Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrew Corradini.
Hi Andrew, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
If by “story” you mean my life in music… I started playing the acoustic guitar at the age of 15. 100% self taught. Listening to cassette tapes and running my fingers up and down the neck trying to figure out the notes and chords and melodies I heard. I joined my first band at 17 years old. I played bass in a 9-piece Reggae/Hip-Hop group. Bass, drums, electric guitar, keys, trumpet, trombone, two singers and a DJ. We toured around Southern California a little bit playing clubs and festivals. We put out one album.
After about four years I left to go backpacking throughout Europe and the UK, solo. I also made it to Egypt and Israel during that time. As you can imagine, it was one of the most eye-opening experiences of my life. To recall and describe my memories of that trip would be to write a book. As far out as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and back up to Liverpool and so many places in between, crisscrossing here and there, back and forth multiple times. A fair amount of time in Italy and Spain. Reading, writing, hiking, diving, meditating, drinking, eating, sleeping, partying. New friends, romances. And in 2001, so all before iPhones. I mean there were Internet cafes around, but it got too expensive. So I just had my “Let’s Go Europe” book and my backpack and guitar and that’s it. Hahaha. Old school. After nearly a year out there I returned home. I missed music and performing on stages, writing songs and working on a project.
I came home with an intent to focus on all of that. I wanted to sing and be a front man this time around. I rented a room in a cool beach house with some friends down in Newport Beach started a new band. A 4-piece Pop/Rock band. Bass, drums and two electric guitars. Sometimes keys. Again eventually performing all over Southern California. We also recorded one record. I did all the songwriting for the band.
During this time I also happened to fall in love and get married. The two of us moved to Laguna Beach, which is where I was born and raised and am currently living in. Juggling the desire for a settled family life and at the same time a life in rock & roll as a working musician in a working band proved difficult at times. I had a completely understanding wife and partner. But it wasn’t easy. Six months after having our first daughter, Alabama, the band broke up. It was a nice five-year stretch and came with some sadness. But I had also lost my father at that same time to Alzheimer’s, so I was a bit of a rollercoaster. It was definitely an emotional time to say the least. I was now married and had started a family and I wanted to be closer to home. I took up the craft of sound engineering, mixing and producing and started a recording studio in a 1-bedroom apartment in downtown Laguna Beach, below where we lived. I was recording other artists as well, helping develop their material and put out their records. During this time I had also started a new original Folk-Americana group, consisting of six members including myself. It was so fun and refreshing, and so completely new for me. Upright bass, drums, acoustic guitar, lap steel guitar, mandolin and a backup singer. We played all new original songs which I had written. I felt like I was in a really good groove. This went on for a couple years. I started loosely working on a songwriting project with my dear friend Russell Long that would lay the foundation for something special to come years later.
It was during this time, however, while my wife was pregnant with our second daughter, during her third trimester, that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Life got real heavy again in a hurry, and in light of not finding any desirable, long-term solutions to her health issues in Southern California, we decided to pack up the family and move out to the middle of the ocean, to island of Maui, HI for a fresh start. We felt like we needed to set our sights on a new landscape with new surroundings, gain a new outlook. Personally, aside from the health problems in our home, I felt very much drawn to the lifestyle out there. The aloha spirit really spoke to me in a huge way. I felt like I was somewhere I had longed to be my entire life without knowing it. Like I had finally gone home. In the brief two years we were out there, I found a fair amount of personal success within the island music scene. I lucked out in that the home we moved into had a huge dry storage basement that was bigger and more spacious than my original Laguna Beach studio. It was on a beautiful large property out in Haiku on the edge of the jungle. A Craigslist find, around the same price as our rent back in Laguna. And the only rental even available haha. We scored for sure. So once again I set up shop and began recording my own songs as well as others’. I was also performing all over the island in just about every hip joint, bar and club with live music, playing street fairs and festivals, beach weddings, resorts, and opening for some cool touring acts as well. It was also at this time that I established a relationship, and signed a deal, with the LA-based licensing company HyperExtension, and began working with an agent and submitting original works for sync. I was creating music for commercials, short films, actions sports videos, you name it. Spending my days with my daughters at the beach or at home while my wife worked (she landed a job as a travel writer), then performing in the early evenings somewhere around the island, and finally coming home and staying up writing and recording in the studio until about 1am. A lot of those times were just magical.
But after two full years my wife was not getting any better. So once again, we moved. This time to a 25-acre mountain farm in North-Eastern California, to the town of Montgomery Creek in Shasta county. Owned and operated by a dear friend of mine. My wife’s family was in Bend, OR which was only 5 hours north, which made her feel good being closer to them. During this year on the farm I played very little music, focusing more on my wife’s health, taking care of my daughters, and tending the land which consisted of many animals and vegetable gardens. We also had multiple vineyards full of different varietals of wine grapes. I really got lost in that lifestyle and had it not been for my wife’s deterioration in health, I might still be up there today. It was wholesome, beautiful work, every single day. Tiresome too. Early to rise, early to bed. Lots to do. Physical labor lifestyle. I think I was also getting tired of what we were dealing with, the intimate relationship with her cancer and what it was doing to her, to us. Despite best efforts to cure her of this illness, in her own way, holistically, we felt like we kept falling short. A clean bill of health seemed further and further away. Everything was getting pretty blurry. Life in general had been anything but ordinary, for many years at this point. Lots of ups and downs. And we were on a work/trade deal with the farm. So we were earning barely any money. And as it turned out, certain circumstances led me back down to Southern California, to Laguna Beach in order to play music again and perform as much as I could again to earn more money to pay for different holistic medical treatments. While my wife and daughters stayed in the farm. They eventually moved up to Bend and in with her folks as I remained in Laguna, working and sending money up. As logistics would have it, there was more money to be made down in Orange County in an immediate period of time than up in Bend, from my vantage point with what I do. All of that lasted about five or six months. It was the most difficult time of my life, being away from all three of them for that long.
My wife passed away on Mother’s Day nearly 7 years ago. We had been together 14 years, married 11. Since then my daughters and I have now been living back down here in Laguna Beach, in Laguna Canyon. We were actually here together, the three of us when she passed. In order to tend to my personal grief during those early years of being back in Laguna Beach again full time, I dove head first into the local music scene again, performing as much as I could, with tons of friends all over Orange County. It was my way of coping, numbing the pain. Being in public, around lots of people, performing. I had started a giant 14-piece party band called The Farm. It was a huge sound and gained a lot of local interest. We threw great big concerts/parties and had tons of fun. But it was all cover songs. Playing for playing’s sake. Not a lot of creativity. I once more began to miss the “push” of writing and putting out original music, of working on a project. I felt like I was lacking that for many years. I took the general idea of The Farm with its “large-band” sound and scaled it down to seven members. I began uncovering some old stones, revisiting past original songs and writing new ones again with an old friend.
Russell and I finally formed the band we had always dreamed about with five other close friends. We are called The Great North Special. A original 7-piece Jam band that crosses genres such as Psych-Rock, Country-Blues, Funk-Soul, Experimental-Pop and Jazz. We have amassed a large community fanbase that stretches from LA to San Diego, and even up through San Francisco and all around the Bay area and along the CA coast. Our sound might be considered reflective of bands such as Little Feat and The Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers and The Band. It’s all original, super fun and funky, beautiful and groovy all at the same time. We battled through Covid and lockdown and maintained our love for the project and the desire to forge ahead no matter what. We released an EP in the spring of 2020, which to no one’s surprise proved a little difficult to gain attention. We followed that up with a single and music video the next year. We are thrilled to be releasing our debut full length album this spring 2024. A proper release with in all aspects of production, mixing/mastering, artwork/layout, photography, etc. with an astoundingly generous backing from the City of Laguna Beach Arts Commission in the amount of $20,000. The album, “Calithump Parade,” named after the title track, is hands down the most ambitious and creative musical project of my life to date and I am overjoyed, after everything I’ve been through, to be working together with this group of guys on this project. I am more proud of this record than any other artistic endeavor of my past.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No, not a smooth road. But definitely a fun one. As I previously mentioned, there were many personal things happening throughout my whole life, constantly it seemed. Lots of hurdles along the way, notably marriage and fatherhood, and my spouse’s health, and simply trying to maintain a life in the arts and to take care of and provide for my family while making music. The dance between sacrificing and dreaming big. It’s a daily practice. There were definitely bouts with depression here and there, and self-doubt, fending off naysayers, and some questionable decisions made from time to time, risks taken. Which is all a part of a life well-lived I guess. I feel like now I am thriving more than ever, confident in all aspects of my life. My daughters might be the best kids on the planet haha. They are truly amazing young ladies and I am in awe of them every day, how they have handled everything and how they carry themselves in this world. I am beyond proud of who they are and who they continue to become. I’m so grateful for them. Being their dad has been the great joy and privilege of my life.
And I’m so happy to be creating the best most fulfilling music I ever have to date with some of the most talented musicians and guys I’ve ever met.
And lastly, I have fallen in love again with a most beautiful woman and most gracious and patient and loving partner. Everything feels right and I feel very fortunate to be in this place right now.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I might have touched on some of this in the previous answer. What I do? I make music. I always have. I’ve never done anything else professionally, except maybe wait tables for a minute in my early adulthood.
What am I known for? I don’t know. I have a big beard. I have two beautiful daughters. People here in our local community of Laguna Beach know us all pretty well, since it’s such an interconnected community of people.
What am I most proud of? My two daughters and maintaining a life in music. And a continuing passion to make music.
I believe in being as kind as I can be to every person and thing I come across this life.
How do you think about luck?
I’m not sure what role luck has in all of this. I do believe that there are things in motion out there beyond what I can see or reach, energies helping shape my life. I don’t know quite how to describe what I feel, nor do I feel the need to do so. I simply have my own way, my personal formula, for how to “be” and act out in the world. I trust there are greater things at play, but I do not need to know what those are. I believe in searching for the silver lining in every moment. As long as I work hard, and do my part, and simply trust in the kindness of others and the beauty that is all around me every day, and reciprocate that, I think things will always work out and be all right.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thegreatnorthspecial.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/thegreatnorthspecial
- Other: www.andrewcorradini.com
