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Thursday, March 5, 2009
Interview: Terry Adams, former keyboardist for NRBQ
Posted by Eric Snider on Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 11:57 PM
Rare is the musician who can record an album of avant-garde solo piano, then turn around and write, sing and perform a simple, confectionary pop song called “My Girl My Girl,” which begins with the lines, “Just can’t find one better lookin’/ There ain’t no one that’s got more cookin’.”
Perhaps that’s why more people haven’t heard of Terry Adams. His brand of bold, unrepentant eclecticism does not usually make for a star career. More folks know Adams as the wild man behind the keyboards in the long-beloved and now-defunct cult band NRBQ. That outfit was about as stylistically free-spirited and far-reaching as any that’s fallen under the general rubric of rock ’n’ roll. Adams, who formed the band, and the various musicians who came through it, had an exquisite case of musical ADD.
NRBQ used to bounce from honey-coated, post-Beatles pop to jagged jazz a la Thelonious Monk to silly country tunes to jaunty blues. And more, lots more. They weren’t genre slumming, either; the group played everything convincingly, albeit with a healthy dollop of quirkiness. At the height of their powers, the quartet would even take random requests from the audience and perform (sometimes attempt to perform) songs that they had never played together before.
In the five years since NRBQ’s breakup, Adams’ has forged on with a similarly fearless aesthetic. The central characteristic of his music, from its beginnings in the mid 1960s until now, is a sense of wonder, an almost childlike yen for constant discovery. And when he gets there, he shares his delight with the audience. Along the way, he’s shown a knack for making the complex seem carefree and the simple seem somehow profound.
After a half-hour phone conversation with Adams — not to mention several quickie calls to set up an interview — I feel qualified to say that he’s a one-of-a-kind cat, an eccentric (but not strange) fellow not given to linear thinking.
I ask him why he doesn’t use the NRBQ moniker as a branding device — to, at the very least, pull more folks out to his shows. Adams pauses, seeming to genuinely ponder the option. “I didn’t wanna keep draggin’ the name on,” he replies in a slight drawl reminiscent of his native Louisville. “I dunno, maybe I should.”
Tom Staley, an early NRBQ drummer who’s joining the keyboardist for a few Florida dates as a member of the Terry Adams Crazy Trio, has a more pithy take: “He has more integrity than to call something he’s doing NRBQ,” says the St. Pete resident, who also drums for The Vodkanauts. “He knows people would take offense at that.”
Staley met Adams in Miami in ’68, when personnel from a number of bands were congealing into NRBQ. Adams recalls that after exhaustive auditions, they couldn’t find the right drummer. Up popped Staley. “He had a natural kind of swing that I need and was required for the music, which had gotten lost over the years,” Adams says of stickman.
Staley departed in 1974. “Hindsight is always 20/20,” he says. “The biggest thing, I think, is that I was the first to have a child. Me, my wife and my child couldn’t live in the group house, so that sort of individuated me from the band.”
The drummer admits to a certain amount of regret at having missed out on potentially three decades of terrific music making, but overall sees his departure as “the right decision at that point in my life.”
Staley remained “just a phone call away” and an ardent fan of NRBQ in the subsequent years. He performed with Adams overseas two years ago. So it was only natural to enlist him into the Crazy Trio, which also includes guitarist Scott Ligon. As off-the-cuff as Adams likes to play it in concert, Staley isn’t going to just show up with his kit. “I have a big list of stuff [I have to learn],” he says. “He wants to do tunes from his new CD.”
Adams confirms this — “I can’t wait to do ’em live” — and that’s a good thing. Holy Tweet, released on the artist’s own Clang! label, is a charmer, 11 helpings of unkempt pop with whiffs of ’60s garage-rock, Beach Boys sweetness (sans sweeping vocal harmonies) and an adolescent innocence. At 59, Adams shows he still has a lot of melodies in his satchel.
The aforementioned “My Girl My Girl,” which leads off the disc, instantly seduced me. “Will you play it at the show?” I ask Adams. “I’m getting my request in early.”
“Sure, but I’ve had people request songs during a show and I’ll think I wanna do it, but then I don’t honor it ’til the next night,” Adams replies with a chuckle.
“Well, if I haven’t heard it by an hour into the set, I’ll be the guy yelling it out,” I counter.
“Not a bad idea,” Terry Adams replies.
The Terry Adams Crazy Trio w/The Vodkanauts, Sun., March 15, 5 p.m., Skipper’s Smokehouse, Tampa. $10.
Video of the Terry Adams Rock and Roll Quartet.
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