Musician, whistler, one-person showman, and Covington native Andy Offutt Irwin releases Free the Imprisoned Lightning, a new assortment of stories and songs, including live recordings from the National Storytelling Festival, and two new stories from the hilarious and heartwarming world of Andy’s 85-year-old newly minted physician aunt, Marguerite Van Camp. This will be the fourteenth audio collection from this “storytelling icon” (as recently dubbed by the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, Tennessee.)
The title story is a patriotic tale of German Jewish immigrant Leopold Mendelssohn, who as a young man in the early twentieth century, buys a Model T truck, tricks it out to live in, and begins his journey from the Lower East Side of Manhattan to the Deep South which will become his adopted home. He maintains a lifelong love for the object of his earliest memory, the colossal Liberty Enlightening the World — the proper given name of The Statue of Liberty. He beheld Liberty as a tiny child in his mother’s arms, as the ship that brought them to America sailed into New York Harbor. A constant and deep wit, “Great-Great Uncle Leo” passes his love of Liberty through the generations.
In Mr. Dewey’s Train, we meet the most steadfast (and the only) employee of the Great Newtonsborough Railroad: Mr. Dewey. He thrills the population of two counties by becoming an undeniable ghost with the help of Dr. Marguerite.
The songs include A Methodist’s L’Chaim, a new anthem that premiered at the 2023 National Storytelling Festival, and an instrumental revisiting of Andy’s groovy dog-ate-my-homework-no-wait-I’m-in-college song Chlamydomonas.
Kevin Kling, playwright, Emmy-winning storyteller, and commentator for NPR’s All Things Considered, recalled his first encounter with Andy’s work like this:
“Andy took me on a journey…full of heart and gut-busting humor all wrapped in a hauntingly, beautiful story. What separated him from any other teller was his characters. Like Charles Portis, flesh and blood people born of great imagination, visceral and nuanced, we immediately know and love his family because it’s our family…. Since then I have had the joy to share the stage with Andy. An incredibly giving soul, he wants everyone around him to do well. Then he humbly takes the stage and blows the lid off the joint. For all his audacity he has a giant, giant heart… When it comes to originality Andy is a piece of the American storytelling puzzle that is not shaped like any other.”
Free the Imprisoned Lightning is available on all streaming platforms, or by flash drive from Andy’s website: andyirwin.com
