Andy Offutt Irwin

Andy Offutt Irwin

Performing at the Atlanta Botanical Garden
June 27, 2009
Background information
Born 1957
Origin Covington, Georgia, U.S.
Occupation(s) Storyteller, arts educator,
singer-songwriter
Instruments Guitar, percussion
Years active 1984–present
Website AndyIrwin.com

Andy Offutt Irwin (born 1957) is an American storyteller, arts educator, singer-songwriter and humorist. Born and raised in Covington, Georgia, a small town outside of Atlanta, Irwin began his career in 1984 with an improvisational comedy troupe at Walt Disney World. After five years he shifted to performing as a singer-songwriter, touring the Southeast. In the mid-1990s, Irwin branched into performances for children and since then has appeared in hundreds of schools (from preschools to colleges) and countless public libraries.

Irwin continued to perform as a singer-songwriter and added storytelling to these performances, usually telling one story (about ten to twenty-five minutes in length) during a show. In the fall of 2004 he decided to pursue storytelling as a career and quickly achieved national prominence. Irwin now appears regularly in storytelling festivals across the United States. He has released several albums which feature stories, songs or whistling and has collected numerous awards for these albums. In 2013, Irwin received the Circle of Excellence Award from the National Storytelling Network.

In addition to performing, Irwin worked as an artist-in-residence at Oxford College of Emory University and Georgia College for a total of fifteen years. During that time he directed several plays, conducted acting workshops and served as an acting coach. Irwin was also featured as storyteller and host of the program Evening Star on public radio. Currently, Irwin divides his time between storytelling festivals and children’s performances. Irwin also performs as a whistler with the Kandinsky Trio, a chamber music group.

Background and early career

Andy Offutt Irwin is a native of Covington, Georgia,[1] a small town in the United States' Deep South about 35 miles east of Atlanta. As a child, he always wanted to be a musician,[2] learning to play drums in elementary school band and adding guitar as a teenager. It was also in his youth that Irwin discovered his talent for imitating different sounds[3] and the speech of others.[1] While he was growing up, Irwin was an avid fan of comedy albums.[1] Irwin memorized these comedy routines and, at his teacher's suggestion, would recite them to his class while his teacher prepared a daily report.[4] Irwin later attended Georgia College where he received a B. S. in Sociology in 1983.[5] While there, he was named Mess Georgia College.[4]

Offutt the Minstrel
Georgia Renaissance Festival, 1997

Starting in 1984, Irwin spent five years writing, directing, and performing shows with the improvisational comedy troupe SAK Theatre at Disney World.[5] Upon returning to Georgia, Irwin began to focus on singing and songwriting, though he always kept comedic elements in his music.[6] Beginning in 1991, Irwin toured the Southeast as a singer-songwriter,[7] performing both solo and with his band, an act that he bills as "Andy Offutt Irwin vs. the fingermonsters" (sic). From 1995 to 2001, Irwin sang humorous songs, played guitar, and performed comedy as "Offutt the Minstrel" at the Georgia Renaissance Festival.[5][8] He also performed at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival during the 1980s.[4][6] From 1997 through 2005 Irwin directed the annual Cracker Crumble, an evening of politically satirical skits put on by the Georgia Press Association for Georgia politicians and lobbyists.[5]

Storytelling

Andy Offutt Irwin
Telling a story
May 10, 2008

Evolution as a storyteller

Irwin's evolution from singer-songwriter to storyteller was gradual and over a decade in the making. While performing with his band in the early 1990s, Irwin would often tell a story about a song before performing it. "I could do a 10-minute introduction for a three-minute song."[7] He would usually end these stories with the phrase, "but I digress," before getting back to his musical performance. One evening a member of the band said to him "You know, the digressions are the best part."[9] When Irwin released his first album as a singer-songwriter he also included a 22-minute story recorded live during a 1994 performance. He honed his storytelling skills in his monthly appearances with the Evening Star Music Series where he would tell a story in addition to serving as host and introducing musical acts. However, at this point, he did not realize that storytelling was a performance genre and that there was a national storytelling circuit.[5]

Around 1996 while performing at the Georgia Renaissance Festival (GARF), Irwin met nationally prominent storyteller Carmen Deedy. Deedy had previously been a GARF performer and was joining several current performers for dinner after the festival. After spending several hours interacting over dinner, Deedy said to Irwin, "You’re a storyteller". After seeing Irwin perform at Eddie's Attic, Deedy explained the storytelling circuit,[7][10] and encouraged Irwin to develop his storytelling, splitting a storytelling show with Irwin at Atlanta’s 14th Street Playhouse. Leaving his guitar at home, "to stretch myself a bit," it was Irwin’s first storytelling gig.[4][9][11]

Irwin continued to develop his storytelling repertoire at Evening Star and by telling one or two stories during performances as a singer-songwriter. His second album, released in 2004, consisted exclusively of stories. In 2005, Irwin appeared as a Featured New Voices Storyteller[12] at the National Storytelling Festival (which Irwin refers to as the "Super Bowl" of storytelling).[5] This appearance resulted in him getting eleven storytelling gigs nationwide and launched his career as a full time teller.[13]

Since his debut at the National Storytelling Festival, Irwin has performed at storytelling festivals across the United States.[7] He has returned several times to the National Storytelling Festival both as a Featured Teller and to perform stories and songs at the Midnight Cabaret.[14]

Storytelling as a performance form

While he grew into storytelling from his performances as a singer-songwriter, it was the skills that he developed in the years he worked in theatre that Irwin drew from to become a skilled storyteller. "I look at storytelling as a form of theater. I’m on stage doing what I’ve done for years, but now it’s just me. Now I can do all the theater I want without having to worry about sets, costumes, lighting and working with a big cast. It’s very economic, storytelling."[13]

Prior to deciding to become a full time storyteller, Irwin worked as a stand-up comedian "for a few minutes".[10] During this time, Irwin won the Farber Invitational stand-up competition at the Punchline comedy club in Atlanta.[15] However, Irwin came to see that the days of storytelling comedians, like Bill Cosby, had passed.[16] Irwin also realized that his style of performance was at odds with the main venue available to comedians today; comedy clubs. (Irwin joking refers to comedy clubs as "evil, smelly places".[17]) Some of his stories are an hour in length and Irwin notes, "[t]here was a time when comedians could do that but they can’t anymore because the clubs give them three minutes, and they are timing the laughs per minute."[16] Using storytelling as a theatrical form allows Irwin to create more fully drawn characters and to explore darker subject matters as well. "Although I like to think of my storytelling as funny, I can have these serious moments. I’m not depending on the audience to laugh the whole time... I hope there’s content with the form."[16]

Irwin "takes the humor very seriously... I remember being a little kid wondering why we laugh and what makes me laugh. I always was a class clown. I was always interested in what makes laughter happen and now I get to dig into the theory of it every day."[7] Irwin thinks of himself as a fiction writer and refers to himself as a humorist,[17] and states, "I call myself a humorist and storyteller instead of a comedian because I play in libraries and there's no three-drink minimum."[7] Irwin's stories often reflect life in a small Southern town with recurring themes of growing up and growing old,[7] the bonds of family,[2] the complexities of racial relations in the Deep South, especially during the 1960s[7] and the important art of the practical joke.[18] In addition to performance, Irwin leads workshops where he teaches storytelling technique.

Arts educator

Irwin is a natural as a children’s performer, because at heart he is an overgrown kid.[5] His performances for children can be traced to summers during college when he worked as a camp counselor.[5] It was as a camp counsel that he started using his middle name, “Offutt”, (the maiden name of his paternal grandmother and the name of a favorite uncle).

In the mid-1990s he began touring the Southeast as an arts educator and over the years he has performed in hundreds of schools and libraries. In 2000, Irwin was the keynote performer/speaker at the Library of Congress/Viburnum Foundation Conference on Family Literacy.[19] Irwin’s work in schools ranges from forty-minute shows where he sings, plays guitar and tells stories (show titles include "Offutt's Environmental Epic", "Nouns, Verbs and Other Important Stuff" and "PROtozoa/ANTIbacterial") to weeklong residencies where he leads workshops in songwriting.[20] He has contributed a chapter called "(I Got Those) Low-down Dirty Emergent Reader Blues" for the book Literacy Development in the Storytelling Classroom (Norfolk, Stenson and Williams, eds., 2009).[21] Irwin has also written and recorded three songs for public service announcements for the Books Ahoy! Vacation Reading Program for children in Georgia and South Carolina.[5]

In addition to performing for students in schools, Irwin has held part-time positions at two colleges. During the 1983-1984 academic year, Irwin served as artist-in-residence at Georgia College. While there, he wrote and directed the play Through the Needle's Eye: A Celebration of St. Francis,[5] which Irwin describes as a "musical comedy".[4] The play was subsequently produced at Duke University's divinity school in 1986.[4][22]

In 1991, after returning to Georgia from his five-year stint at Disney World, Irwin began to work part-time at Oxford College of Emory University, first serving as acting coach[15] and then as Interim Director of Theatre.[6] From 1993 until his retirement in May 2007, Irwin served as artist-in-residence.[5] While at Oxford, he directed several plays, conducted workshops, worked with the Campus Life Division and assisted Oxford's Chaplain.[8] In 2001, Irwin was recipient of the Sammy Clark Award for Exemplary Teaching and Service.[5]

Characters

Many of Irwin's stories revolve around his fictional aunt, Dr. Marguerite Van Camp, whom he describes as being about 85 years old. Aunt Marguerite founded Southern White Old Lady Hospital in rural Georgia because (as Irwin explains in Marguerite’s old lady voice) "all our husbands have moved on, and we were tired of the garden club and the bridge club and the ladies club. So Mary Frances and Julia and I all went back to medical school."[8] Irwin loosely based the character of Marguerite on his mother ("unabashed and delightfully inappropriate")[2] and his maternal grandmother ("a genteel, bun-haired lady of means").[4] As Irwin explains, "I was raised by Southern women so I imitate a lot of them. Marguerite is the voice of my grandmother, who was born in 1894, and the attitude of my mother. And anything that I want to gripe about I put into [Marguerite's] voice and nobody feels bad about me."[4]

Two other recurring characters in Irwin's stories, Johnny and his brother Kenny, are actual people whom Irwin knew as a child. When the all-white elementary school that Irwin attended in the 1960s was forced to integrate, he became classmates with Johnny Norrington, an African American. They became good friends despite lingering racial barriers. In his story "The Rudiments" on Banana Seat, Irwin describes an accident he caused while riding his bike on a visit to the Norringtons' all-black neighborhood. Genuinely afraid of retaliation, Irwin was whisked to safety by the boys' mother. On the album Bootsie in Season, Irwin recalls how he and Johnny managed to watch the movie Dr. Terror's House of Horrors together despite Johnny having to sit in the "colored section" in the balcony while Irwin watched from the level below.[23] (The two boys would share a box of Milk Duds by throwing it back and forth between the balcony and the floor.) Friendships that crossed the color barrier were unusual at the time and Irwin had to endure vicious taunts from other white children.

Mouth sounds and imitations

Irwin has a unique ability to make an extremely wide variety of sounds with his mouth, whether he is imitating the voices of others, musical instruments or the sounds found in everyday life.[24] Utilizing these vocalizations in both storytelling and musical performances, he has been called "a veritable master of sound effects and voices"[15] and a "virtual sound factory".[3]

Additionally, he is an extraordinary whistler, able to make sounds on both inhalation and exhalation, which allows him to whistle without pausing for about one and a half minutes. The Beacon, the student newspaper for the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, recounted a portion of Irwin’s performance:

'Someone ask me if I smoke,' said Irwin. The audience complied. Then he whistled without taking a breath for over a minute. After which he answered with a sly 'No.'[4][24]

The Kandinsky Trio, a classical chamber music group, heard Irwin whistle when they were performing at the National Storytelling Festival in October 2005. The Trio was so impressed with Irwin that they suggested collaborating. In December 2006, Irwin joined the Trio in concert at Roanoke College. The evening featured Irwin performing with the Trio by whistling several songs specifically arranged for the Trio and Irwin.[25] Their repertoire includes Dvořák, jazz standards by Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington, a Romanian pan flute concerto, and unusual arrangements of popular music.[4] Several videos of their collaboration have been recorded and posted on the video sharing website YouTube including their version of the new wave tune "She Blinded Me with Science" and the Monk/Best tune "Bemsha Swing".[26]

"Don't be afraid to be amazing"

Quote by Andy Offutt Irwin

In an interview, Irwin described a late night conversation at a Waffle House that he had with Cyndi Craven (a friend, musician and Irwin's website designer):

... and I was talking about what I have to tell myself all the time when I'm afraid about doing something that hasn't been done before because it really is frightening to step out and do something different. So I will tell myself, "Don’t be afraid to be amazing". Cyndi said, "Where did you get that?" I said, "I made it up".[4]

Craven subsequently posted the quotation on the internet and it now appears on hundreds of websites.

Irwin's quotation was chosen to be the message of the murals created by artist Susan Guevara for the post-Katrina renovation of the New Orleans Children’s Resource Center branch library.[27] Irwin also uses the quotation as a title of a storytelling workshop that he teaches to adults.[28]

Personal

In 1992, Irwin and his wife, Kathleen, married. Later that same year, Kathleen gave birth to twins. One of the twins, Ian, was stillborn and the other, Tristan, was born profoundly disabled and microcephalic with the spastic quadriplegia form of cerebral palsy characterized by extremely limited motor skills and cognitive abilities.[5] Two stories and one song on Irwin’s album Crowd Control recount his experiences of loving and living with a severely disabled child.[29] Defying medical expectation (Irwin jokes that Tristan flunked out of in-the-home hospice care for not dying on schedule), Tristan lived to the age of eleven, dying in 2004.[5]

Irwin resides in Covington, Georgia with his wife and their son, Liam (born 1999).[5] Irwin is 6 feet 4 inches (193 cm) tall.

Discography

Title Format Release date
Banana Seat Folk/Pop songs with one story 1995
Christmas at Southern White Old Lady Hospital Storytelling 2004
Book Every Saturday for a Funeral Storytelling 2006
Bootsie in Season Storytelling 2007
Crowd Control Storytelling with one song 2008
Lip Service Whistling, singing, mouth noises 2010
Risk Assessment Storytelling with one song 2011
A Not So Silent Night with Bil Lepp & Kim Weitkamp 2013
Sister True Storytelling with one song 2013
Andy's Wild Amphibian Show Stories and music for families 2015

One of the songs from Banana Seat, "Clamydomonas (sp?)" (sic), is featured on the website of the International Society of Protozoologists.[30] Another song on that album, "Clarice", (which a reviewer described as "Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl ... to the Klan.")[31] was recorded live at Eddie's Attic by Shawn Mullins and Matthew Kahler for their album, Jeff's Last Dance, Volume 2.[32]

The final track on Risk Assessment, "One Clown Short of a Circus," is an improvisational piece recorded with storytellers Bil Lepp and Kevin Kling. Lepp also appears on "Upidstay, Umday, Ainbray," the final track on Sister True.

Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer appear with Irwin on the final cut of Andy's Wild Amphibian Show!, performing the 1938 song "I Love to Whistle".

Awards and honors

Year Award Organization For
2006 Winner: Storytelling Album Just Plain Folks Christmas at Southern White Old Lady Hospital
2008 Winner: Storytelling Recordings Storytelling World Christmas at Southern White Old Lady Hospital
2008 Winner: Storytelling Recordings Storytelling World Book Every Saturday for a Funeral
2009 Winner: Stories for Adult Listeners Storytelling World "The Beauty Pageant" (recorded on Bootsie in Season)
2009 Winner: Storytelling Album Just Plain Folks Bootsie in Season
2010 Winner: Storytelling Recordings Storytelling World Crowd Control
2010 Winner: Special Storytelling Resources Storytelling World Literacy Development in the Storytelling Classroom,
ed. Norfolk, Stenson & Williams
2013 Winner: Storytelling Recordings Storytelling World Risk Assessment
2013 Winner: Circle of Excellence Award National Storytelling Network
2015 Winner: Storytelling Recordings Storytelling World Sister True
2016 Winner Silver Honors: Audio: Storytelling Parents' Choice Award Andy's Wild Amphibian Show!

References

  1. 1 2 3 The Storytellers by Curt Holman for Creative Loafing (Atlanta), January 30, 2008. Retrieved January 30, 2008.
  2. 1 2 3 Grounded Energy: Newton County Native’s Music Career Flourishes by Brittany Edwards for The Covington News, January 8, 2006. Retrieved May 3, 2006.
  3. 1 2 Showcase Performer Enjoys Sounding Off by Kent Kimes for the Augusta Chronicle, web posted February 20, 1998. Retrieved June 24, 2006.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 by Greg Davis for Tonic, WUKY, April 28, 2008. Retrieved July 16, 2008.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Have stories, Will Travel: Andy Offutt Irwin Shares Tales, Coast to Coast Archived September 29, 2007, at the Wayback Machine. by Jackie Kennedy for Georgia Magazine, March 2007. Retrieved April 10, 2007.
  6. 1 2 3 Diverse Artist Andy Offutt Irwin Always a Crowd Pleaser by Alan Back for The Technique, May 28, 1999. Retrieved on May 15, 2006.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Storyteller: Andy Offutt Irwin Brings Characters from the 'New South' to Life by Jeremy D. Bonfiglio for The Herald-Palladium, May 12, 2013. Retrieved May 13, 2013.
  8. 1 2 3 Irwin Adds Quirky Humor, Music to Renaissance Festival by Dan Treadaway for Emory Report, October 1995. Retrieved on August 18, 2006.
  9. 1 2 Storyteller Takes Stage at Julyfest on The State, July 19, 2006. Retrieved on July 24, 2006.
  10. 1 2 Interview with Andy Offutt Irwin on WRHI, recorded March 21, 2009. Retrieved June 18, 2009.
  11. ↑ Tell Me a Story by Curt Holman for Creative Loafing (Atlanta), January 30, 2008. Retrieved January 30, 2008.
  12. ↑ Andy Offutt Irwin Archived March 11, 2007, at the Wayback Machine. by Seeger Swanson for Fiddler’s Green Concert Series, June 2005. Retrieved on July 25, 2006.
  13. 1 2 Theater Prof Leaps into Storytelling GoTricities.com. Retrieved on October 20, 2008.
  14. ↑ Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough Oct. 2-4 WJHL, October 1, 2009. Retrieved May 13, 2013.
  15. 1 2 3 Southern Voice(s): Through Stories, Georgia Teller Assumes Multiple Identities by Jill Oxendine for GoTricities, June 2006. Retrieved July 14, 2006.
  16. 1 2 3 ‘Give Me a Response’: Andy Offutt Irwin Thinks His Stories Are Funny But He Wants His Listeners To Take Away More” by Rick Brown for The Kearney Hub, January 18, 2008. Retrieved January 19, 2008.
  17. 1 2 "Entertaining Children Without Boring the Grownups out of their Skull", Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf Show, December 16, 2008. Retrieved February 2, 2009.
  18. ↑ Andy Offutt Irwin Armed with New Tales Kingsport Times-News, June 30, 2012. Retrieved May 13, 2013.
  19. ↑ Bio Official website. Retrieved May 13, 2013
  20. ↑ YA Artists: Andy Offutt Irwin Archived February 7, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. from Young Audiences, Woodruff Arts Center Artist Guide, 2007. Retrieved on May 6, 2007.
  21. ↑ Literacy Development in the Storytelling Classroom. Retrieved May 11, 2013.
  22. ↑ New CD, Banana Seat, by Andy Offutt Irwin by Randy Myers, Echo Lake press release, June 8, 1995. Retrieved on August 23, 2006.
  23. ↑ Art of Storytelling Celebrated with Weekend Concerts Archived July 17, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. by Randall Higgins for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, February 27, 2008. Retrieved March 3, 2008.
  24. 1 2 Andy Offutt Irwin Plays CC's Cafe by Timothy Hamel for The Beacon, February 8, 2001. Retrieved July 17, 2006.
  25. ↑ Roanoke College Announces Kandinsky Trio Concert Archived February 16, 2007, at the Wayback Machine., November 8, 2006. Retrieved November 27, 2007.
  26. ↑ He's Blinding Us with... Stories by Curt Holman, Creative Loafing, January 30, 2008. Retrieved May 11,2013.
  27. ↑ Children’s Resource Center Renovation Project New Orleans Public Library. Retrieved March 27, 2007.
  28. ↑ Arkron Storytelling Festival Retrieved May 20, 2013.
  29. ↑ Crowd Control on CD Baby. Retrieved October 24, 2008.
  30. ↑ For Fun; Songs about Protists International Society of Protozoologists. Retrieved on April 22, 2006.
  31. ↑ Banana Seat Review by Wil Owen, for Rambles, A Cultural Arts Magazine, September 1, 2001. Retrieved on June 13, 2007.
  32. ↑ Jeff’s Last Dance, Vol. 2 (Live) Amazon.com. Retrieved on August 10, 2006.

External links

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