Crandall Creek Bluegrass

Crandall Creek came into being in 2015 when Jerry Andrews decided he wanted to start a bluegrass band. Jerry also had some stories to tell, which would best be shared via songwriting. He brought together a bluegrass band that created its own music with an ear toward the mountain harmonies he heard as a child, growing up in Moundsville, West Virginia.

Rewinding to when music first got its hooks into him, Jerry recalls without hesitation that he was ten years old when he first got his hands on a guitar. “We had an Epiphone semi-hollow-body guitar. It was black. I remember it like it was yesterday…I found a Mel Bay handbook and taught myself how to play guitar.” He played rock music in high school, then later country, but in 1982, as Jerry describes it, he “put the guitar down, and I didn’t look at an instrument until 2015.” Family and holding down multiple jobs took Jerry’s focus off music for a while.

Music got jolted back to life for Jerry when he decided he wanted to see Donna Ulisse in concert. “She came to Glenville State College in West Virginia and did a songwriting seminar and a concert…I called to get tickets and oddly enough they said they weren’t handling the tickets but they’d give me a number to call.” When he dialed the Nashville number, Jerry ended up on the line with none other than Donna Ulisse herself. She told him to bring his guitar and play some of the songs he had written back with his country band at her songwriting clinic.

Not long after reviving his passion for music and songwriting, Jerry assembled the group that would become Crandall Creek. Their third and latest album is a nine-track effort called Handprints on the Glass. They have also recently released a new single, “Refrigerator Homemade Picture Show.” Written with bandmate Kathy Wigman Lesnock. Jerry explains that “the song came to me one day as a cascade of my grandkid’s artwork peeled off the refrigerator door. As I picked it up, it made me think of all the creativity kids have. Sometimes I wouldn’t know what the picture in the drawing was, but I applauded just the same.”

To find out more, visit here.  Listen to the interview here.

By Dan Walsh