by Andi Bricklin
Long before most of us fell in love with everyone’s favorite curly haired spectacled contestant on Season 7 of The Voice, Matt McAndrew was a student at UArts in Philadelphia, trying out his tunes on the patrons of Fergie’s Pub during open mic night. These days if McAndrew wants an audience to hear a new songs he’s working on he simply sends out a tweet tagged #MattNow and hundreds of people immediately log on to his YouNow channel to watch, chat, comment and make requests. “I have a song called ‘Hard Day’ that I played, and when fans come to shows they’ll request it even though it’s not recorded anywhere, it’s pretty cool.”
Philadelphia is the 3rd stop in McAndrew’s tour that started with two sold out shows in his hometown of Barnegat Light, NJ. “It was kind of a metaphor for my journey to come back home and kick-off my first tour from here.” For McAndrew, keeping his friends close is simply a must. His band members are life long friends, and his sister is his tour manager. “We needed someone to sell merchandise, book hotel rooms, handle business while I’m on stage and she kind of fell into that role. She’s great!”
McAndrew debuted his new single “Counting On Love” during The Voice this past season and it shot to number 14 on the iTunes all genre chart. With so much excitement around the song, they decided to shoot a video that is soon to be released. There are a few interesting pictures from the shoot floating around on Instagram, so consider me intrigued.
The Matt train rolls out of Philly and heads up north where he’ll begin his stint with Andy Grammer and American Authors! “We’re doing four shows with those guys, and then two with Maroon 5 and Nick Jonas.” Nuts right? Maroon 5 and Nick Jonas?! Did you get you tickets for the Atlantic City show on 8/16 yet?
There are a lot of great things stirring for Matt McAndrew right now so be on the lookout for more news in the future, and hey if you want to talk to him directly, just send a SnapChat #MattChat and you may just get a video call from the man himself.
