Andy Kuncl seeks solace in his guitar
by Greg Barbera
"I'm just a 23-year-old trying to find myself," says the soft spoken singer/songwriter Andy Kuncl from his parent's home in Chapel Hill. It's his first official interview and I've stumped him by asking the rhetorical question: "Who is Andy Kuncl?"
What Kuncl is is a bleach-blonde, barefooted, college-educated songwriter caught in the post-graduation what-I-going-to-do-with-my-life blues. "I'm finding out what I need to do in order to be happy with my life," says Kuncl. Happiness, he has found, lies somewhere between his fingertips; between writing and performing songs.
He explains that he didn't pick up the guitar until his sophomore year in college after an epiphany he had: witnessing the power of lesbian troubadour Ani DiFranco play. "I had never seen her before. Seeing her and what she was doing, I thought 'I've got to learn how to do this.'"
And learn it he did. Kuncl's performances encompass much of the same energy and wit that a DiFranco show does. A few months back during a N.C. Songwriter's Co-op Songwriting Contest at the Skylight Exchange in Chapel Hill, Kuncl delivered a stunning performance that led him to first place in the competition. Combining clever metaphors in songs like "hurricane" ("I just found out I got three sisters/I never knew I had/their names are Bonnie, Bertha, and Fran/Guess that explains a bit about who I am") with a hands-on approached to guitar playing (Kuncl also uses the acoustic guitar as a percussion device), it was obvious to everyone in the house the moment he stepped his shoe-less feet on stage, that he was going to take home the prize.
Fast forward to the present and you'll find this ambitious lad has just released his second self-produced CD, who i am, to an unsuspecting singer/songwriter public. Teaming up with über-producer Chris Stamey (Kuncl confesses that he didn't know his pedigree--Stamey's band, the db's, were elemental in shaping Carolina's pop scene back in the 80's) and sporting a backing band that features members of the local funkenjam outfit Hipbone (and yes there's even a Squirrel Nut Zipper cameo by drummer Chris Phillips), the budding musician found the answer to this soul searching is in making music.
The 12-song disc addresses all the unanswered questions one finds thrust upon themselves at this tender age. And Kuncl wrestles with these questions like he wrestles with his acoustic guitar: He named his upstart label Missing String Music because of his penchant for breaking strings mid-song. He confesses that he still hasn't figured it all out yet.
I figure the best advice for him is no advice. I don't tell him that nobody ever figures out their life. But Kuncl will figure that out soon enough. •