Clem Snide & Jill Andrews’ Fall Tour

CLEM SNIDE

“The last ten years have been a rollercoaster of deep despair and amazing opportunities that somehow present themselves at the last possible second,” says Eef Barzelay. “During that time, the band bottomed out, I lost my house, and I had to declare bankruptcy. The only way to survive was to try to transcend myself, to find some kind of deeper, spiritual relationship with life. Once I committed to that, all these little miracles started happening.”

Forever Just Beyond, Barzelay’s stunning album under the Clem Snide moniker, may just be the most miraculous of them all. Produced by Scott Avett, the record is a work of exquisite beauty and profound questioning, a reckoning with faith and reality that rushes headlong into the unknown and the unknowable. The songs here grapple with hope and depression, identity and perception, God and the afterlife, humanizing thorny existential issues and delivering them with the intimate, understated air of a late-night conversation between old friends. Avett’s production is similarly warm and inviting, and the careful, spacious arrangement of gentle guitars and spare percussion carves a wide path for Barzelay’s insightful lyrics and idiosyncratic delivery.

“I look up to Eef with total respect and admiration,” says Avett, “and I hope to survive like he survives: with total love for the new and the unknown. Eef’s a crooner and an indie darling by sound and a mystic sage by depth. That’s not common, but it’s beautiful.”

Named for a William S. Borroughs character, Clem Snide first emerged from Boston as a three-piece in the early 1990’s, and the group would go on to become a cult and critical favorite, picking up high profile fans from Bon Iver to Ben Folds over the course of three decades and more than a dozen studio albums. NPR highlighted the Israeli-born Barzelay as “the most underrated songwriter in the business today, with a sneakily firm grasp on poignancy and humor,” while Rolling Stone hailed his songwriting as “soulful and incisive,” and The New Yorker praised his music’s “soothing melodies and candid wit.” Barzelay currently resides in Nashville, TN.

Jill Andrews

Acclaimed singer-songwriter, Jill Andrews gives the unsung moments the voice they have always deserved. From her days fronting lauded Americana group, the everbody fields, to her successful solo career as a writer and performer, Andrews’ music has taken her far from her East Tennessee home.

She has collaborated and shared the stage with countless celebrated artists including the Avett Brothers, Langhorne Slim, Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors, and the Secret Sisters. Her music has been featured on Grey’s Anatomy, This is Us, The Good Wife, Nashville, and Wynonna Earp to name a few.

After the success of her critically acclaimed 2020 album and book, Thirties, Jill decided to dig back into her songwriting catalog. Her October 2021 release, Ellen, is one that feels as if it lives in a middle space between where she has been and where she is going as a musician, songwriter, mother, wife, and friend. The six songs on the EP were mostly recorded when she first moved to Nashville, while still finding her footing in a town filled with some of the music industry’s most talented people. She had just started co-writing and recording with incredibly prolific writers and musicians (Trent Dabbs, K.S. Rhoads, Shawn Camp, etc.) and was still playing with some longtime friends like Josh Oliver (the everybodyfields, Watchhouse) and Ethan Ballinger (Miranda Lambert). Then, while the whole world was on pause, Andrews took the opportunity to focus on uncovering those songs. With hours of work put into rerecording, mastering, and fine tuning these songs, thus came, Ellen. Andrews currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee with her children Nico, Falcon, and husband, Jerred. In 2022, Andrews is releasing an EP she created in collaboration with the Nashville Conservancy called The Parthenon Sessions. It features reimaginings of some of her most beloved songs with the added benefit of a strings section. Next, Andrews is continuing her work with writing and recording her fourth full length record following her first UK tour, slated for release in February 2023.