Andrew Combs on Eating Pho and Dealing with Taxes

Photo credit: Fairlight Hubbard

Tell us about your tour vehicle. Any notable breakdown stories?

If it’s a band tour, I rent a van from a friend. If it’s a solo or duo tour I take my 2010 Honda Odyssey. I call her Shamu. I just spent a pretty penny on a new power steering system and a new alternator. She’s a workhorse though. I hope to keep her around for another 100k miles at least. Right now we’re at 217k.

How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?

We eat a lot of pho. It’s cheap and fills you up for the day. Stocking up on leftover rider items helps too.

How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?

I rarely break strings, but change them once every few weeks on my acoustic and electric when on tour.

What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?

It was an electronic dance song called “body in motion” and I just sang that over and over again.

Describe your first gig.

I don’t know if this counts but I used to play assemblies at my high school. I’m sure that was my first time playing in public. Probably played some Brit-pop cover. Probably was scared shitless.

What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?

I pick up odd jobs at home these days – delivering packages was my last endeavor while back from tour.

How has your music-related income changed over the past 5-10 years? What do you expect it to look like 5-10 years from now?

It’s increased slowly but surely. Key word is slowly.

What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?

Get someone to help with your taxes/bookkeeping!

A Dallas native now living near the same Nashville airport immortalized in the opening sequence of Robert Altman’s country music odyssey, Andrew Combs is a singer, songwriter, guitarist, and heir to that 1975 film’s idea of the Nashville troubadour as a kind of musical monk. Here in the twenty-first century whorl of digital narcissism, where identity can feel like a 24/7 social media soft-shoe performance, Combs makes music that does battle with the unsubtle. Like the pioneering color photographer William Eggleston, he sees the everyday and the commonplace as the surest paths to transcendence, and he understands intuitively that what is most obvious is often studded with the sacred. As a songwriter, Combs relies on meditative restraint rather than showy insistence to paint his canvases, a technique commensurate with his idea of nature as an overflowing spiritual wellspring.

Ideal Man, his latest album, was released in September 2019. Connect with Combs online and on the road.