On his critically acclaimed 'Sunflower Girl' album, ANDY THORNTON used his songwriting gift to heal the grief of the death of his young wife. Tony Cummings reports.

Andy Thornton

The release of 'Sunflower Girl' by Andy Thornton has brought the 48 year old singer/songwriter considerable critical praise. Maverick magazine enthused, "'Sunflower Girl' will gently break your heart and then immediately restore your faith and for that alone, it deserves its place among the singer/songwriter classics," while Cross Rhythms called it "a remarkably uplifting record."

'Sunflower Girl' was written in the year following the loss of Andy's wife Donna to cancer at the age of 29. At the time of the album's release in February 2006 Andy said, "The first thing you want to do in mourning is curl up in a ball and hide, to put your emotions on hold because they're too unbearable. But the strange thing about songs is that they take on a life of their own even as you write them - they become a place to lay things to rest, to put them outside yourself and diffuse the emotional tension. I think I just had to write and see what happened."

Andy admits that 'Sunflower Girl' ran the risk of being hugely maudlin. "I wasn't writing an album, I was just writing songs. They didn't have to go on an album, they just had to escape. To some extent they kept me alive, kept my emotions flowing rather than closing down in the grief. It doesn't help for me to talk to people much about all that in this context. Imagine the worst thing you could ever imagine happening - when it does, what do you do? Well, one of the things I did was write songs, then recorded some of them once I'd decided I thought they were good enough. People don't have to buy them - I don't make music for a living, but I do like the idea that I leave some kind of trail of who I am, what I thought, what I made of life. if for no one else but my daughter who will have to make sense of all this later in life (which I have done in many ways, not just recording this album)."

'Sunflower Girl' was originally released under a different title. It was launched at Greenbelt 2005 with the title 'The Healing Darkness' but quickly withdrawn. Andy explained why. "I saw people pick it up and look uncomfortable with the title, and it didn't seem to say to them what I thought it was saying. I actually saw it as quite a beautiful description of the experience, and the experience is more than you could ever dream of as a positive outcome in a terrible circumstance. I think many Christians who have experienced grief would relate to it. The darkness is the place of unknowing where you have to go and sit while your emotions are healed and you become ready to face life in all its fullness again. To go there is an act of faith. If you think you can survive by cheering yourself up you don't allow the spirit to minister to you in the profound way that you need it. So it's a place of healing when you don't know how to carry on. God knew how I could carry on when I didn't.

"'Sunflower Girl' was the nick name that some friends had given Donna when she was in Hull. It sounded like it might more truly reflect something of the album which, as most people who listen to it will tell you, is actually a very positive album, about emerging and finding life, about the eternal value of love as the reassurance of eternal hope. Nothing that Donna brought to me has vanished and I am forever grateful for her."

Andy was born in Yorkshire in 1958 and grew up in a small village. Andy's father was head of a little C of E school and his family went to church fairly regularly. Music made an impact on Andy from an early age. He explained, "One of my parents was a piano teacher, the other an amateur operatic singer, so I was surrounded by it. I was told I had to learn 'proper' instruments, but the day I first played a chord on the guitar I was in love! The same day I also wrote my first song. I just wanted to do it. I played it to my parents and they kind of nodded and said 'now go practice your oboe'. Perhaps they did me a favour as I then quickly formed a (terrible) rock band and wrote non-stop."

Spiritually, the lights came on for Andy at the age of 17. He remembered, "I went to a service in York Minster where David Watson was preaching. I made a Christian commitment at his invitation and something changed inside me. It was a wonderful and affirming and serious shift. A few years later I took on a more reformed, Calvinistic, hard line faith which did me few emotional favours but it did get me into some serious theological thinking - which had some intellectual benefits. I got pulled out of that through the charismatic movement and then through Kingdom theology which started to integrate the whole 'package'. After I'd become a Christian I spent years struggling with the dichotomy of guitar versus Jesus! What was my first love, etc? I kept feeling that I should smash the guitar in order to prove my love to God. In retrospect I was just a victim of some fairly unhelpful absolutist theology that hadn't quite got a grip on grace."

Andy can vividly recall his first experience of recording music. "The first time I went to a recording studio was to make a tape with a friend called John Griffiths with whom I was in a kind of light hearted duo called Stonewall Griffiths. (He later formed the Woebegone Brothers with his brothers who were a great, errmmm, post-modern skiffle gospel busking band!) We made a nice enough tape of our quirky songs with some now fairly famous guest artists like Ricky Ross from Deacon Blue, who I lived with at the time. I do remember a phenomenal sense of possibility as soon as we started multi-tracking. It's like we could go anywhere and build up the sound and be anything we wanted. I still absolutely love that. This last album is the first time I've had an orchestra at my fingertips and I want to compose a lot more that way now. Computers are amazing for musicians who've always heard orchestras in their heads but could never afford them!"

In 1986 Andy formed a sophisticated pop trio based in Glasgow called Big Sur. "I always wanted to play music full time and in the '80s I left my job as a Church of Scotland youth worker to play music and try 'make it' with my band which led to something of a dead-end rock and roll apprenticeship though I did sign to Chrysalis as a writer and learnt to express myself in songs as something of a second nature."

The vaguaries of the mainstream pop world were neatly demonstrated when Chrysalis released Big Sur's 12 inch single "Please Stay". Record Mirror named it "record of the week" while, the same week, NME called it a "vile, disgusting whinge." Big Sur broke up in 1989. Andy became involved in the alternative worship movement and contributed regularly to the Late Late Service, the Glasgow-based collective whose events and albums on Sticky Music were pioneering in bringing the dance rhythms of clubland to the worship experience. But when in 1994 Andy released his debut album 'Victims And Criminals' it was in a style a long way from the house and techno rhythms of The Late Late Service. Said Andy, "I guess each album represents some kind of 'sitting still and letting it all happen then trying to make sense of it' phase in my life. Unfortunately a few of those have been tough times and I'm slightly embarrassed about the angst that seems to characterise my songs because it's not what I'm like in real life! I think my writing is a form of processing my life and though I'd sometimes like the themes of my songs to be different (perhaps more cheery!) it usually feels like I've just got to get on with it and let it come out. 'Victims And Criminals' was recorded in a more or less live band setting in the studio, with awesome musicians who made it sound great. It's the most acoustic sounding album and I think it contains one of my best songs, which is called '21' - a song about becoming reconciled to getting older, which I think was complicated for me at that time as it also represented never getting anywhere as a professional artist in our culture where being young is part of the fame formula. As one person said to me recently, if I'd made my latest album when I was 25 I might be on my way to being a household name, but no one really wants an old newcomer!"

In 1999 Andy recorded 'The Things You Never Say'. It came out of a difficult time in the singer/songwriter's life. "It's much more rocky and perhaps a hard listen at times. The angst is a bit louder as I was heading for a relationship split - I would rather the listener chose what they make of that, cos some people like it that way! The last song, 'I'm Not The Man' is a pretty profound one lyrically - the music's definitely influenced by Pulp who I liked at the time, but nicely crafted to my ears.

"I've always had a belief that it's right to expose my inner life in my songs, mainly because it's a 'gospel risk' as an artist, to my understanding. Art has to carry our humanity to others and has to risk the repercussions of that. I can't stand songs where you think the artist is playing it safe. Either repeating old doggerel, someone else's sentiments that they think it's okay to wear as their badge of honour, or even regular bedroom 'nobody loves me' angst. If you do that you're not understanding the nature and value of art in the human experience. It communicates elements of the soul that can't be encapsulated by logical discussion or a set of propositions. It connects on levels that liberate people from their isolation and invites them out to be fully human together. I know people who have found faith because I and other artists like me have made contact under their skin in a way that has connected their humanity and made them more confident to let themselves out. One of my mentor figures uses the phrase 'between us and God there is no between'. When God meets us it is at our deepest level - somewhere we find it very hard to get to! It's an article of faith to be as illuminatingly yourself as you can be (recognising that that means that you're a fallible and flawed creature!) as it liberates others to acknowledge their fallibility and aspire to be godly themselves. Sometimes I may tip too far for some people's comfort on that one, but it's done with the best of intentions and mostly with self-awareness!"

Troubled times weren't finished with the singer/songwriter. As he explained, "So a few years after 'The Things You Never Say', I was happily remarried and had my first child at age 42, and then my beautiful wife and mother of my daughter developed cancer, which she died of a year later. One of the ways to get through the deep sadness of that was to let the situation emerge in my songs without trying to judge the product, just let it happen. I wasn't trying to describe or declaim the experience, just get through and find out how to live again. So 'Sunflower Girl' was written as something of a survival measure, and recorded at night when babysitting my two year old daughter. I bought a pile of studio gear and recorded it at home and played most things on it myself. When it was near finishing I called up Iain Archer and asked him to help me finish it. He's an absolute star and musically so naturally clever, he did a lot of fixing!"

Today Andy lives with his daughter Cara in the village of Stansted Mountfitchet and works with the Citizenship Foundation. He told me a bit about his work. "It's the country's lead charity that promotes active participation in communities and democracy. I lead a section of it called Participation and Social Action. We were formative in developing Citizenship as a mandatory subject in the secondary school curriculum. In the past few years I've developed a role as a specialist in education about charitable giving in relation to citizenship and released materials that are now used in a few thousand schools around the UK. I'm also a kind of adviser to the Cabinet Office on the subject. This government is very interesting in its social support of voluntary activity - quite radical, trying to put ordinary people in the driving seat of their lives, even though they don't always want it and are happier to complain that other people aren't doing it for them. but that's another conversation!

After his trials, things are again on the up for Andy. He has met and fallen in love with a lady from Australia whose book Change The World For A Fiver has been getting good reviews. Andy will be getting married next April. In the meantime, he's enjoying village life with five year old Cara. He said, "I go to the local parish church in our village which is a great little community of very caring people who have been absolutely wonderful over the past few years. One day we were driving past it taking some friends to the airport and my then three year old daughter pointed to it and said, 'That's our church. They love me in there, they do.' What more could you want!?"