My name is Andy Barton, and I'm a 33 year-old creative 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 songs for my recording project, Reverie Rush, since I returned.
I have additional bylines at Impose, Treble, and The Blue Indian, as well as experience producing podcasts, writing copy for email marketing, and creating/scheduling social content across a variety of channels. 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!