Adam Levy, former guitarist for Norah Jones, will play a solo gig in Ventura
Guitarist has gone from Norah’s sideman to solo success
The guitarist, a former Thousand Oaks resident, will open for A.J. Croce at 8 p.m. Thursday at Zoey’s, 185 E. Santa Clara St., Ventura. Tickets cost $20. Call 652-1137 or visit zoeyscafe.com. Levy’s website is adamlevy.com.
By Bill Locey
Posted July 14, 2011 at 6:03 p.m.
When Adam Levy was a kid growing up in the late 1970s, he used money from a paper route to buy records. “I remember buying Joe Pass’ ‘Virtuoso,’ the Dixie Dregs’ ‘Freefall,’ Dave Edmunds ‘Repeat When Necessary’ and George Benson’s ‘Cookbook’ all around the same time,” he writes on his website. “I bought a couple of Chuck Berry singles as well.”
Under-the-radar guitar god Adam Levy, having spent much of the new millennium keeping up with the Jones, will demonstrate what he has learned when he shares the bill with Jim’s kid, A.J. Croce, on Thursday night at Zoey’s in Ventura. A former Lancer from Thousand Oaks, Levy was, for many years, an integral part of that sultry soundtrack for millions as the guitar player for Miss Mellow Herself, Norah Jones. His own man for a few years now, Levy has a new album, “The Heart Collector,” and these days is just a guy and a guitar driving around, living the rock ‘n’ roll dream and all that jazz.
In the music biz, just about every frontman was, once upon a time, a sideman, doing his job like a good worker bee but increasingly becoming certain that, “I can do that.” Sometimes, they do, and sometimes it becomes painfully obvious that the sidemen as frontman should’ve stayed as a backup. Levy seems to have successfully turned the corner. He discussed all this and more during a recent phoner.
Hey, Adam, what’s the latest in your world?
I’m here right now in New York where it’s raining and hot.
So how is “The Heart Collector” doing? Are you a rich rock star yet?
(Laughs heartily.) No, I’m not a rich rock star yet but I do play one on television. It’s funny — the record is doing quite well, but a lot of what I do as a working musician still is just playing for other people. So it’s kind of an interesting life — to go back and forth being, you know, Clark Kent and Superman.
Wow, well said. You’re touching upon my next question: How do you going from being the sideman to The Man?
I was an instrumentalist for years and years and years — I played on other people’s records in the past. I played on Tracy Chapman’s records beginning in ’95 and I was just hired to play guitar. People didn’t think of me as a backup singer then something happened in the early 2000s. I started writing songs and couldn’t find too many other people that wanted to sing them. I started doing it myself. Eventually, enough people encouraged me and I had fun doing it, so that’s how I made the transition.
Fast-forward to the present, and you have a ton of solo albums, right?
Yeah, several instrumental ones before I started singing. As a vocalist, I have “The Heart Collector,” “Washing Day” and “Loose Rhymes.”
Does every sideman up there playing think, “Man, I could so do that.”
Yes.
But only a few take the plunge.
Because it’s safer. There’s probably a lot of people in normal jobs that look at their boss and think, “I could do that better,” so it’s kind of the same thing. It’s one thing to say to your boss, “Hey, I could do that better,” but it’s another thing to quit your job and do it. And that’s what I did. I left Norah’s band in 2007 and I still do some gigs for hire now and again, but basically, I’m trying to fill up my calendar with my own work.
Adam Levy’s new, 13-track CD “The Heart Collector” has been getting raves. NoDepression.com said the disc was “overflowing with warm and soulful songs that enchant the ears and captivate the heart.”
Have you always been a guitarist?
No, actually, I started out as a clarinetist.
Clarinetist? Wow.
Yeah, it’s a hard instrument. I meet more people who started on clarinet and very few still play it. I think it’s the most abandoned instrument in the world. Oh, by the way, I don’t know if you know this, but I actually grew up partially in the San Fernando Valley (and) we moved to Thousand Oaks when I was in sixth grade. I went to Aspen Elementary School in Thousand Oaks. That’s where I started playing clarinet.
What high school did you go to?
T.O.
How ’bout them Lancers?
Yeah — go Lancers — and I went to Redwood Intermediate School. So, yeah, clarinet did not work out for me, but the guitar, as soon as I picked it up, just made sense to me.
Now you’re the jazz guitarist. Why not the reggae guitarist or the hard rock guitarist?
Because I was always interested in the kind of math-and-science aspect of music: theory and how harmony and scales work. It wasn’t so much that I was drawn to jazz as a listener. I still liked to listen to rock records when I was a kid, but the more I tried to study the mechanics of music, I started going toward jazz because that seemed to be where you could get into the nerdy and nitty-gritty stuff. As a kid instead of drawing pictures of race cars, motorcycles and stuff in the margins, I was drawing scales, chords and thinking about music.
Where’d you meet Norah Jones?
We met at a bar in New York City called the 55 Bar around 1999 or 2000. It was just one of those funny things — we wound up sitting next to each other. We started talking a little bit. At that time, she wasn’t signed to a record label; she was just a musician banging around New York like the rest of us. I gave her my number and I said, “Call me sometime,” and she did and we started playing.
Mellow music like hers attracts a certain demographic, so I’m assuming you’ve encountered zero mosh pits and no drunks shouting for “Free Bird”?
No, we never had that, but strangely, there were a few fights.
Wow. A fight at a Norah Jones show?
The first time I saw it, I was totally shocked. It wasn’t an all-out brawl — just people arguing over seats, and security had to come to pull people apart, but it’s the last thing you would expect at a Norah Jones show. You’d expect everyone at a Norah Jones show to just turn to the person on their right and start making out. And mostly, that’s what happens.
How long were you keeping up with the Jones?
For eight years.
How much Norah is in you and how much of you is in Norah?
Boy, that’s hard to say — that’s a really good question. I would say the thing she instilled in me was just the confidence to write songs and also to play the way that I play. As a sideman, it’s easy to try and fit in and take the path of least resistance, but she always encouraged me to play the way I actually play and not worry about playing pretty or in a pop kind of way. The first time she heard me, I was playing with Joey Baron, who’s kind of an avant-garde New York jazz drummer, and she used to come see his band all the time. She loved it and always liked that aspect of my playing.
As to what of me is in her — well, I showed her a few things on the guitar and she plays a lot more guitar these days than when I met her, but it’s hard to say. I think I’m in her music and she’s in mine, but it’s really hard to take it apart in any more detail.
Any extra-strange gigs?
The strangest gig I ever played was at the Placer County Fair up in Roseville. We were the opening act for a celebrity goat-milking contest. After we played a set, they brought a goat on stage and had local celebrities take turns to see who could get the most milk out of a goat in 60 seconds.
Local celebrities?
Yeah, very local celebrities from Placer County. After the contest, they asked us to come back and the stage was just covered in goat milk on a hot summer’s day.
Who knocks you out as a guitar player?
I never get tired of Jeff Beck — he’s amazing. Every time I hear him, I learn something new. And Ry Cooder really knocks me out as a guitar player — I think he’s underrated, really.
What’s the best and worst thing about being a musician?
The best thing about it is that I get to live my dream. I knew when I was 12 years old that I wanted to play guitar for a living, and here I am, 44 years old and still getting to do that. Most people don’t even know what their dream is, and if they do, they probably don’t get to follow it. The worst part for me is that I’m not a night owl by nature. I wake up every morning around 5:30.
Yeah, me, too — morning is the best.
It’s so beautiful. The light is great. It’s quiet. It’s a magic time, especially in New York because New York gets so loud and crazy — it’s the one time that New York feels kind of empty. To me, the life of a rock star means taking a lot of naps so at the gig I’m energized and can still get up at 5:30 and enjoy that time and not be all bleary-eyed.
Read more: http://www.vcstar.com/news/2011/jul/14/adam-levy-former-guitarist-for-norah-jones-will/?partner=RSS#ixzz1SC7CNOUy
- vcstar.com
