Education
- Ph.D., Department of Education, Bath Spa University, 2012
- M.A., Professional Learning, Bath Spa University, 2006
Andy West is associate professor of music in music production: creation and production at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
West has been a professional musician and songwriter since 1991, when he left indie band The Fontaines to join Hugh Cornwell (The Stranglers) and Roger Cook (Blue Mink) in the eclectic trio Cornwell, Cook, and West. Since then, more than 400 of his songs have been published, primarily by Warner Chappell, and featured in film and on TV in over 40 countries, most notably in the Grammy-winning shows Heroes, Lost, and True Blood.
With his various bands and as a solo artist, West has toured extensively in the U.K., U.S., and Europe, and while residing in Nashville from 1997 to 2003, he played live and recorded with Ian Wallace (Bob Dylan), Kenny Vaughan (Lucinda Williams), Willie Weeks (David Bowie), Garry Tallent (Bruce Springsteen), Michael Rhodes (Etta James), and Chad Cromwell (Neil Young).
In 2003, West produced Julie Lee’s album Stillhouse Road, featuring Grammy winners Alison Krauss and Vince Gill, and later that year, his solo album Sundays and Birthdays was released on the Nashville-based Infinity Cat label.
A specialist in the fields of higher education and popular music studies, West’s Ph.D. focuses on the teaching and learning of songwriting, and he has an M.A. in Professional Learning. In 2006, he designed and course-directed the world’s first master’s degree in songwriting.
His first book, The Art of Songwriting, was published by Bloomsbury in 2016 and is now in its fifth edition. A second book, Higher Music Education: 21 Questions for the 21st Century, was published by Leeds Conservatoire in 2020, and his third book, Paul Weller and Popular Music, was published by Routledge in 2022.
As a guest lecturer, West has taught songwriting and production at music institutions in Amsterdam, Esbjerg, Copenhagen, Aarhus, Rome, Oslo, Mannheim, Kristiansand, London, and Rotterdam. A longstanding member of PRS and ASCAP, he became a senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2021.