Today we’d like to introduce you to Andi Jane.
Hi Andi, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My musical journey started as a dreamer. I grew up in the middle of nowhere Illinois, down a dirt road, with no neighbors. I sang to the sky. I danced for the birds. It was clear at a young age that music–particularly singing–made me feel alive in a way that nothing else did. As a youth, I took piano lessons and sang in school plays and variety shows. I didn’t have much thought of singing as a career at that point, but I always loved to do it. Come life after college and I moved to Chicago and formed a band. Performing as the front person for a band was electric–I knew this was it for me. But I lost my way in the parties and the drugs for a few years. I DJed parties, danced A LOT, and made many friends that probably forgot who I was the next day.
One day, I met this girl who said she was moving to Nashville from California. I said why would you ever do that? Do you make country music? She said No–Nashville is music city. If you want to make music your career, you go to Nashville. A week later, my landlord told me he was selling my house, the restaurant where I bartended laid off all its workers to renovate, the two bands I sang in broke up, and I realized I didn’t love my boyfriend anymore.
No ties left to Chicago. So I moved to Nashville.
It’s been a journey here, as I built up and co-fronted the band Catfish Seminar and gained some local success, then went solo 2 years ago and have been working on putting out my own music and building success with my band Andi Jane & the Honky-Tonk Cabaret.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
There is no such thing as a smooth road in the music industry. My first band in Nashville was the most challenging time of my life. We were a duo, a partnership. We had a band, but we wrote our songs together, and started spending a lot of time together. It was in this band that I learned to play keys, write a compelling song, perform confidently on stage. But something else was developing. I started to realize that writing with someone, and singing with someone, was quite an intimate experience. You truly get to know one’s soul when you see how they craft their art.
So we fell in love.
Instead of celebrating that, we hid it. We didn’t want to distract from the music. We went about our lives, playing shows and making content, recording an album in Muscle Shoals–we were really putting in the effort, but underneath the surface, the relationship was fraught. This made everything difficult. Every video shoot, every recording session, every show. And finally, after releasing our album, booking our first real music festival, and building a fan base that we were excited about–we broke up. The band and everything.
This experience led to so many great songs. Sobriety. And a renewed sense of purpose and direction. It may have been the hardest years of my life, but it was truly a gift.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am known as the Queen of the Honky-Tonk Cabaret! My show is big, sparkly, dramatic, and blends multiple genres so the audience members truly have an EXPERIENCE. I do my best to make sure it’s a show unlike any you’ve seen before.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
While I grew up on country music, I never wrote a country song until I came to Nashville. To be fair, my brand of country isn’t mainstream, but it’s still has the elements of a country song. Before I moved here, I wrote dark pop songs on a weird synth/vocoder. I DJed. I listened to mostly Electronic Dance or Pop music. Nashville completely changed me musically, and led to a style that feels more authentically me than anything I did prior.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.andijane.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andijanemusic
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andijanemusic
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@andijanemusic
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@andijanemusic
