Editor’s Note: In recent years, Hawaii-born, Tucson, Arizona-raised, and Los Angeles-based Winter Andrews has gravitated as an actor to taking on emotionally raw and dramatic roles in film and TV. That includes appearances on Law & Order: SVU & Organized Crime, Criminal Minds: Evolution, and Hulu’s upcoming Murdaugh Murders. However, on November 21, he will share another, more true side of himself – his musical side – on debut EP ‘til the moon fades away. The EP was co-produced with Dave Thomas Jr. and features strings by Grammy-winner Rob Moose (Taylor Swift, Phoebe Bridgers).
According to his bio in a press release, “Winter now brings that same intensity to music; a lush, cinematic blend of indie rock and folk in the vein of Bon Iver, Phoebe Bridgers, and Jeff Buckley.”
One of the first songs shared from the release is “The Lovers,” which a press release describes as a “sweeping, string-laced waltz about longing for something divine in a fading relationship.”
“This song was like a prayer for something real and beautiful and fated… a wistful, tender ballad that’s somewhere between a dream and a memory,” he says.
Andrews continues to showcase his gift for storytelling through music, reflecting on the arc “… of a relationship over a lifetime – from distant, adolescent longing, to young adulthood and erotic consummation, to aging and the passing of time, and finally, to death.”
The following paragraph from a recent press release sums up his emotional journey in music:
“Winter came of age in personal longing and artistic fire. An LA local and Tucson native, he grew up with a blind older sister who also had numerous health issues that were life-threatening. His upbringing was intense and marked by periods of solitude, as his family was preoccupied with the emotional and logistical demands of caring for his sister. Music and the arts became his salvation. ‘I think I fell in love with stories as a way to escape the one I was in,’ he says. A lifelong mimic with a naturally gifted voice, Winter honed his artistry through singing, self-taught guitar and piano, and countless hours alone with sound, feeling, and story.”
Today, SWT is excited to premiere the song’s video and share an essay he penned below about wearing different masks as an actor and musician.
I was recently asked on The Encore Club podcast, “Is there any difference in the creativity you’re using when you’re acting, versus when you’re doing your music?”
I liked the answer I gave them, but the question has still had me pondering the differences in these two worlds I live in. It comes back to me while I’m going (more than slightly) insane trying to finish a mix at 4 AM, or as I’m getting my head smashed in by a stunt actor in the film I’m currently shooting.
Who am I to answer that question? Well, I’m something of a rarity in that I’m both a working professional Film/TV actor, and a fully committed singer/songwriter; writing, producing, and releasing my own original music. There’s no shortage of actors who’re talented musical performers – but there are comparatively fewer who’re doing their own original music.
In the film and television land, it’d seem I’m becoming something of a character actor. Many young working actors end up consistently playing virile, beautiful, passion-driven lovers, and would really like to be playing challenging roles. Meanwhile, I’ve been doing meth-heads, murderers, secret sex traffickers, big-brained nerds, and the mentally broken, and I’d just really love for someone to hire me because they think I’m hot.
But at the very least, my mother’s still proud of her professional meth-head son.
All this to say, I think I’ve gotten pretty good at wearing a variety of masks. One great benefit to acting is that when you’re acting, you do get to wear a mask. You become someone else; you get to experience and channel things you’d never get close to in your ordinary life. You can’t be blamed for anything the character does. Though, that said, some inevitably do try – some of my cousins still feel weird around me at Thanksgiving, knowing that I just played a disturbed serial killer the week before. I don’t blame them, as I’m also insanely ripped and intimidating. (A lie.)
When I’m acting, it doesn’t matter whether I’m crying over my mother’s passing, or gleefully knocking some little shit around with a frying pan, or getting my head smashed in by a robot – someone will eventually call ‘cut.’ It’s over. It’s not me. I’m back to being my most pleasant, affable, perfectly likeable and hireable self. There’s still a massive amount of vulnerability in this work, and there’s still a large degree of the actor imprinted in the work, but at the end of the day – it’s someone else’s story. I was hired by someone else because I was the best person available to play someone else.
I’m not there when the story’s being written. I’m not the director, the cinematographer, the costumer, or the editor. I’m there when it’s my time to play my part – and I do what I can to serve the story I’m in. Really, in musical terms, I’m like a session player. Sometimes that means I’m the sexy, chaotic guitar. Other times I’m the weeping violin, highlighting someone’s tragedy. Other times, well, I’m the cowbell. Whatever the song or story needs.
But as the actor, my mask is my instrument, and my job is always to use it in service of someone else’s story.
So I’ve spent a considerable amount of time performing as others, for others. But in the quiet of my own home, almost all of my spare time has been spent making music. And it’s there that I’ve learned to play for myself, and to please myself. Which sounds scandalous. And it is.
Music’s been my quiet salvation. It gives me a place to channel the depth and intensity of my emotions and my experiences. It’s the most honest journaling I know. Whenever I sit down with my guitar, or at the piano, whatever I’m going through seems to will its way out. Often I don’t even realize what I was going through at a given moment, but then I listen back to my voice memos – and I think, my god. There I am. I can shroud my truth in poetic language or metaphor, but there I am. There’s my story. Something in me insists on being heard, in becoming music, in making order out of chaos, or in making chaos from some intolerable order.
But while I’ve grown quite familiar with the vulnerability involved in acting, it’s an entirely different beast when it comes to music. I’ve spent years writing and learning in quiet, and I’ve written many things that I think are beautiful. But I’ve been loath to share them. It’s a risk that I have to take. If people find my lyrics embarrassing, or my songs poorly produced, or they think everything I’m doing is just plain old’bad, then it’s not the fault of the writer, or the editor, or the director. It’s me. It’s just me.
But just as the vulnerability is wildly different in these worlds, so, too, are the rewards. I’ll never forget a moment while doing my first role – I was Troy in High School Musical Jr. I was in 7th grade. It wasn’t long after the original movie came out, so people were still obseeeessed. Hordes of girls crowded the front row and screamed every time I entered, and they pulled at my arms. It was awesome. I can’t really think of a better way to get an otherwise shy 7th grade boy to fall in love with acting. But they weren’t cheering for me, they were cheering for Troy. I was a vessel for someone else’s idea.
But I’ll never forget the first time someone sang a song I wrote back to me. It was a girl I couldn’t have loved more. It felt like, god, I don’t know, the deepest hug my inner child so desperately craved, that I didn’t know it wanted. To think that I could create something that someone I loved would sing along to, that someone could remember, that someone could be moved by? In the same way I’ve been moved by the songs and artists I so adore?
Holy shit, man. I love acting, but it’s got nothing on that.
So now, after years spent working alone in quiet, I’m stepping into the light with my boldest, most vulnerable performance yet. I’m releasing my debut EP, ‘til the moon fades away, and finally letting some of these songs and stories I’ve crafted in secret be heard.
The curtain’s up, the cameras are rolling – but now I’m the writer, the director, the editor, and the performer. How will the world respond? I really can’t say. I can only make my art as best as I know how to make it.
But now, my mask is off. I hope you enjoy the show.
Winter Andrews
Contributor
Hawaii-born, Tucson-raised, and Los Angeles-based Winter Andrews is a rare kind of artist: A true multi-hyphenate and shape-shifter, as likely to devastate you on-screen as he is through your headphones. Best known for playing dark, twisted, or emotionally raw characters in major TV dramas like Law and Order: SVU & Organized Crime, Criminal Minds: Evolution, and Hulu’s upcoming Murdaugh Murders, Winter is now emerging as one of indie music’s most haunting and compelling new voices with his debut EP, ‘til the moon fades away, full of emotionally rich, sonically detailed songs that feel like miniature films.
Winter came of age in personal longing and artistic fire. He grew up with a blind older sister who also had numerous other health issues that were, at times, life-threatening. As such, his upbringing was intense, and filled with periods of solitude, as his family was occupied with the emotional and logistical demands required by his sister’s care. Music and the arts became his salvation. “I think I fell in love with stories as a way to escape the one I was in,” he says. A lifelong mimic with a naturally gifted voice, Winter honed his artistry through singing, self-taught guitar and piano, and countless hours alone with sound, feeling, and story.
Inspired by the likes of Hozier, Bon Iver, Jeff Buckley, and Phoebe Bridgers, Winter's music feels like being pulled into a dark, misty forest of myth and yearning… underneath a canopy of beautifully lush, cinematic indie rock and indie folk soundscapes, we disappear into his fables, only to emerge finding ourselves marked by the same ghosts.
