Andy J. Forest & Snapshots - Andy J. Forest & Snapshots (1981)

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Andy J. Forest & Snapshots - Andy J. Forest & Snapshots (1981)

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Andy J. Forest & Snapshots - Andy J. Forest & Snapshots (1981)

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Biography
Andy J Forest was born in Washington State in 1955. His family moved to Southern California where he grew up in the Pasadena area. At the age of 16 he quit school and went to Hawaii where he survived by picking shell fish on the coastal cliffs and selling them to the Japanese fish merchants, cleaning Hotels and picking pineapple on the Dole plantation.
Upon returning to the mainland he studied violin and harmonica. A six month trip to the Virgin Islands after hitchhiking to New York added to the resume of already some 30 jobs he'd had, ranging from fishing salmon in the Northern Pacific, constuction, oil refinery tank-scraping, roofing and electrician's assistant.
Andy studied music, dance, Latin and fencing at Pasadena Junior College when he was 18. During this time he focused on blues harmonica, which would later lead to a recording career. Moving to New Orleans in 1974 he received a scholarship at a local dance company. Between waiting tables at Brennan's and playing harmonica with local bands he began to experiment with poetry and songwriting.
1977 found Andy on a three month trip to Europe that lasted over ten years. He recorded the first of 13 albums in 1979, consistantly writing 90% of the material. Touring extensively in Europe he returned to New Orleans periodically to record his songs and play in clubs. In Italy, he began teaching harmonica seminars and master classes and interviewing rock stars for Italian television as his Italian became fluent.
A casting agent in Rome saw him playing in a club in 1985 which led to a twelve film, five year acting career. He landed lead roles acting next to Toshiro Mifune, Irene Pappas, Ernest Borgnine and many others. He shot films in the Moroccan Sahara Desert, Yugoslavia, Brazil, Canada, on the Orinoco River in Venezuela and in Italy. The films ranged from B war movies to arty erotica (Tinto Brass) and brilliant comedy to Safari films for Japanese television. Forest also has a dozen TV commercials to his credit as an actor and one as a writer.
Not satisfied with his dialogue he began to re-write a lot of his lines and eventually wrote film ideas that he wound up molding into short stories, preferring the literary form over film script. By 1990 he had begun to develop a writing style and abandoned cinema for a full time touring schedule. The music had become just as lucrative and more artistically satisfying.
In 1997 Forest entered a short story and a poem in the William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition in New Orleans and was a finalist in both catagories. With this encouragement he has taken writing more seriously. In the winter of 1997-98 writing between Bourbon Street gigs and tours, he completed his first. The novel was short listed for an award in the 1998 Faulkner Competition and was published for Pengragon Press in January 1999. The French translation was published by the prestigious Editions Gallimard (Serie Noir) in 2003. The soundtrack or companion CD on Appaloosa Records has the same title as the novel. "Letter From Hell" Painting What started out as a hobby has almost become a second career for Andy. Since the winter of 2000 he has been drawing and painting. The first art show was in 2001 at Eugene's Gallery on Royal Street in New Orleans followed by a show in Ferrara (Italy) and then Paris France. The Sonny Boy Williamson Museum in Helena Arkansas has several and the House of Blues art department has aquired several dozen from Andy. La Belle Gallery (see link) has a small collection and the legendary New Orleans restaurant "Jaquimo's" has a few of Forest's acrylic portaits on it's walls as well. Some of his recent paintings are displayed here on www.andyjforest.com