Thirty years. That’s how long Andrew Schiff has been quietly writing songs before most people ever caught one, and “You” is the kind of track that sneaks up on you. Figures, really. Catchy is sort of his whole deal.
Schiff’s a Brooklyn guy. Singer-songwriter, and a published author on top of it, which you don’t see paired up too often. He got into writing music back in grad school, of all places. SUNY Albany, where he was actually there for a Master’s in history. Picture that. For a while he’d play the Tuesday open mic at a place called Valentine’s, just his own songs, and the same thing kept coming back at him. Folks would catch him after the set and say they couldn’t shake the tunes. Stuck in their heads. Every songwriter wants that and almost none of them get it.
Then there’s the baseball thing. He wrote a book in 2008, “The Father of Baseball: A Biography of Henry Chadwick.” It ended up a finalist for the Seymour Medal. That’s the award the baseball research crowd hands out every year for the best book. So yeah, the guy can write. Just not only songs.
“You” comes out of a long road. He started recording back in 2015 and only got around to remastering everything last year, which is a lot of patience for one batch of songs. And you can feel it. These aren’t tossed off, they’re tunes somebody actually sat with.
Low-key, that catchy reputation is the whole pitch here. If a room full of strangers kept humming your stuff back at you for years, you’re clearly doing something right. Give “You” a spin and see if it lodges in your head too. Good chance it does.
Listen: https://open.spotify.com/track/1hH7pxLRRsF5nUrKMG2i2J
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