Adam Ezra Group

it's still dark at 5am. always weird to me, everytime i wake up at this hour. the darkness. i somehow feel like i've been cheated out of having the sun help me wake up. to be honest, i have way more memories of seeing the sun begin to rise before going to sleep, than i do seeing darkness after wake up. reminds me of wrestling season. yup. that's right. your humble narrator wrestled at 152 pounds my senior year of high school. in addition to practice everyday after school, i would wake up at 5am to get an extra workout in before school started.
   
   dark then too.  i hated running, but i got some of  my best runs in during those early dark hours of the day.  
   
   feels like wrestling season this week. intense. got in last week from chicago. picked up by turtle and shuttled right off to the next gig. the last 6 days have been packed with 6 shows, 2 studio sessions...oh yeah, and the flu. hard being sick with alotta shit to do, ya know? can't cancel. things are going too well! even with no voice, which has been the case for the last 3 days, we've had some great shows and studio sessions. it's 5 am and i'm driving to a recording session 2 hours away in my hometown city of boston.
   
   this is where it all catches up to me.  gotta record vocals today and i still haven't gotten my voice back.
   
   should postpone, but can't.
   
   the cd goes into manufacturing a couple weeks from today, and as of now, this is the only day i'm not on the road between now and then.
   
   not sure what's gonna happen.
   
   not stressed though.
   
   how can i be?
   
   i frickin get to make music for a living!  i mean, what's the worst that could happen?  
   
   well, a lot of terrible things actually, but the point is that tomorrow, when i wake up, (hopefully at a more reasonable hour), i'll still be making music. ya know?
   
   let's fast forward first.
   
   starting on friday i'm doing a stretch of shows with ellis paul. can't wait! hitting pa and long island this weekend, and then banging out a midwest stretch that will take us through iowa, kansas, and missouri. so cool! everytime i play with ellis i learn things about songwriting, performance, life...feels like i'm apprenticing with a master craftsman. he's the balls. gonna be a good couple weeks...
   
   ...assuming i get my voice back.  
   
   then off to colorado for a string of 5 shows, one of which will be opening for robert randolf and the family band...wahoo! wish i was going to have the group out there with me for that, but wattayagonnado...
   
   then los angeles. WARM SUNSHINE!
   
   then back east for portsmouth, hartford, and...drumroll please...the 1st annual rockoustigrass winter solstice soire and holiday festivus at the big easy in portland, featuring aeg! wahoo!! our friends from girls, guns, and glory will be starting the night off, and redhook brewering company will be providing ridiculously delicious and cheap beverages along with lots of prizes and gifts. did i mention, wahoo!
   
   ok, let's rewind a second:
   
   you fucking people are amazing!  
   
   thanks so much for sending me so much love on my bday last week. (or was it two weeks ago?). whatever. the point is that while out scampering through the woods, i would, on occasion, find a bar or two of coverage...just enough to check facebook to see hundreds of people checking in to say hi. what an amazing feeling!
   
   thanks yall.
   
   i'm a lucky boy.
   
   had a great show at savor the flavor coffee house in chicago. thanks to all of you who came out to see the show! so cool to have a room full of people at a show 1000 miles away from home.
   
   spent a week with 60 ridiculously energetic 5th graders in the woods. (this probably deserves an entree of it's own at some point)
   
   then back for a show in north adams at mass college of liberal arts where the crowd was small but fierce! psyched to see yall at the cd release concert in a couple months!
   
   half door in hartford...you people rage.  cant wait to come back in 2010...
   
   to the folks at breath: new hampshire, thanks for having us at breathefest this year.  we had a blast.
   
   as for you folks in portsmouth...i can only shake my head. i mean, honestly, we did NOT expect the crowd that came out last friday. packed! amazing! jesus! where are all you folks coming from! i love it! at this rate you portsmouther's will beging to rival our boston crowds before long!
   
   ENTER THE HAGGIS! no, it's not some celtic ritualistic mandate...it the group of irish rockers whom we opened for this weekend in ma and ct. great music. great bunch of guys. great crowds! problem was that i had no voice. problem. i mean i realize my voice ain't the prettiest thing in the world to begin with, but it at least has the advantage of articulating thought and some semblance of melody, ya know? luckily i had turtle with me...next to his singing voice, even my choked out, garbled babblings could only be construed as a positive...
   
   yeah...i said it, turtle.  wachu got?
   
   thanks to ETH as well as TCAN and infinity hall for having us.  we had an incredible weekend!
   
   2 studio sessions in nyc yesterday. finished up remixes of half a hero and vision during the first session. you're gonna love'm! then finished up 2 new tracks for the album during the night session. wanna hint at what they are?
   
   here's an anagram that contains both names.  if you get it and drop the answer into our inbox you get the CD for free:
   
   judges ars's can all shit
   
   or if you prefer something a little less pictoral, yet still profane:
   
   grand hall's justice?  ...ass.
   
   PARADISE CONCERT IN ALMOST EXACTLY 2 MONTHS!!!!!!!!!!!
   
   that's it for now.  the sun is rising.  
   
   
   love,
              ad

let's talk about ellis paul for a second. if you check our tour schedule, you'll notice there are a bunch of opening shows with ellis coming up this fall. if you're asking who the hell this guy is, then you simply are not following the folk music circuit closely my friend. (probably an american idol watcher :). ellis has been one of the standard bearers of the singer/songwriter scene for about 20 years. great songwriter and a great person to boot! anyways, ellis and AEG are both currently signed to the same management company. they had the brilliant idea of getting us out on the road together. so far i've opened up for ellis 3 times solo acoustic and they have all been a blast. more so than almost any other artist i've seen, he's got a following that is comprised of...simply put...good people. each time i play with ellis i feel like i'm hanging out in the living room after thanksgiving dinner...know what i mean? i feel like if instead of playing music, i got up there and suggested we play a group game of charades, everyone in the room would be on board...
   
    so here's where things get interesting. ellis just finished recording a big time album down in nashville filled with wonderous band sounds. he, however, has always toured acoustically. figured out where i'm goin with this yet? yup, a week after our boston AEG cruise concert, we played the ellis paul cruise as his back up band! wacky right? fear not, we're not on our way to becoming a professional back-up band, but it was a total kick for us to learn a completely different kind of music. it was particularly challenging and fun for me as i spent the entire show playing electric/lead guitar! confession: i am by no means qualified to pull this off, but with a lot of practice and lessons from the rest of the group, we ended up pulling it off in style. good to see the ellis paul crowd yelping and dancin up a storm. crowning accomplishment: when the crowd started chanting for ellis to take off his shoes!
   
    these tour dates are gonna be acoustic sets, but we hope to rock the whole band with ellis again soon:
   
    Nov 27 2009   8:00
    Kennett Flash - Solo Acoustic Set Opening for Ellis Paul Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
   
    Nov 28 2009 8:00
    Midtown Scholar Bookstore - Solo Acoustic Set Opening for Ellis Paul Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
   
    Nov 29 2009 2:00
    University Cafe - Solo Acoustic Set Opening for Ellis Paul Stonybrook, New York
   
    Dec 3 2009 7:00
    Legion Arts - adam ezra supporting ellis paul in cedar rapids Cedar Rapids, Iowa
   
    Dec 4 2009 7:00
    Vaudeville Mews - adam ezra supporting ellis paul in des moines Des Moines, Iowa
   
    Dec 5 2009 7:30
    West Side Folk - adam ezra supporting ellis paul in lawrence ks Lawrence, Kansas
   
    Dec 6 2009 8:00
    Off Broadway Nightclub - Opening for Ellis Paul at Off Broadway   St. Louis, Missouri
   
   
    for complete tour dates, check out:
    http://www.adamezra.com
   
    see you down the road!
   
    love,
    aeg

in july we headed up into the catskill mountains of new york for a week of recording with producer tim leitner for the upcoming acoustic album. this was by far one of the coolest recording experiences i've ever had in my life.
   
   first of all, tim lives in an extremely quirky country home on the side of a mountain. the house started out as a little cabin and over the years residents have added wacky, "do it yourself" additions all over the place. the end result is a cross between bilbo's hobbit home, a tree fort, an old country farmhouse, and an escher painting.
   
   when josh and i showed up for the first day of recording, tim had completely wired the house up, and turned the entire place into a giant recording studio. he worked from a control room in his den, and over the week as more of the group showed up we would all play and record live from different rooms and different floors. i don't know how he did it, but the sounds he was getting were amazing! so excited to share this project with you!
   
   so for those of you who were confused by the mailman song that josh posted a while ago, tim and his wife dara had been having trouble with their mailbox and their mailperson was refusing to deliver their mail. ...a big thorn in their side, and the inspiration for our improvised little sound check that tim had the bad sense to actually record. to answer some of your questions, NO, these are not actually going to be going on the album. but there is definitely some quirky shit that is going to make it's way onto the cd. we spent hours one day stomping floors, slapping walls, throwing dishes, dropping silverware, banging on pots, and creating general riotous chaos....all going onto a new song called scandal that some of you have heard at some of the acoustic shows...may be my favorite track on the album so far.
   
   but the best part of the week for me entailed connecting to my woodsy, burrowing, hippie roots. we would work from 10am to about 1am each day. during breaks i would scamper off, across the stream in tim's back yard, and up into the mountain hills behind his house. very wild country, mosly had to make my own trails. i brought up my own tent, and at night i would sleep on a ledge out in the woods. epic, contented dreams. wake up in the morning, strip off the clothes, dunk in the tadpole pond (showers are for the weak), and record all day. rinse. repeat. all week.
   
   i literally fealt like those guys in field of dreams that kept asking if they were in heaven. nope, just kerhonkson, new york.
   
   what else to tell… tims wife dara hung with us all week, and took wonderfull care of us. josh's family came up for a couple nights. good to see his wife sarah and two daughters, (lyra – 4 and seraphina - 1), spending quality time with the band. the road isn't often very family friendly...
   
   this project was originally meant to be a solo acoustic album. i need to do this every once in a while, because i get a build up of songs that i need to get out into the world. we simply don't have enough time to play all of the songs i write, so we have to pick and choose which ones to adopt as the group. the others get put onto solo albums where they sometimes get picked up by the band later.
   
   so anyways, this project has been such an exciting one, that i simply had to invite the group into the mix. rather than our usual band process where we take one of my songs and co-create the parts for each instrument, tim, josh (also helping to produce this project), and i came into this thing with pretty formed ideas about where we wanted the songs to go. in addition it's going to feel much more acoustic guitary than our last recordings. (yes, guitary is a perfectly fine word...back off)
   
   so here is the question: now that we have the band playing on a bunch of the album, should it be an adam ezra group project? even if the approach and sound for the project sounds different than most of the stuff we're doing as the group right now? hard question, right?
   
   send us your thoughts.  we'd love to hear them.  we're all very confused...