Today we’d like to introduce you to Andre Berry.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Andre. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I moved to Los Angeles in 1985 from Cleveland, Ohio to pursue a career as a musician, specifically, as a bass player. I enrolled in Los Angeles City College as I had heard it had a fantastic Music Education Program. It did! I loved LACC! In 1989, I was at a crossroads because I had taken all the available music classes, but in order to get a degree, I had to take the prerequisite classes like Biology, Psychology, History…etc. At the same time, I got a call to go on the road with The Busboys of the Eddie Murphy movie “48 Hours”. I took the gig and went on the road. Such would turn out to be the story of my career, and as it turns out, at every crossroads, I chose to play my bass, and since that time, my bass has taken me all over the world many, many times. I have been blessed to play with a number of exciting artists in both pop, R&B and Jazz, the most recent being my five years stint with David Sanborn, up until this year when Covid-19 halted live performances. I also have been blessed to play with TLC, Tom Scott & The L.A. Express, The Brothers Johnson (filling in for the deceased Louis Johnson), and many, many artists in the Smooth Jazz genre., most recently playing with Eric Marienthal, Chris Standring and Marc Antoine.
Over the years, I have toured with Candy Dulfer of Prince’s band, Peter White, Kirk Whalum, Rick Braun, Wayman Tisdale, and others. I have also been blessed to play on a few films for phenomenal composer David Newman, and in that atmosphere, I learned a lot. I’m in the studio on the Sony Lot and my eyes are watching every move and I would go home and take notes! I am blessed to have worked with these people. I also have always pursued songwriting and studio engineering and production and when times got tough as a bassist, my studio chops were always something I always fell back on. My mother made me go to school for recording engineering back in 1982 and to this day, I thank God she did! When COVID hit and live gigs dried up, for me, I knew exactly what I was going to do. Go into my studio and get to writing songs. I had already been in a writing and recording groove over the years, releasing 7 cd’s of my own and writing songs and jingles for Vision 1 publishing company, so for me, the transition was not only natural, it wasn’t even really a transition.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
To make a living year after year in the music business can be a rocky road. You have to have multiple ways of making income from music. If you play and instrument that’s one way. If you can teach that’s another. If you can write songs thats another. If you can engineer studio equipment, that’s another. If you are an internet tech wizard that can turn your music into likes that’s another. Whatever the case and however you go about it, you gotta be after it, putting time in and creating your nitch, because yeah, it can be thick and it can be lean! The struggles are waiting for the phone to ring with your next road gig that will earn you $5,000 – $10,000 so you can be cool for a bit. But while you wait, what are you doing? You gotta have something and if you have nothing, you’re a sitting duck, waiting to get evicted! To me, that’s the whole trick to surviving in the music business. What else can I do in the interim?
Can you give our readers some background on your music?
I have recently started up a company called SCOMV (Socially Conscious Original Music Videos) with the goal in mind to make original music that talks about the social issues of the day. Lo and behold, Social Consciousness & Protests erupt like two months after I get started, so I am hoping I am in line with the stars. So far so good. The goal is to make socially conscious music for TV, Film and The Internet that speaks and helps people to untangle the issues at hand, make sense of it all, and make some decisions about how they want to proceed going forward with their lives, and also if the cosmos permits, live my dream of Film Scoring. I have been dying for an opportunity for decades and so we are doing a short film and music video of our own that I will score and compose the song for. I just can’t wait on the phone to ring any longer, so we have to do it for ourselves. Back to SCOMV.org… It is our slogan, “Music Can Change the World” and it can. Ask Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, James Taylor, Carol King, Joan Armatrading, Tracy Chapman, and any other artist that talked about social issues in their music. I really feel there is a need for it in the world today, so SCOMV.org is alive and growing every day. It’s my very own, small little Motown if you will. I’ve got some fantastic singers and musicians and we are trying our very best to make music that matters. So that’s where I am today!
What were you like growing up?
I had a pretty confused childhood. I was a music geek very young. I got my first records at a very young age, for my 9th birthday I got “Thank you Fa Lettin me Be Mice Elf” by Sly & The Family Stone and “I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5 and listened to them over and over and over and over for months. turning into years nonstop. I still listen to those two songs! At nine years old, my older brother put some headphones on me and said listen to this! and I proceeded to listen to all of Led Zepplin II with “Whole Lotta Love” & “Ramble On” and “Dazed & Confused” and Man oh Man! Was I ever “Dazed & Confused” I listened to music all day…I played piano and got a guitar at 13. Tommy Bolin was my #1 hero. But then I got lost. Cleveland was a tough town to grow up in. Lost of tough guys that would bully nerds and snatch you out of your world and into theirs and I was a victim of that. You had to fit in or get your head stomped and so the guitar began to sit, and the streets called. Lucky for me…Lucky for me…I had just turned 17 and my sister had a boyfriend that brought his cousin over for the family Xmas gathering. I was in charge of spinning the records like I was every year. It was Stevie Wonder, The Temptation, Earth, Wind & Fire, The Jackson 5 Xmas album, Nat King Cole, Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis (my Mother’s favorites, couldn’t not make Mom happy on Xmas!) I’m spinning records along, and playing air guitar, drums, bass and hitting every lick, even the tambourines and the claps… and my sister’s boyfriends cousin came over to me and shouted “Man what are you doing?!” I said “What’d I do?!” I thought something was wrong with the stereo or something…He said “Man, I’m looking at you from across the room and it’s so obvious to me. You’re supposed to be playing Music!!” and it hit me like a ton of bricks!! I had forgot that’s that what I was supposed to do.!! I ran in and told my mother “Mom. I’m gong to play the bass!!” She shunned me on “Can’t you see I’m in here talking to your Aunt Betty…get along boy…” “but I said again…”No for real Ma. I’m going to play the bass!! I’m going to do it!!” My mother didn’t say anything more, but she understood because she called me from worked a few days later and said “Ok if you’re going to do this, I’m going to ask your older brother to go to the music store and help you pick out a bass… I’m going to give you $100 to put it in Layaway and if you really want it, you have to get the rest together to get it out..” and we did and I did. April of the next year after that Xmas party I got a Rickenbacker 4001 bass just like the one Chris Squire of Yes played ( My brother took me to see Yes perform at the World Series of Rock in Cleveland two years prior)
and even though I was in my 12 grade year…once I got that bass, the world stopped. I didn’t come out of the house. I sat with my buddy Darry by my side and I practiced and practiced and practiced, and that next fall, we went to the University of Cincinnati to start college, and I practiced and practiced and practiced and the following fall I had to tell my parents I wasn’t going back, that I was going to play the bass. My Mom’s immediate reaction was, “What else are you going to do?!” I told her…”Nothing, I’m going to play the bass!” and her response was…”Pick something else to go along with it, because you are going to do something else too…you hear me?” and I picked recording engineering school. Beachwood Recording in Beachwood, Ohio. As a matter of fact, I got top honors in the class and our class project was to record a live band and each of us got to go into the studio with the teacher looking over our shoulder and we got to mix the song and ask for help if we needed it. I didn’t ask for help, and got top honors for the final mix, with the band using my mix on a Local TV morning show. I just instinctively knew what records were supposed to sound like, and once I learned what the gear did, it was a natural extension of my world. It was the next phase. and to this day, I like my guitars distorted, my grooves tight, and music with soul, whether it be Led Zepplin soul or Gladys Knight soul, the mix has to bring that soul to life. Thats my life story in a nutshell.
Contact Info:
- Website: SCOMV.org
- Email: andrerberry@gmail.com
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