Adam Ezra is leaving his band behind for the acoustic show at the Broward Center on Thursday, Sept. 15. (Photo courtesy of Broward Center)
While he’s usually surrounded by the band that he created in Boston, which is known for its Herculean tour schedule – at least 200 shows a year, Adam Ezra says he’s looking forward to playing solo in Fort Lauderdale.
Ezra kicks off the Broward Center for the Performing Art’s singer-songwriter-musician series in the Abdo New River Room on Thursday, Sept. 15.
“The Broward Center, well, they are helping to keep independent American music alive,” Ezra says by telephone on his way to meet the band for a gig in Syracuse, N.Y.
His acoustic evening at the Broward Center is a way for him to return to his roots, he says. Following the Fort Lauderdale show, he’ll head to Captiva Island, Fla., where he’ll be part of the Island Hopper Songwriter Fest, a 10-day singer-songwriter music festival in Southwest Florida, performing there on Friday.
“While I play with an amazing band these days, I wanted to just come out by myself as a solo artist, dig in and take my time,” he says about the River Room show.
He wants audiences to experience a different vibe, to be part of what he says should feel like a conversation between the audience and the artist. He confides he doesn’t plan out a set. “The concerts that have always inspired me are the ones that don’t feel like a performance,” he says.
It’s this grassroots approach that has organically grown his following. He’s not signed by a major record label nor will you hear his songs on mainstream radio, but there’s no doubt that he has a flock of rabid fans.
Born Adam Ezra Olshansky in Corning, N.Y., he was raised in Weyland, Mass., In between semesters at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., he worked on a dairy farm in Cookstown, Ontario, as a farm hand. And he was writing songs. “I didn’t really know how to write a great song. I didn’t know how to use my voice yet but the more I wrote and the more I sang and the more songs that came out of me, the more I felt was the most honest parts of me that were showing up.”
He says he made a pact with himself on the farm that he was going to be a musician. “I was going to live my life through music and it probably meant that maybe I’d be 65 years old and playing on Thursday nights at a Joe’s Crab Shack. If that’s what it meant that was OK,” he says, adding he had yet to play a live show in his life.
Adam Ezra performs in the Abdo New River Room at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday, Sept. 15. (Photo courtesy of Broward Center)
The next stop was Chicago where Ezra says he was hired as a “recess guy” at an elementary school. But it was the music that was front and center. He played open mics. He then traveled the country. “I was trying to scrape gigs together, living out of my car for a while.” He returned to Boston where he had a vision of forming a band. “I wanted to be a part of something that was bigger than myself.”
He created Adam Ezra Group in the early 2000s, which consists of fiddler Corinna Smith, drummer Alex Martin, and bassist Poche Ponce. He says as good as they were, they couldn’t get hired anywhere in the competitive musical landscape of Boston.
“And so I found one of the emptiest bars I could find in Boston. I asked the owners if we could set up in the corner and just play and they said OK. We called all of our friends and that was how it started. We started playing Friday nights and after a little while there was a line out the door,” he says about playing the club Porters near the Boston Garden.
Then bars outside of Boston reached out and then places in New Hampshire.
Adam Ezra kicks off the Broward Center's singer-songwriter-musician series in the Abdo New River Room. His show is Thursday, Sept. 15 at 7:30 p.m.
“That was our story. It has been one person at a time for the last two decades and it’s been for most of the 20 years and we would play in any bar that would hire us and often times in danger of outnumbering audiences that we would play for.”
But a community started to evolve around the band’s music. “We started getting invited to play at real music venues, theaters and festivals.”
Ezra’s life, he says, has changed. The 45-year-old is a dad to 1-year-old Willa. His wife, Alley Welsh, is an artist, sculptor, and scientist with a specialty in cancer biology, he says. They met while he was playing a show at a club called the Middle East in Cambridge, where they struck up a friendship. “We were friends for many years and now we’re husband and wife,” he says.
Inspiration for songwriting comes from just about anywhere, he says. “I’m inspired by life journeys that we all take. I love writing songs that tell stories whether they are my own or someone else’s or a made-up story. Art reflects the lives we lead and the journeys we take,” he says.
Ezra says touring is still a bit “topsy turvy” since the COVID pandemic but “we’re back on the road and playing,” he says. “It’s been a long time since I’ve performed in Florida and I can’t wait to reconnect with people. It’s one of the reasons I’m looking forward to being at the Broward Center.”
Other singer-songwriters in the Broward Center Abdo New River Room series include:
- Andy McKee on Friday, Sept. 23
- Trent Harmon on Saturday, Nov. 12
- Dan Rodriguez on Sunday, Nov. 13
- David Cook on Thursday, Nov. 17
- Susan Werner on Friday, Jan. 27
- Vance Gilbert on Thursday, April 27
A solo acoustic evening with Adam Ezra is Thursday, Sept. 15 at 7:30 p.m. at the Broward Center for the Arts in the Abdo New River Room. Tickets online at BrowardCenter.org, or Ticketmaster.com; by phone at (954) 462.0222 or in person at the Broward Center’s AutoNation Box Office.
Tickets are $30-$35. The Broward Center is located at 201 SW Fifth Ave.in Fort Lauderdale.
