Andrew Alli On The Blues

by Charles McGuigan 09.2024

Andrew Alli, who was majoring in environmental studies at VCU at the time, happened to be strolling through the Byrd House Farmers Market in Oregon Hill when he heard something that would change his life forever. It was a plaintive wail, punctuated by short licks with punch and grit that came from a small rectangle of stainless steel and plastic smothered in hands clapped to a mouth that breathed life into the listless.  The groove he heard at that moment pierced Andrew’s soul in a way no other music ever had. He moved toward source of the music—a busker on his harmonica with a tip jar at this feet.  After leaving the market Andrew went directly to a music store and bought a five-dollar Hohner Blues Band harmonica. He blew into it and sound instantly came forth.

“I was instantly drawn to the harmonica,” Andrew tells me. “It seemed like a cool instrument and it was so portable.”  He sits across the table from me dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans and sporting a custom-made cap that features “Major” Taylor, the first African-American to win a world championship in cycling. In his left hand he holds a harmonica. “I had never focused on an instrument and started diving into the history of the harmonica,” he says. “I started at the beginning, and once I heard the classic blues harmonica players, I was hooked.” 

On both the instrument and the blues.

Virtually every style in the architecture of popular American music—whether it’s jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, country, ska, soul, funk, hip-hop, you name it—is built on a foundation of the blues. This musical style, which came into its own after the Civil War, was created by formerly enslaved Blacks.  Coincidentally, on about the same time, a German clockmaker by the name of Matthias Hohner began refining a relatively new instrument on the European front. In 1862, as the Civil War raged, Hohner began exporting his harmonicas to the States. And though music like the blues had been around in one form or other on plantations throughout the South for over a century, this new instrument, which was also relatively cheap, meshed perfectly with this genre that formally burst onto the scene after emancipation. By the early 1920s the blues had become a staple and radio stations began playing “race” records, which helped popularize Black artists.

“When I heard those sounds, I was like this is the sound I want to get,” says Andrew. “For me it was hearing the range of sounds people were getting from the harmonica. There were so many different styles and tones and approaches.”  He mentions other masters of the blues harmonica—Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, Big Walter Horton, Jazz Gillum—these men who inspired him to take up the mouth organ. 

Andrew dove in head first for a full immersion baptism, and would emerge as a successful player, singer, and songwriter.  He released his first EP back in 2018 with longtime music partner Josh Small, and two years later a vinyl album titled “Hard Workin’ Man,” which features three classic blues covers and nine original compositions. He’s in the process of completing yet another album with all original works. Over the years he’s had at least two bands—Andrew Alli and Last Night’s Blues Band, and Andrew Alli and the Main Line.

He also tours widely, either as a solo act or with fellow Richmond musicians, Josh Small and Tim Barry, or with Jontavious Willis, a blues phenomenon out of Georgia. Andrew will be performing on the last weekend of September at the Richmond Folk Festival. “I want to say this is my fourth or fifth year,” he says. “And I’m honored every time they ask me. It’s the best festival I’ve ever experienced.”

Andrew holds up his harmonica, and turns it slowly with his fingers, and then he begins telling me what it is he loves about this instrument which has become almost synonymous with the blues.  

“I think it has to do with the sort of tonal and sound qualities it produces,” he says. “It’s like an extension of your voice, and I think that you’re able to talk and express yourself through this instrument in a way that you might not be able to do through another instrument.”

He blows tentatively into the harmonica. “It’s fairly easy to make noise on it,”says Andrew. “I always say it’s an instrument of nuance: it’s easy to make a sound, but it’s really hard to understand all that it can do. In that way it’s just like every other instrument. You can pluck a string all day, but to really understand the capabilities of the guitar takes a long time and commitment.”

When I mention the Hohner I had as a boy, and how the instructions told you how to block the holes with your index fingers so you could produce a single note, Andrew smiles. “But the historic style of playing is what’s called tongue blocking,” he says. “What you were doing with your fingers, you actually do with your tongue. It’s got a lot of benefits.  Your whole mouth is sort of involved in producing these sounds.”

Shortly after learning some of the basics, Andrew began playing late at night on front porches down in the Fan, and sometimes at parties. “There was no goal,” he says. “I just enjoyed it, it was just something to do and as I started to listen to more of the music and I heard all these sounds and I wanted to get that sound.”

Andrew brings the harmonica up to his mouth, cupping it in his hands, and begins playing the iconic “Walter’s Shuffle” by Big Walter Horton.

When he finishes, Andrew says, “This was the first blues stuff that really spoke to me. There’s a particular Big Walter Horton record called ‘The Soul of Blues Harmonica,’ and for me that record was it. He’s known for his tone and he was able to get a big sound out of the harmonica, both acoustically and through the amp. I particularly like his acoustic playing because he was really able to mold the sound. He had really big hands. His breathing, everything went into it. He had so many layers to his sound. Tremolos and vibratos all these things that really make it. You hear one note and you know it’s Big Walter Horton.”

Andrew invites me to imagine a plunger mute on a trumpet in the able hands of Louis Armstrong.  “The way you manipulate the sound is just like that,” he says. “Your hands are kind of doing the same thing so you’re able to mold the sound. You can take it to another level of expression.” 

As he lowers the harmonica to the table, he looks on it with wonder. “When you hear some of those recordings by Big Walter you would never think the sound comes from this little tiny instrument.” 

Blues harmonica seems to demand vocals from its players. Though Andrew did a few musicals during his senior year year at Godwin High School, he was not trained in voice.  “I didn’t focus on singing even when I started playing the harmonica,” he says. “But what I realized was that for the music that I liked harmonica was only part of it. Yes there are instrumentals, but there are also all these great songs with singing. And I realized I should probably start singing.” Which he did, and his voice is powerful, an instrument unto itself. 

Andrew tells me why he so loves the blues. “It’s got a purity to it, and it’s a music that easily connects to me,” he says. “I think it’s a truthful music. It’s just a release. If you hear it, you can’t deny the power of it.”

He considers some of the misconceptions about the blues. “There’s this idea that the blues are about being down and out, about struggles,” Andrew says. “Of course those things are part of what we associate with blues. But it’s not everything. To me the blues is just life. It’s the good and the bad. It’s just telling the listener how you feel.”

Well over a decade ago, not long after he really got his feet wet as a harmonicist, a friend of his told him to check out some local musicians who were playing the blues in Monroe Park. Andrew mounted his bike and pedaled over to the park. He stood among a ring of spectators listening to Josh Small and Tim Barry who were performing. It was a fairly low key show, but they began playing a song Andrew knew, so he pulled out his harmonica and joined them from the audience.

“They invited me up to play with them,” he recalls. “So fifteen years later I’m still playing with them. I look back at the most fun I’ve had and the best opportunities I’ve had and it was all about taking things as they come. That’s the way I look at it.”

Like most musicians, and other artists, Andrew has a full-time job—one that pays the bills. He is trails and greenways superintendent for the Richmond’s Parks and Recreation. “I manage the trails all around town,” he says. “I’ve worked there for ten years now. We’re getting more and more new trails. I’m excited about the James River Branch Trail and the Crooked Branch Ravine Trail. Those are both happening very soon.”

After graduating from VCU with a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies, Andrew did a fair amount of of urban gardening, and then landed a job at Powhatan State Park. From there he went to work for Parks and Recreation. 

“It’s been an interesting journey,” says Andrew. “I enjoy my job with the city, and I enjoy the rewards I get from that. And I also enjoy what I get from music, and it’s kind of nice to have both.”

He then whisks me back to that very first time he heard the man busking at the Byrd House Farmers Market.  “I think back on that moment,” Andrew Alli says. “Had that guy not been playing there I would not have bought a harmonica, and all these great things that the harmonica has done for me wouldn’t have happened. Maybe I’ll be that person for someone else and help change someone’s life.”