My name is Andy Barton, and I'm a 31 year-old writer and musician originally from Chapin, South Carolina. I grew up visiting Athens, Georgia and the UGA campus, where I relished time away from my small hometown (three stoplights) to visit my two older sisters in school there. I ended up making my own move to Athens in 2009 to pursue a bachelor's degree in journalism at UGA's Grady School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and jumped headfirst into learning more about the town's storied music scene. During my post-collegiate time in Athens — an additional four years, with a yearlong stint in Atlanta sandwiched in between — I played in a band, wrote about music and culture for Flagpole and Creative Loafing Atlanta (each city’s respective alt-weekly), and worked as a publicist for independent musicians at a boutique PR firm. Carrboro, North Carolina then became home for a short period of time, where I took a break from writing to live a relatively tame professional life as an account rep for a music distributor. Something about Georgia was calling me back, though, and I’ve been diligently working on new creative fiction, freelance copywriting, and a full-length album for my recording project, Reverie Rush, since I returned.
I have additional bylines at Impose, Treble, and The Blue Indian, and also have experience writing band bios, doing freelance publicity for musicians, and scoring podcasts. I've had the pleasure of interviewing Arcade Fire, Pylon, Spoon, Neon Indian, and Kishi Bashi, to name a few. Give me a holler if you have an inquiry, a project you’d like to hire me for, or want to collaborate!