BIOGRAPHY

Independent Since 2005

Andrew Reeves was born in the small, rural, farming community of El Paso, Illinois. The Highway 51 and Highway 24 intersection slowed down the out-of-towners who came in off of Interstate 39 but couldn’t slow down the progress that changed his home town. “My story is of a young man growing up, leaving and looking back on rural America” Andrew says. “I realize now that our way of life is almost gone and it kills me.”

The Reeves family farmed in central Illinois from the late eighteen sixties until the late nineteen nineties when they lost their land. His grandfather was a farmer. His grandmother was a housewife. His father was a car salesman. His mother was a hairdresser. Andrew is a writer, a painter, a filmmaker and a musician more than willing to explore his family’s 150 year American history.

“There aren’t a lot of musicians writing about what’s really going on in the country” Andrew says. “I went to art school in Dekalb, worked in Chicago and realized that I didn’t need to sell my talent to the same corporations that are killing rural America just to make a living.” Andrew packed his bags, moved to Los Angeles and wrote hundreds of songs. “L.A. is no place for someone like me” Andrew says. “But it is necessary to try everything once.”

On January 1, 2005 Andrew formed Reeves Records as a way to write, record and release music independently. “My number one goal is to stay independent” Andrew says. “I don’t want anyone or anything standing in the way of my vision.” He released “1048 West Kensington Road” on September 1, 2007 to critical acclaim. The record is a self-produced, lo-fi, ten song cycle that details four years of living in Echo Park, California. “I was introduced to The Brian Jonestown Massacre when I first got to Los Angeles and they changed my life forever” Andrew says. “1048 is an honest attempt at exploring their do-it-yourself process.”

In the winter of 2007, Andrew had the opportunity to spend three months in his family’s 150 year old farm house. “I wrote and demoed my second record there while my sister was trying to sell the house. “It was my chance to express how I felt about my family leaving El Paso and moving to Austin, Texas. The record explores the good, the bad and everything in-between.” He released “Somewhere In The Middle Of Nowhere” on September 1, 2009 and the response has been overwhelmingly good from his old friends and family back in El Paso. “The old farm house still hasn’t sold” Andrew says, “so I still have a place to call home if Austin doesn’t work out for me and my family.”

Jonathan Hill

JPSJ Management