F. Scott Fitzgerald’s oft-quoted assertion that there are no second acts in American life may hold water on this side of the pond, but it doesn’t apply to the Welsh, at least not to Cardiff-born Andy Fairweather Low. During the course of the last four decades, the 57-year-old writer/singer/musician has be-bopped and hollered his way through three distinct acts—teen idol, solo artist in the ’70s and in-demand hired gun. Now Low’s fourth act is beginning with the release of Sweet Soulful Music (Proper American Recordings), the first album to come out under his own name since 1980’s Mega-Shebang.

After cranking out a string of U.K hits in the ’60s as the leader of the beat group Amen Corner, Low came of age as an artist the following decade, fashioning three delightful and distinctive solo albums for A&M Records that took on (and retain) the status of connoisseurs’ delights for their impeccable musical understatement and the everyman’s eloquence of their songs and singing. In a 1978 essay on Low, the esteemed rock critic Robert Christgau noted that there is “a quirky punch to this music—especially in the grit and surprising turns of Low’s singing, which has gained strength without getting pushy about it—that makes for great rock and roll…. It’s country-style music that’s black as well as white. It’s alive.”

You will agree with every syllable of Christgau’s rhapsodic assessment if you were lucky enough to be introduced to—and thus fall under the spell of—those three ’70s records. The good news is that the fittingly titled Sweet Soulful Music sounds precisely like the logical next chapter in this trio of cult classics, which began with 1975’s Spider Jivin’, rolled along with 1976’s La Booga Rooga and concluded with 1978’s Be Bop ’n’ Holla. (Low is less proud of the subsequent Mega-Shebang, released by Warner Bros., partly because of his decision to play the drums on that record—“and I don’t play drums.” But three out of four ain’t bad in any pursuit.) If anything, his singing is richer and more expressive than before, his guitar playing has benefited from all those years as a sideman and his songwriting has been commensurately enriched by his life experience. “The more you do something, you ought to get better at it,” he submits.

The affable and unassuming Low agrees that 26 years is a rather long time between records. “But I’ve been busy,” he points out. Indeed he has, playing guitar and singing on record and/or onstage for the likes of the Who, Van Morrison, Linda Ronstadt, Bill Wyman and George Harrison, his longest-running associations being with Eric Clapton (13 years) and Roger Waters (. While he still tours with Waters on those occasions when the Pink Floyd founder is so inspired, Low gave up his chair in Clapton’s band two years ago—and it was not an easy decision. Clapton had been a fan (after falling under the spell of Spider Jivin’, he cut Low’s songs “Be Bop ’n’ Holla” and “Drowning on Dry Land”) and friend (Andy is the godfather of one of Eric’s daughters), as well as the best possible employer. “It was a fantastic gig,” he says. “And I felt very connected to him. But I knew I’d never do the album if I’d stayed, and I had to do the album. I remember saying to him, ‘I don’t want to leave, but I just can’t stay,’ which ended up as a line in one of the songs. And I still haven’t resolved it—but this time I wanted the final opinion to be mine. It was a very expensive opinion, I might add!” There was, however, one other essential opinion—that of his biggest fan and harshest critic. “Most important of all, my wife liked it,” he says with relief.

Working with legendary producer Glyn Johns, whose knack for delivering musical and sonic authenticity was honed while he engineered the Beatles and the Stones, Low has opted for stripped-down settings featuring just his guitar, the bass of Dave Bronze (Robin Trower, Procol Harum, Clapton) and the drumming of Henry Spinetti (Clapton, Harrison, Paul McCartney, Roger Daltrey), with John “Rabbit” Bundrick (the Who, Pete Townshend, Bob Marley) adding piano to two tracks. Bundrick played on La Booga Rooga and Be Bop ’n’ Holla, both of which were produced by Johns, while Spinetti appeared on the latter LP, so these sessions occasioned a reunion of hale fellows, well met. He further challenged himself and his virtuosic cohorts by giving the crew 10 days to record and mix the album, which they proceeded to do. “At 8:30 on the tenth day, we packed up and went home,” he says, with a mixture of nonchalance and pride.

As with this trio of cult classics (finally released on CD in 2004 by Edsel as the set Wide-Eyed and Legless: The A&M Recordings), Sweet Soulful Music throbs with a distinctly human vitality, its 13 original songs by turns playful and plaintive (in the manner of Dylan’s latter-day masterpiece, Love and Theft), as the artist confronts those matters of life and death that tend to increasingly preoccupy one who has been on the planet for more than half a century. Low declines to discuss the meanings of stunners like “Hymn 4 My Soul,” “Ashes and Diamonds,” “Bible Black Starless Sky,” the interrelated “Don’t Stand” and “Don’t Need,” “Low Rider” and “Life Is Good.” “When you talk too much about lyrics, you tend to sound like a folksinger from the ’70s—more than slightly pretentious,” he says with a laugh before acknowledging the seriousness of his themes, albeit obliquely: “When it comes to heavy songs, George Harrison had that one nailed—‘Inner Light,’ ‘Beware of Darkness,’ ‘All Things Must Pass’—ouch.”

Low readily admits that “I spent a lot of time on these lyrics; it was a lot of work.” He did his work well enough that there’s really no need for him to explain these songs; they explain themselves. Consider “Zazzy,” which contains what could stand as this iconoclast’s personal credo: “I won’t be what you want me to be / Can’t go where you want me to go / I believe in myself and nobody else / I wouldn’t say it if it isn’t so.”

Talking to Christgau back in ’78, Low acknowledged that even then he labored over his material for months to make it come off as spontaneous. “But mind you,” he told the journalist, who noted that the artist was anxious not to sound pretentious, “I write big.” If Low wrote big as he was turning 30, he’s writing positively massive three decades later. This is a record the world needs to hear, and the world needs to know that. Here’s hoping a few discerning souls happen upon Sweet Soulful Music and are inspired to spread the everyman’s gospel of Andy Fairweather Low.

OFFICIAL ARTIST SITE: TBA

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