This podcast is only temporary

In this episode Andy turns his attention to Everything Twice, the fourth song he and Tim Finn wrote for the 'AT' album. The three previous songs had worked – the two chums were doing it again, and that was how the songs started. You can do it twice. You'll hear how the song started with one phrase and a method songwriters use for jotting down a melody. Then a variety of increasingly...

Three tracks into the AT album and Andy steps up with a song that started in a similar way to I Decided to Fly from Altitude.  This time, Tim and he go back and forward writing a song about their parents, although some of it ends up being about a certain Irish mongrel. The latest dive into the AT master tapes reveals Bundle of their Dreams' relationship to Seventeen and uncovers the secrets o...

After The Sea Holds the Memory, Andy and Tim started writing Three Sheep Grazing straight away. It started after a conversation with a friend about the village green and globalisation. Find out more in this second episode of the new series and hear the mysterious and marvellous  musical elements that contribute to one of the lads' favourite songs on the 'AT' album. Andy mentions two...

The podcast is back! This is the first episode of Series 2 which looks at Andy White and Tim Finn's 'AT' album song by song. Andy has dug out their original writing demos plus some of the emails that whizzed back and forwards across the Tasman Sea between the two pals.  This week you'll hear what inspired Andy and Tim to get writing and how this first song came into being – an...

In the final episode of the series, Andy takes a look at the last song he wrote for This garden is only temporary , but didn't make it to the album's final running order. "Sometimes the last song you write for an album makes sense of the whole album and jumps straight into the running order, but in this case I was happy that nothing would make sense of the questions that were being...

This week's penultimate episode is all about the bass and includes an official bass warning. Often hiding behind everything else, this one is all about the bass. Andy's looking at Bass Priority, a track that didn't make it onto his latest album This garden is only temporary and talking about the sequencing of an album. How important this is, and suggesting some ways you could go abo...

This episode starts off thinking it is going to be a short one but Andy gets his guitar out to take you through Shine a Light, the last track he's looking at on his latest album This garden is only temporary and discovers how even the simplest song can contain hidden complexities.  Some of these remain hidden after he tries to explain the chords (thanks to friend and mentor Joe Bennett for st...

This week a special guest drops in to the podcast, freelance designer Sebastian White . Sebastian has designed Andy's albums since 2014, and after chatting about granola for a bit, father and son discuss the process of conceptualising and realising the artwork for This garden is only temporary .  They find the process is remarkably similar to that involved in writing and recording the songs,...

Alarms, reminders, notifications. Church bells and a space shuttle countdown. Hurry up and read me! You're late! This song started with a concept and collecting the sounds that expressed it. Electronic instruments suggested the beat and melody, the lyrics came after that. Telling the story of how the song came together, Andy digs deep into the recording session to reveal the component parts b...

Most songs take their cue from visual imagery or emotions. Sometimes hearing and touch are mentioned. Take Me Back Home was started when Andy rolled down the window of his out-of-action car one hot Melbourne night and smelt French pancakes cooking in the bar across the road. In this week's episode he discusses how this took him back to another time and place. To teenage photographs, punk guit...

Poets on the phone, Jim Morrison shopping for trousers, webless spiders, major/minor changes and so much simile content. Andy takes us on the rollercoaster ride of writing and recording I Miss You, the sixth song on his new album This garden is only temporary . "I wanted to send someone a message without it being an email or electronic. I wanted to say I miss you." Andy talks about songs...

This week's episode is about writing a different kind of love song, because your own story is not like anyone else's. Making it real. Andy discusses Leonard Cohen , Janice Long , metaphors, similes, and admits how annoying it is when he talks over the music. Andy has gone into the original master recordings of Not so Far Away and you'll hear a mellotron , guitar lines, and a glocken...

It's becoming clearer – this podcast is about the elements that go together to make an album! This week, Andy is talking about dreams and expectations, writing about somewhere he  knows well—his hometown of Belfast—from an unexpected point of view. He discusses travelling in dreams, compares songs to dreaming, and discusses how it can be possible to 'make things right' by writing ab...

In this episode Andy takes a deep dive into the writing and recording of the third track on his new album This garden is only temporary . He's been in the studio with the master tape, and shows you how this many-layered song was written and recorded by playing excerpts of the individual instrument and vocal tracks.  Andy talks about layering, using effects, inspiration from John Leckie, how s...

Andy talks you through the writing of Tell It How You Feel, the second song on his new album 'This garden is only temporary'. He plays some of the original recordings, most of which made it to the final version, and lets you in on some of the earliest inspirations for the song. Some of the songs Andy mentions are Metal Guru , Sweet Jane and You Never Can Tell . You can listen to Rod&apos...

Andy's albums are available on Bandcamp or www.andywhite.com Podcast artwork: Sebi White

Back home in Melbourne, Andy talks you through the writing of Another Sunny Day, the first song on his new album 'This garden is only temporary'. He plays some of the original recordings, most of which made it to the final version, and talks about some of the earliest inspirations for the song and his early plans for the direction of the album. The interview where Tony Visconti analyses...