By Taylor Harrington 2/15/2021 9:32am ET

Musician and Texas native Andy Seagrave is paving his own path through the concrete jungle of New York City and is leaving a lasting impact on everyone who hears his soulful blues-rock music.

Calling in from the same location many of the tracks from his new album, The Jungle, were recorded, Confessional Magazine got to know Andy a little bit better and found out there is, of course, more to the story.

Tell us a little bit about your new album, The Jungle. How did you come up with the name and what was your thought process in writing it?

At first, when I moved here I was looking for water and sky for a little while, and I remember walking all the way to the East River during my spare time to try and get back to that big Texas sky. It was an adjustment, trying to find some kind of familiar home feeling.

The name The Jungle came from the title track of the album. I was thinking back to the night before I moved to New York from Texas and a friend was like, “Are you ready for the concrete jungle?” I think we both kind of rolled our eyes like, “oh, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

I love everything about New York now, so it’s kind of cool to have this album be a tribute to this crazy city.

Since first moving to New York have you found that “community feeling” playing at any of the bars and venues in the city?

Absolutely. New York feels like home now, you know? I’m definitely not trying to feel like I’m in Texas or anything anymore. I live in Manhattan, close to Central Park and Upper West Side Harlem, and I love where I am. It really feels like home now. Brooklyn has people moving from wherever and trying to turn it into the Midwest or the South or wherever. Brooklyn has breakfast tacos and barbecue now. One place that I love to go to is Pig Beach. It’s great barbecue and they have a big outdoor space.

I know that you have played at the Apollo Theater before, what was that like?

I did amateur night. It was when I was first kind of realizing my niche in the blues-rock genre, which I’ve always loved. Even if it’s not popular, you know, artists like Gary Clark, Jr. popped up and really inspired me. I have this blues tune that I cover and it’s been doing well at open mics, and so I think, let me try it. Let me try this at The Apollo during amateur night. So I went and auditioned and I waited in line all day, probably from eight or nine in the morning until seven at night. They even tried to get rid of some of the crowd. They were like, “we have all we can take you guys can go“, and a bunch of people left, but I stayed and I auditioned. They called me a few months later and said I was going to be performing at the amateur night. It was really cool, but it’s also terrifying because it’s a huge crowd, right? No want to get booed. I got third place that night, which was really incredible. It was unexpected. The people from the crowd were passing by and being like, “you were my favorite”, and one of my friends was like, “all these young people like you”. So it was weird and so unexpected. You should really step out and try something, it could surprise you.

Who would you say was your musical influence growing up, before you even picked up a guitar?

The first person was Michael Jackson, maybe New Kids on the Block or Vanilla Ice before that, but really, it was Michael Jackson. I would lay in bed and listen to his albums at night. I think a lot of musicians have that story, which I didn’t realize that a lot of musicians, but as kids we would just listen to music at night or in bed, that’s what we did for fun. So anyways, MJ, all his records I was listening to in bed before I could even play the guitar. My parents also always had The Beatles, Carole King and James Taylor, and some Bob Marley eventually made it into the mix. We had one of those five-disc changers, so there were just different albums on in the house all the time.

How old were you when you started playing the guitar?

I was 12 and my neighbor had a guitar and at the same time, my older sister was in high school and she was dating a musician. It was cool because the guy she dated played by ear and it really impressed me. He would listen to Eric Clapton Unplugged and be like, “Oh, this is what he did“, and then he would play it. I was made aware of learning stuff by ear from him and then my parents got me some guitar lessons.

I heard that this album is a culmination of years of your songs, can you tell me more?

The oldest track on the album is “Where Did He Go?” It’s just guitar and vocals, kind of a stripped down thing, and that’s probably over ten years old, but none of these songs have been released yet. The songs have developed over the years with the drummer, Keith Robinson, and a couple of bass players, Nick West and Dan Green, are on the album, too. All these people have really helped shape the sound of The Jungle, too.

I recorded the vocals and the guitar in my apartment, Keith recorded the drums at his place, and Nick recorded the bass at his place. A lot of the songs came together like that. Three of the tracks we had previously done in a studio and then we polished those up and made them all sound consistent with the new tracks that were recorded basically in quarantine.

I really feel blessed and thankful that, you know, I had a friend do the album art and Christopher Davis did a photoshoot for me which helped promote the album on Instagram and social media, and Keith, he co-produced it. He really put some nice touches on this thing and he’s a seasoned guy.

Where can we see you perform currently?

I did an album listening party on Instagram Live the other day and performed some of the tracks on my acoustic and took requests and told the stories behind the song. So I might do more of that live stuff.

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We can’t wait to see what else is in store for Andy Seagrave, and hope to catch him at a live performance the next time we are in the concrete jungle of New York City.

Andy can be followed on Instagram at @SeagraveSounds, and his music is available on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Deezer, and everywhere music can be found.

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