Andrea Perry

Born on August 8, 1967, during what many consider pop music’s most daring era, Andrea Perry grew up shaped by the decade’s eclectic mix of bubblegum sounds and progressive ideals such as Free to Be...You and Me. Both parents worked in music—her father as a pianist and university professor, her mother as a classical composer, performer, and the producer and host of KMFA’s Into the Light program—yet the only pop records in their collection were Beatles albums, which ultimately steered Perry toward songwriting after an extended period of development.

At age five her family left Ohio for Austin, Texas, where her father had taken a teaching post at the University of Texas. Although she briefly attempted formal piano instruction, Perry soon abandoned the lessons, reasoning that the Beatles had succeeded without reading music. She continued teaching herself and, by ten or eleven, knew she wanted to compose. During her teenage years a boyfriend introduced her to the Clash, the Talking Heads, David Bowie, Lou Reed, the Police, and the Pretenders; those influences, combined with a borrowed four-track recorder, prompted her first recordings in the summer before college.

For her freshman year at the University of Southern California—where her father had also begun teaching—Perry purchased her initial electronic keyboard from an Animotion member along with a used four-track and a $40 microphone, advancing her experiments rapidly. The following year she transferred to Hampshire College, took up guitar, and served as keyboardist in the R.E.M.-ish Ice Weasels, whose members included future labelmate Aaron Tucker of the Sleepwalkers, singer/songwriter Paul Melançon, and drummer, animator, and filmmaker Billy Greene. After graduation she persuaded everyone except Greene to relocate to Austin; together with drummer Mike McElhaney they formed Wax Elephant, which cultivated a modest, devoted audience through 1991 and 1992 before issuing a cassette and then dissolving over creative differences regarding the band’s direction.

Perry returned to her four-track, producing limited-run solo cassettes and CDs while also composing music for video games and CD-ROMs. She later added bass, moved to hard-disk recording, and recruited drummer Chris Searles, known for work with David Garza and Shawn Colvin, to complete her first official solo album, Saturday Morning Sweet Shoppe, released in 2000 on Trust Issue Records. Although several songs dated back years, the confident production and classic pop melodies gave the record a fresh, immediate, and timeless quality. It received strong critical notice, especially through www.mp3.com, yet sales remained modest. Perry followed it with the similarly catchy Two in 2002.