Musician Andrew Holtz remembers the seven miserable months he stuck it out working as an accountant at KPMG in Manhattan after graduating from Fordham University in 2003. “A job like that can just suck you in. The hours are insanity. We were going 8 in the morning to 9, 10 at night. Then I would go to the recording studio until 1 or 2 in the morning. I got to a point where I got so burnt out I couldn’t keep it together.”

Holtz’s first solo album, Leaving New York—released in May and written and recorded in New Jersey with his four-man band—centers on his decision to leave the city and return home for a full-time music career. The cover images were shot in Weehawken (he’s shown “leaping” across the Hudson River to the Jersey side) and Red Bank (in front of the Atlantic Glass Company). The 26-year-old Middletown native, who has been living in his parents’ basement since graduating, is self-taught on guitar—he learned on his father’s old 1971 Martin D35, which had been collecting dust in the attic—and used to mooch singing lessons from college friends who were singers. Now he writes catchy melodies and straightforward, from-the-heart lyrics about classic twenty-something themes of heartache and relationship snafus—like, “I know I shouldn’t call you, but it’s  hard when I can’t sleep. Just a little crazy, going crazy, trying to figure out when I went wrong.”

“Deep down,” Holtz says, “I’m a hopeless romantic.”

He confesses he’s also an “attention whore” who loves to ham it up on stage. This month, catch Holtz at the River’s Edge Café in Red Bank (Aug 18, 7 pm) and at Off the Hook in Highlands (Aug 5 and 26, 6 pm).

Musician Andrew Holtz remembers the seven miserable months he stuck it out working as an accountant at KPMG in Manhattan after graduating from Fordham University in 2003. “A job like that can just suck you in. The hours are insanity. We were going 8 in the morning to 9, 10 at night. Then I would go to the recording studio until 1 or 2 in the morning. I got to a point where I got so burnt out I couldn’t keep it together.”

Holtz’s first solo album, Leaving New York—released in May and written and recorded in New Jersey with his four-man band—centers on his decision to leave the city and return home for a full-time music career. The cover images were shot in Weehawken (he’s shown “leaping” across the Hudson River to the Jersey side) and Red Bank (in front of the Atlantic Glass Company). The 26-year-old Middletown native, who has been living in his parents’ basement since graduating, is self-taught on guitar—he learned on his father’s old 1971 Martin D35, which had been collecting dust in the attic—and used to mooch singing lessons from college friends who were singers. Now he writes catchy melodies and straightforward, from-the-heart lyrics about classic twenty-something themes of heartache and relationship snafus—like, “I know I shouldn’t call you, but it’s  hard when I can’t sleep. Just a little crazy, going crazy, trying to figure out when I went wrong.”

“Deep down,” Holtz says, “I’m a hopeless romantic.”

He confesses he’s also an “attention whore” who loves to ham it up on stage. This month, catch Holtz at the River’s Edge Café in Red Bank (Aug 18, 7 pm) and at Off the Hook in Highlands (Aug 5 and 26, 6 pm).