![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/river_rats.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAt only 25 years of age, guitarist, singer and songwriter Andrew Scotchie has a thriving music career. A prominent fixture of the Western North Carolina music scene, Scotchie and his blues-rocking band the River Rats started out in 2011 as buskers on the streets of Asheville; today the group has released three albums of original music.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
What inspired you to get into music?<\/b><\/p>\n
At the first couple of big concert festivals I went to \u2013 I was 10 or so \u2013 I was immediately taken by the energy and the atmosphere. Everyone was there for the same reason; they were all watching the same thing. When I saw how the front man and the guitar players could get people so excited and so happy, almost instantly I thought, \u201cI want to do that.\u201d It looked like a very fun job. So I took guitar lessons, and then from there I got obsessed with it. I started playing in bands when I was 13.<\/p>\n
Once you started performing, did you find that you were a natural onstage in front of people?<\/b><\/p>\n
In middle school, I was the one in the band that would be jumping around, and having a good time, head-banging and everything. But there was a time in my high school years when I would throw up at every single show. The nerves would get to me so bad, I\u2019d lean behind my amp and pretend I was fixing something. But it got better; my music teacher once told me, \u201cTake those nerves you have before a show and use them as momentum.\u201d<\/p>\n
You started the Asheville Barnaroo Festival nearly a decade ago. Back then, did you ever have a sense that it would be so successful and long-running?<\/b><\/p>\n
No, I didn\u2019t. Especially at that age, you can\u2019t predict something like that. We were going kind of show by show, event by event. And all we really wanted when we started as a collective of young adults was just to have an outlet, an event where people could play, meet people and get better at what they do. And I saw a lot of people grow. I like watching the old videos from those days; some of it is cringe-worthy and some of it is like, \u201cHm \u2026 we all weren\u2019t that bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the meaning behind the title of your band\u2019s latest album, Family Dynamo<\/i>?<\/b><\/p>\n
My cousin used to call my dad \u201cFamily Dynamo,\u201d and that always stuck with me. I thought it was a fun combination of words; it simply means a power that generates family and community. And the title is also a really good way to pay tribute to the people who have inspired and pushed the band, been there since the beginning and wanted to see us keep growing.<\/p>\n
The band seems like a musical family of sorts; does it feel that way to you?<\/b><\/p>\n
Yeah! Keith [Harry, bassist] and I met at the Orange Peel; we were friends before we were in a band together. And Eliza [Hill, drummer] and I first met on the streets of Asheville at Downtown After 5. Went back to my mother\u2019s house and rocked out. Keith\u2019s a brother to me, and Eliza\u2019s one of my best friends. We\u2019re family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At only 25 years of age, guitarist, singer and songwriter Andrew Scotchie has a thriving music career. A prominent fixture of the Western North Carolina music scene, Scotchie and his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14928,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,41,62],"tags":[194,237],"class_list":["post-16734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-interview","category-rawk","tag-andrew-scotchie","tag-asheville","cat-9-id","cat-41-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16735,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16734\/revisions\/16735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}