Author: Lauren Gill

If you look at the day-to-day of Andrea Maddox, you’d see a portrait of someone whose life is saturated with and built around music.

She started learning piano in early childhood and has been writing and performing music for as long as she can remember. 

Today she’s a singer and songwriter who fronts several bands and also teaches piano and voice to about 30 students per week. During the pandemic, she reignited her passion for musical theater and produced a summer music camp for kids, which culminated with the production of an original musical. What started as a lark (and, she jokes, a way to keep her kids occupied) has now been running for three seasons – in August, the group finished up a production of Madame Clementine’s Extraordinaire at Rosekill Art Farm in August.

Andrea plays in many bands, but her main squeeze is the five-piece Country/Americana group Andrea Maddox and the Hey Y’alls, who also played at the 2022 O+ Festival. Even though she’d been to the festival many times as an attendee (and a fixture of the opening night parade), now as an alumnus, she found an even deeper connection to community and care. 

“It was so much fun…You walk into the clinic and everyone is just like, ‘How can I help you? What do you need?’ That was great,” she says. “It just felt really special. One of my bandmates went to the dentist for the first time in years and was like, ‘Oh my god, that was amazing’.” 

She says that receiving care in the clinic, sharing meals with other festival participants, and getting to see other performers offered a truly unique experience.

“It was so nice to see fellow musicians I’ve been playing with for years performing and attending. My entire family came and we listened to all kinds of music,” she says. “It was so nice to be part of a really caring community and feel all that love – to get the love as a performer and go and see all these other musicians doing the same thing. It just had this really warm, wonderful feeling.”

Andrea knows well the push-and-pull between making a career as an artist and making ends meet, and it’s taken her a lot of trial and error to get to a place where she can sustain herself – spiritually and financially – as an artist. 

“For musicians and artists, you’re constantly having to have another job to pay for healthcare or food or rent,” she says. “Many times in my life I’ve had to quit just trying to gig and sort of do the 9-5 so I could get health insurance and actually go to a doctor or a dentist instead of just going to a clinic.”

She says those years oscillating back and forth between gigging and working a series of “regular” full-time jobs was a constant game of trade-offs. On the one hand, there was more consistent income and health insurance; she recalls one job where, once her health benefits kicked in, she spent an entire year catching up on all of the preventive care she couldn’t access before. 

On the other hand, she was miserable. 

“I felt like I was having to sacrifice the time that I could be working on my music to be drained at a day job,” she says.  “As a creative person, I feel like there’s always a choice: you can choose not to do the work, and then there are consequences…because you choose not to follow the thing that is deep inside you and crying to get out.”

For Andrea, sacrificing that creative time meant ignoring her heart’s calling, and taking away a crucial part of her own healing and coping process. Music – composing, playing, performing – gives her a way to work through her experiences and emotions and helps her find a way forward. Without that conduit, she says, her mental health suffers. 

Walking away from her steady job with benefits wasn’t easy, and she recognizes that it’s not always an option that’s available to everyone. But it was a bet on herself that she needed to make. 

“I think the older I get, the more confidence I have. And I think I also understand that we don’t have a lot of time – what we have is this time right now.”

Still, other factors, like relatively good health, improved access to care under the Affordable Care Act, and encouragement from mentors, helped her to take the leap to pursue music full-time – and keep taking it, every day. 

“I’ve had a lot of my mentors say things like, “You don’t have to do it, nobody has to do it. But it’s hard, and that’s why most people quit.’ And that voice has been in my head so much in my life because I thought, you know what? I can do hard things.”

Andrea Maddox and The Hey Y’alls recently finished their latest album, Long Drive Home, which you can stream on all the major services or hear live at their EP release show on Friday, December 15th, 2023 at The Colony in Woodstock, along with other O+ Alums The Kondrat Sisters and Yard Sale. Get your tix here. 

You can also find them online on Instagram, YouTube, and Bandcamp. 

Gregory Stovetop has a unique vantage point of the O+ Festival as an attendee, a festival alumnus, and most recently, as a member of the 2023 music committee.

He says he first picked up a bass guitar as a pre-teen after he saw his cousin learning to play, and his lifelong relationship with music and art only blossomed from there. He jokes that picking up an instrument at the age he did probably kept him out of trouble as a teenager.

“My focus was on music,” he says, reflecting on his adolescence. “It’s the community thing. It’s so vast – almost like a secret language you’re learning that only musicians know.”

He was first introduced to O+ through fellow musician, writer, and O+ alum Richard Buckner back in 2017, shortly after he’d relocated to Kingston from Brooklyn and was looking to make connections within the music community here in the Hudson Valley. He applied to O+ as a solo artist a few times and was selected to play as part of the 2022 festival.

Even though he felt like he was familiar with the festival, having attended and volunteered during prior years, Gregory says he was surprised by what the experience was like behind the scenes.

“I didn’t understand what O+ was until I actually played the festival. I was amazed by the amount of services I got,” he says, referring to his time at the Artists’ Clinic, where all performers and volunteers access a variety of health and wellness services in exchange for their contribution to the festival.

“I just took one day. I started with my teeth cleaning, I got a chiropractic adjustment, I got a massage, and I had a shamanistic counseling session,” he adds. “Having that access alone was so huge…I don’t even know what the dollar amount equivalent to that would be.”

Greg says that spending time in the company of other performers, but also with the broader Kingston community, was equally healing.

“There was just this unity. Everything was chill, there wasn’t stress…sometimes festivals can be overwhelming because there’s too much going on,” he says. “I love that at O+ the health aspect was the objective. You play your music but also get to treat yourself to the support from this community of healthcare providers…I just loved that health was the front-and-center thing rather than a little footnote.”

He also says that the care he received at The Artists’ Clinic gave him a gentle nudge to be more proactive in certain aspects of his health. An energy work session prompted him to make some nutrition changes to better support his liver, and a routine dental cleaning made him feel like a new person.

“Dentistry is one of those things I neglect…I’m not a good flosser,” he says with a laugh. “Getting my teeth cleaned hurt but I felt like I had new teeth afterward. Just seeing somebody and getting that push was helpful.”

Greg says that he’s always been a “self-help” kind of person when it comes to his health and is often drawn to alternative and complementary therapies. But sobriety is what really pushed him to better prioritize self-care and to be more active in tending to his physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.

“Before sobriety, healthcare was nonexistent – I didn’t seek it unless it was an emergency,” he says. “There was lots of neglect…in this world, it equates to money and it equates to debt and so you avoid it until you absolutely need it.”

He still often grapples with his own skepticism about our healthcare system but says that his sobriety journey taught him how to ask for help – and receive it.

“The biggest power move for me was the realization that I needed to take care of myself or I was going to burn out on all levels if I continued,” he says. “Falling or flying, there is this surrender you have to always come to.”

I love that at O+ the health aspect was the objective. You play your music but also get to treat yourself to the support from this community of healthcare providers…I just loved that health was the front-and-center thing rather than a little footnote.

Part of his self-care practice also involves being an active member of the community through volunteering, which has been a jumping-off point for him in making new friends and connections.

“I always encourage people to volunteer. Even last year when I played at the festival, I still wanted to volunteer on the days I wasn’t playing,” he laughs. “The benefit is strengthening your community…it’s hard to put in words. You meet a bunch of people you wouldn’t normally meet, and you’re bridging new relationships. It’s a wonderful thing to do.”

That attitude also drove him to join the 2023 O+ Festival music committee, a rotating team of local musicians, promoters, and creatives who help to curate each year’s lineup. Gregory says that serving on the music committee gave him a whole new appreciation for the work that goes into the festival.

“The first thing I did after going through [music] submissions was thank everybody on the committee last year for picking me because now I know how hard it is,” he laughs.

The submission-to-selection process takes around four months and involves a lot of deliberation and research. Committee members spend a lot of time poring over submission materials and links to music and past performances. For the 2023 festival, he says the committee reviewed more than 200 submissions, which they then had to curate into a lineup of 40 bands and solo artists. In keeping with O+’s mission to uplift local talent, the committee prioritizes musicians and bands from the Hudson Valley, as well as people who are in need of healthcare services.

“It’s so hard to narrow it down…you have to take yourself and your personal tastes out of it so you can think about the bigger picture,” he says. “You’re setting up a weekend of music that you want people to be excited about and have fun with at the end of the day.”

He says the experience of sitting on the music committee turned him on to a lot of cool music but also taught him a lot about how to market himself as a musician to wider audiences. For other musicians who might be interested in applying to future festivals, Greg has simple advice.

“Represent yourself down to every detail. Make sure that what you’re sending musically and video-wise is what you’re gonna serve when you come,” he says. “Just be very authentic to yourself and your mission.”

Gregory Stovetop is a visual artist and musician living and working in the Hudson Valley. You can check out his work and learn more about upcoming shows at https://www.gregorystovetop.com/