PureVolume

Peter Bradley Adams on the Journey to Leavetaking…

“I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama and began playing piano when I was six. My parents found an old piano which had been salvaged from the wreckage of the Tutweiler Hotel after it burned down. It had been used in the cocktail lounge and there were still drink stains on it. I loved playing that piano, but loved even more hearing my grandfather play it. I would crawl under it and stick my head up by the sound board. No one else seemed to get how amazing the thing sounded when he played it. I've been playing music ever since. I studied music in college and went on to get a master's degree in composition, but I've found that most of that formal training has just gotten in the way of making music. All that information clogs things up. I'm sure it's crept into my writing somehow for the good, but I spend most of my time running away from it.
I moved to Los Angeles to write music for film, but the whole time I was secretly writing songs. I was churning out bad music for bad tv shows, then running home at night to write and record songs. It just didn't work like that, and I finally had to leave the steady job. That's when I started making records, first with eastmountainsouth, and then on my own. I'm still learning to write good songs, and I'm still learning to sing them. And I still remember the sound my grandfather made when he played that old piano.”

----------

Peter Bradley Adams released his second full-length solo record, Leavetaking on August 5th, 2008 on Sarathan Records. The record is produced by Peter and Nashville producer / instrumentalist, Lex Price

Within a year of forming eastmountainsouth, (with duo partner Kat Maslich Bode), was signed by one of Peter’s idols, Robbie Robertson, to DreamWorks Records. Peter co-produced their debut album with another one of his idols, Mitchell Froom. They had an amazing year and a half – the album was number one for eleven weeks on the non-com radio charts and they toured extensively opening for Lucinda Williams, Traci Chapman, and performed their final show at the Hollywood Bowl opening for Lyle Lovett and Shelby Lynn.

His first solo record, Gather Up, was released in 2006 on his own Mouse In the Moon label, distributed by High Wire / Fontana. Peter produced the record himself displaying the breadth of his influences from Americana to pop, ambient to alt-country, from folk to his classical training. Reviewers were delighted with the results: “[Gather Up] isn’t merely an amazingly pretty record or a fine example of such and so, it’s a Rumors, a Court And Spark, a Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” – LostatSea.net
“In fact, nearly everything about this recording, from Adams's hushed croon to the atmospheric weave of acoustic and electric instruments to the session's living room ambience, can be summed up in a word: subdued… but the low-key arrangements help sustain the intimate and sometimes haunting mood that allows this CD to quietly stand out.” – Washington Post
XM Satellite Radio’s “The Loft” named him “Notable New Artist of The Year” in 2006.

Peter's arrangement and interpretation of Stephen Foster's "Hard Times" - recently appeared in Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown and was included on the soundtrack album. Peter's music has appeared in an astonishing 30+ films and television shows in the US.

----------

“The title and theme of the album is inspired by a line from the Mark Strand poem titled The View: 'He's always been drawn to the weather of leavetaking.' The word leavetaking resonates with me on many levels. It's a theme you hear in so many traditional songs... some of them traveling songs, or gospel songs, or love songs... they've got that old longing in them that I'm really drawn
to."

pba