“Even when I started writing songs, I never thought about putting out a record under my own name, because I didn’t have a lot of ambition about touring as a solo artist. Then once I had the CD in my hands, I wondered, ‘How is anybody going to buy this album if I don’t tour as Kristin Andreassen?’ The material on my solo record doesn’t sound like Uncle Earl or Sometimes Why. It’s my own thing, and I’m too busy in those bands to put the Kristin Andreassen band together. I don’t need to do that. And there are enough solo singer-songwriters with their guitars out there hitting the open mics. The one thing I realized I could do was win a songwriting contest. Then I could put a sticker on the front of the record that says such a song won a song contest.”
With that in mind, she entered “Crayola Doesn’t Have a Color for Your Eyes” in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest and the songwriters’ contest at MerleFest. A finalist in both, she won $5000 in the Lennon contest for best children’s song.
Still, she has yet to play a solo concert. “Since I already am in two successful bands, it’s pretty liberating because a solo record really is free of commercial consideration. It’s an interesting thing to navigate as a person in a band: how much of your identity becomes that band and how do you forge an identity outside the band? I’m in this band Uncle Earl that’s achieving some success. Do I just ride that and put all my energy there, or do I do something that establishes me outside the band?”
For now, Andreassen seems comfortable with a quartet who’ve graduated from borrowing vehicles to renting mini-vans to owning a 12-passenger van and having a road manager, and a trio who do their best to fit all their gear into one rolling suitcase. But before our lunch is over, she does promise to play at least one solo show in town this year. Watch this space to find out when and where.
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