On his debut album, “American Rough” out Friday on Bloodshot Records, Chicago serenader Andrew Sa offers a tender ode to love, longing and masculinity with a rich voice and country charm.
Sa guides listeners through a vast, 10-track sonic landscape dotted with images of clothes thrown on a chair in the heat of passion, boots left by the door, honky-tonking all night long, chiseled jaw lines with horse-tooth smiles, strong arms and thunderbolt bourbon skies.
Concrete Chicago references surface, too, as Sa becomes a Boystown balladeer “sweeping Halsted like a broom” for men resembling an ex on “You Turned Me On,” and cautioning someone to “take the Red Line and walk away” to cool off on “Fightin’ to be Fightin’.”
At the center of “American Rough” is Sa’s unique voice, a dynamic, warbling birdsong that coos lovingly, soars confidently and glides mischievously, often delivered at his performances beneath the brim of a cowboy hat and neatly trimmed mustache.
Scoring this “American Rough” landscape are the bright plucks of a pedal steel, the tremors of a violin, the grounding strums of guitars and the subtle bursts of horns, all melding Chicago’s storied country, folk, indie, jazz and blues histories, courtesy of a roster of local and North Carolina-based musicians, the two locations where the album was recorded.
Sa populates “American Rough” with a cast of characters he said exemplifies a “specific breed of tall, gruff, broad-shouldered masculinity.” The album examines his relationship to these characters, his own masculinity and “my desires, how that can be beautiful and blooming, and how that can be destructive and painful,” Sa said.
It all makes for an ultimately romantic album, as heard on “Your Whisper,” a slow burner that he wrote about his partner of 12 years.
“That song is absolutely about him and the beginning, the moment of whether or not it’s worth it to commit to love when you’ve been single for so long — the fear and excitement surrounding that,” he said.
“Your whisper heavy in my hand, true as a golden band waiting for an answer,” Sa sings as his tenor trembles, calling to mind the distinct timbres of Roy Orbison and Angel Olsen, imbued with a warm, k.d. lang-like inflection and down-to-earth drawl.
“There’s a timelessness to [Sa’s voice],” said H.C. McEntire, a Durham, North Carolina-based musician who produced “American Rough” and co-wrote and sang on some songs. “His vocals just have legs — they can stand on their own … with the lyrics and his own story, there’s a passion, there’s an emotion there.”
Journey to the Midwest
Sa traces his musical beginnings to his childhood in California’s Bay Area and listening to classic country cassettes in his grandparents’ car. His parents divorced when he was 10, and he spent the 1990s in Fremont and San Jose, where he said his mom ran a traveling karaoke business — she’d have him and his siblings perform to warm up the crowd.
“The songs I always picked were the Patsy Cline songs. … I’d get up there and sing some, longing, lovelorn [song], like ‘Walkin’ After Midnight,’” Sa said.
After some brushes with acting, theater and a stint in Portland, Oregon, he joined some friends living in Chicago to try and push himself as an artist in 2009.
Sa credits songwriting classes he took at Old Town School of Folk Music during his first few years in the city with giving him tools he still invokes today. He also points to Chicago for providing him with a “kick in the a–.”
“Chicago will pat you on the back and say, ‘Great job!’ and then say, ‘What’s next?’”
Honoring the ‘Lavender Cowboy’
A watershed moment for Sa came in 2018, when he was booked to open for the band Lavender Country at The Hideout in West Town. Formed by the late Patrick Haggerty in Seattle, Lavender Country is widely believed to have released the first unabashedly gay country album in 1973.
Sa remembers watching Haggerty perform and feeling something click, similar to when he first heard Freddie Mercury and Rufus Wainwright as a teenager. But this moment pulled him back to his childhood love for country music, a genre he said he’d never seen himself in. At the time, his music was more subdued folk, his clothes all black.
“I again felt like I was given permission to dream of this world where I could write and sing music that was true to me, and my life experiences,” Sa said. “When I saw Patrick perform country music in a queer way, I thought, ‘Oh, wow, I could do this, too.’”
When Haggerty returned to Chicago a year later for another headlining show, Sa said he again opened, this time with a full slate of new, queer country songs he’d written.
“I’ll never forget — he grabbed my shoulders, and he said, ‘I didn’t see you last time, but I see you now.’ And I felt so affirmed by that to continue,” Sa said.
The two would remain close friends until Haggerty’s death in 2022 at age 78. Sa sees it as his mission to tell people about Haggerty’s trailblazing legacy, which Sa honors affectionately with the “American Rough” single “Lavender Cowboy.”
Community in country
Not long after Sa first met Haggerty in 2018, he started co-hosting a campy concert series at The Hideout dubbed the Cosmic Country Showcase, a seasonal variety show featuring local music scene mainstays, bonkers costumes and an “anything can happen” electricity.
Sa’s years playing in the showcase cultivated his love for sparkling, colorful western wear and inspired his sultry, magnetic stage presence. He also fortified his relationships with musicians in the city’s DIY scene, some of whom appear on “American Rough,” like Liam Kazar, a co-writer and collaborator, and drummer Spencer Tweedy.
For Sa, country music in its purest form can serve as a vehicle for even the most masculine-presenting man to access his emotions.
“Men used to sing really beautiful, sensitive songs about their hearts, or their experiences,” Sa said, of classic country music and how it can even compel men to cry together in bars.
“I think maybe we could use a little more of that right now — that willingness and bravery to face your emotion and feel it and express it,” Sa said.
Sa will celebrate the release of “American Rough” with a sold-out show at the Hideout Friday, followed by another sold-out performance at Evanston SPACE on Sunday.