Joseph Andrews pauses for a photo at his father’s home in the Cherry Lane community. Andrews said a career in music has been his lifelong dream, one that is now being realized as he plays drums for Billy Currington, an up-and-coming country music performer.

Joseph Andrews finds his way to Nashville success

With several appearances on the Grand Ole Opry under his belt, Joseph Andrews still isn’t likely to become a household name.

Even so, Andrews, who will turn 27 on Oct. 26, has been dreaming of, and pursuing, a career in the music industry since he was in high school.

He started playing the drums in seventh grade, when he took up the snare. "I was in the marching band, the jazz band, the concert band and a rock band in my spare time," Andrews said with a smile.

The rock band he drummed for performed heavy metal and rock favorites in the early 1990s, with quite a local following. The band, "Tommy Gunn," which also featured locals Ricky and Tony Jones and Joel Sheets, broke up soon after its members left high school.

On the high school band side, Andrews also had success — he was named the 1995 winner of the John Phillips Susa award for his dedication to his instrument. Only one of those awards is given per school, per year.

The first step toward his goal of a career in music was attending Berklee College of Music in Boston after graduating from Alleghany High School in 1995.

While attending college, he played drums with a number of small-time bands in the northeast, ‘gigging’ (playing shows) in numerous bar rooms and small dance halls with unknown bands playing cover tunes (songs made popular by other artists). One of the bands he played with was headed up by Rhonda Lee, a country music performer who never managed to make a break into the bigger scene.

After graduating from college summa cum laude in 1999, he decided to go to graduate school.

"I decided to leave Boston and I went to graduate school at the University of Denver," he said. Andrews worked there as a teaching assistant to help pay his way, teaching freshmen music theory while studying advanced concepts himself.

Then he came home to Sparta for Christmas break and received a message on the answering machine from Lee, asking him to come to Nashville.

"So I went back to Denver, packed up a U-Haul and drove to Nashville," he said. "She thought things might be going the right way for her then, but all that fell through."

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