About Andy

I was born in Slaton, Texas in late June of 1948.  I spent my first few years on a farm just north of town before moving with my family to Lubbock when I was five.  I attended public schools there and got my undergraduate degree from Texas Tech University.  I spent the last six years of the 1970s in the Denver area before removing myself to the Llano Estacado, where I remain.  Flatness is in my genetic makeup.  I am dependent upon our 360º of horizon that permits a perfect view of our 180º of sky.  While I don’t consider myself to be a claustrophobe, trees in sufficient number cause me to sympathize with the condition.

       My dad had done some day-working at the Forrest Ranch in the Yellowhouse Canyon before I was born, and I’ve a fifth-generation-back uncle, Charlie Goodnight, who was a drover and rancher.   As a kid, I chopped cotton, mowed lawns, and sacked groceries, none of that horseback.  While living in Colorado, I was one of the founding members of the Colorado Law Enforcement Rodeo Association, an outfit aimed at getting inner-city and problem kids to a more wholesome and healthy life by exposing them to the culture of the American West, though after meeting several PRCA crazies I had second thoughts about our methodology.  I rode bulls only one year, or rather tried to ride them, after which I unsuccessfully lobbied for the adoption of the cumulative ride rule — in which an entrant’s time on each ride was to be added up over the season, the total divided by eight as the last buzzer buzzed at the end of the year with the winner being determined by the total number of complete rides, if any had been achieved.  I have gathered cows twice, once with J. B. Allen and once with Frankie McWhorter, and flanked calves during brandings on more than one occasion.  I have never been in a horse wreck or a cow wreck, other than in my short stint in amateur rodeo, which was a total wreck.  And as you might guess, I have never been a cowboy.

       I have, however, been lots of other things.  The latter half of my working life has been spent in the arts, primarily as a writer and performer.  The beginning half, though, I spent as a manager and supervisor and budget-planner in two very different, but very intense, worlds.  The first dozen years I was in police work, half in my home town of Lubbock and half in Lakewood, Colorado.  During my time in Lubbock, I was shot at, but never hit, stabbed at, but never cut, worked through one major tornado disaster in 1970 and a riot the following year.  I was fortunate enough to gain a spot on the night shift, which allowed me to attend college classes during the day and complete an undergraduate degree in sociology.  In Lakewood, I spent a couple of years in graduate school at the University of Denver, all the while I had a series of interesting assignments in police administration.

       I left police work so as to be able to play music, but took a decade-long detour in business, thinking that in the world of commerce I’d make enough money to be able to afford a life in art.  Which was a backwards way of thinking, as life isn’t something to be purchased, but rather to be spent.  From time to time, people credit me with courage for having quit my day job to write and sing songs, but it was not courage at all — it was desperation.  Yet that is important, too, for in my own life I have since been able to witness the power of art to transform the world, rather than to merely reflect it.  Since 1991, I have been able to make my way as a writer and performer.  I’ve recorded over a dozen albums of original music, written over a half-dozen plays and the same number of books.  I’ve been fortunate to have won some nice awards and probably just as fortunate to have never had a big hit.  One of my greatest honors has been my induction into the West Texas Walk of Fame, in September of 2014.  Along with my writing and performing, I’ve taught music and art in university and workshop settings, and I edit the book series “Voice in the American West” for Texas Tech University Press.

       I’ve been married only once, in 1968, and still am.  Mary Ann, my wife, is both a baby-whisperer and an incomparable and incorrigible animal lover.  We’ve two children, Ian and Emily, both of whom are fine musicians and writers but, in spite of that, are also gainfully employed.  We’ve a daughter-in-law — Bonnie, who’s over-employed as both an artist and the mother to three of our grandkids, Pixel and Sterling and Zia — and a son-in-law, Justin — who doesn’t let his work as a middle-school administrator get in the way of his work in photography.  Emily and Justin round-out the grandchild list with Margaux and Maizy.

Awards

1985 Kerrville Folk Festival, winner, New Folk Songwriters'  Contest

1994 Western Heritage "Wrangler" Award for Outstanding Original Music given by the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, for “Charlie Goodnight”

1996 Western Heritage "Wrangler" Award for “The Freedom Song”

1997 John Ben Shepperd Jr. Craftsmanship Award, Texas Historical Foundation

1998 Western Heritage "Wrangler" Award in Outstanding Poetry for My Cowboy’s Gift

2010 Western Heritage "Wrangler" Award for Best Traditional Album and Producer for “Welcome to the Tribe”

2014 Western Heritage "Wrangler" Award for Outstanding Photography Book in 2014 for A Family of the Land: The Texas Photography of Guy Gillette

2014 inducted into the West Texas Walk of Fame

2014 Will Rogers Medallion Award for A Family of the Land: The Texas Photography of Guy Gillette