Adam Derry

Adam Derry has spent his days on the move. Born into a missionary family from Omaha, Nebraska, he spent a great part of his childhood in Mexico. After a series of life changing events, including his parents divorce, he ended up back in Omaha, where he buried himself inside a world filled with basketball and poetry.

In his early teens he gravitated toward hip-hop, identifying with its raw emotion and clever word play. It slowly became his passion. By the mid nineties, he had established himself as an unbeatable freestyle rapper allowing his pent up rage to spill out in bar after bar of emotion. It wasn’t until his high school art teacher and mentor gave him an old acoustic guitar that he actually considered making his own music. It took awhile. It was James Taylor and Lou Reed versus Public Enemy and KRS-One.

He kept freestyling with his friends’ band at their live shows, until one day he got called on stage and actually played a few original acoustic songs. Something felt right. Then he walked away from music altogether. He moved to the Grand Canyon and worked in the National Park. He moved to New York and worked with a children’s group. He moved to Guam and taught windsurfing and learned how to scuba dive. He backpacked for two months alone in Thailand and Cambodia. He got a job in a club in New York City. And then, one summer in Upstate New York, he picked up his guitar again. He wrote a song. And then another. And another.

In the early Fall of 2003, Adam took a Greyhound bus from New York City and headed West. For the first time in five years he went back on stage and played an open mic night back in his hometown of Omaha. He silenced the loud bar and captivated the listeners. Someone in the audience liked him so much that three days later they recorded a demo. He continued West on another Greyhound bus to Denver, where he recorded again. Four thousand miles later he had an album recorded and was generating quite a following. This album is appropriately titled, The Greyhound Sessions. Then he got on the radio.

Q98.5, the modern music radio station in Omaha, got a hold of his album and fell in love with it. Despite the stations strict guidelines about playing only signed artists, The highly rated Pat & JT morning show had him come play live in the studio and began playing his singles ‘Shotgun’ and ‘Polarity’ on a regular basis. The rest is history.

He has completed the music for two new albums, but is holding off their release until 2005. His music is captivating audiences of all ages. It is music you hear once and must hear again and again.