AboutAndy Robinson,
known to everyone as Andy Bad

I am a singer and a guitarist, and I have never been able to pick a side. That is really the whole story.

Most weeks I am out somewhere on my own with a guitar and a small PA. A social club on a Sunday afternoon, a pub on the Kent coast on a Friday night, a wedding somewhere in between. Other weeks I am out with Strydes, when a venue wants a band rather than one bloke.

Before all of that there were bands. The Soul Survivors, Gambler, ThreeBand with Suzi Gee and Kev Miller, and TroubleTown with Toby Chapman, Kev Miller, Nick Clow and Terry Neilson. Some of them went further than others. All of them taught me something about what an audience is actually asking for, which is usually not the thing you had planned.

Why the set list is so long

If you only ever play one kind of music you can only ever play one kind of night. So over the years I built sets rather than a set. Nat King Cole and Sinatra for a dinner. Motown and soul when people have had a drink. Clapton, Gary Moore, Santana and Stevie Ray Vaughan when the room turns out to want guitar. Over 700 songs, and the point of having that many is being able to change direction halfway through an evening without stopping.

I try to read the audience and let them dictate where our musical adventure will be taking us for that evening. That sounds like something off a brochure, but it is genuinely the job. Anyone can play a set list. Knowing when to abandon it is the bit that takes years.

Pubs and the other end of it

The regular work is pubs, clubs and function rooms, and I would not want it any other way. It is where you learn. But it has also taken me to some rooms I did not expect, including Le Mans, the Houses of Parliament, a Virgin party, and a boat race party at the Black Lion in Hammersmith.

The honest version is that the two ends are not as different as people assume. A private event with a very large budget and a Tuesday night in a pub both come down to the same question, which is whether the people in front of you are enjoying themselves.

Writing and recording

Alongside the covers work I write, and I record at my own studio, Stridin’ Edge. There are two albums of original material, Well Red and PlanetBoy, Seconds from Disaster, plus a run of things recorded during lockdown when nobody was playing anywhere.