Honeybrowne has made its mark on the Texas music scene and beyond by going song by song, gig by gig, album by album and Mile By Mile, as the title of the band’s latest CD declares. Singer, songwriter and group leader Fred Andrews and his musical compadres come by their sound and success honestly, drawing from a rich palette of inspirations and then going out and road-testing the music they create to ensure that it makes a genuine connection with music-loving listeners. Combining good ole hard work with a vibrant love for the magic of music, Honeybrowne keep their eyes on the prize of being better and better each time out.

So how does the band follow “this year’s first must-hear,” as Entertainment News & Views said of their last release, the aptly titled Something To Believe In? Answer: With a new album that enriches and expands the Honeybrowne sound on a set of even stronger songs that are bound to travel with you Mile By Mile for years to come.
To get to the core of Fred Andrews and his songwriting, Texas is indeed where to begin, in the town of Victoria, to be exact, where Andrews was born and spent his early years. In the Lone Star tradition, music was loved and played around the home: His father plays guitar and piano, his mother is also a pianist and plays violin, and his grandfather was handy with the mandolin, violin and banjo. Andrews played drums from age three, later took a few piano lessons and finally settled on the guitar.

Andrews was raised square within the Texas musical tradition, but his Chicago bred father also instilled in his son his love of respected pop masters like Simon & Garfunkel, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley, Billy Joel and others. Then Fred later found his own favorites like The Replacements, R.E.M and U2. “I think my songwriting reflects a combination of my Texas music heroes and all the other stuff I listen to,” he explains.

Teen years in Charleston, West Virginia also expended Andrews’s musical horizons, in good part thanks to the syndicated NPR concert show “Mountain Stage” based there, which exposed Andrews at its tapings to the crème de la crème of singer-songwriters as well the coolest alterative acts of the day.

“I always liked music a lot more than anyone else I knew,” says Andrews, who finally took up the guitar in his early college years at West Virginia University and started getting serious about playing, singing and writing songs while finishing school at Southwest Texas State University (now known as Texas State University). “I really didn’t know how to play other people’s music so much, so I made up my own. I thought songwriting was really fun.”

A gathering of friends onstage at a local bar started out as “just playing, drinking, having a good time and singing all the songs we knew and ones we made up as we went along,” Andrews recalls. “Then all our friends showed up and then all of their friends showed up. We would draw 500 to 600 people every Tuesday and packed the place for a year.”

When the ad hoc group landed the opening slot at a campus concert by then Texas favorites Jackopierce, they needed a band name and grabbed Honeybrowne from a beer coaster as their handle. By the time Andrews graduated he gathered his first serious core of players — including his college pal, bassist Shade Deggs, now with Columbia recording artists Cole Deggs & The Lonesome — and stepped out into the thriving Texas live music scene.

Debuting on CD in 2001 with Finding Shade, produced by former Loggins & Messina drummer Merel Bregante, Honeybrowne picked up airplay out of the box with “Texas Angel” and “Deeper Shade of Blue” on Houston’s KIKK and other Texas stations. A live album tracked at the famed Satellite Lounge in Houston followed and then another studio disc, 2003’s Good For Nuthin’, consolidated the band’s stature as rising stars with their own sound within the booming Texas music movement.

“I’ve been making my living with music since about 2001,” Andrews notes. “I may not be driving a Porsche, but I sure am enjoying it. It’s a great day job and night job.