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Colman Andrews

Colman Andrews

Colman Andrews (pictured in L.A. in April 1972) has been writing professionally about food, wine, and the arts since 1968. He was editor-in-chief of Coast, a California-based magazine dealing with politics, social issues, and the arts, from 1972 to 1975; a restaurant reviewer and restaurant news columnist for the Los Angeles Times from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s; and wine and spirits columnist for Los Angeles Magazine throughout the 1980s. As a freelance editor, his projects included an edition of The Hollywood Reporter Annual and numerous special editions of the Los Angeles Times Travel Section, as well as the thrice-yearly Times travel magazine, Traveling in Style. In 1994, he co-founded Saveur, hailed as "the ultimate food magazine", and subsequently became its editor-in-chief.

Andrews worked in the music business in Los Angeles in the late '60s and early '70s, doing publicity for Atlantic Records and writing artists' bios and liner notes for numerous record companies (he was responsible for some of the earliest press materials on Bette Midler, the Eagles, and Jackson Browne), as well as contributing to United Artist Records' Phonograph Record Magazine. He wrote and produced radio spots for such artists as The Band, Steve Miller, and The Who (in concert) and was nominated for a Grammy in 1971 for his liner notes for a two-disk Miles Davis reissue package on the United Artists label. He hasn't written on music since the 1980s, but continues to be an avid music fan (his favorite genres include jazz, alternative rock, some classic rock — loves the Stones, can't stand the Doors —, Texas-style country, and the music of West Africa, especially Mali), and performs occasionally as a vocalist with the Texas-based chefs' band The Barbwires.

Today, Andrews is an internationally known food writer and editor and the vice-president and editorial director of TheDailyMeal.com, a food and drink mega-site. He is the author of eight books on food, including a biography of chef Ferran Adrià, an appreciation of American food products called The Taste of America, and a memoir, My Usual Table: A Life in Restaurants. He is the winner of eight James Beard Awards, including Cookbook of the Year in 2010 for The Country Cooking of Ireland.

A native of Los Angeles and a graduate of UCLA, with degrees in history and philosophy, Andrews has two daughters and lives in Riverside, Connecticut.

37 articles

List of articles in the library

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Marc Benno, Rita Coolidge, Crazy Horse, The Dixie Flyers: Rita Coolidge, Crazy Horse: The Troubadour, Los Angeles

Live Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, March 1972

CRAZY HORSE, which was once Neil Young's sometimes back-up group and which also used to have Jack Nitzsche sitting on the piano bench, is currently ...

Bobby "Blue" Bland: Spotlighting the Man: Bobby Blue Bland

Comment by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, September 1972

THERE'S A new Bobby Bland single out ('I'm So Tired') that is both typically fine and frustrating: fine in that it is another two and ...

David Bowie: The Man Who Sold the World (Mercury)

Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, March 1971

THE MAN Who Sold the World is a vaguely-sophomoric, vaguely-mystical, thoroughly logical extension of the Music Hall tradition in British pop music. This is a ...

Gary Burton, Keith Jarrett: Keith Jarrett, Gary Burton: Royce Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles, California

Live Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, May 1975

ONE OF A series of recent jazz concerts at UCLA was to have featured Keith Jarrett on solo piano followed by the Gato Barbieri group. ...

Captain Beefheart: The Spotlight Kid (Reprise)

Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, March 1972

WHO'S THE greatest white blues singer in America today? Shame on you if you said John Hammond or Dave Van Ronk or maybe Kate Taylor. ...

Joe Cocker: Jamaica Say You Will (A&M)

Review by Colman Andrews, Creem, November 1975

IT'S MY theory that any LP with ten tracks and 13 recording engineers is in trouble to begin with. But never mind. ...

Dada: Whisky a Go Go, Los Angeles CA

Live Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, June 1971

DADA, A group from England which, so far as I could tell, exercises none of the grand illogicity or intellectual impudence their name would imply, ...

Miles Davis

Profile by Colman Andrews, Creem, November 1972

MILES IS AN absolute mother-fucker of a musician. He's just simply one of the most vitally important makers of music that stalks the earth today, ...

Miles Davis: On the Corner (Columbia)

Review by Colman Andrews, Creem, March 1973

IT'S SHORT, punchy, beefy music, taut, untattered (tight) and tautological. Tautological? Yes, because it's internally consistent. It's true to its school. Quel school? Well... ...

Sandy Denny, Marian Segal: Sandy Denny and Marian Segal

Profile and Interview by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, September 1972

AN ARTICLE on Sandy Denny and Marian Segal, huh? O.K. Now who's Marian Segal? ...

Doobie Brothers: The Doobie Brothers: The Doobie Brothers (Warners)

Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, August 1971

THE DOOBIE Brothers may turn out to be, it has been subtly hinted by the Warner Brothers promo department, the world's first successful "over-the-transom" recording ...

Nick Drake: Nick Drake (Island)

Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, November 1971

NICK DRAKE — who is, despite his name, a singer/songwriter and not a prototypical 1942- vintage private detective radio hero — has made a first ...

Grand Funk Railroad: Survival (Capitol)

Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, August 1971

GRAND FUNK are a real good group. A lot of media critics don't like them, they say they're not real artists and that they just ...

The Groundhogs: Who Will Save The Groundhogs?

Profile and Interview by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, August 1972

IT MAY HAVE been The Last Pop Festival. I mean, they didn't even call it a pop festival, but that's clearly what it was — ...

Herbie Hancock Sells In

Profile by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, November 1974

ALL OF A sudden you wake up one morning and find that Herbie Hancock has three albums on the charts. Herbie Hancock, one-time enfant terrible ...

Herbie Hancock's V.S.O.P.: Greek Theatre, Los Angeles CA

Live Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, August 1977

"V.S.O.P." — Herbie Hancock's Reunion ...

Keith Jarrett: America's #1 Keyboard Star

Overview by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, August 1976

KEITH JARRETT is the first genuine keyboard star of the seventies. Zawinul, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea are stars of a sort, and can certainly ...

Rahsaan Roland Kirk & the Vibration Society: Rahsaan Rahsaan (Atlantic)

Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, March 1971

RAHSAAN ROLAND Kirk is an irrepressible wit, musically and verbally; he's also a fine, funky philosopher, an exhilarating entertainer, and one of the best damn ...

Little Feat: Dixie Chicken (Warner Bros.)

Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, April 1973

LOWELL GEORGE is probably the best ear-to-the-earth, eye-on-the-bar-line writer of folk-themed rock and roll this side of Robbie Robertson, and Dixie Chicken by Little Feat ...

Bob Marley & the Wailers: The Wailers: Catch A Fire (Island)

Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, March 1973

THE WAILERS is/are a sort of senior, "safe" reggae group, in the same way that the Roiling Stones are a sort of senior, "safe" perverto-bizarro ...

Ian Matthews, Randy Newman: Randy Newman, Ian Matthews: The Troubadour, Los Angeles CA

Live Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, November 1971

RANDY NEWMAN looks like a kid you used to know in high school — the one who always read Scientific American and got A's in trig. Which ...

Joni Mitchell: Hejira (Asylum 7E-1087)

Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, December 1976

VERY FEW of Joni Mitchell's songs since the Ladies of the Canyon LP have been recorded by other artists, and I suppose that must be ...

Nico: The End (Island)

Review by Colman Andrews, Creem, May 1975

NICO'S LAST album, Desertshore — her strongest, most varied, most emotionally effective work, was released over four years ago. In the meantime, some of us have been ...

Ohio Knox, Seals and Crofts: Seals and Crofts, Ohio Knox: The Troubadour, Los Angeles CA

Live Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, June 1971

JIM SEALS and Dash Crofts exercise a rare and nearly faultless contextual hegemony over the musical province they have staked out for themselves. I don't ...

The Pointer Sisters: That's a Plenty (Blue Thumb)

Review by Colman Andrews, Creem, August 1974

THE POINTER Sisters are basically the Bettes noires of East Bay jazz-rock jive. ...

Bonnie Raitt: Streetlights (Warner Bros.)

Review by Colman Andrews, Creem, January 1975

BONNIE RAITT has become, if we are to take Streetlights as proper indication, much more polished and slightly less interesting than she used to be. ...

Buffy Sainte-Marie: Buffy (MCA)

Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, 1974

TINA TURNER apparently has some new competition in the ethnic carnality sweepstakes. In the quickest turn of plume since Sacheen Littlefeather showed up in Playboy, ...

Traffic: The Low Marks of Well Heeled Boys

Comment by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, January 1972

SOME NOTES ABOUT THE SLOWING DOWN OF TRAFFIC ...

Ike & Tina Turner: Workin' Together (Liberty)

Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, March 1971

TINA TURNER ought to be ashamed of her fine self, screaming and shouting and carrying on the way she does. If she isn't the sexiest ...

Ike Turner, Ike & Tina Turner: The Roots of Ike Turner

Essay by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, July 1972

IKE TURNER'S roots are blues roots. That's obvious, right? You hardly need some wise-ass young punk kid writer in good old PRM to lay that ...

Loudon Wainwright III: Album II (Atlantic)

Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, September 1971

LOUDON WAINWRIGHT II was (still is, for that matter) one of the best, most readable of the bleeding-heart-liberal slick-paper journalists; his son, Loudon Wainwright III, ...

Junior Walker & the All Stars: Jr. Walker: 'Everybody's Just Ready For Me To Blow.'

Interview by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, October 1976

JR. WALKER is the man who, it might be said, invented disco-jazz. Ten years ago or more, he was creating a kind of music Ramsey ...

Leon Ware: LA's Most Important New Writer/Producer/Performer

Interview by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, November 1976

LEON WARE'S songs have been recorded by an almost bewildering array of performers — including Ike and Tina Turner, Bobby Womack, the Righteous Brothers, Kim ...

Weather Report: Black Market: Wayne Shorter & Weather Report #6

Profile and Interview by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, April 1976

WEATHER REPORT — the adventuresome, electronically-spiced neo-jazz group founded five years ago by Josef Zawinul, Wayne Shorter, and Mirsolav Vitous, and still co-led by the ...

Bobby Womack: Communication (United Artists)

Review by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, January 1972

I'VE MET Bobby Womack a couple of times, more or less interviewed him, written things about him, etc. He's so strong and sure that he ...

Bobby Womack: The Stark Soul of Bobby Womack

Essay by Colman Andrews, Phonograph Record, April 1972

A NEW WOMACK record is at hand. So what? the more unenlightened among you might ask. So plenty, now that you mention it. Plenty and then ...

List of genre pieces

Norman Seeff by Norman Seeff

Interview by Colman Andrews, Marty Cerf, Phonograph Record, August 1977

As told to Marty Cerf and Colman Andrews... ...

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