Claim OwnershipThis podcast is only temporary
Subscribed: 3Played: 64
Subscribe
© 2025 Andy White
Description
Irish songwriter and producer Andy White’s fourth series of This podcast is only temporary tells the story of the writing and recording of his live album 'The night is approaching through some would say it was morning', recorded at Abbey Road with producer John Leckie.
Progressing through the day from morning to night, Andy tells the stories of the songs along the way - as in previous Series 3 in which he looked at his spoken word album 'Good Luck I Hope You Make It', and the first two series which go track by track through solo album ‘This garden is only temporary’ and the 'AT' album co-written with Tim Finn.
34 Episodes
Reverse
Back home in Melbourne, Andy talks you through the writing of Another Sunny Day, the first song on his new album 'This garden is only temporary'. He plays some of the original recordings, most of which made it to the final version, and talks about some of the earliest inspirations for the song and his early plans for the direction of the album. The interview where Tony Visconti analyses the master tape of 'Heroes' is here and the songs Andy mentions from his own catalogue are The Pale Moonl...
Andy talks you through the writing of Tell It How You Feel, the second song on his new album 'This garden is only temporary'. He plays some of the original recordings, most of which made it to the final version, and lets you in on some of the earliest inspirations for the song. Some of the songs Andy mentions are Metal Guru, Sweet Jane and You Never Can Tell. You can listen to Rod's standout piano work with Andy on all of the early albums—check out Street Scenes From My Heart—and One In A Mi...
Andy's albums are available on Bandcamp or www.andywhite.com
In this episode Andy takes a deep dive into the writing and recording of the third track on his new album This garden is only temporary. He's been in the studio with the master tape, and shows you how this many-layered song was written and recorded by playing excerpts of the individual instrument and vocal tracks. Andy talks about layering, using effects, inspiration from John Leckie, how simple melodies and chords can work together and, above all, telling the truth when you are expres...
It's becoming clearer – this podcast is about the elements that go together to make an album! This week, Andy is talking about dreams and expectations, writing about somewhere he knows well—his hometown of Belfast—from an unexpected point of view. He discusses travelling in dreams, compares songs to dreaming, and discusses how it can be possible to 'make things right' by writing about it. As the layers that go to make up Get it Right This Time are unpeeled, you'll hear isolated mixes f...
This week's episode is about writing a different kind of love song, because your own story is not like anyone else's. Making it real. Andy discusses Leonard Cohen, Janice Long, metaphors, similes, and admits how annoying it is when he talks over the music. Andy has gone into the original master recordings of Not so Far Away and you'll hear a mellotron, guitar lines, and a glockenspiel you haven't heard before. Did you spot the Marvin Gaye line on the finished album? The older songs he menti...
Poets on the phone, Jim Morrison shopping for trousers, webless spiders, major/minor changes and so much simile content. Andy takes us on the rollercoaster ride of writing and recording I Miss You, the sixth song on his new album This garden is only temporary. "I wanted to send someone a message without it being an email or electronic. I wanted to say I miss you." Andy talks about songs from Time is a Buffalo in the Art of War and its title. Other songs he mentions are Riders on the Storm,...
Most songs take their cue from visual imagery or emotions. Sometimes hearing and touch are mentioned. Take Me Back Home was started when Andy rolled down the window of his out-of-action car one hot Melbourne night and smelt French pancakes cooking in the bar across the road. In this week's episode he discusses how this took him back to another time and place. To teenage photographs, punk guitar and his piano-playing grandmother. Tom Waits and Marcel Proust are mentioned. You'll hear excerpt...
Alarms, reminders, notifications. Church bells and a space shuttle countdown. Hurry up and read me! You're late! This song started with a concept and collecting the sounds that expressed it. Electronic instruments suggested the beat and melody, the lyrics came after that. Telling the story of how the song came together, Andy digs deep into the recording session to reveal the component parts before playing the rough mix he took to the mix sessions in Calgary. There is a tritone warning—and ma...
This week a special guest drops in to the podcast, freelance designer Sebastian White. Sebastian has designed Andy's albums since 2014, and after chatting about granola for a bit, father and son discuss the process of conceptualising and realising the artwork for This garden is only temporary. They find the process is remarkably similar to that involved in writing and recording the songs, on the way talking about collecting ideas, balance, conceptual art, favourite album covers and psyc...
This episode starts off thinking it is going to be a short one but Andy gets his guitar out to take you through Shine a Light, the last track he's looking at on his latest album This garden is only temporary and discovers how even the simplest song can contain hidden complexities. Some of these remain hidden after he tries to explain the chords (thanks to friend and mentor Joe Bennett for starting him off on this journey of explanation!) On the way he refers to The Lyre of Orpheus, The...
This week's penultimate episode is all about the bass and includes an official bass warning. Often hiding behind everything else, this one is all about the bass. Andy's looking at Bass Priority, a track that didn't make it onto his latest album This garden is only temporary and talking about the sequencing of an album. How important this is, and suggesting some ways you could go about it. There are digressions on vulnerability in your playing style, leaving some musical ideas for another ti...
In the final episode of the series, Andy takes a look at the last song he wrote for This garden is only temporary, but didn't make it to the album's final running order. "Sometimes the last song you write for an album makes sense of the whole album and jumps straight into the running order, but in this case I was happy that nothing would make sense of the questions that were being asked on the record. This is where I started from…" Mysterious! As is The Answers to the Questions. Thanks fo...
The podcast is back! This is the first episode of Series 2 which looks at Andy White and Tim Finn's 'AT' album song by song. Andy has dug out their original writing demos plus some of the emails that whizzed back and forwards across the Tasman Sea between the two pals. This week you'll hear what inspired Andy and Tim to get writing and how this first song came into being – an interview their ALT band mate Liam did with a Dun Laoghaire magazine, a couple of poems, and how they dragged B...
After The Sea Holds the Memory, Andy and Tim started writing Three Sheep Grazing straight away. It started after a conversation with a friend about the village green and globalisation. Find out more in this second episode of the new series and hear the mysterious and marvellous musical elements that contribute to one of the lads' favourite songs on the 'AT' album. Andy mentions two Oliver Postgate TV series he watched when he was a child (and perhaps more recently) Camberwick Green and...
Three tracks into the AT album and Andy steps up with a song that started in a similar way to I Decided to Fly from Altitude. This time, Tim and he go back and forward writing a song about their parents, although some of it ends up being about a certain Irish mongrel. The latest dive into the AT master tapes reveals Bundle of their Dreams' relationship to Seventeen and uncovers the secrets of the dreaded Melodica. But most of all, that writing around a theme close to your heart i...
In this episode Andy turns his attention to Everything Twice, the fourth song he and Tim Finn wrote for the 'AT' album. The three previous songs had worked – the two chums were doing it again, and that was how the songs started. You can do it twice. You'll hear how the song started with one phrase and a method songwriters use for jotting down a melody. Then a variety of increasingly crazed story lines before coming back to the original one. Doing it again, in Melbourne and Auckland. If you...
Sometimes everyone is too busy to talk. Or to meet. Andy has reached Save me a Weekend, the last track on side one of 'AT', the album co-written with Tim Finn. In Episode 5, the pals start off with one of them feeling grumpy and end up writing a wider lament. Thankfully, Andy has edited out the update on his tooth situation, but there are digressions on singing harmony and Harriet the double bass. You can listen to her on I Will Wait and One in a Million. Poetry fans will be all over pathet...
"Hotels." No, "old hotels". "Thick walls." No, "thick thick walls." Pericles, a caterpillar and dashboard lights. If you have only heard the single version of My Regeneration, you will find the whole story here. Andy is halfway through his exploration of the 'AT' album he wrote with Tim Finn. The sleep-inducing yet fascinating BBC series Andy mentions is In Our Time. The other Shakespeare plays are The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. We have no links for Andy's bass playing digres...
In the latest episode of Andy's journey through the 'AT' album he wrote with Tim Finn, he goes off to Canada to play the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. Where folk is not, perhaps, what it seems. He encounters the Warrior backstage and a new song is born. Mostly, Andy waxes lyrical on Canadian folk festivals, their vibe, food, and hotels (always with thick thick walls). However, it is also about co-writing songs with A and B sections—and writing things down immediately, when they happen. As al...
Comments
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States