Nashville-based musician Andrew Osenga wears many hats. He is a singer/songwriter, and has played with the bands The Normals and Caedmon’s Call. He also produces, engineers, writes and plays guitar for other musicians. He will release his sixth solo album, Leonard the Lonely Astronaut on September 18th, mixed by Grammy winner Vance Powell (Jack White, The Raconteurs). On this record Osenga recounts Leonard’s story as he spends a year alone in outer space after his wife dies. During that year, he thumbs through all of his memories, “…looking back at relationships, mainly the one with his wife, plus other aspects like religion, family and childhood.”
Photo Courtesy of andrewosenga.com
With the help of his fans through the funding site Kickstarter, Osenga constructed a fairly authentic-looking spaceship interior to help relay his story. At the core, he wants this record to be a vehicle through which people can take a look at their own lives, and think about why they may pull away from each other at times.
“I wanted to have a true character express some of the things I was thinking,” says Osenga. “I’m an insomniac, and one of the things I was told to do to help me to sleep is to make up a story that doesn’t have to do with my life and think about that. I was thinking about a spaceship because I was watching “Battlestar Galactica”, so I created this character in my head while I was waiting to fall asleep, and started writing songs from that character’s perspective.”
Though initially just messing around, Osenga continued to write a few more songs. One thing led to another, and he had to give this project his all. “This is the first time I’ve really put my own record in the spotlight,” he reveals.
One of the purposes of telling stories through an artistic lense is to show your audience an everyday moral that they might not see on their own. All it takes is a little change of perspective to see something so obvious.
“In “Battlestar Galactica” they change the context and put things in a different world where all the rules are different. Then you look at relationships or politics or religion and all of a sudden you’re seeing it from a different perspective. There’s an episode where there are people in a concentration camp and there are suicide bombers. It was pretty much Afghanistan, but the people you were rooting for were the oppressed people. I don’t have anything in common with these people in an outward sense, but in matters of the heart… those are always constants.”
It’s clear that one of the things Osenga has set out to convey through this record is that honesty with yourself and others is paramount. Reflection is the key to unlocking reasons why we may let opportunities pass us by, or why we may shy away from those we love. In terms of collaborating with other musicians, he holds a similar philosophy.
Photo Courtesy of andrewosenga.com
“My goal when collaborating is to try to get people to be more honest. I want people not to hide and to be more conversational,” shares Osenga. “But when I’m on my own, I really like that sense of reckless abandon where you can spend three days going off in one direction and then it can totally not work. You never know what you can find. A lot of times with someone else you might not want to take that risk.”
In striving to realize creative projects (as well as entering into relationships), it’s all about taking risks. It wasn’t always easy to actualize particularly daring musical creations, and maybe ten or fifteen years ago, Osenga would have encountered some roadblocks in making Leonard the Lonely Astronaut the way he did.
“When I made my first record in ‘98, I was on a label and we had a budget that people were laughing at, and it was $40,000. I haven’t made a record that has cost that much since. I think it’s a lot easier to be creative now, because you can buy a laptop and a mic and make a record. But the things that made a good record then are the things that make a good record now- that’s great songs and great performances. I love the freedom you have now. There’s no way [a label] would have agreed to the whole idea of building a spaceship when I first started. When you’re on your own, the only risk is ‘can I do it?’”
Osenga has collaborated with Jars of Clay, Matthew Perryman Jones, and others. But when asked which musician he’d sit down and have a beer with, he replied “Paul Simon. My favorite record of his is Surprise. It’s a killer record, it almost sounds like a Peter Gabriel album.”
One of the most important things Osenga wants to communicate through songwriting is the idea of “…believing and trusting the people who say they love you,.”
“I think a lot of my writing is geared toward taking the risk of believing that people actually do care about you. If somebody hurts me I just back away and put up a wall, but then you see where that gets you. I think it has been a challenge to me to pursue people who have entered my life. A lot of my songs are reassurances or encouragements to enter into relationships.”
Written by: Michele Zipkin
