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From the introduction to my fictional autobiography:

I was born on the road in a cheap motel somewhere along the St. Lawrence River. My mother was a traveling seamstress and my father was a train engineer who'd been blacklisted for giving rides to hobos in his cab. Times were tough, until one day they fell in with a troupe of out-of-work circus freaks who'd started a commune in an old farmhouse in eastern Ontario. There I was named and raised.

The commune eventually failed, so at the age of 13 I hit the road with a stiltwalking Scandinavian violist named Maelstrom. He taught me the rudiments of alchemy and snakecharming, as well as the basic forms of a strange music he called "Hobo Folk Noir." That was the beginning. I was entranced by the haunting melodies he pulled from his gut strings and by the mysteries of the resonator guitar, the mouth harp, the horn violin and other antiquated instruments from a nearly forgotten past. I harboured dreams of traveling the world as a professional banjoist.

By the time I left him, Maelstrom's knees had fallen prey to the stiffening disease and he could no longer walk the great stilts. As we parted he made me promise to carry the old ways forward into the new century. So while I never learned to stiltwalk, I continue to practice this rare form of conjury known as folk music. I write songs for orphans, for freaks, for hobos, for ghosts. For anyone either running from or dancing with their demons. I hear magic in strings, horns, voices and the creaking of rusty gates on moonlit nights. There is a killer in all of us and a God as well. Watch for me on the road and together we'll find them both.

A stitch of truth:

Jeff Andrew is a singer, songwriter, guitarist and fiddler-for-hire living in Vancouver, BC. He learned his craft during years spent hitchhiking, tree planting and busking all over Canada and the western US (including a cross-Canada hitchhiking tour in 2008, with the folk/spoken word group Ghosts of the Highway).

In 2009 he released his debut solo album Vagabonds & Wastrels (on Shade Tree Records, his self-run label) to radio support and critical acclaim across Canada and western Europe. He has performed numerous times at the ArtsWells festival, the Robson Valley Music Festival and the Brandon Folk Music & Arts festival. He has shared stages with great artists like Geoff Berner, Carolyn Mark, CR Avery and Rae Spoon.

Andrew also plays fiddle with Vancouver's notorious country-punk outfit the Joey Only Outlaw Band and tours relentlessly - most recently a trek from Vancouver to Boston and back with Victoria-based folk-punk acts O'Mally and Gumshoe Banshee. Watch for him in 2010 as he releases his second album Hobo Postcards, assembles a touring band called Crows At Midnight and solves the Mystery of the Haunted Calliope.