By Rachel Kramer-Bussell

When Andy Friedman takes the stage, whether at local venues such as Pete's Candy Store or Hank's Tavern or in many a college town, audiences may not know what to expect. With musicians surrounding him and a microphone and rhythm guitar at the ready, he woos his listeners with songs that spin road trip tales, artistic traumas, and romantic odes to a backdrop of loose country music and his own original artwork. Merged in such a way, he lulls listeners into his world, one, as you'll read below, where art is not simply a spectator sport, but a place where viewers and creators can share, learn and interact.

Friedman is passionate about his art, as well he should be-he left a job at The New Yorker to spend much of his time on the road, traveling to towns like Eugene, Oregon and Portland, Maine to bring his unique brand of slideshow poetry to new eyes and ears. The 30-year-old entrepreneur started his Brooklyn-based record label City Salvage Records, to release his own works, such as his books of art and poetry Future Blues and Drawings and Other Failures, as well as the notable CD Upstate Songs by folksinger Devon Sproule and albums by Paul Curreri, Matt Curreri and Brady Earnhart. Tonight marks the start of a seven week run at Bowery Poetry Club, where he will be joined by his band, The Other Failures, along with a rotating cast of writers and artists to open each show. Friedman emailed his detailed responses to Gothamist's questions, showing just as much zeal, vision and perfectionism as he does onstage (but, alas, no arm-wrestling).

You grew up on Long Island, and I'm curious how suburban life affected your view of art and music.

I was wearing Spider Man underoos under my clothes and telling the other second-graders that I was Spider Man's assistant. Maybe all the lawns and fences and straight sidewalks made me dream more, if anything.

How did the music you listened to growing up shape the kind of art and music you create now?

I think at the jewel center of my artistic development exists the "mix tape." Here was the way that I could tell a particular someone about what and how I was feeling without having to open my mouth. It was only a matter of time before I saw that my paintings and drawings could be mix tapes of their own.

You're about to start a seven-week run at Bowery Poetry Club. What appeals to you about that space in particular for your work?

A few years ago when I first started out with the performance end of things I contacted about every club in town. Bob Holman, the fearless poet who founded and runs the Bowery Poetry Club, wrote back to me and said it sounded like my performance embodied the vision for which his club was built. The clientele at the BPC is already into stuff like what I do, the less conventional on-the-fringe-type stuff, as well as the more traditional music acts, and they go there to experience it all. So, for me it's the perfect kind of place. Add to it the fact that they have an elevated stage, great sound, a dressing room, and poets with names like Shappy and Moonshine tending bar-all that stuff doesn't hurt, either.

Will each week offer up a different set? Are you trying to cultivate a returning audience each week, or hoping to generate newcomers as they hear about the show?

It's always nice to recognize faces in the crowd and see people come again and again. And of course it's just as nice to attract new people to the show. It's my belief that most people think my show is something linear with a clear start and a middle and a finish and that it will always be that way like a movie or a novel, but it's not the case. I have my songs and depending on how I feel on a given night I will decide which ones to play and when. And each audience affects the show, too, whether it's a rowdy crowd or a quiet one, big or small. I like to play with all these elements and throw curve-balls when fast balls are expected and I look to the audience for that. It's not a play that I'm offering. It's always different.

You've said that you want to make art less about something you see only in museums and galleries and more about being an interactive forum. What's missing from the modern art world that you'd like to see there instead?

What's missing in the modern art world are artists dealing with everyday emotions and situations that could be of practical use to someone. Most of the visual art these days, that I see, anyway, is art about art. It's as if the role of the visual artist is still to examine various new ways in which things can be expressed visually. Painters seem to have settled into roles of "painter as visual and conceptual scientist," not "poet to the people." In the 20th Century that was an important road, but it took us to here and now it's more of a cul-de-sac. We've got to recognize that and pave painting's new highway.

Does the one-sidedness of the current means of showcasing art detract from drawing in new art fans and collectors?

No, it just attracts fans of the same old gallery scene. I've always felt that when I walk into a gallery I'm made to feel that I should know what the art is about and where it's coming from and that somehow it's my problem if I don't. Most people feel comfortable walking in and out of a bar if they don't like the sound of the live music that's playing and they don't think twice about it. But the same people might not give themselves the freedom to resent visual art for the same reason, for the sheer fact that they're not connecting with it right off the bat or that they don't get why they're looking at what they're seeing. So, they feel dumb for not getting it or appreciating it, as if they are self-conscious of what they fear is an intellectual shortcoming, and find reasons and ways to fall into the role of someone who appreciates it, of someone who cares, even if they don't feel anything at the core. I think its OK to start demanding more from our painters and the pictures they're making. I bet most people, experts and laypeople alike, would not be opposed to taking home something more filling than a belly full of diced cheddar and a few plastic cups' worth of Zinfandel.

How does your artwork fit into the gallery/museum world?

If you mean the original paintings, drawings and photographs, well, then like any other visual artist's work, my drawings and paintings would fit right on the wall. But that, as far as my works are concerned, is only the exhibition of the art object, which is only half of the picture. Granted, there could be a lot to gain from getting up close to my paintings and drawings, but mostly on a technical level. The whole picture is not being shown if the lyrics and the music are not there being shown with it.

But, very few people from the gallery scenes around this country seem to consider what I'm doing as a visual art venture at all, so far as I can tell. If I were naked and painted yellow doing my show in the street, the same set-up, those same people-the gallery-goers, judges and critics-would come out and name my pursuit worthy of consideration. Or if I wrapped myself in tin-foil and played the same venues. Perhaps it's because what I do may seem "familiar" in the sense that I come off like a music act in a bar rather than a painter in a gallery. But, my whole set-up is a living, breathing painting happening in real-time. I think it's the "entertainment" aspect of it that throws the art-lovers off.

You're often on the road and have performed all across the country. Are local, hometown audiences more receptive to your work?

NYC is the best. I mean it. All the adventurous souls move here from all over, so NYC is like an artistic, adventurous, cultural all-star team, you know? But, I also enjoy getting to areas that many other performers don't seem to stop at. Places like Union City, Indiana or Waverly, Alabama. There are curious, adventurous people all over this country. Being in or near a city has nothing to do with it. Everyone is going through the same emotional stuff and dealing with the same obstacles in life.

Are there any towns that have surprised you with their positive (or negative) reactions to what you do?

Well, I just got back from California and I really think I alienated a lot of people there. A drunk in Bolinas told me to take my "intellectual rock" back to NYC, and that sort of summed up a lot of the energy I get out there up and down from LA to SF. It wasn't so much that tomatoes were being thrown, but that could've been due to the fact that the tomatoes in California are delicious.

You had an early career at The New Yorker as an assistant to the cartoon editor, which you left to pursue musical endeavors. What was it like working there and what made you make the leap to leave a full-time job to pursue music?

I left my full-time job to pursue a full-time job in music and art. It wasn't the idea of the full-time job I was looking to leave. I was involved in all sorts of adventures and had friends with access to all sorts of backstages and places that I never would have imagined having access to, and had plenty of drink and conversation with heroes of mine. That will always affect the way you go about pursuing your dreams in life, when one or two of your heroes looks you in the eye and says you can do what you want to do. I never took any of that for granted.

There's something of a very different era about your entire presentation, from the mellow blues to your voice to the mood you create. It's slower and more relaxed and just harkens back to another era. Is there a time in history you feel like your show would fit in with more than 2005?

Not in history, but maybe in 2007.

There's also something pretty tough about the tone of your recordings, as evidenced by a heckler who you challenged to an arm wrestling match during a set in Columbia, SC (a challenge you accepted and won, getting him kicked out of the bar). It's not necessarily macho, but there's a lot of drinking and fighting, a rough-and-tumble street-smart sensibility that definitely comes through on the live recordings, while at the same time the pace of your music is mellow and unhurried. Is that drinking-and-brawling persona that way you are in your regular life or is it enhanced by the kinds of clubs you play?

I think it's a tough thing to be unhurried and mellow. It's a hard place to be, isn't it? Most of life is fast-paced and caffeinated, but I think everyone wants to be calm some of the time. But we all struggle to get there and if we get there we struggle to relish in it.

Maybe the pace of my music is slow and mellow because it's the place in my life where I can actually have control of the pace. You can't write and create your life, really, you have to roll with a lot of punches, but in your art, if you're tough, you can do all the things you need to do, including arm-wrestle people who are giving you a hard time. In a sense, the audience is my boss and my employer and sometimes they give me a hard time. Isn't it nice to be able to shut your boss up with an arm-wrestle now and again?

There's a sense of urgency and necessity in the live interviews you've given, like making your art is not a matter of choice but something you're compelled to do. Would you agree, and how does that interact with the need to make a living?

In anatomy drawing class in art school we were taught that "form follows function." Essentially, you employ different drawing techniques to different parts of the body based on what muscle is flexing and what muscle is relaxing. You don't just draw what you see, you draw what you know. And I use that for everything. That's what my art is and that's how it comes out. It's all based on need. Form follows function. I live my life and shit happens, and I deal with it and make sense of it in the art. As far as making a living, hell, it's like anything else. You just got to figure out how.

You're about to become a father this summer, and I'm curious if your impending parenthood makes you see your artwork and career in a different light. Has that affected your career goals and outlook?

Well, form follows function. I'm sure having a child will affect me in new ways that I don't know now. At least that's what I signed up for, and I'm sure it will come out in my work, either in the things I muse about or the way I go about creating it. There has been no part of my life where the realities of living haven't informed my art and poetry in some significant way.

In your set, you show your painting, "Pilot Light," one that you worked on for three years. It depicts an elderly couple, and you tell a story about wanting to know what it was like to make a perfect piece of art, something you feel you achieved, took a slide of it, and it was later ruined in a varnish accident. How do you feel about the time you put into that painting now?

I wanted to be able to paint like Carravaggio or Valasquez. I wanted to know what it felt like to make a painting perfectly as far as my own standards were concerned. And then, yes, the painting was ruined and that sent me on a whole other journey to rediscover what perfection really is. What you are actually handed in life is perfect, whether its' a knee in the gut or a pat on the back, all you can do is learn from what happens to you, make sense of it and use it to take you to where you should be. So all the time I spent on it was necessary, because the moment of ruining it would not have been as significant to me had I not literally put everything I had into it.

Is there such a thing as "perfect art" and should that concept exist?

"Perfect Art" is real art, true art, art that comes from a truthful life, art that is made with however much or whatever little confidence one may have, no matter what shape or form that confidence manifests itself. Perfect, real art does not concern itself with who may buy it or who will enjoy it. Now, adhering to this principle doesn't always make it accessible to anyone on the receiving end, but it does make it genuine. But that's a whole other topic. There's a lot of genuine stuff in Chelsea, for example, but none of it's ever rescued me when I was sinking. Maybe that's because what I'm really looking for is never exhibited. When I'm in a gallery I feel like the silver discs are being exhibited but there is no CD player, so to speak.

You called your first book "Drawings and Other Failures." How and when is art a failure?

Both beauty and failure are in the eye of the creator. The success of a piece of art depends on a combination of how well the artist knows why the piece is being made coupled with the artist's ability to expresses what needs to be said.

Is it purely a subjective matter? Is there any value to a failed piece of art? Have you learned from the works you've deemed "failures?"

The only real failed pieces of art are the ones that the artist gives up on. An artist has to be prepared for the fact that one's art can change directions the way a well-laid plan might. So, it comes down to picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and starting all over again, or just keeping at it. But remember, it has nothing to do with how the art is received. There are some times on stage in strange far away towns where I am doing one of my favorite songs or stories and no one is listening at all. It isn't catching on and I don't care. I know that at least three people are into it at all times no matter what, so I keep going for them and for me. The noise does not indicate that I'm a failure. There is no such thing as failing unless you plan on giving up.

How do you get an audience's focus back on you when they're talking or otherwise not paying attention?

They say when the rider is nervous the horse gets uncomfortable. I don't really try to win-over anyone at all. I do my thing and I do it the way I mean to do it and I find that this kind of light pierces through the thickest darkness and the noisiest crowds to the ones who need it, the ones who are picking up the signal.

If you go through life, or a performance, worrying about how to win people over then you will either come off looking like an idiot or a Vegas lounge act. My heroes are the ones who sing their songs and then look up to see if anyone is listening.