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When summer
signals a break from teaching high school English and journalism,
Andy Hawk ’88 throws his guitar in the car trunk and travels around
the country to hit open mic nights, singing and playing his own
music. Last year, those little trips took on a more focused tack.
“A friend and I
talked last year about how millions of people have dreams when
they’re young, but at some point just tuck them away and label them
childish,” Hawk said. “It made us think, ‘Why do people quit?’ Why
can’t you keep some of that alive, even if you’re never going to be
famous or make money from it?”
Andy Hawk at
Captain Mike’s
in Kenosha, Wisconsin
He always wanted
to record his songs and have his own tour, but since record
companies and promoters weren’t pounding on his door with
corporate-sponsored deals, Hawk realized that the power to realize
his dreams was in his hands. “I thought, why not use my time off to
go on tour and use some of my earnings to record a CD?”
With the addition
of a third friend who always wanted to be a standup comedian, Hawk
and his pals took off from their home base of Frederick, Md., in
late June and began traveling and performing around the country. The
trip is being filmed, as are their interactions with people they
meet. Tentatively titled Hawk Across America, it will be
about regular people who don’t want to give up their dreams.
“We’ll be
interviewing various people along the way and asking them what
they’ve always wanted to do,” he said. “If someone wanted to act,
then we’ll film them doing a scene from a play or movie with us, or
if they wanted to play music, then we’ll have them get on stage and
play. I think it’s appealing because there are so many people who
talk about their half-finished novel or how they used to play in a
band.”
A website will
soon be up and running to document the group’s travels, along with
information about Hawk’s first CD, Moth Crazy (available at
www.cdbaby.com/cd/andyhawk).
For his “regular”
job, Hawk teaches English and Journalism at Loudoun County (Va.)
High School, where he’s been since 1997. The Kittanning native
worked as a sports writer for the Columbus Dispatch for four
years before moving on to teaching, which includes running the
school’s newspaper and literary/arts magazine.
 Elected
by the high school seniors as faculty graduation speaker in June,
2004, Hawk wrote and sang a song to them instead of giving the
traditional “chase your dreams” speech. |
