Schur

When I was eight years old I was sitting in class with my squad, posted up at this table shaped like a crescent moon. I remember this day because one of my friends brought up an unusual topic. He said that his dad had shown him this rock band, Led Zeppelin, and that he had become obsessed with them. The squad had no idea what a rock band was or what a “Led Zeppelin” was.

That night I asked my parents if they knew about them. My mom said “of course!” and my dad (who grew up in England in the 70s) replied “nah, never heard of them.” Laughing, they opened up the record cabinet and started playing their albums.

SHEEEEESH.

Within a few hours I had decided that music is what I wanted to do with my life. I NEEDED to play guitar and become Jimmy Page. This band was magical. Hearing Led Zeppelin for the first time was, in every sense, a life changing experience.

I was gifted a guitar for Christmas and started taking lessons shortly after. Guitar consumed my life. I joined a band with my brother from the same mother, Zach, who plays bass. We switched bands after a year and started our own group, Pampalibros. From ages nine to fifteen I played with Pampalibros every week. We had concerts at bars, restaurants, venues, and wherever would let us play. We even recorded an album with the legendary producer, Rob Fraboni. It was a BLAST. I remember thinking “we’ll make it big one day”, but then the older members went to college and only me and Drew (my brother from another mother) were left.

I was really ignorant during this time (which you’ll see is a running theme). I exclusively listened to classic rock. I remember saying, “if they had to use a computer to make it, I don’t wanna listen to it.” After years of my brothers and friends pestering me to expand my taste, I eventually caved and started listening to hip hop. Thus began another obsession. Kanye, J. Cole, Kendrick, and Logic became my new teachers. Also, there was a rapper called Felly that my friends and I loved. He was a huge inspiration because he was one of us: a local kid from Connecticut who had made it in music.

As my hip hop obsession grew, Drew and I wanted to make beats and record in a studio. We had loved the experience of recording with Rob Fraboni but quickly realized that studio time was too expensive for teenagers. We decided to start our own studio for younger musicians. In the attic of an old stone cottage that my parents had used for storage, Rock Cottage Studio was born.

Drew and I loved running RCS. We worked with tons of local artists and learned a lot about recording. Word spread about us and local bars started reaching out, asking us to help them book bands. Completely unplanned, we became booking agents. We put together many shows, most of which were fundraisers for a local music charity called Horns for Kids. Our work culminated in a 550 person music festival, Rendezvous, in the summer of 2016. The headliner of the festival was our hometown hero, Felly.

After several years of running the studio it was time to go to college. I had two options for school: New Hampshire or New York City. While I am 100% a woodland creature, I felt that there would be more musical opportunities in the city than in the sticks. I moved to the city for college at Columbia University.

In college, I did a very good job at unknowingly putting myself in much needed learning environments. For example, my freshman year I joined a humor magazine, mainly to format the magazine and draw the cover art. I loved illustration and design. Although I was mainly the illustrator, they asked me if I wanted to write a few pieces. I did my best at trying to capture the high level wit of shows like How I Met Your Mother. My versions, much to my surprise, just sounded crass, ignorant (remember the theme?), misogynistic at times, and not nearly as funny. The sentiments that I wanted to express were not accurately reflected in my writing. In fact, I was quite embarrassed by what I had published because it was rash, improper, and so far from what I was trying to say. Despite how ashamed I am of those writings, this was an essential experience for me. I was 18 and it wasn’t until a few years later that I realized just how much word choice matters.

When I started making songs in my second year of college, I spent so much time with word choice and sentence structure to ensure that what I was saying would come across as intended. It took me sooooo long to write lyrics (and still does to this day).

I put out my first song, “Gullwing Bravado,” in the summer after my second year of college. I remember thinking that it would easily do well and set my summer goal at two million streams. During that period I got less than 1,000 streams (ignorant once again!). Dismayed, I figured there’s gotta be a way to promote my music. Everyone said to use social media, but I wasn’t good at it and didn’t love using it. Instead, I decided to try playlisting campaigns. These were seemingly straightforward: pay someone to add my songs to playlists with large followings. This would result in streams.

Unfortunately, almost all the playlists I was added to were fake and my music went nowhere. It took me a couple hundred dollars to realize that I was getting scammed (seriously…the ignorance never stops). After the third or fourth scam I thought “THERE MUST BE ANOTHER WAY!” It was then that I found Andrew Southworth’s Youtube channel.

Andrew Southworth is an indie music marketing guru. LEGEND. A savior amidst the demons of the music industry. His channel was filled with videos about how to use Meta Ads to promote songs on Facebook and Instagram. The ads on social media would supposedly direct people to Spotify, resulting in real streams and high engagement. It looked wonderful, complicated and time consuming. I kept putting it off when I was in school, thinking that it would take up too much of my schedule. But then…. Covid. The world shut down and I was back in Connecticut with nothing but time on my hands. My Southworth study began.

After weeks of learning and testing I had finally designed a successful campaign. I set my daily budget at $7.50 and turned it on. The next day I realized that I had accidentally set it at $75.00 (Andrew you dongus!), buttttt I had generated 1,400 streams in a single day! I was ELATED. I had finally found a way to promote my music (outside of social media) that worked. This became my primary promoting method.

Covid ended, school progressed, and by senior year I was putting out a song every couple months and promoting for $25/day using money I earned working odd jobs. At one of these jobs I was the audio engineer for a racial justice podcast. I didn’t know much about this subject and learned loads, especially when I tried to defend Thanksgiving as a holiday while talking with my boss, not understanding how much pain and suffering it represents (once again…ignorant).

When I graduated, I moved back to Connecticut and worked for my parents’ landscaping business for a few months. During this time I traveled, met a girl (whatever…not at all a life changing experience or anything like that), and tried to figure out how to make money to support my music.

Initially, I figured I’d work as a recording engineer in a music recording studio. I landed a job as an audio engineer trainee at an infamous studio in downtown Manhattan. One of my first shifts was from 3:00 pm to 7:30 am the next morning. The pay was low, the shifts were humongous, and the schedule was unsustainable. After thinking it over I decided that having a career in music recording was not the best way to fund a career in music performance. A little disappointed, I stayed in Connecticut and continued working for my parents’ business.

I must point out, working in landscaping was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. For me, there was no greater satisfaction than finishing a week with the crew, guzzling a Corona, and plopping down in the yard. Also I got ripped. So that’s cool I guess.

While I worked for my parents my friend added me to an audio/podcasting listserv. I sent out my resume and, after a few months, landed some jobs as an art studio manager and an audio engineer. These allowed me to move to the city in the fall of 2021.

For the next four years I posted up on the UWS of Manhattan, grinding, and working a variety of odd jobs. All of these helped me finance my music. By 2023 I had 23,000 monthly listeners on Spotify but was very unsatisfied with my progress. I figured it was time to step things up a notch. Instead of releasing one song every 3-4 months, not promoting enough, and wasting time with minutiae, I made a New Year’s Resolution to release one song every four weeks, promote the hell out of it, and hope for the best. This led to The Unsure Mixtape. I spent all of my savings on promotion (which lasted for a few months) and got to 70,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. I picked up any job I could (including working at a Marine Layer clothing store which was an awesome experience) to finance my promotion. Nevertheless, I ran out of money in July.

Around that same time, two major things happened:

Some startup investors asked if I was looking for an investment. They had seen my growth over the six month period and were impressed by the efficacy of my strategy. After a few months of discussion we decided to test an investment for one month (low stakes, short contract, no stress). The first month went well so we decided to do a second month…then a third…and a fourth… WOOHOOO!After the investors approached me, I scheduled a consultation call with Andrew Southworth (the indie music marketing guru). He had recently opened an ad agency and was running campaigns for artists. I asked him whether I should hire his agency with my potential investment money. After looking at the results I was already getting, he said “no, you’re doing great by yourself.” I was shocked at this response because I hadn’t realized that years of running campaigns had actually made me pretty decent at it. In fact, a month later he hired me to work at his agency.

By August of 2023 I had new investment money to fund ads AND started working at a music ad agency. I was PUMPED. The peeps at the ad agency helped me optimize my campaigns and contributed greatly to the success of my advertising.

The investment performed so well that I was able to quit most of my non-music work by May 6th, 2024…my birthday! I started pursuing music as my full time job and only kept one podcasting gig on the side. My main goal was to CRANK OUT MUSIC. I had 300,000 monthly listeners when I quit my job, and double that six months later.

I came into 2025 hungry. Top priority: meet my fans in person. I had played some shows in and around New York, but for the most part my audience was online. A tour had to happen.

First off, I needed an agent. You can book shows without an agent but it is incredibly difficult, takes a ton of time, and doesn’t always land you in the “right” venue. Agents solve all of these issues. The problem, however, is that you need to have a touring history to get an agent. Bruh…if you need concerts to get the agent, but the agent books the concerts, what the fweak was I supposed to do?

I spent the first couple months of 2025 painstakingly organizing shows and trying to get a mini tour together. All of my energy went into making this happen and wildly, the stars aligned. One of my favorite artists who I had recently met at a show (DLG.) reached out to me and asked if I was interested in opening for him on his 6-stop tour throughout the States. Incredible! Between that and the four shows I had self-booked, I had lined up ten shows for the spring, or “Schpring” as I called it. One of the shows even involved flying to Mexico City with my girlfriend to play an acoustic set in a small bar. It was one of my highlights of 2025.

We went on our mini tour and thankfully attracted the attention of a few agents. Over the summer I found the right peeps and began working with them to plan my first headline tour. The plan had worked!

Around that same time, I moved out of NYC. My girlfriend had gotten into Oxford for grad school (huge smartypants…Sciences Po, Columbia, Oxford…big brain type sh*t), and I quickly realized that affording our one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan was not feasible on my own. Additionally, I had a dream of traveling the world with a portable studio. So, we moved out and went to Peru. It was there that I wrote my favorite song of the year, Testarossa, and planned the Slowly But Schurly Tour – 28 shows, 27 cities, 10 countries, 7 weeks!

This planning continued throughout late summer and into the fall. In September, something wild happened: ONE MILLION MONTHLY LISTENERS! I had achieved my decade-long goal. At the time I was in a small Airbnb in Athens. I remember finding out in the evening and going out to eat at 11:00 pm only to find the streets and restaurants PACKED. What a vibe. The food SLAPPED.

Between releasing a song every two weeks, traveling, living out of a backpack, and organizing the tour (with a lot of help from my brother/bass player Zach), I was COOKED. It was one of the best (and most stressful years) of my life. I was so grateful for everything I had experienced but also recognized that that rhythm was unsustainable. I settled in Connecticut at my parents’ house for the winter and got cozy while finalizing everything.

After months of work, I was nervous to announce the tour. I had no idea how the streaming/social numbers would translate into ticket sales. It’s different for every artist. I felt pretty good because I had worked with some friends to run massive ad campaigns in the months leading up to the announcement, but the question mark remained. When the day finally came I felt like I was running an election and watching the poles come in.

The announcement was MASSIVE. The tour poster quickly became my most liked post on Instagram and the dates started selling out fast. London sold out in eight hours, half the tickets sold in the first two weeks, and I was shocked. Venues got upgraded, and dates were added (a second night in Denver, a new show in Antwerp)! Planning kicked into high gear.

The amount of organization that goes into an international tour is INSANE. Taxes, insurances, flights, hotels, van rentals, administrative forms, etc. etc. etc. I barely made it out the door in time for the first show. With Zach’s help, we somehow pulled it off with no prior knowledge of how anything worked.

The tour itself was one of the best experiences of my life. Holy moly. (What is a moly btw? Never understood this word…). I had started releasing music in the depths of Covid and never seen it physicalized. Meeting the people responsible for my career was mindblowing, and not to mention in such different environments! Drew (pianist, amigo, Diet Coke enthusiast) and I joked that our van would see all the biomes on the road, and we weren’t entirely wrong.

Here are some random highlights from tour:Meeting Andrew Southworth for the first time in person at the Boston show (all our work had been over Zoom previously)The green room in Denver was an Airstream trailer (shoutout Ted – awesome sound engineer there)Going from sub zero temperatures in the Twin Cities to 75 degrees in CaliforniaNorth America end of tour celebratory In-N-Out with Zach in San DiegoKebab at 1am in LondonPlaying to 500 people in Paris…our biggest show!Arriving in Warsaw and realizing how far the songs had spreadTaking a run with Adam (drummer, peanut butter enthusiast, instant sleeper) through Prague right before our show

The craziest moment of tour, however, was the Wyoming situation:

We had two full days to drive from Denver to Seattle. It’s roughly 20 hours of driving. We could either cross the Rockies or go through Wyoming. The Wyoming route seemed to be the best option (and the shortest). We set off from Denver and immediately ran into high winds. By the time we got to Cheyenne we saw flashing signs stating that all vehicles of our size were banned from traveling on highways. We would’ve pulled off anyways…it was freaky. Trucks were getting blown around and we saw one almost knocked entirely off the highway.

A night in Cheyenne. We woke up the next morning and the conditions hadn’t improved. All of the roads were blocked heading north, south, and west. We had 33 hours to get to Seattle and the only open road was east…the opposite direction! There was no other option. We set off on a 1,500 mile, 27 hour, non-stop drive that went from Wyoming, into Nebraska, up into South Dakota, across the entirety of Montana, the skinny tip of Idaho, and across the entirety of Washington. We made it with three hours to spare. No flat tires, no snow, no car issues. It was a drive for the ages. I remember waking up at 3am in Montana and seeing the new Google Maps direction “continue straight for 820 miles.” At one point a tumbleweed hit the car and cracked our windshield. It was hilarious.

I could go on for a while about the tour, but for the sake of making this bio concise (lol) I’ll stop here.

In the weeks following the tour (while I’m writing this) I signed my first ever distribution contract. This is a big milestone for me! It’s my first financial foray into the music industry. I’m stoked about it because it allows me to keep my independence while getting my feet wet.

  And that’s about all for now! I am infinitely grateful to be able to make music everyday. If you’ve made it to the end of this absurdly long “about” page, hell yah! This was also a nice reflective exercise for me. A lot has been going on and I wanted to take a minute and appreciate everything that has happened (especially because there’s so much more to come).

As always, more music is on the way. Thanks for listening, vibing, and being a part of my life.

Much love,

Andrew