Andy Grammer Goes From Busker to Pop Phenom, With Rainn Wilson's Help

When Andy Grammer transplanted himself from upstate New York to the West Coast, he took his acoustic guitar to the streets of Santa Monica, traversing the popular tourist spots and showcasing his catchy pop melodies and unusual beatboxing skills to anyone who would listen.

"There's something really exciting and exhilarating about an impromptu concert with people that didn't know they were gonna be a part of it," Grammer tells Spinner.

"In the beginning, I paid my rent off of selling CDs, which was a pretty cool thing," he says. "It was a hustle. It was like labor. You're out there in the sun for 12 hours. It's pretty much like a taco cart but you're selling CDs -- set it up every day and take it all down. It was intense, but pretty rewarding."

Getting the attention of passersby wasn't always easy, so Grammer adapted some beatbox and vocalized trumpet skills that forced people do a double take.

"In the beginning, I was playing by myself with solo guitar and I would hear all the beats, so eventually I would become the drummer," Grammer says. "It would be me beat-boxing, then mouth-trumpeting and doing covers of different songs, maybe hip-hop covers with the beatbox."

Now Grammer has a record contract on S-Curve, and a debut album due out later this year. His first single off the album is 'Keep Your Head Up,' a song that made a mini-viral splash last year through an interactive video starring Rainn Wilson from NBC's 'The Office.'

"Rainn Wilson is such a homie," Grammer says. "He co-wrote a book with my old roommate. One day he was in my apartment and I took him out to lunch and told him about the video and he was so gracious to be in it."

The interactive video has a number of different sequences that the user can navigate through the change and alter the outcomes of the narrative set to Grammer's song.

"It was a huge undertaking, not only to shoot that many scenes come up with some sort of script that has all these different options in it. It was a big, fantastic, amazing project."

Andy Grammer's Original 'Keep Your Head Up' Video


Download Andy Grammer Songs