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We caught up with Andy Black before his headline show at the Tramshed in Cardiff to talk about the success of his debut solo album 'The Shadow Side', his current Andy Black solo tour, his acting debut, what inspires his song writing, plans for the future and much more.

The Andy Black project has been a long time coming, how does it feel to finally have released your debut album ‘The Shadow Side’?
It’s fantastic, to be able to do something I had a relatively short time to complete that I had been planning for years to actually be out and doing so well as we have got the reports back and this is the highest charting record I have ever had including Black Veil Bride releases, and I am having a lot of fun so far with the whole project.

How would you say ‘The Shadow Side’ has gone done with your fans and the press so far?
One of the great things about being on tour when a record comes out is that you are a little bit isolated and you have to really make an opportunity to look for reviews, so from what I’ve seen with friends and family members sending me e-mails of reviews has been really positive and the fans have been responding really well as we play the shows every night and the kids know every word and the record has only been out for a week so it’s a lot of fun.

You worked with producer John Feldmann on the album, how did you find working with him again and on a totally different project to before?
Feldy is one of my best friends so to work with him on anything is always fun weather it is writing songs because we like writing songs or writing songs for a project and that’s how this stemmed as we got together and thought we should write some different stuff. It’s a fun familiar family experience working with Feldy and he is just like an older brother to me and I love him.

You worked with many different musicians on the album such as Gerard Way, Mikey Way, Patrick Stump and your musical idol Matt Skiba etc how did this all come together and how was it to get creative with so many other musicians?
Its’ crazy because when you are doing a solo record you don’t have a band and you can do it one of two ways and either do everything in pro tools and have a session band play or have people come in, and it was great to be able to have some many people come in and give us there skills and allow the record have such a variety in terms of instrumentation. Having Mikey come in and play bass on a song I wrote with Gerard was a fun thing and same goes for Quinn from The Used coming in he played a lot of guitar and did a lot of really interesting stuff that we wouldn’t otherwise thought of so it was a big collaborative effort.

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