By Benjamin Joe
Photograph by Benjamin Joe
It’s not easy getting up and performing, but it’s something that sometimes has to be done. Some would say that music creates a safe space for marginalized people. There can be a lot of reasons for a performer to do what they do.
And it can also can be pretty scary.
“Some of the shows that stressed me the most out were house shows because they’re right there,” Adelaide said, laughing. “You’re really singing right to them.”
The artist known by their middle-name, Adelaide, talked about their life as a musician and ultimately, a person, in a well-known bakery and coffee shop on the West Side of Buffalo.
The Southern Towns native wrote their first song on guitar after living in Colorado for a spell (in the middle of nowhere) before coming back to Ithaca where they’d recently dropped out of the University. Once there, they started playing out with a band called “Thunderstorm Clouds.”
Many lifetimes later, Adelaide is in Buffalo for now, recently bereft of their day job and is a consummate musical artist who is frank about their gender (they are queer), their beliefs (healing with music) and their ability to “feel intensely.”
“I’m a bit of a vessel, a channeler to something bigger than myself,” they said. “Lyrics will come to me as I’m falling asleep or when I’m in meditation. …
“More often than not it comes from feeling something so intensely that it reverberates outside my body and it needs to go elsewhere.”
Adelaide had a few things to say about the music industry, but also said that “confidence,” was the major factor that has allowed them to play in so many bands, in so many places, write so many songs and have so many people connect with them. Life’s been good, however, they did note a male dominancy that seems to overcast the industry.
But this is not an unchangeable obstacle.
“When I lived in Portland, when this magazine started – it’s now a larger collective called ‘She Shreds Media’ –… I was a subscriber. So obsessed. Was very invested in what was going on,” Adelaide said. “It finally felt like there was a community of guitarists and bass players who were women or nonbinary people who wanted to change the narrative from – like pictures in the classic guitar magazines – where there’s a woman in a bathing suit holding a guitar.”
Adelaide said that rock guitar has a long history of women, but it’s been taken away. Today they say they listens to women and femme musicians to “honor that legacy.”
“I think there’s such value in uplifting musicians that are in whatever various, for lack of a better term, a marginalized identity,” they said. “If I go to a show and it’s five cis straight white guys playing instruments, I’m just like (pause).
“I value it in its own way, but I really at this point want to see more musicians of color, more queer people, people who’s gender, you don’t know their gender, but I’m digging their vibe.”
For the future of Buffalo’s music scene, Adelaide sees a lot of hope. The working class rust belt mentality has a long way to go in terms of being progressive, they said, but they still feels, “there’s an effort to push past that.”
“I think my music could be considered rock,” they said. “But it’s so lyrically and emotional driven it steps out. There’s a saturation of dad-rock in Buffalo. It’s interesting because it’s not all (that way). There’s so much of every genre here, in Buffalo, but I do think there’s a saturation of dad-rock… It’s changing because that’s how time works. People from every generation are coming through and I think that’s a good thing.”
In the end, Adelaide said one should never, “live in regret,” which is something they’ve learned from the very young and the very old.
“There’s a lot of people who I think lose that because they have to focus on the basic needs … to survive. There’s no shame in that, that’s living life,” they said. “I feel very fortunate. One of the things I love most about Buffalo is the cheap rent. If I lived anywhere else I couldn’t quit my nine to five. Being able to live as an artist in a location and make art – and obviously it’s changing, Buffalo is changing – I do feel so grateful to have this perspective. Sometimes you need to just go for something, even when it’s risky.”
Adelaide’s single “Fire” can be found at https://adelaideband.bandcamp.com/track/fire. While the song is about Portland, OR, many have listened and said it’s got to be about Buffalo.
Buffalo Music Players 