songs, some of which have since appeared on studio albums. Fingerlings 3, released in October 2006, also featured studio outtakes. Fingerlings 2 provided Bird with an unexpected boost in recognition in 2004 when it was named album of the month by Mojo.
In 2005, collaborator Martin Dosh joined Bird's line-up, adding percussion and keyboards to his sound. Jeremy Ylvisaker was later added to the group on bass and backup vocals.
Signed to Fat Possum Records (2006–2011)
In September 2006, Bird signed to Fat Possum Records, and in March 2007 he released his third post-Bowl of Fire album, Armchair Apocrypha. The album was recorded in collaboration with electronic musician Martin Dosh, and includes a track composed by Dosh entitled "Simple X". This song first appeared without Bird's lyrics as "Simple Exercises" on Dosh's 2004 release Pure Trash. The album was produced by Ben Durrant, and also featured Haley Bonar and Chris Morrissey. The album went on to sell over 100,000 copies.In promotion of Armchair Apocrypha, Bird made his network television debut on April 10, 2007, performing "Plasticities" on the Late Show with David Letterman. He also appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien on June 14, 2007, performing "Imitosis" from the same album. These appearances were accompanied by an extensive tour, which ended with sell-out performances at the Beacon Theatre, New York and the Orpheum Theater, Los Angeles.
In January 2007, Bird made an appearance on the Noggin television network's Jack's Big Music Show, playing the part of Dr. Stringz and appearing in order to mend Mary's broken dulcimer. Bird sang a brief song called "Dr. Stringz", written specially for the show. He now often plays it live as an introduction to the song "Fake Palindromes".
On May 20, 2007, National Public Radio aired a live concert by Bird from Washington, D.C.'s 9:30 Club He also worked with Reverb, a non-profit environmental organization, for his 2007 spring tour.
Five of his songs – "Banking on a Myth" from "The Mysterious Production of Eggs", a medley of "I" from Weather Systems and "Imitosis" from "Armchair Apocrypha", and "Skin" and "Weather Systems" from Weather Systems – have been licensed for use by Marriott Residence Inn.
Since March 2008, Bird has contributed to "Measure for Measure", a New York Times blog in which musicians write about their songwriting process. In it, he has charted the development of the song "Oh No", previewing samples at various stages of development through to the finished album recording. He also discussed the conception of the song "Natural Disaster", the recording of instrumental piece "Hot Math", and previewed "Master Sigh". The first two songs were later released on Bird's 2009 album Noble Beast, whilst the latter two appeared on its bonus disc Useless Creatures. "Oh No" was featured in the show Billions.
In November 2008, he appeared in the second series of Nigel Godrich's From the Basement alongside Radiohead and Fleet Foxes. His performance included a preview of new song "Section 8 City", a ten-minute re-imagining of "Sectionate City", which originally appeared on the Soldier on EP.
Bird's fifth solo album, Noble Beast, was released on January 20, 2009, and contained fourteen new songs, with bonus tracks available for download from iTunes and eMusic. "The Privateers" is a re-imagining of a very early song entitled "The Confession" from 1999's "Oh! The Grandeur". A limited deluxe edition of the album included alternate packaging and artwork, as well as an all-instrumental companion disc entitled "Useless Creatures". The entirety of "Useless Creatures" was made available via Bird's website during the run-up to the release. "Noble Beast" has been met with generally favourable reviews, receiving a score of 79 out of 100 from review collation site Metacritic.
In 2009, he contributed a cover of the song "The Giant of Illinois" to the HIV and AIDS benefit album Dark Was the Night produced by the Red Hot Organization. On May 11, 2009, Bird released the EP "Fitz and the Dizzy Spells". It contains "Fitz and the Dizzyspells" from "Noble Beast", as well as other songs from that album's recording sessions. Some of the songs on the EP were previously available for download from iTunes and eMusic as bonus tracks to "Noble Beast".
He also did a La Blogoteque performance at a house party in Paris, collaborating with St. Vincent.
In 2010, Bird recorded with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, contributing vocals and violin on a cover of "Shake It and Break It" on "Preservation: An Album to Benefit Preservation Hall & The Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program." In August 2010, Bird contributed a charity T-shirt to the Yellow Bird Project to raise money for the Pegasus Special Riders Fund, which provides therapeutic horse riding activities for adults and children with special needs.