Young Aundee is the stage name of Andrew James Southard,[1] a Sacramento electronic, hip-hop and trip-hop musician, beat-maker, vocalist and DJ whose falsetto vocals, melodica playing and production work tie together a wide swath of the city's music scene.[2][3] He is a long-running collaborator with electronic producer Dusty Brown — a California electronic artist and childhood friend[1] — and has performed and recorded across multiple Sacramento projects including the hip-hop group Who Cares and Steven Borth's dub project CHLLNGR.[2][3]
At a glance
- Real name: Andrew James Southard.[2][1]
- Roles: electronic/hip-hop/trip-hop beat-maker, singer/vocalist (notably falsetto), DJ, and melodica player.[2]
- Began recording original music on a four-track at age 14; described in 2015 as approaching his "second decade" of making music.[2]
- Grew up in a sheltered fundamentalist household; left home at age 16, drawn toward electronic, dub, reggae, and punk rock music.[1]
- Member of hip-hop group Who Cares and part of CHLLNGR's live and studio setup.[2][3]
- Solo releases: Fear in the Fold (2013, CB Records[1]) and the EP Caveat Emptor (2014, Waaga Records).[2][4]
- Sustained creative partnership with Dusty Brown; co-founded Halftone Society Rhythm Section with producer Benji Illgen (Mophono).[2]
Identity and local status
Submerge consistently identifies Young Aundee as Andrew Southard and treats him as a Sacramento-scene musician.[2][3] His full legal name is Andrew James Southard.[1] He came up in the local scene, describing himself as making music since recording on a four-track recorder at age 14 and being immersed in Sacramento bands from his teenage years onward; his first band was the Sacramento punk-reggae group Secret Six.[2][5] He is repeatedly framed as a Sacramento artist embedded in the city's "electro-synthed-out" landscape and is grouped with local performers at hometown events.[2][6] On this basis his origin is treated as local (Greater Sacramento).
According to CB Records, Southard grew up in a sheltered fundamentalist household; the music he gravitated toward — electronic, dub, reggae, and punk rock — was part of what drove him to leave home at age 16.[1]
Instruments and style
Young Aundee plays the melodica (a blow-tube harmonica), which he says he took up because of his connection to dub reggae music, citing Augustus Pablo as the instrument's 1970s popularizer; he first used it in Secret Six.[2] His earliest band was a keyboard-driven, Cure-influenced pop project.[2] His output is described as ranging from punk rock to hip-hop, built on layered synths and methodical beats, with a "mood-drenched" lyrical style and frequent falsetto vocals.[2] He generally works with a lyricist, collaborating with longtime friend Jeremy Dawson on roughly 70 percent of his lyrical content, and describes himself as "more of a singer and a part maker" than a lyricist.[2]
Early recording career
While still in his teens, Southard wrote and recorded three full-length albums with his first band before setting aside the guitar.[1] The dissolution of that band led him to spend five years focused on sound experimentation, audio engineering, and production before returning to performing.[1]
Secret Six
Young Aundee's first band was Secret Six, a Sacramento punk-reggae act he compared to Bad Brains and Operation Ivy (and explicitly distinguished from Sublime-style reggae-rock).[2] He used the melodica in this band.[2] Riotmaker frontman Jeffry Valerio later wrote the song "Ritalin Kid" about Young Aundee from his Secret Six days, lifting lyrics from a song the two had written together years earlier.[7]
Who Cares
Young Aundee is a member of the Sacramento hip-hop group Who Cares, which was originally formed around 2002 by Ernie Upton (aka Ernie Fresh / Fernie Fresh) on the mic and Maxwell McMaster on production.[5] Southard became a fan of the group in 2005 at the Heritage Festival at Raley Field and subsequently joined, adding R&B vocals and melodica and becoming an increasingly prominent member.[5] He considers his first show with the group to be Aug. 4, 2006, at the Mezzanine in San Francisco on a bill with electro legends Egyptian Lover and Nucleus — a show the band remembers as their best ever.[5][2]
Who Cares' releases trace the group's evolution: The Winter Came Back EP (2006), and the 2010 official debut Teenage Ego Trip, by which point the core had become Tarkington, Southard and Upton with Dusty Brown as silent partner/executive producer.[5] On Teenage Ego Trip, Young Aundee's falsetto crooning appears sparingly, including an "Aundee refrain" on the electro-outro of "These Three Words."[8] A later EP, Juvenile Hall (with guest appearances by Murs and Cosmo D), was completed but shelved.[5] The group announced its breakup and played its final show (at least for the time) at Concerts in the Park on June 17, 2016.[5] Through Who Cares, Young Aundee established a collaboration he prized with 1980s Los Angeles dance/electro legend Egyptian Lover.[2][5]
CHLLNGR
Young Aundee was part of the dub/electronica project CHLLNGR, masterminded by Sacramento-raised, Copenhagen-based musician Steven Jess Borth II.[9][3] He had earlier appeared in Borth's three-piece Dub Defender (CHLLNGR's predecessor) at The Press Club, contributing falsetto vocals; he is also identified there as a Purple Girl / Who Cares keyboardist.[9] In CHLLNGR's early live setup (circa 2010) the lineup was Borth, Andrew "Young Aundee" Southard, and Dan "DJ Whores" Osterhoff.[3] On CHLLNGR's debut LP Haven (2011), Young Aundee wrote the lyrics to the closer "Dusty," did most of the arrangements for that track and the lead synth on "Ask For," and Borth credits him with a large role in the early demos cut at Dusty Brown's studio.[3]
Solo work and other projects
Young Aundee's solo discography includes his 2013 debut album Fear in the Fold, produced by childhood friend and fellow California electronic artist Dusty Brown on CB Records,[1] and the four-song EP Caveat Emptor (2014, Waaga Records).[2][4] Caveat Emptor features two vocal tracks and two heavily layered instrumental cuts; its opener "Amazing Grace" was built from a Dusty Brown beat dating to 2007, and the title (Latin for "let the buyer beware") reflects Aundee's view that art and music carry "whatever discomforts come with the bad and the good."[2] Submerge ranked Caveat Emptor at No. 22 on its Top 30 Albums of 2014, describing it as a lyrically sparse EP "wading in the deep end of ominous soundwaves."[4] As of late 2015 he was working toward a full-length album he hoped to release in 2016.[2]
Prior to the Caveat Emptor EP, Young Aundee released two 1980s synth-pop covers on Bandcamp: "Young Tuesday" (a cover of Yaz's "Tuesday") in May 2013 and "Young Small Town Boy" (a cover of Bronski Beat's "Smalltown Boy") in July 2013.[10]
He co-founded Halftone Society Rhythm Section, a collaboration with producer Benji Illgen (who performs as Mophono), described as a deliberately mysterious alliance drawing on the San Francisco jazz scene and beat-music scene.[2] The Halftone Society Rhythm Section released Don't Look Any Further featuring Young Aundee on December 8, 2015 (CB Records / Change The Beat), a digital album and limited-edition 7" vinyl issued in two pressings: 200 copies on burgundy transparent vinyl and 300 copies on black. The release includes a cover of "Caribbean Queen" and was recorded at Circuit Studios in San Francisco, with drums by Patrick Korte (P Dub).[11]
He guested as a vocalist/lyricist on the Sacramento hip-hop duo DLRN's 2014 LP Neon Noir (Waaga Records), alongside other local artists.[12]
Scene relationships and DJ work
Young Aundee's central scene relationship is with electronic producer Dusty Brown, with whom he maintains a long-running partnership and whom he calls (along with Benji Illgen) one of the most underrated electronic producers in Northern California.[2] According to CB Records, in the period leading up to Fear in the Fold he performed with nationally acclaimed acts including Clark, Shigeto, Lorn, oOoOO, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Sister Crayon, and Mophono.[1] In a 2016 development, Who Cares bandmate Ernie Upton landed a collaboration on DJ Shadow's album The Mountain Will Fall after a session with Egyptian Lover and Mophono in Los Angeles that Upton and Southard set up.[5]
As a DJ, Young Aundee performed at Submerge events including the magazine's 200th Issue Party at LowBrau (Nov. 15, 2015) and played ArtMix at the Crocker Art Museum.[2] He performed a DJ set at the THIS Midtown block party on Aug. 8, 2015.[13] He performed at the third annual Sacramento Electronic Music Festival (SEMF) in May 2012.[6]