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Shortly after Fenstermaker moved in, Harper started staying with a girlfriend. Not long after that, he got his own place and Fenstermaker followed, eventually moving out of the Milestone and becoming Harper's roommate.
"In a lot of ways, I became a man while working at the Milestone," says Fenstermaker. "I wasn't even 21 when I started working there. I was a kid."
Fenstermaker has explored all sides of his musical personality as Andy the Doorbum. He's experimented with layering to develop complex sounds, and stripped things back to offer a more somber, sparse tone. His creativity, he says, comes from not watching television.
"I've been TV-free for about seven years," he says. "That was on purpose. Television is a huge distraction. Without one, if I'm bored, I'm more inclined to work on music. That screen doesn't offer anything fulfilling."
He also spends time scouring thrift stores for records that find their way on to his Plaza Midwood Community Radio show, "The Weird World of Traditionally Unconventional Music." Fenstermaker's home contains a handful of boxes of vinyl full of some odds and ends that he's picked up in addition to albums he's kept from his childhood years — Butthole Surfers, Creedance Clearwater Revival, among them.
For his Andy the Doorbum gigs, Fenstermaker either plays solo or with multi-instrumenalist Buck Boswell on banjo, drummer Ricky Culp, or both. He has played electric sets three times with the band, but usually performs acoustic. He's come a long way from his punk days, in part due to Harper's insistence. "I pushed Andy to play because I liked what he did and thought other people might like it, too," Harper says. "I kind of took Andy under my wing like a little brother and still, to this day, if he needs advice or anything, he's always welcome to call and I'll help him with anything I can."
Fenstermaker, sitting in his home studio flanked by two racks of acoustic and electric guitars, says he doesn't have strong ties to any of his instruments. He usually plays two of the acoustics because they sound the best. There's also an aged Fender he says he'll never play.
"It's my mom's wedding present to my dad," he says. "He took it to every party he went to and played old country songs. He was hard up for money and I bought it from him with the condition that he couldn't ever buy it back from me. I knew it was really sentimental. If he was gonna part with it, he had to commit to it. It's the only one that really means something to me. I'm sure he was going to give it to me one day anyway."
His latest album is a dream come true for Fenstermaker, who says he always wanted to release a vinyl record. The medium, with its "cracks and pops," offers the perfect accompaniment to his sound. He says if it weren't for cost, he would have released all of his albums this way.
"I think every album he's done has been different, but I think this new one is his best work so far," says Harper, who helped him mix the entire set in just three days. "I think it matches his persona much more than any of the others."
When Fenstermaker's not playing music, he still works nights at Snug Harbor and the Milestone.
"Even if I didn't work the door anymore, I'm always going to be Andy the Doorbum," he says. "I've made a name for myself that way. I do visual art, I'd like to publish a book of short stories, and I'm doing a radio show — all of that is Andy the Doorbum." Not that he set out to cultivate an image. "I didn't approach it as marketing or branding," he says, "but that's what it is."
ANDY THE DOORBUM
With Temperance League, JKutchma, Bobby Childers. $5. Feb. 18. 10 p.m. Snug Harbor.
