EP 3: Adam Rafferty's Wild Journey to Fingerstyle Guitar, Groove, and Building a Sustainable Music Career

Jesse Paliotto (00:11)
Hello everyone, welcome to the Guitar Journal, podcast where we love to talk about making music, particularly through the lens of fingerstyle guitar. I'm your host Jesse Paliotto and I love getting to hang out with you all here. Today we have with us Adam Rafferty. Adam is an incredible fingerstyle guitar player, originally born and raised in New York City, now spends most of his time on the road doing shows and workshops. He's got millions of views on YouTube, he's released multiple instructional fingerstyle guitar DVDs, as well as running study with adam.com, which hopefully we'll talk about in a few minutes.

And then continues to play to audiences all over the world. So if you like fingerstyle guitar and you've ever been on the internet, I'm sure that you know Adam. So Adam, so glad to have you here today. Thanks for doing this, man. I appreciate it.

Adam (00:49)
Thanks for inviting me, Jesse.

Jesse Paliotto (00:51)
I just to jump into the deep end of the pool I'd love a little hear a little bit about your background For anybody if you if you guys have followed Adam, I know I have followed him online You may know that he's got a background in jazz in New York City, but obviously does a lot with acoustic finger styles I'm really curious man just to hear like how did that happen that you moved from? Genre and format and all that and got to the focus that you're in right now

Adam (01:18)
Sure, where should I begin? Should I begin way back at the beginning?

Jesse Paliotto (01:22)
Yeah, like how'd you get into guitar, I guess? And then it's really curious to me as somebody who's really into, like I like jazz now and I feel like a lot of guitar players end up pursuing jazz maybe later, because it's more sophisticated. But I love to hear like you start, how'd you start out? How'd you get into jazz right at the beginning? And then what made you go to fingerstyle?

Adam (01:39)
Okay, well, my dad played guitar. He's still alive, thank God. He's fighting prostate cancer. He's doing great. And next week I'm gonna pick up from him the first guitar that I ever heard, which is his Martin D28. Because he's like, dude, it's time for you to take the guitar. that's an old one with no truss rod.

Jesse Paliotto (01:57)
no way.

Dude, that's a legit guitar. That's amazing.

No way.

Adam (02:08)
1968. So, and for me, that was the first introduction. I don't know, maybe I heard it when I was in my mother's stomach, but bam, little Adam is born and there's dad. I remember the smell of the guitar. I remember the blue velvet in the case. It was just an absolutely all consuming experience. The sound of my dad singing and it was just magic. So I always wanted to play guitar and got little plastic toy guitars.

Jesse Paliotto (02:24)
Yeah.

Adam (02:38)
everything and then at age five I got to study with somebody who became a really pretty famous guitar player Woody Mann. Do you know who man is?

Jesse Paliotto (02:51)
Okay.

I feel like I know the name from charts from jazz big band charts. That's Woody Herman. okay, Herman.

Adam (02:56)
No, you might be thinking of Herbie Man, who, when

I was having a part-time job as an HTML geek, I did Herbie Man's website in the 90s, actually. That was the only other gig I did to try to survive other than typing the HTML. Whew, and a text editor.

Jesse Paliotto (03:08)
right on.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, give you

flashbacks.

Adam (03:19)
Woody

Mann, if you look at Stefan Grossman's guitar workshop, there's some videos of Woody and he played blues and sang and he was... So I was about six. Woody was like the guitar teacher who'd come to the school five or six years old. He was probably 21 or 22.

Jesse Paliotto (03:39)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (03:40)
and he was showing me all these blues tablatures of Gary Davis and Blind Blake. So he was really into that, but he was a jazz guy too. He had studied with this blind pianist, Lenny Tristano, who was like this freaky pianist who has almost his own like...

Jesse Paliotto (03:44)
Okay.

Okay.

Adam (04:01)
sort of sect of how he taught people jazz. There's like a whole like lineage of Lenny Tristano people. and Woody was also, I think he, I might be wrong, but as I recall, he studied clarinet at Juilliard. So here's this like super musician who's like, yeah, I understand classical, yeah, I understand jazz, but I'm doing this kind of funky bluesy.

Jesse Paliotto (04:04)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (04:26)
acoustic stuff and he got me my first tunes and playing my first little blues stuff and strumming chords and Beatle songs and tablatures and so that was age six to about I want to say ten then I thought well I'm just gonna kind of feel my way myself no about six to age 12 and at age 12 I discovered Led Zeppelin

Jesse Paliotto (04:41)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

He

Adam (04:54)
And so I remember Woody went with me and my mother, we went to 48th Street guitar shopping. There was still a store called Alex Music. Manny's was there, it was the old 48th Street. Sam Ash was not a national chain. It was like on 48th Street. And I got actually a really good Ibanez artist.

Jesse Paliotto (04:55)
Rock on.

Adam (05:17)
It's kind of like the John Abercrombie I think played one of them or like there's some ads, you know, it's like it looks like an SG shaped guitar, heavy as hell. And I just kind of taught myself for a couple years studying, you know, really going down the rabbit hole. I mean, it was serious ear training by myself with like Led Zeppelin albums, figuring out the solos, developing my ears, maybe.

Jesse Paliotto (05:22)
Okay.

Yeah.

Adam (05:47)
Then also some Van Halen stuff like how is he doing eruption? You know, it took me, I didn't know he was doing it like this. And this was like you hear in a lot of interviews. I didn't get to see people do this. I mean, it was like amazing when you finally saw somebody on TV and could see their hands. It wasn't like, yeah, you know, cause like I would hear things on the radio like Sultans of Swing or

Jesse Paliotto (05:52)
Yeah, right.

Yeah, like you get to see the magician actually doing the trick finally.

Adam (06:15)
or of course Stairway to Heaven was on the radio all the time. I mean, I remember I was dying to see the song remains the same movie, the live Zeppelin movie. Like, what does it look like when these guys are playing? like you couldn't imagine. So I did age 12 to 14 just by myself. And then I kind of felt like...

Jesse Paliotto (06:27)
Yeah.

Adam (06:40)
I'm hitting kind of a wall. know, I would get a jazz guitar book. I was itching to learn something. And then I'd play these chords. I'd be like, some of these sound really bad. What is this? I don't understand it. Like, you know, playing a minor seven flat five chord. You're like, God, this sounds terrible. Like, you know, I can't just jam on it. But then I'd see the jazz guys hitting the changes right by me.

Jesse Paliotto (06:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam (07:05)
where we lived in the neighborhood, there was a place called Augies, which is now a place called Smoke. And I mean, all the guys who are like famous now, a lot of them, my generation, Roy Hartgrove, Joel Frum, Peter Bernstein, Chris Potter, Brad Meldow, all these guys were like students, man, they were playing.

Jesse Paliotto (07:29)
No way.

Adam (07:30)
Where'd it go? You go in there, buy a beer, everybody would be talking, they wouldn't be listening. And these guys would go around with a little bread basket and I'm putting in dollar bills for like Peter Bernstein and Chris Potter and Larry Goldings. Larry Goldings playing a DX7 with Peter Bernstein and Bill Stewart playing drums, just like free. You just walk in, hey man, here's a buck, know, I'm drinking a beer. And so I got, well that was a little later than 14 years old, but I just remember.

Jesse Paliotto (07:51)
That's wild.

down in the drink and a beer when you're 14.

Adam (08:00)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I'm saying this is the kind of environment. Jazz was bubbling in New York, as was hip hop. And so I just started going, I can't do this. I can't learn this alone. And my mom was really cool. She was like, you want lessons? I'll pay for it. You know, want lessons, you got lessons. And so I started asking around.

Jesse Paliotto (08:04)
This is a scene, yeah.

Adam (08:28)
I said, should I get jazz lessons or classical lessons? And I don't know if I would give this smile. A good friend of my dad said, if you learn classical, then you'll be able to play anything. I didn't know which direction. They knew I needed to study one or the other. I didn't really want to take rock lessons. So I went to my local music school and got classical guitar lessons.

Jesse Paliotto (08:31)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Adam (08:57)
at age 15 from a guy named Dennis Cianelli who sadly passed away. But man, that kicked my butt. That was like I had to learn how to read music. You know, I had to get my left hand, I know for the people who can see the video, you know, the typical left hand to get it out and position.

Jesse Paliotto (09:19)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (09:22)
like this and he first made me aware of tone which is something that all guitarists struggle with that forever but he could pick up a nylon string guitar and just with his hands pull out such a better sound than I could I was like whoa and then this was the first

Jesse Paliotto (09:28)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Adam (09:49)
excuse my language, ass kicking, I got because I saw there are people who really worked at this stuff and can play Bach and do this stuff with the chops. And then I started listening to classical guitar records. was like, damn, that's some serious guitar playing. So I did two years in high school. And then the plan was,

Jesse Paliotto (09:57)
Yeah.

Adam (10:16)
go to college and be a classical guitarist. Parallel to that, I was jamming with my very best friend who's an amazing drummer who's I'm gonna see in California. His name is Christian Yurik, John Christian Yurik. He has a big house music band now called Tortured Soul. I've played with them from time to time, but we were growing up parallel. were best friends and...

Jesse Paliotto (10:22)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Adam (10:39)
went to school together. So, you know, I do my classical stuff and then we rent a rehearsal studio and like rock out on Van Halen tunes and stuff on the weekends. So I always loved the connecting with a band, but then I was like, but I also got to take care of my business. And went to, then we both went to the same college cause we wanted to stay. We wanted to follow our dream and

Jesse Paliotto (10:46)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah.

Adam (11:06)
Way back then, high school teachers were like, you guys are crazy. You're never going to be musicians. Well, like we're both musicians now, you know, but, and so I went.

Jesse Paliotto (11:09)
Ha

Yeah, right.

How did that link

through to jazz? you stay in that genre for a while with classical or? Yeah.

Adam (11:19)
I'm tell you, I'm getting to that. So

Woody played, so I was no longer in touch with Woody, but I remember going to his house and he played jazz too, know, and he would, so not only did he do the Reverend Gary Davis, but he'd have an L5 there, I'd see magazines where George Benson was on the cover and you know, he could just play over changes. It's like, that's so cool. He's like playing lines, but he's hitting changes. So that was like,

Jesse Paliotto (11:36)
huh, yeah.

Adam (11:46)
New York was just bubbling with jazz energy. had the music school, musicians everywhere on the Upper West Side at that time. And so went to a school called SUNY Purchase and I studied classical guitar up there and it was super depressing. I'm not saying

Jesse Paliotto (12:12)
that's not where I thought

you were going with that. Okay.

Adam (12:14)
I'm

not saying the school is now. like I went to another, I had gone to another private teacher, the guy who was Dennis's teacher. And so that was my kind of guitar guru, a guy named Pat O'Brien, who was a loop player. That was my guru at the time of college. And then there was this classical guitar department, only like six students. And there was this teacher who's like, I'm not going to say who it was.

Jesse Paliotto (12:27)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (12:42)
brilliant guitar player, but such a strong personality. And it's like, you do it my way or you're a complete idiot. And there were some technical things that my teacher, Pat, said, be careful because I'm doing repair jobs on people's hands that study with that guy at the school because he's getting them to play. So I was sort of like resisting what they were teaching at the school. And you know, you're very insecure when you're a college freshman and not knowing.

Jesse Paliotto (12:45)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Adam (13:11)
And so I was like the black sheep. And after a year, I was like, I kind of don't want to do this. It was really a negative experience. So this is first year of college. But what had happened was that the first year of college,

Jesse Paliotto (13:21)
Yeah, yeah.

Adam (13:32)
a bunch of us classical music people, because there was just a classical department, we had a little pop band on the side. And Christian was playing percussion and, you know, was sort of an okay, you know, some cover songs, some of our own songs, know, gigs around the campus. And then one rehearsal. So this is happening, life, the one year dreaded year of classical guitar, but on our own time, Christian and I, you know, we're 17, 18 years old.

Jesse Paliotto (13:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Adam (14:01)
we're in the band rehearsal room, we start goofing on some hip hop. He's playing drums and I'm rapping and we're just kind of goofing because we would listen to like, we grew up on Rapper's Delight. I I knew every word of Rapper's Delight when I was 10. And we were in the dorms and all the dance parties. It was like all this hip hop.

Jesse Paliotto (14:05)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

yeah.

Adam (14:26)
It wasn't like hip hop today. was somehow friendlier and more fun. And I wasn't quite so explicit and violent and all. know, wasn't so, you know. So anyhow, and the guy who was the leader of our band said, man, you guys should do one tune on the gig where you actually do that. We were just fooling around. And so we said, okay. And we did it. And.

Jesse Paliotto (14:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ha

Adam (14:54)
Be careful, you know, life just took a left turn. Everybody was like, you guys are amazing. And we. So I stopped playing guitar for two years and I was a rapper. And I was like, kind of again, like when I was a kid with no music lessons, so and the school.

Jesse Paliotto (15:03)
You just became a hip-hop band.

That's awesome.

Adam (15:20)
The school Purchase did something really hip. actually said, right at the end of my first year when I was like, I can't stand this classical guitar department. So, and Christian was doing modern percussion where he had to play all these like 20th century modern pieces and learn marimba. And he was like, man, I don't want to do any of this crap. And so they knew, the school knew they had to be competitive with places like Berkeley. So they said, you know, we're going to do a new

Jesse Paliotto (15:28)
Yeah.

Adam (15:48)
program called Studio Composition. You got to do your theory classes, got to do your solfege, you got to do all that, you have to study composition, and you can use the recording studio. a bunch of, you know, there were like a bunch of people here, are jazz people, are pop people, they want to do jingles, they want to do Broadway shows, that, you know, they were like, we can't just limit it to classical music. So this started right at the time that I, so I said, cool.

Jesse Paliotto (16:09)
Yeah.

Adam (16:18)
Can we do that? They said, absolutely. And so we were doing hip hop tunes and getting A's in our college classes for doing the hip hop tunes and producing them. like Christian was playing live drums and we started doing shows and we never went on tour, but started doing shows. And, you know, we would even do rap shows. We were like the two white dudes that went into the black neighborhoods. And we

Jesse Paliotto (16:23)
You

That is funny.

Yeah.

Adam (16:48)
We tore it up as hard as we could. mean, talent shows were like 50 acts and we'd get third prize. It was at the same time as the Beastie Boys, except Christian was playing drums. So we allowed him and he was a great drummer. So that was like...

Jesse Paliotto (16:54)
You're going full Beastie Boys. That's what was going on.

Yeah, yeah.

Adam (17:06)
Really strange that my life went in that direction, but now I beatbox when I play. I'm still so influenced. Even every day now I'm watching old hip hop videos from Biz Markie and Big Daddy Kane and Eric D and Public Enemy and Run DMC. That was my stuff, like 88, 89. I love that stuff. Still. Exactly. That was at the peak of when we were doing it.

Jesse Paliotto (17:12)
yeah.

That's funny. I was just singing, I want to rock right now. I'm Rob Beason. came to get out. Yeah.

Adam (17:37)
that and so, you know, bring the noise and all. I mean, we were, we were starting to like get into, you know, we, we were starting to kind of get in touch with the radio DJs and Rick Rubin one time, we, you know, kind of met him and kind of, he wouldn't remember us, you know, and we got, we had a,

Jesse Paliotto (17:52)
yeah.

Bye now.

Adam (18:05)
This is part of the jazz story, just bear with me. Yeah, yeah, there's a turn, the jazz turn, it's coming ahead. So we got in with a manager who was like, okay, I think I have a contact at a recording studio. We've got the engineer who just did Run DMC's last record. So.

Jesse Paliotto (18:08)
Yeah, like there's some some turn coming up. I can feel it.

Adam (18:28)
maybe we can do a couple of tunes with him, but then, you know, like today, I'm going to sound like an old fart, maybe I am. They didn't have Mac computers with GarageBand. You had to go to a recording studio, and this is $1988, or excuse me, $1989.

Jesse Paliotto (18:54)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam (18:56)
They would charge you $150 an hour. And so you had to have a record company backing you to even get anything done. So the recording studios, what they would do is they'd say, hmm, you guys sound kind of cool. We'll front you the time, but we have to negotiate if you guys take off, we're going to get a lot of points and percentages of your records in exchange for the time we're giving, right?

Jesse Paliotto (19:05)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (19:22)
So we had this, you know, they dragged forever with these two tunes that we did. I mean, it was just, it went on forever and ever and ever. You know, we couldn't come to a... One day these Austrian producers, we get a call from the studio and they say, man, we got some Austrian guys coming in. They got this funny project.

They said they want some rappers, man. You know, you guys want to come down? think maybe they'll give you 50 bucks or something. All right. We hung out all night and it was like this weird imagine like house music, but with like Austrian folk instruments and little like, like, you know, like.

what the hell are these guys doing? And they said, okay, you know, and we were goofing on them. We were just like, this is like the stupidest shit we ever heard, you know? And they were like, okay, you're gonna do this rap about this flower called Edelweiss and it's on the top of the mountain. people go, yeah, well that, yeah. And they were like, and we were like, okay. And so we ended up finally cutting the vocals like two in the morning.

Jesse Paliotto (20:07)
Yeah.

You like sound of music it'll vice. Is that what I'm doing?

Adam (20:33)
And I don't even know if we even got 50 bucks. know, maybe they just bought pizza and we thought it was going to be good for our career. Six months later, we get this call. They're like, do you guys realize the record you did is gold in like all of Europe? We're like, what? What are you talking? It was gold. it's the song is called Edelweiss. We were like, what are

Jesse Paliotto (20:52)
What?

Adam (21:01)
We only got 50 bucks for that. And it was like, you know, Holland, Switzerland, and like all these people from our school who were into like quirky new wave music, they already had like the record and they were like, it's awesome, you know, like you and it's you guys. And the worst part is they came to America with a stereo two track mix. We recorded everything on tape. They had to sample it, our raps off the tape.

Jesse Paliotto (21:04)
What?

Adam (21:30)
The rapping on the record is totally out of time. The cats couldn't hear the syncopations we were syncing. So it's way off the beat. It just sounds like, you know, it has nothing to do with beat. And it's like in the vinyl. We're just like, it was, and so they said, you want to do the video? And we were like, well, maybe this is our chance to make it big. So we took a semester of school off. went out to Austria.

Jesse Paliotto (21:34)
private

talking or something.

Adam (21:55)
you guys can look it up on the internet, bring me Edelweiss, that's me and my best friend, we're wearing fur hats, 19 years old. And so, and so like, it was really cool when I started touring in Europe, I could tell people, hey, you remember that, you remember that Edelweiss thing? And it was like a thing, like I could have in a conversation. And then people were just, at some point I realized I was getting older, they were like, yeah, my mother was like really into that recording.

Jesse Paliotto (22:02)
I this. I did not know this is where this interview is going. This is so good.

Adam (22:24)
You know, like I realized. So it's not necessarily something I'm proud of. I'm just dropping the story because it's such a bizarro story.

Jesse Paliotto (22:33)
It is.

It is. There's so many stories like that of like these almost made it moments with these wild turns with the music industry. That is classic. That is so good.

Adam (22:40)
Right. And so

now eventually I'm doing this rap stuff and you know, we're rehearsing and you know, we had our tunes and like we had a band. I was just sort of like, I'm not scratching the musician itch. It's a, so I'm a musician where...

And now I'm going through the same thing now. There's part of me that wants to be the introvert musician and study classical music or study counterpoint or play jazz. And then there's this other part of me that really wants to connect socially, which might not be the most sophisticated music, but that's still important to me. And so that was kind of a little bit out in the forefront and the musician in me was kind of gasping for breath. So our third best friend,

Jesse Paliotto (23:21)
Yeah, it's interesting. How do you resolve that?

Adam (23:33)
in Manhattan, another guy that Christian and I were very tight with, he kept saying as we were growing up, he's like, man, Dizzy Gillespie's pianist lives one floor below me. And I see this guy and Mike Longo, Mike Longo, Mike Longo. And then I was like, man, I want to learn jazz piano because I heard some great pianists in school. was like, guitar kind of sucks. You know, I'm not really into jazz guitar. People would say you have to like check out jazz guitar.

Jesse Paliotto (23:44)
Hey now.

Adam (24:01)
Give me Jim Hall and give me Joe Pass. And somehow as an 18 year old, was like kind of too, I was like, it's not cool enough. And like, I heard Mike Stern. I was like, well, that's kind of cool. It's kind of rock and jazz at the same time. I knew playing, but then I heard like Bill Evans playing piano. was like, is the shit. So I went to Mike. I said, can I study with you? And he says, yeah, okay. And I.

Jesse Paliotto (24:02)
Yeah.

just wasn't connecting.

Yes, yes.

Adam (24:30)
I realized this is a heavy, heavyweight musician. was like, whoa, this is like, you know, and it started dawning on me. He plays with Dizzy Gillespie. he played with Dexter Gordon. He played with Sarah. Who these people? And I realized just being in his house, seeing the records and the people who would come in and out, I was like, I just stepped into the deep end of the pool with a jazz guy. I was like, I'm going to do whatever this guy says.

Jesse Paliotto (24:42)
Hahaha

Yeah.

That's a big deal.

Adam (24:58)
It was like, and I met my guru. That was my guru. Every other word out of my mouth today is Mike Longo, or every two words. And that was my music guru. And so at a certain point, he just said,

Jesse Paliotto (25:00)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam (25:17)
You know, the rapping stuff was just getting to be like a grind for me, because then it was just about making it big and like getting another gig and screaming my lungs out at show. I had this other thing and he's like, man, I'm going to give you an ultimatum right now. If you want to keep doing that rap stuff, don't come for lessons anymore.

I don't have the time or the energy to pour everything I know into somebody who's not serious. If you want to be a jazz musician, that is a full on responsibility. So you better think about what you want to do. You want to keep doing that rap shit, don't come back. Now, that may or may not have been cool, but I took it very seriously and I had to tell my best friend, I quit. And he still...

Jesse Paliotto (25:59)
Yeah.

How do you take it?

Adam (26:11)
He's still my best friend. It was like

Jesse Paliotto (26:12)
Yeah, I it well.

Adam (26:13)
a divorce, man. It was really hard on us. We couldn't talk because this thing was so far down the line that we had done with like this, we got some momentum going, know, shows, demo tapes, people getting them. And he didn't want to let it die. He was like,

Jesse Paliotto (26:28)
Yeah.

Adam (26:36)
And he tried with a few other kind of like vanilla ice type guys to try to make it work. But eventually he, he dropped it because he's a songwriter too. You know, he wanted to do some stuff. And so then it was full on.

bebop, jazz, guitar, you know, and I go.

Jesse Paliotto (26:58)
How did you do

guitar? Because you start studying piano with them? And then how did you do that?

Adam (27:02)
I started

studying piano, I was like, just want to do piano. And he said, well, tell me a little bit about your background. Long ago. you know, I said, well, man, you know, I played guitar my whole life, but I'm really interested in piano, but classical guitar, I this rap group, you know, like he said, he just sort of went, okay, okay, okay. And so, you know, I learned some basic piano voicings and I can play piano the way a non pianist plays piano. I can.

do some stuff for lessons but I can't like go do a gig you know and he said man you said you bring you play guitar he says bring bring your guitar in next week let me hear you play and you know he has this little African hand drum like I used to teach my students now and he says man I want you to just hit a hit a solo

Jesse Paliotto (27:33)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (27:54)
just play like B flat minor seven to E flat seven, just groove over it along with me and he was playing and I was grooving and playing and afterwards he goes, damn man, you can play the blues. You're a guitar player. He's like, you're a guitar player. Next week, Charlie Parker's confirmation on guitar, go home, start learning. He just went, and he...

Jesse Paliotto (28:17)
How did you handle

that where you're like, but I didn't I'm not into jazz guitar like if that was how you were feeling

Adam (28:29)
He just said to me, he said, your touch, your time, your tone, your technique, the blues, he's like, this is your acts. And he's like, there's universes of music that you can go into on this guitar that you're not aware of. So instrument doesn't matter. He's like, next week. And that's when the Karate Kid training really just. So.

Jesse Paliotto (28:54)
Yeah.

That's interesting because and the reason that I kind of maybe I'm diving into that part of the story a little bit is I feel like I've talked to a number of especially fingerstyle jazz guitar players. Bill Evans always comes up. He's just the man. I personally love Bill Evans and I feel like that's a big thing for fingerstyle guitar players where they're like obviously like I'm limited a little bit by the mechanics of this instrument. Wouldn't it be cool if I could do this on piano? So it's interesting that you actually had that journey of like taking a stab at that but then getting pushed back.

Adam (29:28)
Right, and he also showed me, he's like, well you can't play 10 notes in a voicing, but you can swing, and you can play the voicing like this, and so because he was, Mike was a world-class arranger.

He wrote for like charts for the Buddy Ridge Band, for all kinds of big bands, for the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra. You know, he studied counterpoint, he studied composition. He's like, man, you just have to reduce. Yeah, you can't do that, but here you can do something like this. And he'd write these little musical examples. He'd say, you know, it's the laws of music. So he says, don't worry about the instrument. We got to do music. And so that was, that's when that journey started. And...

Jesse Paliotto (29:47)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (30:13)
You know, was that and so that's when I started really paying attention to one of the jam sessions in New York and.

Jesse Paliotto (30:20)
Yeah.

Adam (30:26)
Rad Meldow was just coming up, Joel Fom, Chris Potter was already playing. mean, Roy Hargrove, I'd like, who's that guy? Jesse Davis, alto player, I played with him on some other projects. You'd see, and then like all old guys, you could go to Birdland, like Lou Donaldson and Lonnie Smith are playing there, like right by me, or Kenny Barron's playing piano. mean, I just, you're right in the middle of it. no, no, no, what were you gonna ask?

Jesse Paliotto (30:44)
Yeah.

So how does that, sorry, I cut you off, go for it.

I was going to ask, if you fast forward, so you get into jazz and you're there for some period of time, there's another turn in your story where you go to playing fingerstyle acoustic. OK, you're on the way. OK, got it.

Adam (31:03)
I'll get there.

So I'm still a full-on, even though I don't really show it, I'm a jazz guy. And it was...

It was funny, there was sort of like...

I was trying to what it felt for me and other people might laugh at this or it might sound like kind of strange but if you're in New York you knew it. There was sort of a group of guys, a core group of guys that all kind of knew each other. They played great like Pete Bernstein who I'm know loosely buddies with. We've always gotten along good.

the guys who played at this club, Augies, and they were sort of like related to Manhattan School of Music and the new school. And the musicianship, the level of the musicianship was really high. here I was studying with Mike and getting introduced to a lot of the older cats, and I felt like I could never socially somehow crack this...

core scene in New York. Very tricky. It was like, and the few times that I would go to a session, I mean, was like vicious, man. Cats would start playing a tune, you don't know. Yeah, I remember that. said, I don't know, I think just to play, but like, there was sort of a standard that those guys had, and I was just kind of catching up to all that. And it was really hard to crack the scene, and I had certain...

Jesse Paliotto (32:23)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Just to mess with you, you mean?

Adam (32:51)
beliefs and attitudes about music and ideals. And I still do, you know, things that I want to. And Mike, you know, I knew Mike was like old guy who's seen it all, playing dizzy, all that stuff, you know. And I kept telling him, man, I'm trying to crack this scene. And man, the guys, the vibes are so weird at the jam sessions and guys and the ego trips. And man, feel I just want to get in there and I don't know how to.

Jesse Paliotto (33:05)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam (33:20)
And Mike said, listen man, that's whatever's going on there is school boy shit. And he says, your job for your next lesson, there's a jam session up in Harlem. You gotta go play with the old black cats. And then he says, don't come back until you've done it. Because he says,

Jesse Paliotto (33:28)
Mm.

Adam (33:43)
There's a certain kind of white musician, I hate to bring race into it, but he says, you have to have the balls to cross the tracks and go play with the black cats. He says, that's gonna be a life changer, go do it. So this was the next, my skin's tingling telling you this because, okay, so I live just south of Harlem and there was a jam session on 157th Street and I'm 22 years old.

Jesse Paliotto (33:53)
Hahaha!

Yeah.

Ha

Adam (34:13)
And so, and we're talking, I'm carrying a heavy fender amp, I'm taking a cab on my own money, scared, shitless. And I go in there and the guys, first of all, the vibe was so warm. And it's like, whoa, where did I just land? Like, it was like if you went to another city. It was like, no.

Jesse Paliotto (34:18)
Yeah.

Ha

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (34:43)
phone. Nothing serious. She thought I was talking to her. And so the old cats are up there, Tippy Larkin, trumpet player. was like, you know, sort of a Harlem local guy. I remember the guys, old cats, all like in their 60s and this young drummer, burning, grooving drummer. I went, man, what a...

Jesse Paliotto (34:46)
Hahaha

Yeah.

Adam (35:10)
Whoa, and I'm there with my little suit and tie and my little Fender amp and my Gibson ES-175. And I said, all right, set up. Cool, let's play. And they said, I don't know, what do you want to play? I think I played, you know, they'd start playing standards that you were supposed to know, Cole Porter tunes. And I'd say, wow, I got to kind of hear my way. But it was usually kind of bluesy stuff. And I can remember.

Jesse Paliotto (35:36)
Yeah.

Adam (35:40)
playing, trying to hit all the changes and like play the lines and you know kind of trying to be like you know like Joe Pass, Pat Martino-ish you know like trying to really trying to hit it. I saw people in the audience like okay you know I just saw people like okay and I'm going shit man. I gotta come up with something and that's when I just went it's time to play the blues.

Jesse Paliotto (35:48)
Mm-hmm.

Hahaha

Adam (36:10)
I just started playing the blues and playing like shout choruses on the octaves. And then I hear, yeah, yeah, play it. Yeah, man. And then I see the people like, grooving to it. And then this feedback loop starts and I'm just cooking as hard as I can. And the place bursts into screaming. And I went, my God, that's.

Jesse Paliotto (36:19)
There you go.

Yeah.

Adam (36:36)
that's the level I have to be playing on. I mean, it took every bit of my energy. And then the old black cats, end of the night, they were hugging me and they said, don't be late for class next week. So then I became part of that band. when I would, and this is not to put anybody down.

Jesse Paliotto (36:41)
Yeah.

no way.

That's amazing.

That's a great story, by the way. That is so good.

Adam (37:02)
But

when I would then poke my head into the clubs downtown where everybody was playing their butts off, I'd be like, wow, the content that they're playing is amazing. Like they learned everything off the records. But the message I was like, what those cats in Harlem was doing is that's the shit. That was like...

Jesse Paliotto (37:18)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Adam (37:31)
you know, and I went, my God, you know, like that's this deep old thing from like Africa where like it wasn't just musicians, hey, we're performing and you need to check us out. It's like the musicians are playing and the whole place is pumping. The whole place is into it.

Jesse Paliotto (37:42)
One or two...

Yeah.

Adam (37:54)
Like everybody's like, you know, and so and there was no cell phones or anything. It was just it had to be happening right then and there. Nobody's filming it. It was just like. And so that became like my musical family. I was like. And then Mike was like, see, I told you that's what you did. That's you needed. That's reality. He was like, that's reality. This other thing is just schoolboys. You know, and he.

Jesse Paliotto (38:12)
Yeah.

Well, there's

several things that I've been picking up from what you described. Part of it is almost the intellectualization of music, particularly jazz, where it can be a lot of stuff in your head and not very much in your gut. But also just that audience focus, where am I playing for the other musicians in the room to compete with them, or am I playing to communicate with an audience? And this may go off in left field, so apologies if it does. Do you ever see that movie Whiplash?

Adam (38:29)
Mm.

It's fine.

I didn't see it.

Jesse Paliotto (38:49)
It's, I think it might have won awards and stuff. It might've been five, seven years ago. It was about jazz musicians in New York. And a lot of people loved it. I actually had a really strong negative reaction to it because it really focused on that competitive edge to jazz performance where it's about me being better than that other guy. And like, that's not what I love about music. I love the joy. I love the connection. I love the creativity. And that other sort of dark light is not attractive to me.

Adam (39:04)
Mm-hmm.

That's ego stuff. See, like,

Mike's guru was Dizzy, Dizzy Gillespie, who a lot of people think, well, Dizzy's the old funny guy with the bent up and the big cheeks.

Jesse Paliotto (39:20)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, big cheeks.

Adam (39:30)
All the musicians were like, that's the guy who knows. Dizzy could teach them and play stuff that nobody could understand. mean, this guy was a genius beyond belief. Stuff he did with the rhythm. Imagine for a second, okay, like before Dizzy and Charlie Parker, Charlie Parker too. I mean, we're all still trying to play like Charlie Parker, you know what mean?

Jesse Paliotto (39:57)
Yeah.

Adam (39:58)
so dizzy before you'd have Duke Ellington like the rhythm section would sound like

Jesse Paliotto (40:06)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (40:13)
Right? Here comes Dizzy Gillespie with Night in Tunisia. Everybody in the band is playing a different part. He had a rhythmic counterpoint bass is going, ba-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do

Jesse Paliotto (40:17)
Yeah, I was thinking you were going.

Adam (40:40)
this level of groove and rhythmic counterpoint, you wouldn't have Stevie Wonder doing what he does unless there was Dizzy Gillespie doing that. So it was like a leap in what the music did. And Mike would always tell me, I talk about that competitive thing. First of all, as a teacher, Mike was incredibly loving.

Jesse Paliotto (40:49)
interesting.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (41:09)
He only wanted to support me and was never, hey man, you gotta do, you know, was never like this. He'd say, man, you go in there with the groove, just kill him with the groove. Don't worry about it. And the groove is based on natural laws. It's not your ego. It's not you proving something. It's not you. It's not based on race.

Jesse Paliotto (41:29)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (41:30)
It's not based on being high. It's like, and he showed me with this African drumming thing, he's like, man, a lot of musicians think it's about getting high. A lot of musicians think it's about testosterone. Man, check that, out in the corner and then you can start to swing or like only the black cats can swing. And so he'd say, no, no, no, it's the physics. It's the physics of the music, but it was discovered. This groove stuff was discovered in Africa.

Jesse Paliotto (41:33)
Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Adam (41:58)
And people say to me, well, Irish music and Scottish music has 12-8, but it's not an African 12-8. It's just not because the way that all hooks up over there came to us and bled out in the forms of blues and R &B and jail, funk and everything. And so, yeah, that whole whiplash, I saw a little bit of it and I just sort of went,

Jesse Paliotto (42:04)
Mm.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Adam (42:27)
It's a movie, it looks like a movie, you know, and Mike would say, man, if people are messing with you at a jam session, just play your heart out on a ballad and you'll cut through all the BS, because love is gonna be a higher vibration than all that ego shit. So he really, and it was always this old guy who, I don't wanna say old, because I'm as old as Mike was then, but he would give me his guidance. wasn't...

Jesse Paliotto (42:43)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Adam (42:56)
I wasn't left to my own to try to figure stuff out. And then he could explain the Lydian chromatic system. He showed counterpoint. He trained me. I wrote fugues. I wrote two part inventions. I transcribed. I played harmony on piano. I wrote arrangements. technical stuff. He was cool with all that. But then when it was time to play the blues and swing.

Jesse Paliotto (43:03)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Adam (43:20)
He was really down with that too. mean, Cannonball Adderley was like his band teacher when he was 13 years old. So here I am, I'm coming and he studied piano with Oscar Peterson. I was like, I felt this jazz, the forefathers of jazz behind me pushing me. realized, I was like, whoa, man, this isn't just somebody telling me licks. And so let's keep fast forwarding.

Jesse Paliotto (43:28)
That's bizarre. mean, that's crazy.

Yeah, yeah.

Adam (43:50)
Right? And so.

get to be a professional guitar player, struggling to make a CD every couple of years. First couple CDs I did with him. Second CD, I had Bob Cranshaw, the great bass player for Sonny Rollins playing on it, who was also, I didn't know him very well, but we knew each other a little bit and he was super supportive and like only trying to help the younger musicians. He was very active in the Musicians Union in New York.

Jesse Paliotto (44:17)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (44:26)
And so I was doing any little gig that came my way in New York. I seemed to never be cracking this scene with like stages or clubs like the Village Vanguard or anything. I didn't have a record deal. I was doing my own CDs. And so I started finding, instead of the few guys who were like very visible because of like...

those cliques where they would kind of stake out certain clubs. I was like, wow, there's like 20,000 other musicians in New York who also play good and we would meet each other on gigs. I started building a network. And then I started putting my first few little European tours together with a trio. Sending CDs in the mail, hundreds to try to just land 10 gigs. There was no internet.

Jesse Paliotto (44:56)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam (45:24)
I had to wake up at four in the morning and call people. And so I had a couple gigs at local music schools teaching little kids how to hold a guitar, playing the first songs. I was trying to survive. My own little put a tuxedo on and I'll play your wedding. I had my own little business with a band to try to advertise that. So I was trying to hustle all the little jazz angles in New York.

Jesse Paliotto (45:26)
Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Adam (45:52)
And man, it was a struggle. It was really a struggle. And I was doing it and I realized everybody else is struggling too. So, you know, that's what that's what we do. And somebody said to me, this was like 2006, a friend of mine says, man, I went to this jazz festival, I heard this outrageous acoustic guitar player, Tommy Emanuel. Said, man, check this, check this out. I was like, damn, that guy. I was like, he's not really a jazz guy.

Jesse Paliotto (46:13)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (46:22)
like really a jazz guy. You people say, Tommy can play jazz. He's not really like a Joe Pass jazz guitar player. I was like, but damn, his groove and his touch and everything. And I was like, that's one guy. Because until then, I thought solo guitar meant like when Joe Pass kind of quietly played solo guitar and played a bunch of noodley.

Jesse Paliotto (46:27)
No, no, no.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (46:49)
solo, single line, and you know the listener has to kind of hear the changes. Or it meant classical like Andres Segovia, John Williams, Julian Brean, Pepe Romero, or flamenco.

Jesse Paliotto (47:00)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (47:04)
And it's like in my world, Chet Atkins didn't even exist. You know, there was no country music energy in New York that was just totally out the radar. here I am, grew up on rock, have a spot for rock, the hip hop stuff and the groove, know, like, and then the groove and jazz and then the jazz background and all this. And I'm hearing Tommy, I'm going.

Jesse Paliotto (47:10)
Right.

Adam (47:31)
And that's really cool. Like it's one guy who can go on tour all by himself. Cause the touring with the trio was really problematic. The money was so thin, you know, that I could barely get guys to come with me, you know? And then I saw another friend showed me the Sheldon Hall DVD, Tommy at Sheldon Hall. He's on, it's, you can see it on, on YouTube live at Sheldon Hall.

Jesse Paliotto (47:40)
Yeah.

Okay, I don't know if I've listened to that one.

Adam (48:01)
And I just went, my God, this is like a world. It was still like when he sat for gigs and he had the big, you reverb. He wasn't the Tommy of today show wise, but he was powerhouse. I was, so this was my first thing kind of.

in the jazz world, the jazz world, the jazz world, know, running, running, running, really paid the dues on the subway, you know, New York Subways with the train and the amp and duos and cocktail parties and teaching. And all of a sudden I get this glimpse of like, wait a minute, there's a world outside New York, there's a world outside jazz. And then I saw how Tommy would play like a Beatles tune and wow, he's mixing in cover songs, but, and so.

Jesse Paliotto (48:42)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (48:53)
All of this is going, wait a minute, I studied classical, I studied jazz, I can kinda... So I tried learning some of his stuff, which some of it worked, the flat picking stuff at the time kinda worked, the boom chick I wasn't interested in, I just went, you know, if I do that, if I do that...

I would want to do a powerhouse show, but like do my stuff, like jazz and like maybe Stevie Wonder, know, like something like that. And so my buddy, Christian, tortured soul from Raph and Cooley, from Edelweiss, that's what, I was Raph, he was Cooley, Raph and Cooley, see. He would come pick me up at my music school gigs.

Jesse Paliotto (49:18)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Adam (49:40)
teaching because he'd say, hey man, you want to go get a beer or you want to grab something to eat after school? know, like I'd get off at 7 p.m. And I'd say, and he knew I was kind of struggling because he was already starting to really make it big with his group, you know, touring and everything. And he'd say to me, man, you still haven't dialed it in yet. There's something he's like, there's something there's something you got, you know, like. And.

Jesse Paliotto (49:42)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (50:05)
And so this was in the most primitive stages. said, Christian, check this out, man. I'm thinking, what if I could play a Stevie Wonder tune on solo guitar? either I played him Serduck or I played him Superstition. And he went, that's it. You could be the Stevie Wonder acoustic guitar guy. He's like, that could be like a thing. And I was like, hmm. And I started practicing my butt off with this idea.

Wait a minute. And then Tommy came to New York. played this little, a couple little clubs, semi little clubs. B.B. King's.

Jesse Paliotto (50:44)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (50:47)
And I remember I took my girlfriend at the time, Jill, from Jill's song, which is a song on my first record. I said, there's this guitar player, let's go check him out. And I was so knocked out. I mean, was like, if you've never seen Tommy before, the first time you see him, it's this awakening. You're just like, wait a minute. I thought guitar had to be this quiet, boring little thing. And here's this.

Jesse Paliotto (51:13)
I had the same

conversation with Emil Ernebro about like this. It's so big.

Adam (51:17)
And here's this guy

doing this powerful, big show and at the same time brilliant guitar playing. And so I was like, I know it's not jazz, it's not giant steps, it's not rhythm changes, he's not tearing it up over chord changes, that kind of way. But the sound and the whole thing.

Jesse Paliotto (51:22)
Yes.

Adam (51:46)
And so I had already been checking him out and I went backstage and I just, I almost start to cry now thinking of it. started to fucking cry like a baby. And yeah, I mean, you see, look, and I went, man, cause then I realized Mike was one guru, but he's another guru. He's another, he's the new one. shit.

Jesse Paliotto (52:00)
Really?

Mm-hmm.

Adam (52:14)
I just stepped into a whole new thing. And it was

Jesse Paliotto (52:14)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam (52:17)
just this inspiration. It was just this. And I said, man, you changed my life. You don't understand. Like, and I'm sure he's had a million people say that, but he looked me at he remembers it. If you ask him, he'll remember this. And I said, man, until now, I've been really working hard playing jazz guitar. But man, I caught the bug for this fingerstyle thing. And he grabs my hand and he said, you're making the right decision.

Jesse Paliotto (52:44)
Hahaha

Adam (52:47)
And I think he meant financially and just everything wise, which, you know, maybe musically, who knows if it was right. And then, so then I was like, I'm in. I booked my first tour. I bought a Bose L1. I played a little, I was like, I gotta see.

Jesse Paliotto (52:50)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (53:04)
I've been in New York my whole life. I've never even been to North Carolina or to the, I've been there on a little jazz thing at a university, but I was like, I gotta go see if I can play for the people. I wanna go to a gin mill in North Carolina with bikers, and I wanna see if my thing here is gonna fly. So I did a driving, driving, and I remember,

Jesse Paliotto (53:10)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Adam (53:34)
being on the road going crazy driving this rental car. And then it was the first time driving I ever heard, here I am on the road again. It came on the radio. I had never heard the song on a little lonesome highway, east of Omaha. And I was like, my God, they're telling my story. I was somewhere in like,

Jesse Paliotto (53:50)
Hahaha!

You're like, I am Easter-Cobar!

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Adam (54:06)
I was like,

I'm it.

Jesse Paliotto (54:21)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Adam (54:33)
little energy here and then I had I said I'm gonna go to CAS you know I was only CAAS I was only like an hour and a half flight from Nashville I was like I'm gonna go there and I went there and I met all the Buster B Jones and Tommy was there and I met all the country guys and here I am there's some of the videos on on YouTube

Jesse Paliotto (54:34)
Yeah.

Mm.

Adam (55:01)
where I played some of my stuff and I kinda, I was like, okay, I'm the New York weirdo who's playing kinda funkier stuff, but I'm going for it. I'm just putting myself right in the middle of this fingerstyle scene. And because of that, a guy named Tomi Paldanias, I don't know if you remember his name, he has some videos and he's Finnish guy. He calls me, he says, man, you wanna open for Tommy in Finland?

Jesse Paliotto (55:20)
Hmm. Okay.

Adam (55:30)
And I went, what? And I barely had enough tunes. And he says, no, just a couple, just a couple of tunes. And I was like, okay. And so I was like, whoa, now I'm actually backstage with, and I couldn't even play like a whole concert at that time, barely. And then another thing, so slowly this started building and then I started calling a couple of the places where I played jazz with my trio in Europe. said,

Jesse Paliotto (55:33)
Yeah.

Adam (55:58)
Would you be cool if I came there and played solo? And they were like, sure, we have solo guitar all the time. And so all of a sudden that started catching fire. And so next thing you know, I'm kind of getting to know Tommy. I'm kind of touring and the YouTube thing's running. And then another big, you know.

Jesse Paliotto (56:05)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Adam (56:18)
God or the Almighty or the universe, whoever, whatever you want to call it. There's a few things in life that just happen, hopefully, that are a really stroke of good luck. Every it's partially luck. It's partially timing. It's yeah, you work for it. But a lot of it's luck. Steve, my arrangement is Stevie Wonder's superstition took off. And I was like, man, I'm just going to sell tablatures, you know. And I did that.

Jesse Paliotto (56:35)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm.

Adam (56:48)
And I opened it up, just selling a PDF. was like, the hell with it, I'm just gonna do it. And right away, first day, Stefan Grossman from Guitar Workshop, he says, Adam, could really get, he mailed me, he's like, I'm following you, man, you're a great player. And he said, you could really get in a lot of trouble for that. need all sorts of rights to do that. He says,

Jesse Paliotto (56:55)
Huh? Yeah, yeah.

Adam (57:13)
if you wanted to do a DVD where you teach the Stevie Wonder stuff, I'd be willing to produce it. And I went, the chess genius just gave me the chess move.

Jesse Paliotto (57:27)
Yeah, yeah.

Adam (57:29)
And I was like, if that's his idea, wait a minute. I don't want to do it for a company. I want to do it. And so I was right on the tail end where you could call, where you could contact like Hal Leonard and places like that and say, can I license these tunes? And so, so that I can, and I had to learn what's a sync right? What's a print right? You know, how's this going to work? And

Jesse Paliotto (57:34)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Adam (57:57)
We mapped out the agreement. of fact, I got to do my year end royalty payments to them. I'm glad I'm reminding myself. I got to always do the... And got it ironed out. so then I had the... So I was totally compliant, totally official. I opened it up and I got like so many orders the first week. I was in a panic. I was like...

Jesse Paliotto (58:02)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam (58:23)
not gonna send all these. I was just like, man, 300 orders came in. That's a lot of envelopes and a lot of addresses to write and trips to the post office. So I had to get a little mailing company, a mom and pop place in Brooklyn where they could have warehouse space. But this was the godsend, because suddenly I was making a living.

Jesse Paliotto (58:24)
It's a great problem.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (58:50)
I wasn't just living off gigs, and this is before, nobody had apps. People still wanted a thing in their hands. So this was the start of like a little mail order business where I was in the game and I was like, for the first time in my life, I could relax a little financially and I was having a great time. I was like, wow, I'm playing gigs. I got this other little business. I did the second Stevie Wonder DVD and then Billie Jean came on YouTube.

Jesse Paliotto (58:50)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (59:18)
I did it, that was the big hit, you know. And Seung-Hae Jung learned it and my version had, you know, a million hits and his has like 40 million hits and that was an awakening. I was like, it's not just how you play it, because he's playing it pretty wrong at age eight, could probably play it now. But he was cute and it has to do with how it looks also. I was like, hmm, okay, make a note. But the point is, Billy Jean, I said, great.

Jesse Paliotto (59:35)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam (59:48)
I'm going to just do a Billie Jean DVD next. And then Sony says, we're not giving you permission. I said, what do mean? I thought I could just get permission. They're like, no, you have to ask for permission. Nope.

And I was like, wow, I'm kind of, now I'm stuck. And I said, well, what about Beatles? And they went, nope, no permission for a DVD. And I said, well, because I had some of the Jackson tunes, said, well, what about these old Jackson five tunes? They said, well, that we can talk about. So originally I wanted to do like Rock With You, Billie Jean, have a DVD with that.

Jesse Paliotto (1:00:25)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:00:30)
didn't fly and that was the first step I realized, ooh, this is not, you don't always get the permission, you know? So I did the Jackson 5 DVD and this was still before people were doing logins and websites and online schools and everything. Who wanted the thing?

Jesse Paliotto (1:00:35)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Adam (1:00:48)
And then I was sort of in this habit and then I was like, well, next year I got to do another DVD and I did one of originals that never really sold that much, Fingerstyle Favorites. So I was like, I got my little mail order library. And so this was in, I want to say 2013, 2014. And then...

Jesse Paliotto (1:01:09)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:01:14)
Stefan Grossman and another guy, Happy Tram. What was Happy Tram's company? He passed away. Another one of the, Homespun maybe? Homespun. I saw those guys were selling downloads of the DVD and Stefan Grossman said, yeah man, you should really sell the download. And he says, I'm using this company called Platform Purple, which I use now. It was before like WordPress. It was kind of a cool company.

Jesse Paliotto (1:01:21)
I don't know.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Adam (1:01:44)
And I'm not sure if I'm going to put out more titles with them. I might since I'm already set up. it's no fee. They just take a percentage and they have the whole backend technology. And so people were starting to buy the downloads, but I was still shipping the DVDs. Had the warehouse in Brooklyn that I had to pay every month the shipping costs. Really nice folks.

And it started to tip, like people stopped buying DVDs, people started buying more downloads, online memberships, online schools where you could pay and have a login. And so I'm still touring the whole time and I'm going, I need to have an online school. I was like, because then maybe I shouldn't, but I could put an online lesson up for Billie Jean behind.

Jesse Paliotto (1:02:20)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:02:43)
paywall and I could say people are paying for the membership not Billie Jean and God forbid they complain I take the video down and and people don't have illegal stuff in their hands so one one thing I want to say for the record I don't give any tabs out you know ultimate guitar they've transcribed some if a student is stuck with like a spot I'll write that one spot out but

Jesse Paliotto (1:02:54)
All down, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Right.

Adam (1:03:12)
There's people say, you have the tabs for Billie Jean or do you have the tabs? I said, nope. Because there have been numerous guitarists that have done it and gotten in trouble. I don't know how everybody's doing it on Patreon and Udemy and all that. You know, they're just, but sooner or later, it's like driving fast on the street. Sooner or later, there'll be a cop there with radar. And so that's how Study with Adam was born.

Jesse Paliotto (1:03:15)
Yeah, no. Yeah.

I don't know.

Yeah, you'll get it. Yeah.

Adam (1:03:41)
my online school. And it's, right now it might not be quite as slick as like teachable or Udemy with the videos and it remembers where you were because at the time, 2014, I was like, I need a membership plugin, WordPress site.

Jesse Paliotto (1:03:43)
Interesting.

Adam (1:04:01)
and I had to get a little more serious. How do I film myself with three cameras and how do I record it? you know, I had to kind of, I'm still up trying to always sort of up my video game. So that's kind of, and now I once again, after touring for 15 years, finger style, you know, like there comes a point, I love the social part, right?

Jesse Paliotto (1:04:29)
Yeah.

Adam (1:04:30)
But man, imagine this now. Okay, Beatles, 1961, like, what was one of their hits? And I love her. Now imagine all the phases they went through until Let It Be with the whole revolver and Sergeant Pepper and all that. That's only nine years. I've been doing Superstition and Billie Jean for like 15 years.

Jesse Paliotto (1:04:39)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam (1:04:56)
on stage

and it's like people just want to hear it and I love connecting with the people and that's the reason I practice. But all of a sudden I land in Linz, I see some cool musicians, I'm like, hey, you guys want to play? So like I have a band project here now where I got a telly and I'm feeling that thing. We're not making any money. I feel like I'm 20 years old again starting, maybe it's like good life crisis stuff. I'm putting up with it.

Jesse Paliotto (1:05:24)
Is this Imp to Dimp? This is the band, Imp

Adam (1:05:26)
Imp the Dim, yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (1:05:26)
to Dimp?

Adam (1:05:27)
Imp the Dim. Which, by the way, the name of the band, I gotta do a video. So I'm still playing fingerstyle, everybody, but I'm pulling back a little bit on the touring. I'm teaching my study with Adam, people. If the spirit, this just to put sort of a period on the fingerstyle. I just uploaded Bridge Over Trouble Waters.

Jesse Paliotto (1:05:32)
Yes, I was going to ask. I'm like, what is this?

Yeah.

nice.

Adam (1:05:53)
you know, because if I hear a tune that hits me, I'll say, yeah, let me work that out.

but I'm kind of going, you know, I'm discovering Eric Gales, Joe Bonamassa, Gregory Govan, Matteo Mancuso. These guys, I'm going like.

my God, there's all these electric guys who are killers and I'm Richie Cotson. Greg Howe, I can't believe I missed Greg Howe. was playing an hour away from here and I missed. dude, Greg Howe, check him out. He played for Michael Jackson.

Jesse Paliotto (1:06:24)
I don't know.

All right.

So this is the new Vista. Can I go back one paragraph or two or you finish your thought and I'll do it? Because there's one nerdy thing for the fingerstyle side, which I mean, a lot of the open blue water it sounds like you're looking at as in this band, those guys you just mentioned. In the fingerstyle, I have a personal question. Other folks out there might also be curious about this. Tommy Emmanuel is such an inspiration to so many players.

Adam (1:06:36)
Sure, Norman, go ahead, go ahead.

I

Jesse Paliotto (1:06:57)
and he's doing the thumb pick thing. He's pulling from Chet Atkins. You even mentioned it when you were saying like I wasn't into the boom chick stuff. It's interesting talking with Emil Ernebro who does thumb pick style but manages to make, in my opinion, makes it very fluid and a lot more varied in like the textures and stuff he does. And I know you played with a thumb pick for long time and then went back to just, you know, regular thumb, flesh on fingers. Can you talk about that and why you did that? This is a very selfish question because I'm...

Adam (1:07:23)
Absolutely, No, no,

no, this is, no, no, no, this is, this is, this is important. I unfortunately don't have an acoustic guitar here, but I have an electric guitar. So at least for the video I can kind of show. I would say.

Jesse Paliotto (1:07:26)
I'm processing that in own playing right now.

Adam (1:07:46)
Now this isn't necessarily one to one with the thumb, but this is just to, it's more about the flesh and placement of notes. Okay, so for me, a sort of religious figure guitar, if I had to say, if you said you're only allowed to listen to one guitar player for the rest of your life, Wes Montgomery. Now.

Jesse Paliotto (1:07:53)
Mm-hmm.

okay.

Adam (1:08:14)
I haven't mentioned that name yet. I love George Benson. I love Tommy. I really dig Pat Martino. I was really inspired by him. But Benson, I love George Benson. mean, know, like Breezin and all that stuff. Him, you know, just as a player and a musical force, it's like, my God, you know. I never really was super into Django. He's great, but I was just never really, I was kinda like, okay, well, you know.

cool, but that's not it didn't kill me musically. Just because of the environment that I grew, just like somebody from Nashville probably doesn't listen to Public Enemy, you know what I mean? So. But Wes. I started realizing, wait a minute, man. He.

No, green is great, but it's like there's something about West Montgomery. There's a placement of the notes and it took me a minute because if you listen to Joe Pass, the lines are a little bit more like Bach, right? They're a little bit, it's picked, it's virtuoso, it's like more like, you know, you hear the line going. And Wes, it's kind of, it's not maybe as clear depending on which recording you're listening to. But then I got the incredible jazz guitar, West Montgomery, and I went.

Jesse Paliotto (1:09:09)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:09:35)
he is as in the pocket as the whole band. And I never heard a guitar player who possesses the rhythmic concept. And then, you know, I was playing with a lot of bass players, great bass players. And one of the bass players who I got to play with a lot,

Jesse Paliotto (1:09:39)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Adam (1:10:00)
and sadly he just passed away about a week ago. His name was Ben Brown. He played with Dizzy's group when Mike was there. He was like a New York killer bass player. He played a lot of Broadway shows and jingles and played on Sesame Street for money. He was like a successor to Bob Cranshaw who was the great bass player for Sonny Rollins. And I, you know, I saw so many bass players that I played with.

Jesse Paliotto (1:10:15)
That was funny.

Adam (1:10:28)
this big fleshy sound and even if they're solos, even if they couldn't play a lot of fast, Ben could play really fast, but.

Jesse Paliotto (1:10:31)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:10:40)
I saw how profound this beautiful sound was. And I kept looking for it with the pick and know fatter strings and fatter picks and this guitar and that guitar. And I kept, I had one track mind, it has to be picked. And I did technical exercises.

Jesse Paliotto (1:10:45)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Adam (1:11:00)
flat picking. I even wrote a book with all these hand exercises religiously for years and years and years so that I could flick a switch and you want to play giant steps? No problem. And I could alternate pick and go over all the changes. Like, you know, I had my chops so that I could do that. And Longo, the lessons with Longo, he'd look at me and say, hmm.

Jesse Paliotto (1:11:06)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam (1:11:30)
I hope I'm not going too long, man. This is starting to be a lot more work than getting into it. He would say to me, hey, man, play this phrase. And he write out something for me. He had a bunch of very specific little things. I'm a guitarist, bad sight reader, so I'd have to look at it. And he would have a phrase that sounded something like almost like a Jocko.

Jesse Paliotto (1:11:32)
No, I'm digging this. you're good, let's keep. Yeah.

Adam (1:11:57)
Pistorius thing like you'd have a little phrase and it would end and It would sound like one two three four, baby. ba ba ba ba ba ba ba

And he'd say, okay, play it. And so I'm typical guitar. I'm thinking, well, it's like you're going dega, dega, dega, dega, dega, dega. It has to be down up. I said, go down, up, up, up, up, dega, dega, you know, ticka, ticka, ticka, toka, bim, bom, bom, bom. And we're doing all the strokes. And he'd say, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, that's not the right sound. And I said, what are you talking about? And he'd say, he's going, man, it sounds like this. He's like, you're going, ooh, you know?

Jesse Paliotto (1:12:22)
Yeah. So you stay in the up and down.

Adam (1:12:40)
And he would just say, he's like you're going, like, he'd say, if you were a drummer, that would be like doing the bass drum and the snare drum. You could go one, two, three, four. He'd say, I want this. One, two, three, four. And he'd say, man, play those notes with a down stroke. Try that.

Jesse Paliotto (1:12:54)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:13:09)
And I'm going, man, you're crazy. And he'd say, look, man, guitar's not my instrument. I don't know, down, up. But he says, try it. Just try it. And I would have to do some awkward thing that was sort of out of my comfort zone to get, be, don't, don't, don't, don't, And he'd say, that's the sound. That's it. And I kept going, man, this guy's crazy. And he said,

Jesse Paliotto (1:13:24)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:13:34)
No,

Jesse Paliotto (1:13:47)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, right,

It should be up here.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:14:04)
And so this was one of the major, major things he'd say, man, the accents. And so I was still always practicing my alternate picking. you know, and one day I recorded myself. This jazz. And I said, let me play a solo. Let me just let me.

Jesse Paliotto (1:14:25)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:14:30)
I'm gonna play, I don't know, Rhythm Changes or Stella by Starlight or something. I'm gonna play single line and let me hear if it's in the pocket. No backing track, no nothing, just with a cassette recorder. And I was mortified because the mechanics, it's not a personal thing. I was like, the mechanics of doing this, they don't lay in the pocket. For funk, if you're really grinding it out and you're always locking back on, yeah. But the jazz kind of, I was like,

Jesse Paliotto (1:14:57)
Yeah.

Adam (1:14:59)
Wow, I thought it was in the pocket when I played it and I listened back. it was speeding up a lot. And I said to Mike, said, man, I was kind of mortified. I did this little check. I was like, I'm cool if I have bass and drums. They're defining where I have to play. I can always lean on them. And he says, man, if you're speeding up, it means you're playing some accents wrong. He's like, and the funny thing is, he says, you're probably beeping where you should be bopping.

Jesse Paliotto (1:15:03)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Okay.

Adam (1:15:29)
And then he showed me there's this Dizzy Gillespie tune called He Beeped When He Should Have Bopped. And it was exactly about that. He's like, you're beeping when you should be bopping, meaning you're doing a short. You should be doing a long. it's and so.

Jesse Paliotto (1:15:33)
Okay

Yeah.

Interesting.

Adam (1:15:46)
That's always been, and so part of the fingerstyle thing was like, I knew I had this problem. And I said, you know, I really want to...

Jesse Paliotto (1:15:50)
Yeah.

Adam (1:15:56)
let me take a song and just try to put the song in the pocket. me not do all this complicated playing, countdown and giant steps and all that. Let me, you know, cause he's like, yeah, man, that kind of playing, he's like, if you're playing all this stuff, and he even said it when he heard Mike Stern, I think he heard Mike Stern one time. And this is an old bebopper.

Jesse Paliotto (1:16:03)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Adam (1:16:23)
He says he didn't even know who Mike Stern was. He says, man, I saw this cat playing with Miles on TV, this young white cat playing.

like rockin', kind of a rock guy, and he said, man, he had great lines, but he said he was all up in his head. It was like, was nothing, it wasn't like down in the floor. He was like, it was the right idea, and he says, sometimes, he says, sometimes you're doing that. It's the right idea. You understand the lines, you understand it, but it's not grounded. And so I was lucky, man. I had all these old guys come up, put it in the pocket. And the thoughts were going, this leads to this technical question you were asking.

Jesse Paliotto (1:16:44)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

yeah.

Adam (1:17:02)
And I

realized soloing, I'd be doing, you know, this jazz guitar stuff like this, but then comping, I couldn't get the right sound with the pick. I would just comp with the thumb and I could really groove with the band. Wait a minute. Comping, I'm in the pocket. That's no problem. What's getting lost in translation here when I'm going to the soloing thing? And it was a real honesty thing. This is, and this is a big point that I think

Jesse Paliotto (1:17:12)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam (1:17:30)
a lot of guitar players, this is a really scary thing because speed is this quantifiable thing, you know, so we all think, well, I just got it. can't let go of that thing that would allow me to play fast. So jazz went off to the side. I was still kind of had, okay, I play with a pick. I'm not really sure how I'm going to solve this. I'm not ready to throw in the towel and learn how to play like Wes Montgomery, even though I know it's probably the right way to do it.

Jesse Paliotto (1:17:37)
Yeah.

Adam (1:17:59)
Not because of the thumb, because it sits in the pocket the right way. The whole thing, forget about fast, it's right. It's like, it's real, you know? It's quite...

Jesse Paliotto (1:18:03)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's interesting how speed is such a distraction. Like, I don't know, there's, I don't know, if I can't

play fast, what happens? The world ends? I don't know.

Adam (1:18:18)
Well, and so then I saw Tommy and I was like, okay, so Tommy's got his fast songs with the pick, know, Tall Fiddler, The Hunt. He's got his burn the house down thumb picking songs. He's got his sort of 80s pop country-ish ballads that's his stamp like Angelina, that kind of thing. He's got the Beatles. I was checking out his repertoire and I said, I'm just gonna do kind of a parallel repertoire. I'm gonna have a fast picking tune. I'm gonna have a thumb picking tune. I'm just gonna...

I'm going to do different tunes. Stevie Wonder got to build some kind of repertoire and it's a good mix. And I was using the thumb pick, but I never really had, I never really devoted my life to that Chet Act. It's like solid thumb picking. So I never got it. You know, was kind of doing it on superstition where it was just kind of grazing the string on beat one. And

Jesse Paliotto (1:18:52)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

huh.

Adam (1:19:15)
I was like, well, that's how I'm going to do it. Thumb pick and fleshy fingers like Tommy. That's just, he does it. And I realized playing the gigs, I was like, I need kind of a fat jazz bass kind of sound. Cause I'm hearing Ben Brown going, I'm hearing this big, I'm not hearing bling, bling, bling, bling, bling. It's not even boom, boom, boom, boom.

Jesse Paliotto (1:19:30)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam (1:19:46)
And so.

I mean, for like 10 years, and I would be real nervous before gigs. I'd be backstage, like sweating, like feeling like I was missing. And for sound checks, I was hitting such a small part of the thumb pick, it was not solid. The hand was kind of flying with superstition and doing this. Sometimes I'd lock it in, sometimes I wouldn't. And it also put my fingers on a funny angle. Like, damn, you know.

Jesse Paliotto (1:20:04)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam (1:20:16)
I don't know what I'm doing with this. I'm kind of getting by and the arrangements are pretty good and people know the tunes, but there was a lot of nervous energy, you know? one gig, one time I realized, man, well for ballads I started using my thumb because I could control it more. And then I was like, man, this is more this, doong, doong, doong. And then I did that same test recording myself. I still do it on the iPhone.

Jesse Paliotto (1:20:17)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:20:45)
I said let me play, I don't know, a blues or mas canata or something with the thumb pick and without it or even maybe just a bass line.

Jesse Paliotto (1:20:54)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:20:56)
It could have just been that I was going boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Maybe I forgot what I did. And Longo taught me how to listen with like a third ear, not necessarily to listen to the content. Like, is it fast? Is it this? Is he playing cool stuff on the changes? But to sort of listen and just wait and see if your body rhythm, can you tell the foot to it? Does the foot start going by itself?

Jesse Paliotto (1:21:21)
yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam (1:21:26)
And I started noticing on the recordings, was like, you know, it's the tool. It's there's this sound that I'm getting from the tool. I was like, man, the one sound is clearer and there's maybe there's a little more excitement. But this other sound is deeper and I'm feeling this boom, boom, boom. And I could I could dance to the thing.

Jesse Paliotto (1:21:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Adam (1:21:52)
really like with a body rhythm when it was the flesh of the thumb and I was like that's what the bass players are doing that's what Wes Montgomery is doing. So then I just said, well.

Jesse Paliotto (1:21:58)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:22:05)
do a concert with no thumb. And no, no, I I probably practiced a couple of days and it was really hard because I and there's a video. I did Brazil a couple of times and there I'm still really struggling with the technique. You can you can see it if you watch the I wasn't sure if the thumb should be like out or in or back or.

Jesse Paliotto (1:22:05)
Did you just do it cold? Showed up one day and you're like, I'm gonna give it a go?

yeah,

yeah.

Adam (1:22:33)
And I remember playing these concerts and my hand was so, the first couple, my hand was so tight and I was like, God, my classical teachers would be cringing. This is, can't be right. So how, how am going to do this? And I literally had to just start from zero again with the thumb. And I realized when I use strength in the thumb,

can't get a consistent sound, especially on acoustic guitar, like open strings are easier. Then you go to fret up here, and the string is tighter, and you have to push hard, and it can be really lumpy and thumpy, the attack. And I was like, okay, so I know I want the flesh, that's helping me put it in the pocket. Instead of a bling, bling, bling, bling, bling, I was getting, don, don, don, don, don, right?

Jesse Paliotto (1:23:11)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Adam (1:23:26)
And so I started, I do this with students at workshops, I started saying, I gotta be at a zero, what I call a zero relaxed position. And Tommy gave me some good advice.

Jesse Paliotto (1:23:34)
Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:23:39)
because I showed him with the thumb pick I said, I'm still trying to figure this shit out man can you show me and he saw the way I was playing and in two seconds he says, no your thumb still isn't the boss your thumb has to be the boss if you want to do this backstage on a concert I thinking about that I'm going man he just gave me a serious guitar lesson two seconds he saw what was going on he's the master and I realized let me just

Jesse Paliotto (1:23:54)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Adam (1:24:07)
Slow it down and practice scales up and down. Absolutely with the loosest thumb and going with gravity rather than trying to use strength. there's even a really heavy philosophy book by this guy, David Hawking's Power versus Force. This is power. Like a martial artist, I don't need to show you everything I can do, but it's.

Jesse Paliotto (1:24:15)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam (1:24:33)
everything about this I feel like no matter how loose the string is how tight it is I could I could just nail this matter of fact it's like strumming if you were to go to jump jump jump jump you're not doing it with any muscles you're letting the thumb relax and you the physics take care of it record it I'm yeah it's right in the pocket I can snap my fingers and go

Jesse Paliotto (1:24:41)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:24:58)
It's not having that problem that trying to play fast with a pit-cats where there's an organic, rhythmic music problem with that in terms of the pocket. Yeah, if you're playing fast and gypsy jazz and all that, it's at a certain tempo and it's exciting and it burns the house down and all. I love Yo-Show. He's a monster musician. I'm talking about when I want to go, isn't she lovely? Or super-difficult. Right, how am I gonna?

Jesse Paliotto (1:25:21)
Yeah, and it's groove oriented. Yeah.

Adam (1:25:26)
And so then I was like, okay, I got to do the fingers and back to class school, my, one of my teachers was a lute player. I was like, man, I'm having trouble with the treble strings. like, and then lute players play like this with a thumb under technique where, where your thumb, they play scales like this. And I was like, it felt, I was like, it looks so wrong.

you know, but I was like, doing this, and I was still trying to do like a classical guitar three finger kind of technique. And then I thought, okay, what if I needed to really play the D and the G string, the third and fourth string open and really get a good sound. No fingernails, no thumb pick.

Jesse Paliotto (1:26:02)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:26:19)
It's almost like a wrestling move. It's like, I couldn't, and if I wanted to do a rhythm like bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, where I gotta kinda play kinda fast, I was having a really hard time doing it like this. And the minute I went like this, I could go blip, blip, blip, blip, blip, and push into the top of the guitar and get a lot of volume out of it. And I said, damn, that actually kinda works.

Jesse Paliotto (1:26:36)
Mm.

Those loot players know what they're talking about.

Adam (1:26:42)
Yeah, and so I had to do a couple months of kind of upping the software version, so to speak. I was like, okay, well then I got to figure out how play Billie Jean like this. I got to figure out how to play Superstition, but you know what?

When I was using the thumb pick, I was getting such a small little corner of the pick on the string, I'd go to sound checks. Sound checks would be so stressful. And I was like, I need subwoofers, I need the bass. Because if I'm going like this, I wanted the subwoofer to go, you know. I wasn't really doing it. And that's a big jazz guitar problem. Guys are playing the notes. I had this problem. You're playing the note.

Jesse Paliotto (1:27:04)
Yeah.

Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, and you're not giving it to it with the string because you're only catching the tip. Yeah.

Mmm.

Adam (1:27:28)
and you're trying to let like an arch top and turn the treble down. The juiciest tube bamboo, boop, you're trying to get all the boop, boop, you're not really getting that sound. Whereas Wes Montgomery played with the treble open and boop, the fatness was really happening on the string. And so I went, okay, so there's a lot of Wes Montgomery conceptually in what I'm doing.

Jesse Paliotto (1:27:34)
Yeah.

Yeah, interesting.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:27:55)
and a lot of strumming and I said, man, this whole thing has to be in the pocket as if I was playing rhythm guitar. And the position that emerged started to be more like a lute position. And here's, this was the clincher. The more I did it, show up to the sound check, AER, put the AER into the house. I don't even need to warm up. Sound is right there. I said, how's the bass sound? They said, great. How's the treble sound? Great.

Jesse Paliotto (1:28:01)
Yeah.

Adam (1:28:25)
Everything feels good, cool. It's like I do the shortest sound checks in the world. I say, a little too much treble. OK, let's check the beat box. Check the vocal. Great. We're done. 30 minutes, max. So I found through all of this, and really it's the importance of groove, so it's a rhythm first, not speed first, which is like a lot of rock guys and a lot of fusion guys like.

Jesse Paliotto (1:28:43)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Adam (1:28:53)
You know, you see like incredible guy Josh Meader, know, like ridiculous speed, but that's a speed first technique. That's not a groove first. It's like, let me get fast first and then I'll kind of try to groove it. Whereas a bass player, it's groove first. If I can get fast, that's gravy. Classical is tone first.

Jesse Paliotto (1:29:02)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:29:19)
to get this bell-like sound and then speed and rhythm is kind of like well yeah then just try to feel it. The rhythm is not usually maybe with some of the more modern

Stephanie Jones is an exception. She can groove her butt off and the technique and everything, but most, she has a jazz background. Most classical players, it's just tone. So like, that's my whole thing is it's rhythm first. And that, if you look at the whole, starting with hip hop.

Jesse Paliotto (1:29:34)
compositions.

Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah, right.

Adam (1:29:54)
starting with Mike, showing me

drum with the jazz, starting with all this, you know, and it was this honesty with Mike, with the accents on the line saying, man, you gotta be able to play a Charlie Parker melody all by yourself, and that has to be really in the pocket, you know? And he would sing me stuff, because Dizzy taught him like this. He'd say, man, I heard this high school band or this college band, Charlie Parker's Confirmation, and...

Jesse Paliotto (1:30:11)
Yeah.

Adam (1:30:23)
He says, they're playing the accents all wrong. He's like, they're going one, two, three, four. You know, and he'd say, they're not going one, two, three, four. Right?

Jesse Paliotto (1:30:36)
Yeah, it's all about that intonation accent.

Adam (1:30:48)
And he'd say, they got the accents. He'd say, they're swinging backwards. They got the accents inside out. And so that led me to where I'm kind of at now. And I realized, wow, fleshy sound. I can't play fast like Tommy. And letting go of, then eventually with the pick, I had a couple fast picking things that I felt I had to do in concert.

Jesse Paliotto (1:30:54)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:31:17)
My wife, my girlfriend at the time, she says, you know, it sounds, doesn't really sound kind of sloppy, it's just fast. It sounds kind of sloppy and then I knew it wasn't really in the pocket and I said, you know what, let me just try a concert and not do that.

Jesse Paliotto (1:31:26)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Adam (1:31:34)
I then sort of, the more I played for people, the more I did concerts, the more I connected, was like, people want music. They want a nice melody and a nice groove. That's the most important thing. Speed is fun. Hey man, I love it when guys tear it up and play really fast. And I've had moments where I can have, my chops have been in a way to do that, but.

Jesse Paliotto (1:31:43)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam (1:32:01)
The priority is put it in the pocket. That's what saved me in Harlem, is putting it in the pocket.

Jesse Paliotto (1:32:05)
Yeah.

Yeah. This is a great, I feel like this is a great kind of arc to the story today. So we should probably put a comma there. I'd love to have you back, man. I all these other questions I was going to ask you. didn't even get to them. So I'm going to have to like hit you up to do something in the future, I think.

Adam (1:32:15)
Cheers.

man,

I'd love to, man. hope, I know I took, I don't think I've ever done a deep dive interview quite like this. You just, gave me the room to tell the story. I hope people make it to the end. I don't know, maybe break it up over two episodes. It's deep stuff. It's deep stuff. Cause then you realize what connects with people, you know, and what makes music, music.

Jesse Paliotto (1:32:45)
Yeah.

Adam (1:32:46)
Ultimately,

it's the melody and groove, I think.

Jesse Paliotto (1:32:50)
Well, and it's so great to hear your story. mean, for anybody listening right now, I know for myself, as I'm talking with Adam, like the encouragement is for anybody who's a player is it's not, I think it's very tempting to see it as a one size fits all process to get good quote unquote. And that is just not reality. There are so many arcs and twists and turns in how you get to the place where you really nail, kind of like when Christian said, hey, you could be the Stevie Wonder acoustic guitar player. Like you find these junctures that how did you know that you were gonna get there?

Adam (1:33:16)
Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (1:33:18)
And so I love hearing the story, man. It's so good.

Adam (1:33:21)
Cool, man. Well, great, Jesse.

Jesse Paliotto (1:33:22)
So thank you

so much. I'll wrap this up. guess, you know, one quick thing, if people are looking for you online, any place you want to point them or just kind of go searching on YouTube or.

Adam (1:33:30)
You

can get free stuff and get on my mailing list at adamranfordy.com. There's all kinds of goodies there. Hit me up on YouTube. I'm still kind of an old YouTube guy. I need to become more of an Instagram person, but I'm not. I don't really hang out on Facebook all that much. YouTube is good. Email list is best. Grab a free tab. And if you want to take lessons, study with Adam. And why don't you give your link, Jesse, for study with Adam.

Jesse Paliotto (1:33:48)
Yeah.

Yeah,

I will do that.

Adam (1:33:59)
I have my online school and on studywithadam, I'll make this really short. I do 15 minute chats for free like this with any student that wants, except I don't, we don't go an hour and a half, but 15 to 30 minutes and I do.

Jesse Paliotto (1:34:08)
That's cool.

Adam (1:34:15)
you know, live stuff with the students. I'm really in touch with them. Students upload videos. I give them advice and all these kind of things that I've been through. try to point them in the right direction as much as I can. And there's a whole pile of lessons up there as well, video lessons and everything.

Jesse Paliotto (1:34:32)
that's awesome. That's gold, man. Just getting a chance to talk with you, I'm sure for people could be super helpful to work, you know, past things.

Adam (1:34:38)
Yeah, it's not

just a Netflix style guitar site, is I wanna say. It's not just you get in there and it's anonymous. Like I'm really in touch with people. The squeaky wheels. Some people sign up and never contact me. And hey, I they would. But the people who sign up and say, man, I really wanna learn something. I say, great, let's talk, let's get in touch, let's send me a video, let's see what we're doing.

Jesse Paliotto (1:34:41)
Mm-hmm.

I love it. All right, well thank you, Adam. Thanks everybody for joining us today. I'm your host Jesse Paliotto. Love getting to talk music here on the Guitar Journal. I'll let you all go and have a great week, y'all. Thanks.

Adam (1:35:11)
God bless.