Andrew Bird

Biography

Andrew Bird grew up in Lake Forest, Illinois, on Chicago’s North Shore. He was raised Catholic and attended Sunday school at the Church of St. Mary until he got kicked out for mocking God; he now describes himself as a lapsed Catholic. At age four, his mother brought him to violin lessons, where he learned using the Suzuki method, and she picked up the instrument alongside him. He learned to whistle from his grandmother when he was six and spent his youth mastering bird-calls.

Bird didn’t take violin seriously until he was about thirteen, and he didn’t learn to read sheet music until high school—he had been playing by ear. He went to Interlochen Arts Camp as a kid, graduated from Lake Forest High School in 1991, and earned a bachelor’s degree in violin performance from Northwestern University in 1996. That same year, he put out his first solo album, Music of Hair, which draws on folk, jazz, and blues traditions. His first real commercial break came from playing with the band Squirrel Nut Zippers, appearing on three of their records from 1996 to 1998.

In 1998, his group Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire released Thrills, followed by Oh! The Grandeur in 1999—both albums steeped in folk, jazz, and swing. The band included musicians from Chicago like Kevin O’Donnell, Joshua Hirsch, and others. During this time, Bird also sang and played violin in Kevin O’Donnell’s Quality Six, contributing to two albums.

Bowl of Fire’s third album, The Swimming Hour, came out in 2001 and mixed zydeco with rock; Bird called it his “jukebox album.” Though critics liked it, the band never broke through commercially, sometimes playing for crowds as small as forty people. In 2002, when the rest of Bowl of Fire couldn’t make a gig, Bird played solo in Chicago—and that show turned out to be a hit.