Andy Friedman

His gag cartoons have been published in The New Yorker, but the songs written by ?hard scrabble singer-songwriter? (Time Out New York) and ?erudite redneck? (Boston Globe) Andy Friedman aren't written for laughs. "Friedman has a mastery of wordy self-loathing that many white dudes with guitars would kill for," says Nashville Scene. The title track to his 2006 debut studio album, "Taken Man" (City Salvage Records/Rounder Europe), found itself at #30 on the New York Post's "207 Best Songs To Download in 2007.

?? Other songwriters appearing on the extensive list included Amy Winehouse ("Rehab" #1), Neil Young ("Dirty Old Man" #65), and Bruce Springsteen ("Radio Nowhere" #114).

In January of 2009, Friedman -- "perhaps the truest singer-songwriter in the borough" (Go! Brooklyn) released his second studio album, Weary Things (City Salvage/Kindred Rhythm). The album enjoyed an enormously enthusiastic critical welcome. The New Yorker proclaimed that Friedman's "hard-tack" country originals as bearing "the mark of a true artist," while NoDepression.com simply calls them "unforgettable." Appearances on NPR's coveted Mountain Stage and an feature interview on XM's Bob Edwards Show further solidified Friedman's growing reputation as "a songwriter with an engagingly singular voice," (Philadelphia Inquirer) and a "dusty, paint-splattered Americana sage." (Rochester News & Democrat) Old Crow Medicine Show's Ketch Secor, in a poem written about Friedman's latest work, called Weary Things a "certified, genuine American tune." Indie-folk icon Sufjan Stevens proclaimed, "I think the world of Andy Friedman. I've always wanted to be Andy Friedman." In the album's liner notes, the Pulitzer-nominated author (Jernigan) and former senior arts writer for Newsweek David Gates sets the tone for Weary Things: ?What [Friedman] sees through his windshield isn't Greil Marcus's Old Weird America, but the weird new America where the pastoral is no longer pure.?

While his album was recorded with members of his usual backing band The Other Failures, who are known as "one of the most respected bands on the Brooklyn scene" (Cleveland Free Times), Friedman introduces a new backing band this fall by presenting The Golden Winners, who provide a warm, mellifluous backdrop for what the Nashville Scene refers to as Friedman's "dark, singular" songwriting and "world weary" vocal delivery.

While his songs are anything but funny, Friedman has published over a dozen gag cartoons in The New Yorker under the pseudonym Larry Hat. As an award-winning illustrator published under his own name, Friedman's portraits of cultural figures appear regularly in literally hundreds of magazines and newspapers worldwide, including a recent cover for the New York Times Magazine (www.andyfriedmanillustration.com).