Local musician, Mercer professor releases new album

Andy Silver’s main concern is that people hear his songs, not that he sells a million copies of his new album, “fading things and things that do not fade.”

But of course, big sales would be OK.

Silver is a lifelong music lover who has been playing guitar since he was a kid and writing songs for about as long. He’s been performing on and off for decades.

Silver is also an English professor at Mercer University where, since 1998, he’s taught classes in American literature, drama, Christianity and literature, Southern literature and more.

For a half-dozen years, he’s been writing the songs that have made it to the album plus one or two that stretch further back. And yes, though he’s an English teacher, he prefers the album’s title to be written without capital letters. It’s just one of the ways he willingly transgresses not only the rules of grammar but the confines of musical genres letting his tunes crisscross from Americana to folk to rock with Zydeco, jazz and other surprises thrown in. The work contains 10 tracks recorded at live sessions with friends at Capricorn Studios.

But Silver said the behind-the-scenes theme of the album is singular: the grief and sorrow we all experience.

But he maintains the music is not a place for wallowing in self-pity but rather it offers a place to find measures of understanding, healing and even celebration.

“One of the most formative things in my life was my mom getting breast cancer when I was around eight and suffering terribly from it, all of us suffering as we cared for her,” Silver said. “She died at home. That experience was just so raw and awful. That’s when I first started playing guitar. The first song I learned was John Lennon’s “Across the Universe” and it seemed to fit. I found the way you hold a guitar and how it reverberates into your body comforting in ways I couldn’t explain. That and doing a little acting were my way of coping.”

Years later, Silver found himself in a similar situation watching his late wife, Anya, suffer and eventually succumb to cancer in 2018. He said the two met, fell in love almost immediately and married while attending Emory University in the late 1990s. They moved to Macon together.

“She was an amazing poet and taught me a lot about language,” he said. “It was startling the way she used sensory language and images so beautifully in her work. It’s what she was known for. I would get anxious before a public appearance but she had nerves of steel and would walk right up to a mic and share her poetry with absolute confidence. She taught me a lot about discipline in writing. She would be up every morning to spend an hour working even if nothing good came of it. She taught me the value of that.”

Anya also taught at Mercer. During her illness, Silver’s songwriting again reflected the trauma.

“Of course, there was a while I couldn’t do anything but eventually it came,” he said. “A wonderful thing about music is it lets you both participate in the trauma you’re in but it also helps you shape that formless chaotic trauma that masters you and lets you master it in moments. You can become one step removed as it soothes and heals and in some strange way gives you a kind of control over it.”

It was in this period most of the album’s songs were born.

But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Silver said when he sings the songs now, it’s not as a return to grief but as a celebration. He speaks of the transformative power of music, sharing one another’s deepest feelings and acknowledging that through it all there’s a love and connection with others that is more powerful than the difficulties we face.

“For me, they celebrate life,” he said. “I’ve been able to share in that celebration with those close to me, with audiences and with those who’ve helped me shape, play and record these songs. Ultimately, if someone needs the same healing I’ve found in them, it’s there.”

That’s why Silver says he wants his songs heard but he’s not after the biggest crowds. That’s why he said it’s OK this column is out the day after a Thursday release concert at Capricorn Studios.

(But if you see it before then, don’t miss it.)

Silver trusts those who need to hear will hear but don’t get the wrong idea — he knows there’s good in the music even for those not desperate for some deep connection but who simply want to enjoy what he and those around him have worked long and hard to provide: well-crafted, well-played, entertaining, uplifting music.

There’s that aplenty.

Speaking of those around him, Silver continually expresses thanks for the musician-friends who helped make the songs and the album what they are, those who rehearsed countless hours to get what he’d written in shape then helped record them. They include Bray Carr, Erica Carr, Lola Carr, Nathan Whatley, Tim Gardner, Aaron Rubinstein, Sarah Whatley and Amy Swafford Clegg. And Silver said he was also mindful of others in previous groups he was in who played a part in his life, healing and the songs, those in groups like Good Country People and Blueskyblue.

Silver’s “fading things and things that do not fade” is available on virtually all streaming platforms. For more, visit andysilver.bandcamp.com and facebook.com/andrew.brian.silver.

Silver also performs as a duo with fellow Mercer professor and his wife since 2022, Sarah Gerwig. As a bonus, watch Silver’s “Macon Portrait” created and performed with community members and the Macon-Mercer Symphony Orchestra as part of Macon200’s bicentennial celebrations. Search Macon-Bibb County for “Macon Portrait: A Symphony Commissioned for Macon’s Bicentennial.”

Contact writer Michael W. Pannell at mwpannell@gmail.com. Join him on Instagram @michael_w_pannell.