Andrew William Smith on Reality Sandwich

Climbing Kayford Mountain: Finding God & Facing Ecocide in West Virginia
 Andrew William Smith

We saw the beauty of God's glorious creation unfolding before us in all its dramatic magic. From the same site, we witnessed unchecked human greed in the grotesque mechanical destruction of divinely created peaks. I can't claim any moral high ground; I am using coal to compose this piece on the war raging in Appalachia.

Alexander Supertramp and the Failure of Individualist Escape
Andrew William Smith

Sean Penn's film Into the Wild rekindled the debate surrounding Christopher McCandless's dramatic departure from mainstream culture, and his tragic demise. It forces us to ask: how can we preserve “human community” without “returning to civilization?”

Black Mountain's Prog Gnosis
 Andrew William Smith

The visionary Vancouver quintet Black Mountain achieves the transcendent communal bliss that great rock has always aspired to. With their defiantly and ironically titled sophomore release, In the Future, the band reclaims the project pioneered and lost by progressive rock: album as quest.

"Banish the word 'struggle' from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we have been waiting for." — Hopi elders

Sponsored by

Andrew William Smith

About Me

Bio

Andrew William Smith (aka Andy Smith) got his start in peace activism, music journalism, and independent radio as a high school student in suburban Detroit in the mid-1980s.

After graduating from Wayne State University in 1994 with a BA in English, he moved from Michigan to Tennessee to start a rural land cooperative, raise a daughter, attend graduate school at Middle Tennessee State University, and begin his career as a college writing instructor.

Around 2005, with a full-time teaching gig secured to teach freshman comp at Tennessee Tech, Andy embraced rock journalism and radio with the gusto of his youth. Today, he’s an editor at the pop-culture webzine Interference.com and hosts a weekly radio show on WTTU 88.5 FM every Monday night called “Teacher on the Radio.” Each summer, he is the “dean” of The Academy, a workshop tent at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.

Knowing that home is where he hangs his hat, Andy splits his time between his next-to-campus apartment in Cookeville, hotel rooms, couches, and tents near shows and festivals he’s traveled to, and the land-trust in Liberty, Tennessee, which he shares with his wife Viva, numerous land-mates, and lots of animals.