Artist:
Jill Andrews
Genre:
Singer-songwriter
Favorite Nashville spots:
3rd and Lindsley and the Nashville Farmers Market
Jill Andrews left the mountains of East Tennessee, where she grew up, for parts west, first to Knoxville, and then to Nashville.
Andrews wasn’t new to music when she got to Nashville. She had been a part of the Everybodyfields, a popular Americana band that thrilled audiences, from 2004-2009. In 2009 she left the band to focus on her solo career.
And when she got to Nashville, she started approaching her work differently.
“I started co-writing when I got to Nashville,” she says of Music City’s famous method of songwriters working collaboratively on melodies and lyrics.
“It has been really fun for me. It is a way I can share what I am really good at,” she says. Writing songs can be “awkward and terrible,” particularly when you use them to tell personal stories, she says.
“My music is centered around my personal life, and I am no stranger to that. It does not scare me so much anymore.” That said, when she knows she is working on particularly personal songs, such as those on her new album, “Modern Age,” she intentionally co-writes with people she already knows and trusts, allowing her to be vulnerable and for her work to go deeper.
The Nashvillian resident also writes for television. Her songs have appeared on “This is Us” and “Grey’s Anatomy” and the theme song to “Wynonna Earp.”
“Writing for television has been a great opportunity for me. I have been able to take my songs see them in a totally different circumstance. It was one of the first things I was really proud to tell my parents about.”
That diversity will be evident when she plays the Backyard Sessions on the Bobby Hotel rooftop on August 31. 2023, a new venue for her.
“I just want people to feel deeply when they hear my music, whether it is joy or solidarity or sadness.”
