Andrew Osenga

The music industry is changing and there are bright flowers blooming as new growth gives way to new technologies and ways of doing things. Brite Revolution is one of those flowers. The new site features artists we love like Matthew Perryman Jones, Caedmon’s Call, Katie Herzig, Andy Davis and several others (really, check it out!) – providing subscribers (only $5/month) with two new songs from every artist involved each month, a charitable donation and the chance to support the musicians you love.

Wanting to get the story, we recently sat down with Andy Osenga, formerly of The Normals and currently of Caedmon’s Call, to tell us about his own songwriting, his work with Brite Revolution and what Caedmon’s has been up to lately.

Soul-Audio: What does Brite Revolution provide for your music specifically?

Andy Osenga: What it provides is the opportunity for me to make it. There’s a bunch of great things about Brite and we hope it catches on. We need to get enough subscriptions to keep it sustainable. But it gives to different charities, which for me is Compassion International and for others it’s things like International Justice Mission. But each charity gets a cut of a subscription. But overall there’s an outlet for my music that people can find and it doesn’t have to be on the radio or store shelves for people to get it. It’s constantly new. Each month there are two new songs from me for people to listen to, which is great to have new music out there like that. Then for a guy like me with a wife and kids who doesn’t tour like I used to, I’m not going to be in Indiana this month or probably the next year. And so this allows new music to reach people in a way where I don’t have to write a whole record and then be out there on the road trying to get it to everyone.

It also funds the recording of it all which is supremely helpful. Generally independent musicians don’t have the means to record their own stuff. Even for me, I have studio with no overhead, but I have to pay my mortgage and eat while I record my tracks and pay my musicians. So oftentimes you don’t get that money back, or if you do, you do it over the course of a few years. So Brite provides what a label used to in that it funds the recording out of the subscription money. So that’s really helpful.

SA: How has reception to Brite Revolution been for you?

Andy: Yeah, it’s been great. It’s just a matter of getting the word out. It’s getting people to sort of trust it at this point. I think people think it’s a little weird, because it’s not buying things in the store and it’s not buying things on iTunes a song. So it’s a different sort of model for it, so we have to say, ‘No seriously, it’s legit.’ People sign up and they get a free month, so we’re hoping that people will try it out and see that they will really like it.

SA: What’s the status of Caedmon’s at this point?

Andy: Caedmon’s is also doing Brite Revolution, so they’re putting stuff up on there. That’s really it for them right now. Everyone’s just laying low with kids and families. I’m working at Sputnik Studios with Mitch Dane and I’m writing a lot of songs for other artists. I had a new song on the Chris Tomlin and several other projects. I’m just writing, producing, engineering and playing guitar on other people’s records. It’s just very random. I’m a musical jack-of-all-trades and hopefully at the end of the month, I’ve made enough money. [Laughs]

SA: [Laughs] Is that good for you?

Andy: Yeah it is. I love it. It really is. I have a lot of things I really enjoy doing and that tends to be writing and recording. I get to work with my friends and sort of bounce around. You never really know what’s going to come in financially but the Lord provides. So you can tell people to give me a call if they need a guitar player or need someone to produce their record. [Laughs]

SA: What about your own songwriting?

Andy: Well, literally the thing that I just closed before talking to you was my latest for Brite Revolution for next month. So I’ve been working hard on that. The way that I see it is that once my 12 songs are up, I’ve got my new record right there. Once a song is up for two months, then it’s back down. So Cason Cooley helped me produce three tracks, so we’re just getting those ready for mixing and that happens tomorrow. So yeah, other than that, I’m just writing like a fool, but I’m wanting to find the right place to get it out there.

SA: Can you explain that a bit more? The songs are up on Brite and then they’re not?

Andy: The artists retain ownership of the masters, so once they’ve been up on the site for two months, they come down off the site. The artist then gets them, so after a year I have 12 songs that I own the copyrights to – straight up, they’re mine. So I can just print ‘em up and there’s my record.

SA: You say you’re writing like a fool, so what about your writing style and how that’s changed. Are you writing about things you weren’t 10 years ago? Or able to write about subjects now that you couldn’t before?

Andy: As a writer, you only write about what you know. So now I can write songs about kids and things that happened over 7 years of marriage versus 2 years. That’s a lot of things. You’ve just seen more things and you have a better vocabulary – even of experience and just musically as well. You hear different things and you learn them. Every six months, I find I’m able to do things on the guitar I couldn’t do before, so that allows you to be more creative. So it’s a total process and I’m not even sure why someone would want to hear a record by a 22-year-old. They don’t know anything. [Laughs]

Some of my favorite records tend to be old guys who have something to say and they know they have something to say because they’ve lived it, you know? They don’t have to think through it. That was my first record. I look back and realize that I don’t agree with everything I said back then and that I didn’t really know anything. So what do you do? That’s how you learn to make records. Paul Simon had things on his last record that he couldn’t have had on his first record.

SA: When you look back, what songs are you talking about? What do you sneer at in your own catalog?

Andy: Oh, gosh. That first Normals record… most of those songs I wrote in high school. It’s like, ‘I’m mad at my dad because I didn’t even get to go to the ball.’ I just don’t think that way anymore. [Laughs] Theologically, you also change your views and you don’t believe the exact same things for 30 or 40 years. You learn things about God and that changes your view. You learn that God exists and that he loves me, but at the end of the day, there’s a lot of mystery. There are very few things you can be absolutely for sure about. The rest of it, you believe in a person but not specific, you know?

SA: I assume that’s the art you’re drawn to personally – the mysterious…

Andy: Oh, yeah. It’s not art if it doesn’t do that. The very nature of music or a movie or a photograph is that there’s something intangible about it. Literally you can’t even define music. What is it? It’s just sound. You can try. It’s just notes or sounds strung together. But even that’s not it. It’s just music. You can’t define it. There’s something essentially supernatural about making a piece of art. The supernatural, by definition, is beyond our ability to understand. It supercedes the natural. So that’s a very obnoxious way of saying it. [Laughs]

The better way to say it is probably this: Bono said the only art I care about is someone running to God or away from him. I think that’s what I’m trying to say and that’s the best way to say it. I thought that was fantastic. It’s just when someone says, ‘This is it. This is how it is.’ You just look and think, ‘That’s not real.’

SA: That quote from Bono is interesting because there’s only permission for the Christian, most of the time, to only write about running to God.

Andy: Well, the thing is that there’s not any of us doing 100% one or the other. All of us are searching for truth, searching for beauty, wanting to be loved. We’re worshipping our own little idols of lust, control, money or whatever. We’re always doing both of those things.

• www.andyosenga.com
• www.myspace.com/andrewosenga

↓ One comment

#1 JoFresh on September 14th, 2009 at 6:45 am

Andrews good, but… Derek Webbs new album is AMAZING. one of the best albums i’ve heard in a long time. completely did not expect that from him. Its called Stockholm Syndrome and you can check out some cool videos about the album on youtube

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