Catch Of The Week: Adam Ezra
Meet Adam Ezra of the Adam Ezra Group from Boston
If you’ve been around the Boston area for the past 20 years, you’ve likely heard of or seen the Adam Ezra Group. A beast of a road warrior, Adam has championed the art of touring, amassing fans through word of mouth, for decades. His energy is purely infectious, There is the intangible “it factor,” but just as alluring, just as attractive to audiences, is the songwriting. You can have all the charisma in the world, but if a song doesn’t speak to you, if it doesn’t make you think or feel… it’s lost.
Ezra is hard to define, and probably shouldn’t be. He embraces so many genres, from roots to rock, blues to country, which explains his vast appeal. When Adam visited our studio back in April of 2019, he had performed a song that was the most country song he has ever written. He had recently spent time in Nashville and had the opportunity to write with legendary songwriter, Clint Daniels. Clint co-wrote “Some of It,” a #1 hit with Eric Church, among many others like Jon Pardi’s “She Ain’t In It,” and hits for Brooks and Dunn, Joe Nichols, Montgomery Gentry, Easton Corbin, and on and on.
What happens when you take a road warrior off the road? You make lemonade. It goes well with whiskey, after all. Here’s what Adam has done. This hard working, creative force needed to work and create. So, for the past year, Adam has been entertaining his fans, and pulling in new ones, every day, performing live at 7:00pm. He hasn’t missed one show. He calls it “The Gathering Series,” and says, “I just started livestreaming from my house. It was a way to connect with people, to feel a little less lost, a little less scared. I played and talked for about an hour, and then at the end of the stream, I told everybody, ‘I’ll come back tomorrow if you come back tomorrow.” That was a year ago, on March 13.
An Earful of Ezra
Take a listen to Adam’s clever love-gone-wrong song, that has him hitting the hard stuff to drown her memory, “Switching To Whiskey”
Adam and Then Some
- Grew up in: Wayland, MA
- Now lives in: Chelsea, MA
- Current single: Switching to Whiskey
- What lead you to music: As soon as I first learned a few chords on the guitar, I began writing songs. For the first time in my life I felt like I was uncovering the most honest/real parts of myself.
- How old when you started: High school.
- First country song you learned: Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried”
- Instruments played: I sing and play guitar mostly, but enjoy attempting to play and write songs on any instrument i can get my hands on. 🙂
- How would you describe your sound: There are so many kinds of music that inspire me and my band members, it’s always so hard to boil it down! You’ll maybe hear a lot of different stuff in our sound, but we like the term “Americana” because we feel we are following in the tradition of American roots music including country, folk, blues, and eventually rock n roll.
- Who inspires you: People who believe we all belong to one another and dedicate themselves to having a positive impact on the world around them.
- How did you get your name: Well, we’re called Adam Ezra Group, so I guess that’s pretty self-explanatory. I’ve always wondered though, how it would have affected our course if we had picked a more exciting name for ourselves. 🙂
- Awards/accolades: The New England Music Awards named us “Band of the Year” not too long ago, and also gave us their “Grassroots Award” for our dedication to activism.
I’ve had a chance to open for and tour with some of my musical heroes over the years including Little Big Town, Dwight Yokem, Marshall Tucker Band, Steve Miller, and ZZ Top…pretty fun!
We also just found out that American Songwriter and The Grammy Museum will both be featuring us this spring for our Gathering Series and latest song releases. Woot!
- Dream duet partner: Lori McKenna
- All- time favorite country song: Marty Robbins – “Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs” – The entire album.
- First country concert: OK, you may call this “southern rock,” but I saw Lynyrd Skynyrd at Great Woods when I was 17 years old and was never the same again…
- What songs do you like now on Country 1025: I definitely have a single favorite song right now. My latest release, “Switching to Whiskey” was co-written with a great writer and friend down in Nashville named Clint Daniels. One of Clint’s latest is “Some Of It,” cowritten and released by Eric Church. That song just floors me every time I listen to it.
- If you weren’t a musician, what would you be doing: I love playing music because more than anything else in this world, music helps remind me that there is more about us that is the same, than different. When I’m at a concert, it doesn’t matter if there are 50 or 5,000 of us watching and it doesn’t matter who’s playing – I always feel like all of us in the audience are brothers and sisters. (god, I can’t wait ’til venues open up again…) But we can be reminded of this in lots of different ways outside of music as well, and I think if I were not writing and performing songs, I would be dedicated to this concept in some way or another…maybe as a teacher or coach.
- Day Job (if applicable): Getting to the gig. 🙂
- Most proud moment: Since Covid began and our tour canceled, I decided to livestream every night. We call it The Gathering Series, and amazingly it has ended up reaching millions of people, all over the world. This Friday will mark, (I’m not kidding), the 365th night in a row we have Gathered. I think it will be just about the most proud moment of my career.
- Crazy thing that happened in your music career: John Oates (of Hall and Oates), invited me down to Nashville to write songs with him, and to date we have become buddies, and have written about 10 songs together. Crazy!
- Other things you like to do: I started a non-profit organization called RallySound, dedicated to empowering community through music. We do a lot of work that inspires me throughout the year, but our annual festival, The Ramble, takes place every summer on the North Shore of Massachusetts, and over the years has raised enough money to help hundreds of our veteran heroes off the streets and into safe and dignified housing.
- 3 Fun facts: 1.My wife, Alley, and I have a tiny little cabin in Pioneertown, CA. It’s an original cabin from the Homestead Act in a pile of boulders out in the Mojave Desert, and when not on the road, you can picture me there, trimming and planting cactuses as well as hiking the peaks in the high desert. 2. My gramma taught me how to play bridge. It’s one of my favorite things to do, but it takes a lot of work to find a group of 80 year olds to play with me. They seem to be the only other people who know the game! 3. Call me crazy, but I’ll take my pizza cold and my beer warm, if you please…
- Mantra: We have a mantra we talk about in my band that sums up who we want to be as musicians and performers: raw/real.
- Shows: This Friday, March 12th, at 7pm Eastern, I’ll be on FB Live, playing Gathering 365. You’re all invited!!!
The Adam Association
Every week, Kruser’s Local Catch highlights New England’s homegrown country music talent, and tells you where to catch them locally and in Nashville. Click here to view previous catches.
*Singer/songwriters with original music: Please submit for consideration on The Local Catch by emailing Kruser at [email protected]
