Senior Environmental Fellow for Pace’s Academy for Applied Sciences Andrew Revkin has released his first album A Very Fine Line, a mix of folk, blues and bluegrass.
Revkin is no stranger to the blues; he bought his first guitar from a shop in Nova Scotia when he was 17.
According to his press release, “The guitar looked like it had been in a bar fight, but I could see it was a Gibson, so I swooped.”
It was after this moment that Revkin learned how to play a variety of string instruments including the banjo, mandolin and fiddle. He mostly performed as a solo act until the early 2000’s when he met local commuters on the Hudson Line while traveling to his job at The New York Times, and they formed the band Uncle Wade. Revkin took some of their tracks after they broke up, which provided some foundation for A Very Fine Line.
Taking time to focus on his career in journalism, Revkin graduated from Brown University and has achieved great strides in his field. He has won two awards from the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and his book Burning Season was turned into an HBO movie, which won several Emmys, Golden Globes and a Screen Actors Guild award.
His career in journalism is quite notable, but in the past decade he’s started to put more effort into his music. After playing with legendary musician Pete Seeger several times, Revkin acquired his help to write some of the earlier tracks of his album.
According to Revkin’s website: “Pete wrote the music notation for A Very Fine Line for me after he heard me play it at the [Beacon Sloop Club] years ago… he also scribble ideas for suggested tweaks to the song “Arlington”, my song about the uncertain future of national cemetery.”
The main inspiration behind A Very Fine Line hits close to home for Revkin.
According to his website, “I spurred by in part by a stroke in 2011, it deprived of using my right hand…which is the one that does most of the work, as the title song of the album goes, ‘most of your life you spend walking a very fine line’ and I didn’t want to waste any more time.”
The album also talks about other experiences like love and loss, death and other social issues that Revkin is interested in.
A Very Fine Line was released last week on his BandCamp (http:// revkin.bandcamp.com/album/a-very-fine-line) account where you can listen to and purchase it.