Trouble Andrew - Here Comes Trouble
He may be a pro snowboarder, but Trevor Andrew – AKA Trouble Andrew – is developing a new identity in music with his modern dance-rock. And the Canadian’s major champion is none other than his fiance, Santigold.
Trevor Andrew released his debut album as Trouble Andrew independently back in 2005 but, after attracting a grassroots following, Virgin came calling. He’s now reconfigured the album. Meanwhile, his label has generated interest in Australia with the Santigold-featuring single Bang Bang.
Some years ago, while recovering from a serious (and sobering) knee injury, Andrew stayed with his then girlfriend Santi White in Philly. He messed around with her musical gear – and it proved therapeutic. The Nova Scotia native had never before picked up an instrument, but music, so integral to extreme sports subcultures, was a constant in his life. “Music was always a huge inspiration in my snowboarding and skateboarding – just in my life in general,” he says. “I’m a huge music fan.”
He’d dabbled with the turntables yet never committed enough time to mastering them. However, unable to snowboard, Andrew suddenly had time to kill. “I had nine months to do nothing and [White] had all the stuff around the house and so I’d play with it and just experiment, because I was bored,” he says. “I ended up writing a few little riffs on her project at the time – this punk rock project, Stiffed. She saw me really taking an interest and bought me a guitar and a four-track tape recorder for my birthday so, when I was at home and no one was around, I would write these little songs. I bought myself a keyboard and just started getting more and more interested as I was discovering it.”
White “snuck” Andrew’s demos to New York producers Shitake Monkey and this culminated in his album. The snowboarder has tapped into punk, hip hop and electro, concocting a fresh hybrid he’s dubbed “crunk rock”. Amazingly, the Trouble Andrew album comprises all of his first songs.
Andrew has since penned at least 40 more tracks. “It’s not like I’m panicked, ‘Oh my God, I gotta come up with my next record’, because I already have two new records that are ready to be recorded,” he says.
Andrew isn’t abandoning snowboarding. Music is, for the present, an “extension” of his sporting activity. “It’s all art – snowboarding, skateboarding, the music,” he says. “I just like to be creative. I design snowboards, I design my own graphics, I design clothing. Snowboarding is my life and that’s me and I’ll always be a part of it. But, obviously, I can’t be a professional snowboarder for the rest of my life – it’s just physically not possible. I definitely have a lot more time left in me... But you can make music forever. I can snowboard forever, but I just can’t snowboard on that level forever. So I can see music being something that I carry on and do forever. I probably will snowboard forever, too, I just won’t be jumping over 100 foot gaps and stuff forever.”
WHO: Trouble Andrew
WHAT: Trouble Andrew through Virgin / EMI
WHEN: Out now
MORE: troubleandew.com