As a final word, Andrea gives some encouragement to others seeking to follow their dreams: “If
there’s something that they dream of, if there’s something that keeps them awake, chase it.”
Admitting that it will involve “working harder than you ever thought you could,” she offers that
there is a real reward in creating “a vision that you can touch and feel.” Andrea wants people to
understand that she is just an ordinary person who followed her dream, and they can, too. “The
difference between the me I am and the me I was,” she tells us, “is that I just decided that I’m
going to doggedly pursue a dream because I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.” Furthermore,
she reveals, “I want my kids to chase dreams. I want them to have an example of that. That
definitely motivates me to keep doing what I’m doing.”
- Shauna Specht & Tania Robeiro
This poet’s muse? The people she loves. Family…her husband, children and mother. Bobby Cameron, as cowriter and producer, has helped make the songs, as she describes it, “their best versions of themselves.” Now with her first album completed, and released just this month, Andrea is ready to take her message to the road.
“I know who I am at 35 years old,” she says, “and I’m just ready to be a girl talking for the girls because I think we are short on that.” Wanting to put out an authentic album from the
perspective of “a woman with some life behind her,” “Diary of a Housewife” touches on topics
like her perspective on her children and even fights with her husband. The process of recording and releasing her album has helped her, even as someone who has always been comfortable in her identity, to become even more so, because, as she explains, “I’ve been able to articulate what it is to be me.”
Seeing herself as a troubadour, Andrea is ready to take her music to the road, and looks
forward to connecting with people in her travels. Having learned so much from the journey so far, she explains that there is an opportunity to learn every time you leave the house, and hopes she continues being so open to growth and learning, even from experiences on the road.
“I hope that my whole career is a conversation about real life,” she shares, “and that I get to
write stories for people who may have never had the opportunity to do it for themselves, and
that people find themselves reflected in them.”
Looking ahead, Andrea tells us she has been talking with her band about plans to record a
honkytonk album, full of music people can dance to. “It’s going to be escapist,” she says,
“They’re going to be able to have a really good time, but when they lean into the lyric, there’s
going to be something they can chew on there, too. I want to write an introspective yet upbeat
record.”
www.edmontonmuse.ca