The Old North

You can hear the dust in Andrew O’Keeffe’s lungs as he leads his band through the four songs of their eponymous self-titled EP, The Old North (released December 11) The Boston trio play folk, or country, or some New World Equivalent to Old World storytelling music. Drunkenness, love, heartbreak, and tales of yore form the thematic cores of the EP. The band have distilled each of these tropes into a set of absorbing vignettes without resorting to the sea-chantey schtick of other acts.

Hayes Cummings floats electric guitar leads over the strums of O’Keeffe’s dreadnought while Max Liebman’s double bass sways the rhythm from below. Every now and then a light smack provides a percussive element but the band mostly leaves the percussive space open to the listener’s foot stomps and handclaps. O’Keeffe loads the songs with references to working class life in a historic seaside town in the same way that country singers rhapsodize about the Wild West; there’d be a whole lot of bands like The Old North if Nashville sat by the Atlantic coast.

The band’s instrumental thrift makes each song noteworthy. They could have turned “Black Strap Rum” into a raucous drinking song, but O’Keeffe’s weathered voice pulls the listener close, making for a more intimate encounter. “Ironside” recounts an 1812 war victory of the USS Constitution, a ship now permanently moored as a history museum in Boston Harbor. A lesser musician might have treated the piece of local history as a novelty, but O’Keeffe’s poetry balances awe with scholarship. One of the EP’s highlights comes from the interplay of Liebman’s bass with Cummings’s guitar solo on “Driven.” Listeners are treated to one of the EP’s only discernible hooks on “The Give and Take,” a satisfying closer that finds The Old North at their most exuberant.

That is not to say that the EP is wanting for hooks; the steady rhythms, smart lyrics, pleasing harmonies, and subtle dynamic shifts do plenty to hold the listener throughout. Bostonians especially will appreciate the direct allusions to their culture and history without the tawdry fifes and drums. For everyone else, the sturdy set of honest songs serves as a great introduction to the band and warrants a listen. - Atwood Magazine

Every Friday, we’re here to remind you of the Boston artists we love and think you oughta know.

A hidden gem in Boston’s folk scene, The Old North deserves to be on your list of bands to see this summer. Singer/songwriter Andrew O’Keeffe’s smoky vocals and the band’s upbeat, bluegrass-meets-pop vibe enchant any venue they play. When you catch them live, it sounds like O’Keeffe, Hayes Cummings (guitar), and Max Liebman (bass) have been playing together for years. But this is a relatively new venture for the Americana trio; their first EP as a band is planned for release this September.

After their skillful 2-hour set at Atwood’s Tavern, we got in touch with the band to ask a few questions.

ALLSTON PUDDING: What’s the story behind your name, The Old North?

THE OLD NORTH: The band name is a play on the civil war era “Old South” but spun to reflect the band’s base in New England. The name is a nod to the combination of Hayes being from North Carolina, and Andrew from the Boston area.

ALLSTON PUDDING: Are you a history buff at all? I ask not only because of the name, but a couple of your songs sound like stories told from an earlier time.

THE OLD NORTH: Yeah, I’m kind of a history nerd […] I love songs that tell a good story and folk music is obviously full of them. Traditional music from the Canadian Maritimes and Southern bluegrass are big influences on how I try to write and talk about history in songs. I actually put quite a bit of effort into learning the background of certain events so I can write about them accurately. There’s definitely a lot of that in the music we’re recording right now and you’ll hear it on the EP.

ALLSTON PUDDING: What are you all listening to right now?

THE OLD NORTH: Andrew is listening to Brown Bird and Colter Wall, Hayes is into Doc Watson, Hank Williams, and Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Max is on the Wood Brothers and Sturgill Simpson.

If you needed a reason to dip your toe into some local contemporary folk, The Old North is a great place to start. Be sure to stop by the SoWa Market this summer, June 30th, to catch them live in the city. Other show dates are listed here.

You can get a taste for their live performance by watching this video for “Drifter” recorded at the Lilypad: - Allston Pudding

Producing an album can be a slow-moving beast, but singer-songwriter Andrew O’Keeffe finally did it. The Cambridge local released his first full-length album on November 12; a self-titled CD full of folk tunes.

“The very first stuff we started recording was in January 2014,” said O’Keeffe. “Our original goal was to finish by May 2014.”

He laughed at the obvious delay. The guy is definitely a perfectionist. O’Keeffe tends to write slowly and dwell on his projects until it comes out just the way he wants it.

His music career started early. As a boy, he took classical guitar lessons, though he wanted to play Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix. You know, what every 12-year-old kid wants to learn. O’Keeffe grew up on the South Shore in Cohasset, where he sang and played guitar in a high school band with friends. Like most high bands, it didn’t amount to anything concrete. He graduated from University of Montreal after a couple years of studying Mediterranean archeology before he made the leap to Cambridge in 2009.

“It just seemed like the place to be,” said O’Keeffe. “I played a little in Montreal and I knew I wanted to pursue it back home. I thought, ‘Surely I’ll have a band in no time.’ But it definitely didn’t work out that way.”

O’Keeffe had trouble finding musicians serious enough to play in a band. However, he stumbled upon some singer-songwriter tunes that marked the pivotal moment in his music career: He realized how well his voice blended with acoustic sounds.

Singing live, however, is an another hurdle. O’Keeffe was terrified to sing live at first.

“It’s kind of an ultimate form of vulnerability. Public speaking is bad enough. When you begin to write your own lyrics about things that have happened in life, you’re really putting yourself out there,” he said. “Always worrying that people would think the lyrics are dumb or that the song overall is just bad.”

While he searched for his niche, he attended open mics in Quincy and various bars to get comfortable with the scene.

“It helped bridge the gap between Montreal and … Cambridge,” O’Keeffe smiled fondly. “Started to get my feet under how to get gigs, and where to play. At that time, I was doing a lot of covers. Sang a lot of 90s covers at open mics.”

His favorite was the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Cherub Rock.” Sadly, he found these rock songs didn’t lend themselves well to a solo artist. O’Keeffe finally read the lyrics of these covers and realized they were terrible. He started filtering in his original songs after that.

O’Keeffe found adjusting his performance style to the studio to be the hardest part of the album process. It required a completely different approach. It took a few years, but O’Keeffe refused to cut corners. He met Wil Renderos, the audio engineer behind the album, while at public health company, John Snow Inc. They crossed paths at the Middle East and chatted at work, eventually deciding to collaborate on O’Keeffe’s project. The two co-workers started making a plan in the fall of 2013 and began recording the following January.

They spent months recording in Paris Street Gallery in Everett, Mass., a renovated industrial warehouse venue that doubles as an art gallery and music venue. They host everything from art and hip-hop shows to wedding receptions. People rent out spaces inside the warehouse to jam, record, or work on their art. This is how O’Keeffe discovered the artist who designed the cover of the album.

“Wil and I were there side by side the whole time. He was the magician behind getting everyone sounding good.”

O’Keeffe spoke fondly of every person who aided him in the album process: friend Andy Buckley played drums, a friend’s roommate, Emma Puka-Beals, provided background vocals, coworker Ben Bruno played fiddle on “Devil in the Deep,” and high school friend, and band member of the Van Burens, Jeff King played keyboards.

“That’s why it took so long to put together because it was hard to coordinate all these people when they’re not actually my bandmates,” noted O’Keeffe. “I had to put live shows on hold to make the album.”

O’Keeffe defined his sound as simple, but powerful enough to hold you without being too busy. His favorite track off the album is “Devil in the Deep” for its representation of his personal and musical growth. It was the story he intended to tell from the start.

“I wanted to tell a sea shanty type of song and I feel like I accomplished that,” he said.

He described a fine line between getting the idea across in telling a story or complicating the original idea. O’Keeffe also enjoys the track’s stripped qualities; just his vocals and the fiddle. He stops mid-sentence, smiles, and points out Foo Fighter’s “Everlong” pouring from the speakers. It was one of the acoustic covers he played while just starting out.

Now that the studio time is finished, O’Keeffe hopes to get more involved with different artists outside Cambridge.

“I would like to be playing regularly with other musicians of a similar genre, in venues that are appropriate to my style.”

O’Keeffe has held this goal in mind for awhile. He has set objectives and networked his way through the scene. He’s passionate and hopeful for the next year.

“If you work really hard, it’s less likely that nothing will come out of it. If I wasn’t optimistic, I would think this is a waste of time,” O’Keeffe said with a laugh.

Give a listen to Andrew O’Keeffe’s newest release on Soundcloud, or see him at the House of Blues restaurant on January 23. - Sound of Boston

Andrew O’Keefe is coming out with his first full length record THIS FRIDAY, December 4th at The Lily Pad in Somerville, MA. On Wednesday December 3rd, he came into WEMF to talk with Spo about this release and to play a few songs. - WEMF

Singer & songwriter Andrew O’Keeffe has been whipping up something special for folk fans everywhere. The Cambridge native plans to release his first full-length album November 12, followed by an album release show in early December at the Lilypad in Cambridge. O’Keeffe’s sound is simple but stirring, and his self-titled new CD showcases his timid but powerful talents.

Andrew O’Keeffe starts off plain with a country spice to it. The instruments are soft, in volume and power, but that does not deter from the pace nor the energy of O’Keeffe’s bluesy lullaby. With Ben Stephens on strings, the cello resonates through the first couple tracks, highlighting the gypsy feel to “Devil in the Deep,” which features Ben Bruno on fiddle. O’Keeffe has a raspy edge to his voice that soothes the soul but hooks the listener. His tale of the “Devil in the Deep” weaves through the waves of the sea, following a tortured sailor on his trek around the world. Transitioning from oceans to train engines, O’Keeffe dips into more of the blues side for “Freight Lines.” His tracks teeter between traditional folk and blues swagger.

The middle of Andrew O’Keeffe slows down a bit. His sound still keeps chugging along, but the energy and musical stimulation wavers slightly. Songs like “The Good” or “Keep Course” are not bad, they just pale in comparison to his talent in other parts of the album. O’Keeffe’s voice is naturally melancholic but striking. Andrew O’Keeffe embodies all the typical components of a folk album, but adds a dash of southern blues, especially in the latter half of the album. His guitar artistry takes the spotlight in “Bad Love Blues” as he slides over the guitar neck with ease and Emma Puka-Beals assists on vocals. And of course, a blues song needs some liquor and heartbreak as O’Keeffe sings, “I’ve known good men / they’ve been cut right down / might’ve been whiskey took his reason / sure as hell was you who took his heart.” “Bad Love Blues” really stands out on the album, it’s just so much fun.

Andrew O’Keeffe fits the mold for modern acoustic folk, but the addition of the bluesy elements and O’Keeffe’s gravelly voice bring it all home. It’s powerful and holds emotion in every song. His talent is subtle but apparent throughout. Let’s hope he can deliver more spectacular tunes in the future now that he’s set his bar so high. - Indie Minded

“AO” is on the rise.

Singer-songwriter Andrew O’Keeffe, a Cohasset High School alum, is becoming a fixture of the Boston music scene. With his own blend of acoustic, blues-tinged folk rock, O’Keeffe is heavily influenced by the likes of Ray LaMontagne, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Jimi Hendrix.

His acoustic guitar prowess and raspy vocals have drawn comparisons to both LaMontagne, a commercially successful New England folk artist, and even John Mayer. But O’Keeffe is simply focused on crafting his own original songs with powerful, expressive lyrics and melodies.

“Any good songwriter is also a good storyteller,” O’Keeffe explains in a phone call from his Cambridge home. “And you can really write a story about anything.”

The musician says that when it comes to songwriting, he draws on what he knows.

“I pick music out of life… you write about the experience you have.”

Falling in love with his father’s Dire Straits, Jimi Hendrix and Guns N’ Roses albums as a kid kicked off O’Keeffe’s lifelong love affair with music.

He got his start playing at school talent shows with his friends and fellow CHS alums Mike Earnst, who played bass, and Mike Hajjar on drums. After spending much of his teenage years honing his guitar, singing and songwriting skills, O’Keeffe headed to Montreal for college. With his high school bandmates headed off in different directions, O’Keeffe realized that to make it in music on his own, he would have to play and sing his own songs.

“I didn’t sing” much in his first band, O’Keeffe admits. “It took me longer to get the nerve worked up.”

A turning point came when the rock-loving O’Keeffe discovered LaMontagne’s bluesy folk music – and realized that he didn’t need a whole band to write driving, melodic tunes.

“I wasn’t into folk music before that – I always wanted to be the guitar hero, the really awesome lead guitarist,” he explains. “Then when I realized I would start having to do this by myself, I discovered Ray LaMontagne, and that was a moment… I thought, ‘Maybe I can write something like this.’ I could do it with just my guitar.”

While O’Keeffe studied archaeology, not music at Concordia University, the French-speaking city turned out to be the place to take his music further. Armed with his acoustic guitar, and the ability to speak French (his mother is from Paris), O’Keeffe began playing open mikes, coffeehouses, bars and cafes. “There’s definitely a scene for it,” O’Keeffe said of music in Montreal. “It’s so open to all kinds of different art and culture; it’s so European.”

There’s a reason O’Keeffe eschewed music as a major, refusing to get bogged down in theory and complex composition. Although he did a few summer programs at the Berklee School of Music, O’Keeffe ultimately decided to pursue a different major while continuing to work on his own music.

“Music has always been a part of me,” he explains, adding that to write songs from his own perspective, “you don’t need to go to music school.

“I’m not sure anyone can tell you how to be a songwriter.”

O’Keeffe chalked up his college experience to being a side gig to what he really wanted to do for a living. “I feel like I went to school on the side. The most important thing I got out of college and the path I chose was the life experience.”

After four years in Montreal, O’Keeffe returned to the Boston area and started from scratch with his music.

“Like most post-college kids, I had to move back home for a while,” the 2004 CHS graduate explains. He returned home in 2009 and set his sights on the city as the place to launch his musical career, with the determination “to make Boston the place I’m going to put my mark.”

O’Keeffe began working and moved to Cambridge a few years ago – another place with a major music scene, thanks to places like rock club The Middle East and folk venue Club Passim.

“It’s a great spot,” O’Keeffe says.

However, the musician quickly learned that landing opportunities to play live around Boston was no walk in the park.

“I had to figure out how to gig in Boston; I had no connections at all,” O’Keeffe recalls.

Through a friend, O’Keeffe started working with producers at Hear Now Live to start promoting his music locally. Starting in 2012, he began gigging regularly at PA’s Lounge in Somerville, which was “the first place around here that gave me a chance,” he says.

Then he began working with a booking agent, leading to gigs at places like the Precinct in Somerville and the Hard Rock Café.

The years of hard work and dedication are paying off, with O’Keeffe earning a residency at the Middle East Corner in Cambridge every second Wednesday of the month, which he’s been doing for the pat six months. Now, the multitasking musician is working on a new album, collaborating with fellow musician friends. O’Keeffe has partnered with drummer Andy Buckley, who accompanies the singer-songwriter both on stage and in the studio. He has also “commandeered” a cello player and keyboardist from local group The Van Burens, along with friends who provide background vocals and harmonies.

In addition to writing all of the songs himself, O’Keeffe has also fashioned himself into a “jack of all trades” on guitar, playing all of the rhythm, lead, bass and slide guitar parts on the record.

While O’Keeffe has some decent recording equipment at home, including microphones and ProTools software, he is trusting an audio engineer in Everett, Mass. to record this album. And while booking studio time is expensive, the musician says, “I’m willing to put the money into it.”

Even as O’Keeffe reaches for the stars, he’s still willing to revisit his roots, recently playing a free show in his hometown at Beechwood’s Ground Level coffeehouse. The singer-songwriter said that he enjoyed the coffeehouse’s atmosphere, which encourages teens and young adults to take the open mike stage on the first Friday of every month.

“I think it’s really nice that there’s an outlet like that available” for local young musicians, he says. “There wasn’t anything like that on a Friday night” around when O’Keeffe lived in Cohasset, he adds. “But it’s probably something I would have done. For the burgeoning musicians out there, it’s a neat opportunity.”

And as he moves on to bigger shows at even better venues, O’Keeffe will always remember his early music days in Cohasset – particularly because his nickname came from a Cohasset teacher. His second grade teacher, Barbara Buckley, was the first to dub him as “AO” in order to differentiate between him and another Andrew in his class.

“That was eighteen, nineteen years ago, and it stuck,” O’Keeffe laughs. - Wicked Local