The Setlist

Andy Friedman and Paul Curreri
By Jane Longshore, Staff Writer

Andy Friedman and Paul Curreri's Make A Living Tour could loosely be defined as a country blues tour, but the two approach the genre in radically different ways.

For Curreri, a singer/songwriter from Charlottesville, Virginia, the country blues tradition acts as a springboard for his own musical musings. With his folk-inflected singing style and skillful, understated guitar work, he cites Dave Van Ronk, Mississippi John Hurt, Reverend Gary Davis, and Blind Willie McTell among his chief inspirations. His most recent album, Songs for Devon Sproule, was produced by Kelly Joe Phelps.

Preceding Curreri on the bill is label mate Andy Friedman, whose passion for blues has been channeled into drawings and Polaroid photographs, which have thus far been collected in two volumes, 2001's Drawings and Other Failures and the recently released Future Blues. On the Make a Living Tour, Friedman takes the stage in front of slide projections of his photographs and casually discusses the work in relation to the music that inspired it.

Friedman was formally trained as an old painter at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he befriended Curreri, then a filmmaking major. Friedman went on to become an assistant to the New Yorker's cartoon editor Robert Mankoff, and has had several of his own cartoons published in the magazine under the pseudonym Larry Hat. In 2001, he left his post a the New Yorker to found City Salvage records, and has since been touring with Curreri.