Andrew Weiss (guitarist)

Andrew Weiss (guitarist)

Andrew Weiss is a bass guitarist and producer.

Andrew Weiss is an American musician, composer, audio engineer and Grammy winning record producer. Born in Chicago, Andrew spent most of his youth growing up in central New Jersey where he later started playing bass with local bands while attending Princeton High School. In 1982 he teamed up with William Tucker (guitar) and high school buddy Sim Cain (drums) to form Regressive Aid, an instrumental no wave band that released a 4 song EP in 1983 and a 6 song LP the following year. Around this time, Andrew began his experimentations with electronic music and recording. This led to a collaboration with his friend Jeff Rusnack, partnersinWonder, and together they founded Bird'o'Pray Records, a cassette only label that featured electronic and alternative music, including the first releases by the New Hope, Pa. duo Ween.

In 1985, Regressive Aid caught the attention of Black Flag founder/guitarist Greg Ginn who then recruited Andrew and Sim to travel to Los Angeles and form Gone, an instrumental punk/jazz power trio. In 1986 Gone recorded 3 albums for SST Records and played over 500 gigs throughout the USA touring in support of Black Flag as well as performing guerrilla type shows in record stores. The end of the year saw the demise of both Gone and Black Flag, at which point Andrew and Sim teamed up with Black Flag vocalist Henry Rollins and Washington DC guitarist Chris Haskett to form the Rollins Band. It was also around this time that Andrew began to further pursue adventures in music production and engineering, enlisting Ween and local NJ act Skunk as guinea pigs. In 1989, he produced and engineered albums for both bands which were subsequently snatched up by the Minneapolis indie label Twin Tone. Soon thereafter, he also produced a duo project with Rollins for Chrysalis Records, dubbed Wartime, on which Andrew wrote, played, and recorded all the music himself while Henry wrote the lyrics and performed the vocals.

From 1987 through 1992, Andrew toured the world and recorded 7 albums with the Rollins Band acting not only as their bassist, but writing much of the music as well. During this period he also produced four albums for Ween, two for Skunk, and participated in 3 tours and 4 albums as bassist and songwriter for the industrial all-star supergroup Pigface. In 1992, Andrew departed the Rollins Band to devote more time to Ween (as their live bassist) and Pigface projects. The years since have found him recording and playing bass with, among others, the Butthole Surfers, Chris Harford and Yoko Ono (with whom he did a world tour in 1996), while continuing his production/engineering work with Ween (six more releases), a collaboration with the premier Japanese band Boredoms (Z-Rock Hawaii), the 'P' album (featuring Johnny Depp, Gibby Haynes, Flea, Steve Jones, & others), Yoko Ono, and Akron/Family. Andrew is also well known in Central and South America as producer and engineer of albums for a number of Latin American bands including six albums with Babasonicos from Argentina, four with Mexican band Liquits, and the Grammy winning 2003 album from Cafe Tacuba, Quatro Caminos. In 2000 Andrew started spending time in Haiti recording and performing with Port-au-Prince post-racine band RAM. Around this time he also began composing music for television and film, most notably scoring music for a multitude of shows on the Sundance Channel. Andrew is currently the bassist with Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine, while also maintaining his Zion House'o'Flesh studio in New Jersey.