Courtney Marie Andrews | es

Courtney Marie Andrews is an American songwriter born November 7, 1990. She is a founding member of the Southwest label that's being compared to Omaha's Saddle Creek, River Jones Music. Andrews gained popularity by gigging in her home town of Phoenix Arizona when she was just fifteen years old. Producer River Jones met Courtney at an art gallery party while he was there playing spur of the moment drums for a noise post punk riot girl band. He started recording her in his parents living room two weeks later. They made Urban Myths on a laptop, 1 microphone, and a 2 channel line input. Local concert promoters put Courtney on national opening slots for touring bands on Saddle Creek, Kill Rock Stars, Barsuk, Drag City, Sub Pop, etc. Her popularity grew and Courtney was selling out Modified Arts in Phoenix repeatedly as a headliner. Helping Courtney, Stinkweeds Record Store hooked her up with distribution through 29 record stores nation wide.

Andrews immediately started working on her second album "Painters Hands and a Seventh Son" and after a year of weekly recording sessions at River's two bedroom apartment in Phoenix. The album was released exactly one year after Urban Myths. Painters Hands got a lot of attention from musicians as being her best effort, while many younger teens found it dark and bizarre. Record stores voiced concern about the album cover being strange and driving away sales from commercial non indie fans. River replied "I'd rather be releasing albums that make the artists happy more so than worrying about commercial trends. I listen to rock music, I think Courtney has rock music in her soul, and I'm proud of what we did here... I wanted to make sections of the record feel like John Parish or Pink Floyd's The Wall in depth... We even played Black Sabbath and burned candles as she signed her recording contract for this album... This is a tradition at River Jones Music Label that some people are a bit freaked out by."

To promote the record River gave away 30,000 free MP3 copies through MySpace.

To celebrate the new album, Courtney booked tours in yards, houses, coffee shops, and busked daily for gas money. She was invited by hometown hero Jim Adkins of "Jimmy Eat World" to perform a live cover of a Wilco song at a benefit concert for leukemia. Courtney has performed as an opener for Death Vessel, Rocky Votolato, Jeff Hanson, Sera Cahoone, Meiko, Jim Adkins, Obi Best, Marianne Dissard, Andrew Jackson Jihad, and many more. Rocky Votolato was so impressed that he asked her to play a second set and share the stage with him.

Courtney is currently recording her third album. It's a passionate mix of long story telling songs .