www.adamlevy.com/
www.myspace.com/adamlevysings

Throughout his career, Levy has devoted himself to developing his unmistakable sound as a player. He grew up in suburban L.A., where his grandfather enjoyed cachet in the music business as a writer. He’d written a variety of songs, from “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” to the Gilligan’s Island theme, and often brought young Adam along to recording sessions. While other kids his age were emulating Jimmy Page or Jimi Hendrix, Levy based his notions of excellence on memories of guys in suits and fat, colorful ties, reading charts and playing jazz changes. 

Eventually Levy explored the rock canon, if only to pick up some gigs. “I started getting really into pop music,” he says. “I became a Beatles addict. I had a stack of K-TEL records. Today, Levy sites an eclectic mix of musical heroes including: the Beatles, Hank Williams, Richard Julian, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Chris Whitley, Jill Sobule, Loudon Wainwright III, Tom Waits, Gillian Welch, XTC and Neko Case.

His approach to the guitar began with wrapping his hands around the shape of the song. Taste and talent honed his style, and at 23 he left Southern California for the fertile jazz scene in San Francisco.

The road from his ascension in the Bay Area led him around the country. Playing everywhere the work took him, relocating now and then including to Los Angeles and New Orleans, Levy settled in New York in 1999, where he met Norah Jones at a club one night. He gave her his phone number and invited her to call whenever she might need someone to play guitar. When she called him for a job, he played it. Another one followed.

“And that,” Levy sums up, “was all there was to it.”

While becoming an integral component of the sound that launched the Norah Jones phenomenon, Levy continued to spin his own sound. “I wanted to make music that was outside of the traditions,” he says.

Without really even thinking about it, Levy developed a knack for tailoring his parts around a lyric and a vocal. After a while he began adding singers to his own projects. Soon the unique qualities of his writing began to surface, and after spending a weekend in 2005 at a songwriter workshop in England, he started thinking about doing the unthinkable: singing his own songs.”

And so Levy booked himself into the Living Room in New York for a 90-minute solo show. “It was grueling,” he admits. “I’d never done a show like that, but I was daring myself to sing that long. And when I recovered my voice two days later I thought, ‘Now, that’s what I want to do.’”

With that, the path to Washing Day opened wide. Sifting through a guitar case literally filled with songs, he came up with material that was artful and accessible, elusive though revealing, easy to hear yet built on layers of meaning.