Andrew Sa is tenderness. And his music? It is heart, joy, passion, and something that has been in the works for a long time. Try 20 years. Well, not exactly, but the Bay Area-bred, Chicago-based musician spent the early decades of his life singing other people’s songs and building a local cult following. Now, Sa has unleashed a work of his own: his debut album, “American Rough,” a triumphant, progressive country record, which dropped June 26 on Bloodshot Records.
“I feel like my emotions have been a little closer to the surface,” Sa said in an interview last month at the Old Town School of Folk Music. “On top of that, I feel like I’ve been getting a lot of really warm responses, really generous feedback, which can be hard for me to accept. I’m so grateful for it.”
Reaching this moment took time for Sa, whose background is originally in theater. “I have been the vessel,” he says. “I haven’t been the source.”
Figuring out how to be the source was not easy. For one, Sa had to wrangle a lot of demons. Later, he found inspiration through reading other people’s words: plays by Tennessee Williams, books by James Baldwin, poetry by Ocean Vuong. Through their work, he found a through-line to accepting himself for who he is, and ultimately what makes him a unique and compelling artist.
“Even if it’s not a shiny, pretty thing, or even if it’s a little darker or depressive, it took a lot of self-confidence and realizing my self-worth to be able to be the source,” said Sa.
After coming out at age 14 and later moving to Chicago, Sa found a wonderful, supportive group of friends. “I realized that, especially in the music world, I had to create my own space,” recalled Sa. “And in doing so, people came. They wanted to be a part of that as well.”
A large part of his community is rooted in the Hideout, where he performs regularly as part of his Lonesome Holiday Christmas show, and at Judson & Moore Distillery, where he co-hosts the Cosmic Country Showcase with Mary Williamson. Through this community, he also found his musical collaborators such as frequent co-writer Liam Kazar, his manager Sully Davis, and musician H.C. McEntire, a Durham, North Carolina-based musician who became his primary producer for “American Rough.”
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The creation process was slow going at first. Sa wrote songs, often with Kazar, and sent them to McEntire, who would ruminate on and add to them, ask him questions, and send them back. Later, on McEntire’s suggestion, they recorded at Fidelitorium in North Carolina. While there, he also worked with North Carolina producer Missy Thangs, who co-produced and engineered the whole record.
The distraction-free rural environment quickly became a pressure cooker. “I had to believe in what we were doing so much that it inspired the rest of them to believe in it,” he said.
The short recording time (which also included additional tracking at Fox Hall Studio in Chicago) allowed him to be bold and brave with his band. “H.C. was taking a chance on me. She didn’t know me from Adam, and of course, I was taking a chance on her, coming all the way down there,” Sa said. “We were all so supportive of each other, to the point where we allowed each other the space to feel whatever we were feeling.”
That earnestness, that faith in their creative endeavors, is also the emotional core of the album.
Raised Catholic and baptized, Sa said he, for lack of a better expression, tries to continue to do the good work and be a reflection of Jesus. In his songs, he connects the tissue between devotion to religion (“I just try to remember to remain humble and show my gratitude and continue to do the good work and be, for lack of a better expression, a reflection of Jesus,” he said) and devotion to others. Romantically, he embraces the position of the devotee — a beautiful thing, he says, not lacking in any qualities, but embodied through power and strength.
That comes through in many of the songs on the record, such as “Gorgeous Things” and the early single “Lavender Cowboy,” a tribute to the late Patrick Haggerty of the band Lavender Country. Another track, a favorite of Sa’s called “You Turned Me On,” was inspired by the Nina Simone song “Turn Me On.”
“I was listening to it while doing dishes, and I told my partner, ‘God, I wish I had written this. It’s one of those songs — it’s just so simple. It’s so straightforward. It’s so sexy. It’s like all the things,’” he recalled. “And he said, ‘Write your own.’ And I thought to myself, ‘Oh, maybe I can.'” In Sa’s version, he asks: What do you do once the fantasy has been fulfilled? Where do you go from there, especially when you’ve held a fantasy for so long?
It’s potent stuff, music that revels in its confidence as much as its sensuality and vulnerability. In true devotional form, it is also the heart and soul of the record, and Sa hopes others embrace that tenderness, too. “At this time, where we are as a country, as a world, if I can encourage people to be tender with each other and affectionate, and to really believe in something, believe in the love that’s possible — that’s what I want,” he said.
Britt Julious is a freelance critic.