MANKATO — John McAndrew has seen a woman, catatonic for 2½ years, unable to feed herself or communicate, lift herself up and dance to his boogie-woogie song. It’s hard to observe that and not believe in the magic that music can have.
The woman was maybe 50ish, ashen-faced and obviously incoherent, he said from Nashville. For her, that changed when he started playing songs on the nursing home’s piano.
“I see in the back, the head nurse waving her hands, going, ‘Oh, no.’ And then another nurse ran up to her and said, ‘Leave her alone.’ And then everyone’s looking over with tears in their eyes. And she got out of her wheelchair,” he said. She was dancing, looking half her age.
After attending high school in Pittsburgh, McAndrew returned to Winona and started playing different instruments in bands. As he got older, he said, he studied music and learned what he knows about its healing power. Today he is a music therapist as well as a recording musician.
He will be in residence at the Minnesota State University Music Performance Series March 24-26. In addition to a university performance, he will play at Hosanna Lutheran Church’s Journeys ministry.
“Our Journeys ministry’s goal is to connect people with God and with others who are walking through (substance abuse and recovery) journeys in life,” said Ashley Theis, Journeys lead. “It made perfect sense that this could be a good fit for not only our Journeys family, but to open up to anyone hurting and/or in need of hope in the Greater Mankato area.”
The opportunity to be involved was offered by MSU’s Dale Haefner, series director. Although Theis said she did not know of McAndrew’s work before this, after listening to some of his music she set up a meeting for herself and Danielle Burley, Hosanna’s adult life director, with Haefner.
“We all agreed that hosting this event for Journeys and Greater Mankato area would be a great opportunity with our similar vision and goals to share the encouragement, hope and healing that is found in Jesus and connections with one another,” she said.
The free Journeys event starts at 5:45 p.m. March 24 at Hosanna Lutheran, 105 Hosanna Drive, Mankato.
Working with people with addictive behaviors, McAndrews said, he has found many causes and just as many approaches for healing.
“What better place than that to have as a first place,” he said. “Because everybody’s healing from something and it’s just a great community. So, yeah, we’re going to try to get a lot of folks to come from all those communities. And I’ll be doing songs about forgiveness, and I’ll be doing some fun stuff, too.”
At 7 p.m. March 26, McAndrew will perform a concert in the E. J. Halling Recital Hall of the Earley Center for Performing Arts, hosted by the MSU Department of Performing Arts. General admission tickets are $10; students with a valid MavCARD get in for free.
The healing powers of music are not merely anecdotal, McAndrew said. Technology has allowed us to study the brain and see the effects of certain stimuli on it.
“My focus on mental health is just how powerful of a healing tool music is,” he said. “And what changed it is MRIs of our brains under the influence of music or prayer, meditation, all sorts of things. And we can see dopamine produced and serotonin levels balanced, blood flow increased.
“It’s just really, really powerful. We can see it now, you know, so I think that’s been a bit of a game changer in the therapeutic community as well,” McAndrew said.
At the heart of it all, however, is that body, mind and spirit connection that has recognized for centuries to provide healing. McAndrew’s music is easy on the ears as well as recuperative to the psyche.
“John McAndrew’s performance connects music, storytelling and personal experiences in a way that deeply resonates with audiences,” Haefner said. He has known McAndrew for years, and a recent reconnection prompted his Mankato appearance.
But it’s not just longtime friends who write glowingly about McAndrew’s music. Danny Seiwell, a founding member of Wings with Paul McCartney, wrote: “John McAndrew is a force of spirituality, essence of empathy and a wordsmith that opens your soul and fills it with his honest vocals.”
McAndrew works to connect with people where they live. Through music, he said, he can talk about those stories we all have a version of in our histories and help find a way toward recovery.
“I had a great grandmother,” he said. “I was a little kid who lived in Wisconsin, and she had a cellar. You know, like in the kitchen. You open this door and you go down into that cellar. And it smelled bad.”
That’s sort of like what people do when they suffer, he said, except that cellar is what they have experienced. Just as they felt alone when they went through it, they return to that mental cellar by themselves.
“There’s stuff in the past and some shame and guilt. Going down there is scary,” McAndrew said. “So you just ask somebody to go with you.”