By Benjamin Joe
There’s a kind of thing that strikes you listening to Adam, playing out a long, twangy, yet pure sound on the electric guitar accompanied by an electric bass and a full set of drums. Some might call it magical, others familiar, and still more jazz. On the other hand, if you have him play your wedding, you might want to say he just nails it. And that’s what he’s done for several years.
Adam’s initiation into the world of music probably started as a child. Sitting in a chair left of the stage at Nietzsche’s on Allen Street during a segment called Jazz Happy Hour, his mother admitted that they had listened to The Grateful Dead and invited their children to as well. Later, in college, he got into Phish and maybe some other jam bands, and it is fair to say that the guitar licks Adam plays bring us back to the clear tones of Jerry Garcia’s playing, but there’s something underneath that reverberates.
Something simple, clear, and astoundingly sincere.
Photo by Benjamin Joe
I talked to Adam for at least 30 minutes only to discover that my recorder had mysteriously erased our entire conversation. Here’s what I managed to piece together in my notes.
He’s a songwriter. In college he studied Fine Arts, but as he explained the dorm scene to me, I could picture him sitting in one of these empty lecture halls, just playing guitar and slowly bringing his ideas to the other students. I dream of bands forming and reforming in new ways, different combinations, this voice with this rhythm. It all seems so beyond me now, and frankly, talking about it puts Bronstein into a bit of a reverie. There’s the sense that you’re talking to someone who’s been sure of what they want for a long time, so long it surprises them to be living in it.
“I’d meet different people and think of songs they’d be good at playing and the groups just formed out of nothing, really,” he told me, or as near as I can get to remembering. “Sometimes I’d have something that didn’t work with one group, and later I’d find some people who it could work for. Or it worked for one group and we’d change it to work with a new group.”
The first I remember hearing of Bronstein was when his band, Gravy, was playing every week at the Villa Pizzeria. In essence it was an all night jam. After that I would see him occasionally and eventually got him to give me a place where he’d be playing.
“This is kind of a slow time,” he told me. Obviously for him that means something totally different. (like this blog’s promise for new material every week, sorry people, I’ve been busy!)
After the Jazz Happy Hour he told me he’d be playing in his more commercial band to help showcase their range to wedding planners, young lovers if you will, who want to have the best for their big day. I asked him what it was like balancing the commercial with the creative.
“It’s kind of flowing,” he said, something like that. “Obviously you want to make money, but you also want to create. Sometimes the two just come at different times and each compliment each other.”
Whatever keeps your licks clean, Adam.
Oh, and this Happy Hour thing, they had to bring in a bassist last second, and they still hung onto the audience like a red hot poker.
Buffalo Music Players 