At the start of the listening party at Deep Groove Records for his sophomore album, “Since Always,” a few minutes after he arrived with a cooler of iced seltzers and sodas in tow, singer-songwriter Andy Jenkins walked attendees through a short list of frequently asked questions he’d printed out in preparation. Below his name and the logo of Psychic Hotline, the label that would release his album the following day on June 27, the FAQs read:
Q: Can I chat while the album is playing? A: Yes.
Q: Can I shop for records while the album is playing? A: Yes.
Q: Can I drink a free soda water while the album is playing? A: Yes.
Did I chat with Andy while the first couple of songs played? Yes. Did I shop for records while listening to the next few? Yes. Did I drink a free, watermelon-flavored LaCroix? Yes.
While doing all of these, I basked in the scene’s unmistakable Andy-ness, a characteristic thoughtfulness that comes from asking big questions, considering them from unexpected angles, and finding layers of beauty and strangeness others might overlook. I’ve found that curiosity to be contagious, and it makes Jenkins’ songs endlessly listenable, as if the next spin is sure to reveal some previously disguised meaning. It also makes me want to ask Jenkins a question or two, which I did a few days later at his home near Reedy Creek.
Patient cultivation
By day, Jenkins is a horticulturalist for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, something you might infer from the variety of flora on his property. Before moving to the South Side, Jenkins lived in a house in the West End that could very well be designated a local cultural landmark: the one on Libbie Avenue where Matthew E. White began growing the Spacebomb enterprise from an attic studio with a killer house band to a label and management firm with international backing, then a destination recording facility on Robinson Street in the Fan.
White and Jenkins met as high schoolers growing up in Hampton Roads. Though they went to different colleges — University of Virginia for Jenkins, Virginia Commonwealth University for White — the two eventually formed a Richmond-based band called The Great White Jenkins, and Jenkins would co-write several of the songs that helped White establish himself as an eponymous recording artist.
In 2015, the same year White released his second full-length album, “Fresh Blood,” the Spacebomb cofounder served as producer on sessions that yielded Jenkins’ own full-length debut, “Sweet Bunch,” though the album didn’t come out until 2018. The wait was even longer this time around, as “Since Always” was recorded over a two-week span in spring of 2021. “My timelines are always pretty delayed,” Jenkins says. “Both times, there wasn’t a clear release plan.”
But Jenkins seems suited to the in-between times and spaces. You’ll find one at the start of “I Walked Into the Wrong Place,” where Jenkins brightly intones: “You give me new hope at the end of the day or in the blank middle.” He goes even further in “Emptiness Is” by claiming blankness: “You cannot keep out emptiness / Emptiness is mine.”
One upside to the four-year gap between recording and releasing “Since Always” was the ability to listen to the tracks and decide how they best flowed into another. “I did work on the sequence a lot, because there was so much time, and because I wasn’t doing anything else with the record,” Jenkins says.
Perhaps it’s unsurprising that a songwriter with a green thumb would be patient when sharing his music. Jenkins landed his position at VMFA after working part-time for seven years at Agecroft Hall & Gardens, the historic Tudor house in Windsor Farms. “There’s a lot you can do with it,” he says of work as a horticulturalist. “It’s kind of blue collar, sort of creative. It’s this weird space, but it also covers sustainability. It’s your environment. It’s everywhere.”
“Since Always” is teeming with natural imagery that would elude a less observant eye. He sings about the slow work of the sunshine fading a sign. A petal curling and sticking to a leaf. Honeysuckle spilling over a fence.
When we spoke at his home, Jenkins mentioned an interview that British screenwriter and journalist Dennis Potter gave just months before his death in which he credited his deteriorating health with greater appreciation for small miracles, most notably the flower outside his window he called the “blossomiest blossom that there ever could be.”
“Things are both more trivial than they ever were and more important than they ever were,” Potter went on to say, “and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn’t seem to matter.”
So how does one keep both sides of that exquisite contradiction in view on a day-to-day basis — much less set it to song?
“Idleness is maybe a controversial word, but having the time is important,” Jenkins says. “I think maybe all art relates to nature in some way. But that’s an element, too — being able to walk with an empty mind, or do something where you’re not paying attention to other things so you can pay attention to something that manifests or appears.”
Flowing through Chapel Hill
To manifest “Since Always,” Jenkins traveled to Betty’s, the studio outside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina operated by Psychic Hotline founders Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn. The two perform together in the electro-pop duo Sylvan Esso, and Jenkins asked Sanborn to produce the album in hopes of incorporating some of that electronic feel — “a different lane,” as Jenkins puts it.
While Sylvan Esso is known for upbeat sounds that can turn any gathering into a dance party, Jenkins met Sanborn when the latter was playing bass in a more roots-oriented group, the influential, Durham-based, Bon Iver-adjacent outfit called Megafaun. (That band’s guitarist, Phil Cook, played a part in making “Sweet Bunch,” and its drummer, Joe Westerlund, provides percussion on “Since Always.”) That versatility was another reason Jenkins sought Sanborn out. “It’s something we connected on, and something I appreciate about him,” Jenkins says of Sanborn. “Things that I really like — some kind of folk, acoustic tradition, broadly — being really passionate and into that, but also [into] experimental electronic music and treating them all equally.”
“Since Always” is teeming with natural imagery that would elude a less observant eye. [Jenkins] sings about the slow work of the sunshine fading a sign. A petal curling and sticking to a leaf. Honeysuckle spilling over a fence.
“Since Always” makes that range audible across 11 texturally varied tracks, from the organic feel of “Sunshine” — one of 10 songs on the album that Jenkins says could qualify as a love song for the sun — to more Esso-like, beat-driven tunes like “Salt for Morning” and “Lovesick.” Jenkins describes Sanborn’s working style as similarly versatile, with the producer generating ideas quickly, playing multiple instruments, making tweaks on the fly and switching between technical and creative tasks with ease.
That flow can be attributed in part to Betty’s open format, which places the soundboard in the main room of the studio with plenty of sunlight peering in through tall windows.
The list of contributors had its own sense of openness. Amelia Meath ended up jumping in to add vocals, as did Jenn Wasner of Flock of Dimes and Wye Oak. Parts being layered piecemeal, not orchestrated simultaneously, was another departure from how “Sweet Bunch” was made. “I feel like it sounds pretty natural, but [it was] definitely not a big, ‘Let’s do a take of this one,’” Jenkins remembers.
Secret ingredient: AOL
Amid all the change from Jenkins’ previous process and personnel, there was one constant: guitarist Alan Good Parker. The frequent Spacebomb collaborator, now a resident of Los Angeles, was always part of the “Since Always” plan.
Their orbits first intersected when Parker, who also studied music at VCU, joined White’s band around the time “Fresh Blood” was released. Parker had been focusing on jazz, and his playing continues to evince the kind of fretboard fluency that allows for a wide range of options, whether he’s providing accompaniment or stepping out front for a solo. “I just feel like he plays the best. You can’t put it into words… He has such good taste,” Jenkins says.
That quality has earned Parker plenty of work in the rock sphere, including his current gig as part of Lucy Dacus’ touring band. Parker and I spoke over the phone just after he returned from a string of European shows with Dacus. He described making “Sweet Bunch” as a turning point in his journey toward becoming a standout session contributor. “I remember getting the bounces for that record,” he says. “I think of that record as the first record I worked on that was just amazing. I was so so proud.” [Editor’s note: If you’re unfamiliar with studio recording terminology, “bounces” refers to the process of combining multiple audio tracks].
In 2016, a year after the “Sweet Bunch” sessions, Jenkins and Parker began meeting once a week at Parker’s house to work on new tunes.
“I just love his voice,” Parker says. “It reminds me of talking to him. He’s such a witty guy, and so funny and smart, and I think that comes across in his music It sort of felt like we were a perfect compliment.”
With Jenkins holding down the lyrical side, Parker had the freedom to focus on musical matters, and their partnership produced a four-song EP, “The Garden Opens,” which came out in 2019.
While recording “Since Always,” Parker had even more room to operate. Several of Jenkins’ rhythm guitar tracks made the final mix, which meant Parker could venture further afield with his contributions. The sessions even yielded a new expression for especially exploratory takes: “AOL,” short for “Alan Off Leash.”
“Every now and then, they’d be like, ‘Alright, let’s do like an AOL take,’” Parker remembers. “I could feel free to play whatever I was hearing. Sometimes you’re recording, and my background in jazz is such that I shouldn’t go too far in a certain direction. And AOL is kind of like, ‘Yeah, don’t like, don’t worry about that.’”
The solo in “Blue Mind” was the product of an AOL takes. Parker calls it “one of my favorite guitar solos that I’ve ever recorded.” He also speaks in glowing terms about the album’s shortest track, “Nobody Else,” a minute-long seaside portrait in miniature soundtracked by just rubber-bridge baritone guitar and Jenkins’ voice: “Edge of a new path / Low tide to high mast / I don’t need nobody else.”
“It’s a beautiful song,” Parker says. “I love that it’s just me and Andy, and I love how short it is.”
Local release show and unboxing a box
The release show happening at Spacebomb Studios promises to be its own moment in the sun. Jenkins does not currently have plans to tour behind “Since Always,” but he’ll play songs from the album on Friday, July 18 with the help of bassist Cameron Ralston and drummer Pinson Chanselle — both players on Jenkins’ first album. Chanselle’s new solo project, Teleplane, will open.
Jenkins also made an unboxing video — common music industry practice these days — only instead of gleaming, shrink-wrapped vinyl copies of the album being unsealed, you see Jenkins wearing a quizzical expression and breaking a cardboard box down one panel at a time. “So now it’s not a box. It’s just four pieces of cardboard,” he affirms. (For many artists, the need to make such videos — to participate in the promotional side of an industry in a state of commercial crisis — is just as quizzical.)
To tour or not to tour? To unbox or not to unbox? Jenkins approaches these questions with the same outside-the-box inquiry that gives his music its singular perspective. “It’s a retail question that’s tied into people’s life and identity, and art, love and culture,” he says. “But it’s also just a retail question, somehow.”
The answer has become increasingly elusive during the streaming era. Then again, Jenkins’ songwriting — “Emptiness Is,” for example — suggests a sense of creative fulfillment with roots running much deeper than all of that: “You might think you know it all and that you have a line / On getting anything you want / But all I want is mine.”
To hear and purchase “Since Always,” visit andyjenkins.ltd. Jenkins will perform at Spacebomb Studios on Friday, July 18. Teleplane will also perform. Music starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $17.85 and can be purchased via Eventbrite.
