Wooden Birds singer Andrew Kenny has a back up if new band never leaves the ground

Andrew Kenny of The Wooden Birds

Andrew Kenny of The Wooden Birds

Andrew Kenny knows music wasn't exactly a wise move in his career path.

"I left a potentially lucrative career in science and an Ivy League Ph.D. to make an American Analog Set record," says Kenny in a phone call from Brooklyn, N.Y. "That was probably the moment that I cut my boat from the shore and let it drift down the river to some extent."

Kenny's boat drifted from Ft. Worth, Texas, to Austin, Texas, to New York and then back to Austin. After more than a decade with the indie-rock act the American Analog Set, Kenny recently formed the Wooden Birds - a group with a gentle and soothing sound that is more percussion and rhythm-based than Kenny's former group.

The move to Austin, says Kenny, was precipitated by a desire for space, windows, a place to have a dog, cheaper living. and Kenny thought it would be a good place to start a new band.

"My wife and I never do anything impulsive at all," says Kenny. "It just seemed to make a lot of sense when you put it all together and it would be easy to put a band together there. But now my entire band lives in Brooklyn. It was a very Andrew Kenny thing to do - go the long way."

Kenny says he first became interested in making music after hearing R.E.M. and early 1990s British bands.

"Shoegaze kind of stuff," says Kenny.

He became a member of a band called Terrapin which was led by a Dallas/Ft. Worth singer-songwriter named Donald Fagin (not Steely Dan's Donald Fagen).

Shortly thereafter, in 1994, Kenny formed the American Analog Set. He says if there were only one memory from his musical career that he could take with him it would be when he and the group's drummer first saw the band's record in the racks at a record store:

"It was the first time I felt like, 'We're a real band with a real album. We have the opportunity to share this with people and the future is ours for the taking' ... and it's all been downhill from there!"

Kenny laughs.

"Not really. There have been plenty of great moments since then, but if I could only take one moment that would be it."

While the American Analog Set won critical raves and a solid fan base, the group never sold enough albums to be a major concern. He says the challenges with starting a band today are different than in the mid-1990s.

"We've never been so close to the bone," says Kenny. "It's never been so hard to break even, but there's also never been more ways to promote yourself and network with other bands. When we started the American Analog Set 15 years ago, there wasn't an Internet. We didn't even have CD burners. Then it was a feat of will to tour. What an amazing victory to book your own tour and go out on the road. Nowadays if you're not on the road for a few months out of the year then you're really just not trying hard enough."

While Kenny is enjoying the Wooden Birds and loves making music, he isn't going to be crushed if music doesn't make him rich.

"I really like doing this, but the longer I do this it's really less important that I share it with people. ... If you take this seriously this music can make a difference to people and really matter to them, but I don't see myself doing this in 10 years."

He says it's not a question of being defeated as a artist.

"It's more like, 'Doesn't my wife deserve to have a husband who isn't a gypsy?'"

Kenny graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in molecular biology and he was working toward a Ph.D. from Columbia University in biochemistry, which he plans to exploit in the future.

"I'll probably just get a job in lab work," he says, "but I love lab work, and I'll be a good lab employee."

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