My Music Row Story: Porter’s Call’s Al Andrews

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Al Andrews. Photo: Caroline Allen

The “My Music Row Story” weekly column features notable members of the Nashville music industry selected by the MusicRow editorial team. These individuals serve in key roles that help advance and promote the success of our industry. This column spotlights the invaluable people that keep the wheels rolling and the music playing.

Al Andrews is the Founder and Executive Director of Porter’s Call, a nonprofit he founded in 2001. Since its inception, Porter’s Call has been offering its services to recording artists at no charge, providing a safe and confidential space for artists to be off-stage and deal with the issues they face. To date, the Porter’s Call staff has spent more than 70,000 hours working for and with their clients, saving them millions of dollars on counseling fees.

A 1976 graduate of the University of North Carolina, Andrews is a lifelong Tar Heels fan. He is the co-author of The Silence of Adam, the author of an illustrated children’s book The Boy, the Kite and the Wind, and a Christmas book, A Walk One Winter Night.

Andrews loves Southern writers and poets, is quite partial to chicken wings, loves live music and going to movies at the Belcourt Theatre. He lives in Nashville with his poet/artist/counselor wife of 33 years, Nita, and they have two sons, Brent and Hunter.

Andrews will retire from his role at the beginning of 2024. He will be a featured storyteller at Porter’s Call’s 14th annual “Evening of Stories” on Aug. 29 at 7:30 p.m. at Belmont University’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts.

MusicRow: Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Montreat, North Carolina, which is a little town right outside of Asheville. I spent my early life in Virginia till about the fifth grade and then we moved to North Carolina.

What were your interests as a kid?

As a kid, I just loved to play outside. Up until the fifth grade, I grew up on a non-working farm. It was like Disney World, with a lake, fishing, buddies to play, bamboo forests and trees to climb. I just loved to be outside.

What did you think you were going to be when you grew up?

My mother said early on that she thought I’d make a great veterinarian. I’m not sure why in the world she said that. [Laughs] I liked animals, and maybe that was why, but I remember going to the veterinarian one time, when we had our dog put to sleep. I said, “I am not doing this.” That was it for a while, and then I think I just didn’t know for the longest time.

Al Andrews

Where did you go to college?

I went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I went there for four years and I studied American Studies, which is kind of a cultural approach to American history which really prepared me to live in America. [Laughs] God bless my parents.

I loved college. I grew up in this small, fairly conservative town. When I moved to Chapel Hill, it was like this world that I’ve never seen. I made some lifelong friends there. I really dug into school, friendships and going to basketball games. Right after I left Michael Jordan arrived, so we watched it for a long time.

What did you do after your graduation?

I was involved in a college Christian group at school. I ended up going on staff with them for about six years. It’s funny, one of my sons was telling me he wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted to do [when he grew up]. I told him, “I was 47 before I decided what I wanted to do. Between college and now I’ve had nine different jobs.”

I did that for a while. I worked with senior citizens for a couple of years. I went to grad school [to study] counseling. I worked in a furniture store to make an adjustment after counseling school to take a [break] for a while because it was intense. I was an intern in a graduate program out in Colorado for counseling. I did private practice there. I worked in a church for a little while, and then moved to Franklin and started a private practice. I think that’s about nine jobs. [Laughs]

As I look at my life, almost everything I’ve done was laying a foundation for what I get to do now. It all connects somehow.

What drew you to counseling?

Probably like most counselors, I got into counseling by going. I needed some help in my early thirties. I went to a counselor and I got some help. I got to see what happens and I liked the results. I decided I wanted to head in that direction.

What led you to Franklin?

My wife and I were out in Colorado teaching in this counseling program. Both of our parents were beginning the process of ailing health. Her mother lived in Nashville and my parents were in North Carolina, and we just felt like we couldn’t be that far away. So that was what brought us here. My wife is a counselor too, and when we came, she found a job right away and I found a part-time counseling gig in Nashville. So we just started this counseling thing. We had two little boys at that time and we traded off days of who was going to be with the guys, which was really interesting and one of my favorite things.

I ended up getting a full-time practice in Green Hills. After the first year, I looked at my practice and I realized that it was all music related. Some of the first people that came were in music, just different levels. There’s that network in music, so they had passed my name along. I joke about the fact that, at one point, I had two artists, a backup singer, a drummer, keyboard player, an executive and a manager, and I could have started a band or a label.

Carlos Whittaker, Chris Tyrrell, Hillary Scott Tyrrell, Kelsea Ballerini, Anne Wilson, Cody Fry and Al Andrews on stage during 2022’s “Evening of Stories” event. Photo: Makenna Brooke

What did you notice about musicians when you started working with them more?

As I began seeing more and more artists, particularly touring artists, I just began to see some things that were unique to artists as it related to counseling. They couldn’t come regularly. When I went to counseling, I went every Wednesday at 10 until I was done. But I’ve never met an artist that could come very regularly. Early in their careers, they couldn’t afford it—and I couldn’t afford to keep cutting everybody’s rates. Those two things seemed significant to me. I also began seeing some things that they shared in common. Generally everybody deals, at some level, with some of the same stuff, whether you’re an artist or not. Artists deal with what most everybody else deals with, but it’s amplified. Some of that is because they’re in the public eye. People are watching them, judging them, fantasizing about them or whatever. There’s an extra level of pressure.

There’s also this struggle between not making enough money and making a lot of money. There’s this sense of not enough fame and too much fame. I’m not sure which is the more difficult, because they each have their thing. There’s this tension between what people perceive them to be by what they see on stage, and what they know they are and what they know they struggle with. When somebody’s on stage, I don’t need to see them depressed. You go to see them give a great show. The problem is we all see somebody on stage and go, “They must be the most wonderful person in the world,” because they’re doing their best. For artists, sometimes there’s a struggle with which of those am I going to believe. If I believe this one, what everybody sees, I’m in trouble. It means that you’re pushing away a lot of truth in your life.

Tell me how those observations led to starting Porter’s Call.

I was seeing all that and came up with a little entrepreneurial idea. I thought, “What if I went to five labels and I got them to buy a day of my counseling practice, so their artists could come for free and maybe we could get some traction.” The first person I went to was Peter York, who was President of EMI Christian at the time. We just talked about the issues involved, and he agreed that they spend a lot of money getting people out there and successful. If they crash and burn, everybody loses. They lose, their family loses and the record company loses. As we were talking, he said to me, “You’re not gonna believe this, but my board commissioned me about six months ago. They said, we’re asking artists to live a very difficult life on the road away from their families. There’s some good parts of it too, but we’re not helping them to live that life. I want you to find a way that somehow we can come alongside artists with help.” Then I walk in the door. He took it to his board and they talked about it. They said, “We’ll buy a day and see how it goes. Our only stipulation is that you must be willing to see any artist from any label during our day.” That [usually] just doesn’t happen. You don’t take care of other people’s people.

During those first three months, a lot of people came from other labels. It was [spread by] word of mouth. EMI paid for it, which was so generous. Artists started coming. The cool part was a young couple who [could] hardly [afford] food could sit in my office for two hours. I could hug ’em goodbye and send them on their way, and they didn’t have to hand me a check. There was something great about that.

We did that for three months. Then Bill Hearn, who was the CEO of EMI, and Peter came back and said, “We feel like something is happening that’s good. Artists have a place to go. We don’t know what they’re going for. We don’t even know if they’re going unless they tell us. We feel like something good is happening. Would you be willing to turn this into a nonprofit? Because if you do, we believe that we could help shake the trees in the industry. Being a nonprofit helps to get support from larger corporations.” So we did. True to form, they had a meeting and invited lots of their fellow labels, managers and agents. We started one day and then moved to two, and gradually got up to five days a week. It started with the Christian industry, but soon morphed into country, rock, pop, goth, indie and anything in between. That was back in 2001.

Pictured (L-R): Jared Farley, Chad Karger, Audrey Ragan, Al Andrews, Beth Barcus and Phil Shay. Photo: Caroline Allen

That is amazing.

It feels critical to us that artists can come for free. A lot of artists could afford us, and a lot of them do end up giving back. Artists that fill up stadiums could obviously pay the going rate. One time, an artist said to me, “How much is this?” I said, “It’s free.” They contested with, “No, how much is it?” I said, “It’s really free,” and the person said, “Everybody makes money from me.” I was able to say, “Well, we don’t. We just want you to be here, be honest and be real. That’s plenty for us.” You could feel the difference in the room.

Why did you decide to call it Porter’s Call?

My wife came up with that. She’s a researcher. She just loves to do research. She was studying this 1,500-year-old document called the Rules of St. Benedict, it’s a Catholic document. When one of the very first Christian communities was formed—one of the first monasteries—they made rules, such as giving their money to the poor, praying every three hours, working on a farm and other things. There were 99 rules that they [followed]. One of the rules was inside the gates of the monastery, “You shall place a porter.” When a Sojourner knocked on the door, a porter’s job was to basically call out a welcome to them—the Porter’s Call—and then welcome them in and help them find the way to what they needed. If they needed food, he’d feed them. If they needed to sleep, he’d give them a bed. If they needed certain kinds of help, he’d offer it to them. If they needed wise counsel, he’d offer them wise counsel. One of the things it says about a porter is that, “A porter shall be a wise old man who’s finished with his days of wandering about.” We decided that we weren’t going to call ourselves counselors, we were going to call ourselves porters, although we were all trained counselors. So when an artist knocks on the door, we welcome them in and we help them find the way to what they need.

I had a kid call from an indigent hospital in L.A. one time because he did a rockstar jump off the stage and missed. He shattered his ankle and he didn’t have the funds to get it fixed. He said, “[They] told me to call the porter.” I just helped him find funds, probably through MusiCares. Some of it’s that, and some of it’s helping someone weave their way through this industry. Some of it is, “I did something really stupid on the road and I’m paying for it,” “I need some help with my marriage,” “I’m remembering something from my past and it’s getting in the way” or “I’m really anxious.” If we can’t meet that need, we have a large referral resource of different professionals that can and we’ll help them pay for that too.

Next week, you guys will hold your 14th annual “Evening of Stories” event at Belmont, where you will be a featured storyteller. Tell me about that event.

15 years ago, my board said to me, “I think it’s about time we have a banquet.” I laughed and said, “No, I know what happens at banquets. They’re a lot the same. I just want to do something different, but I don’t know what that is.” They said, “You must figure that out because we need some kind of event.” Peter, who helped start this years ago, and I started talking about it. He was listening to The Moth series on NPR, and we started talking about what we do at Porter’s Call is listen to people’s stories and help [them to] heal, help them to change, help them to grow and help them to tell a new or better story. So we thought, “What if we had a night of stories?” We just tried it one year with a small group of people including Donald Miller, who’s an author here in town, Becca Stevens, who’s Head of Thistle Farms, and a singer named David Wilcox. We did stories in the round. David did three songs and they told three stories. Over the years, we’ve added new storytellers and we’ve grown. We’ve had all sorts of singers that have been to Porter’s Call, so it’s morphed into this event that people actually enjoy going to.

You’re looking towards retirement at the beginning of the year. What have been some of your proudest moments?

I think my proudest moments are those moments where you see somebody’s eyes come alive. Where you see a shift inside or a healing come about that was based on an old lie, an old belief that they’ve embraced for so long. To be able to watch them go back and see that something [they believed their whole life] wasn’t true or something that happened wasn’t [their] fault, just that shift in their eyes and a shift in their heart. To me, [those are] my proudest and most delightful moment[s].

LB Cantrell
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