Long Island's Andrew Weiss and Friends have made a name for themselves since their debut LP arrived in 2018 with their unique blend of Laurel Canyon folk rock and the sonic flourishes of late-70s power pop. Singer-songwriter Andrew Weiss clings to and cherishes moments of intimacy and emotional currency through his songwriting. A classic glow silhouettes his storytelling, fusing a smart, throwback warmth and charm right into the work. Weiss’ songs show off his chops for character-driven stories, with an attention to detail and lyrical prowess on par with the likes of Tom Petty, paired with a sense of melody that pays homage to Cheap Trick and Buffalo Springfield. Weiss and his collaborators return in 2026 with a glowing new album …To Change a Lightbulb.
After seven albums, Weiss hits a milestone here: this eighth album took the longest of any to make, at a year and a half. And for good reason: three members of this band became parents during the making of the album. A year and a half is a normal amount of time to record an album by today’s standards…heck, some may even consider that time frame short. Weiss operates on a different schedule. He says, “In the first three years of The Beatles’ existence as a recording entity, they released two albums per year. It’s not a requirement, but writing and recording is so much fun. I can’t stop.”
The first session for Lightbulb was produced by Pete Donnelly (The Figgs, Candy Butchers) at Weiss’ home studio, which resulted in the songs “Second Hand” and “Mr. Roy Gee Biv”, a song written by Weiss and guitarist Sam Popkin fresh off the premiere of their original musical titled “Apollo: The Man Who Built The Moon”. The musical premiered at the Emerging Artists Theatre Spark Theatre Festival in New York City, to a sold-out crowd. The remaining sessions throughout the rest of 2024, 2025, and early 2026 were self-produced and done mostly in Weiss’ home studio between headline slots at the MLB Washington Nationals’ Grateful Dead Night, International Pop Overthrow Festival in NYC, and the Great South Bay Festival in Long Island. In 2025, Andrew Weiss and Friends also appears in the 20th Century Studios film Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, starring Jeremy Allen White. Bruce Springsteen signed off on their appearance himself. The film chronicles the making of the album Nebraska, as well as Bruce’s personal life during the surrounding years. Its source material is a book by Warren Zanes, renowned biographer, musician and also Weiss’ professor when he attended NYU. After Weiss and Zanes coincidentally reconnected during the filming, Weiss, along with a few other musicians, including legendary multi-instrumentalist David Mansfield, accompanied Zanes on a few dates of his book tour. Later in the fall of 2025, Weiss sang and played guitar, bass, and drums with Pete Donnelly during Donnelly’s bi-weekly residency at The Grand in upstate New York.
With the freedom of working mostly in his home studio at any hour of any day or night, Weiss was able to experiment. He remembers, “At the beginning of the sessions, I decided that I wanted to try to make an album that would sonically fit in with the music I love that came out between 1973-1974.” The production on …To Change a Lightbulb was inspired by Weiss’ newfound obsession with Todd Rundgren’s first few albums, particularly evident on “Amongst The Driftwood”. Another one of Weiss’ favorite albums, John Lennon’s 1974 Walls and Bridges shows its influence on Weiss’ assessment of today’s confusing times, “The Future”. The latter is showered with a string and horn arrangement done by Weiss (including tenor and baritone saxophone by Weiss’ sixth grade band teacher, ex-Blood, Sweat, and Tears member Wayne Schuster), aching for empathy.
“She’s a Candy Store” was written for Weiss’ daughter just two weeks after she was born. The song is a genuine journey, combing through the highs and lows and pure joy and exhaustion of being a parent to a newborn. Weiss turns an actual email response he received into a story about a royal couple at a crossroads with their subjects on “Today, Tomorrow, The End of Next Week, The Latest”, echoing Paul McCartney & Wings at their mid-70’s best. “Milk Carton Missing Kid”, based on the true story of the first child to end up on the side of a milk carton, put Weiss and Friends’ Springsteen movie experience into practice. Weiss says, “Listening to the Nebraska album on repeat made me think about lyrics in a different way. I wanted to create stories from the ground up, immersing the listener in the characters’ worlds.”
The album’s title came to Weiss at the very end of the process. He remembers, “For most of the recording process, the working title of the album was Dancing About Architecture because how can one eloquently come up with a button phrase for the sound of searching? But then it came to me in the form of a joke as old as time. The imagery of changing a lightbulb is so loaded. Why does one change a lightbulb? On many different levels, the reasons are endless.” The music on this record is not one that raises its hand trying to get your attention. Rather, it’s here, like all of us existing. And its message is loud and clear: we’re all searching for something. So let’s search together.
Self-taught on the many instruments he knows how to play, Weiss’ journey sprouted from early exposure to The Beatles, which came full circle in 2018 after a spontaneous run-in and 20 minute conversation with Paul McCartney. He began picking guitar and writing songs at only seven years old, and he would later play in various bands throughout his youth. In 2009, he formed a solo endeavor called High Fascination and wrote, recorded and mixed three pop/rock-leaning albums alone in his bedroom.
During his time at NYU, where he studied Music Theory & Composition, Weiss wrote music for films and various ensembles. His High Fascination work also continued there, and he eventually discovered a group of musicians to join him. Four more albums were released during Weiss’ time in college, before the musical style soon shifted to a more Americana-driven approach, or “Power Pop-icana” as Weiss likes to call it. High Fascination ultimately folded to make way for a new project, as a brand new circle of friends and musicians emerged — Andrew Weiss and Friends was born in 2016.
The band has stayed busy since their debut album The Honeymoon Suite was released in 2018 with seven more LPs, three EPs, one compilation album celebrating 10 years of the band’s existence, and ten standalone singles. They have sold out multiple shows at famed Long Island venues My Father's Place and Stephen Talkhouse and have performed alongside Counting Crows and Rob Thomas at The Outlaw Roadshow Festival. In recent years, Andrew Weiss and Friends performed at the Underwater Sunshine Festival, the Mondo Festival, and in 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026 they headlined the MLB Washington Nationals’ Grateful Dead Night to sold out crowds of thousands. Their 2024 performance at Nationals Park was praised on air by the legendary Tony Kornheiser of ESPN’s PTI fame.
The band's moniker honors music’s essential pairing with camaraderie (something we could all use more of these days). Shindig! Magazine observed, “It’s clear that Weiss doesn’t do anything by halves. Big, clever tunes. There’s poetic tilted Americana, booming pop and anthemic road rock. Sometimes it tilts towards the psychedelic. It’s all rather impressive.” Weiss’s astute observations on love, life, and happiness — and how those things may have shifted in recent years — are vital reminders that music is, at the end of the day, a healing agent for us all.