Andy Gallagher dove headfirst off the comfortable cliff of sterile Modern America to travel up and down this country with a borrowed guitar, while the rest of this weird land desperately sought to find or keep the few jobs left before they were literally shipped across the seas. He felt that in this Modern American Life there was something too temporary, too plastic; Guthrie’s boxcar hops and Kerouac’s pickup truck hitching appealed to him more than any in-flight movie could ever imagine to.
The project, taking it’s name from a Silver Jews' classic tune Trains Across the Sea, are the songs of Andy Gallagher, recorded with the assistance of any musician who cares to learn them. The songs can burn the barn with the wild-dusty foot stomping of banjos and spoons and cracked fiddles; spill sheets of words all over classic talking folk chords prompting one to laugh/think/feel all over again; and/or move mind’s back to that exact moment of post-collegiate confusion (or prepare you for it).
Rare is a Trains Across the Sea set that doesn't end in a wild sing-and-clap-along, that doesn’t bring even the squarest of them all to stomp and hum along. In a world of music which attempts to be on the cutting edge of myspace page designs and mashups of the last twenty years, Andy Gallagher and Trains Across the Sea look to tap into the core reasons anyone ever picks up an instrument in the first place.
