Adam Holt

This is Adam Holt serves as a mission statement of sorts as it encompasses the variety of styles and genres that are an integral part of an Adam Holt show while sounding like a complete and focused album. Poppy, jazzy, funky, bluesy...it's all here. - This, That, & The Other Magazine

Could you imagine the Beatles’ "Blackbird" covered as a country-blues-rock song? I’d hate such blasphemy. But having heard a short clip from Adam Holt’s brand new CD, This is Adam Holt, now feeling it quite natural, as if the world was waiting just for this. The album seems to contain the very best of Adam’s works of the last three years. Every track is a potential hit ("Someone to Love", the opening track, excellent acoustic blues "Six Strings Down".

- Midnight Special Blues Radio Paris, France

Alabamian Adam Holt is quickly building a following that extends throughout the South and beyond… This CD is loaded with well-penned songs spiced with great guitar riffs and excellent vocals. It’s great music to just cut loose to. - Singer & Musician Magazine

Adam Holt's new CD, "This is Adam Holt", is an electrifying, soulful collection of 12 new songs by the Loxley singer, songwriter and lead guitarist. Backed by a host of incredible veteran musicians, Holt's new CD brings to mind the music of great blues artists, musicians who have inspired Holt's gritty blues sound.
"There's definitely influence from Eric Clapton to Muddy Waters to Van Halen," Holt said. "I think I've pulled all those influences together to create my own sound on this CD."
Indeed, the two cover songs and 10 original compositions on "This is Adam Holt" tell the classic tale of love gone and love gone bad in a Southern setting. "I call the CD singer-songwriter rock-n-roll with a Southern, rootsy feel," Holt said.
The first number on the CD, "Someone to Love," is a hard-driving rock songs that employs Holt's entire band, and it is on this cut that we are introduced to the power and force of Holt's vocals and grinding guitar. It's a commanding rock-n-roll number that goes right to the solar plexus.
But it's on the slow, steamy ballad "My Inside's Cryin'" that Holt creates the mood with his gritty voice. One can almost see the Spanish moss in the light of the moon on this number. His relentless, steady guitar licks cut through his fine lyrics and help to tell the story.
"She Left Town" is carried by the key board skills of Chris Spies, but it's Holt's infusion of his soulful vocals and catchy rhythm that give it that gospel-rock sound. This is a song for when you're blowing down Route 10 on the way to Mobile.
That Southern rootsy fell is evident on the bluesy "Let's Talk About Love." Backed once again by Spies' steamy keyboard, this song invites the listener to join in on the singing. There isn't a gospel choir behind Holt and his band, but you almost think there is.
"Mean Ole' Woman" is a tongue-in-cheek number, where Holt and his band seem to be having fun. Yet like every number on the CD, it is about the beat and chorus.
Deep into the CD, things return to serious music with "Will You Remember Me?" Holt drags out the question with his strong vocal supported by his lead guitar.
Holt doesn't mention young Elvis Presley as an influence, but "Alright With Me" is a superb rockabilly-driven song with a nod to country and western.
The next-to-last cut, the slow "Interrogation Blues," is just that...pure, hard-drinking blues. Here we're treated to Holt's harmonica as the primary instrument alongside his sultry ballad.
There isn't any mention of a full moon on "Interrogation Blues." But, like many of the numbers on "This is Adam Holt," I'm sure I see one. And mood and feeling are, ultimately, two important components to this superb collection of songs. With each song, it's easy to imagine Holt and his band jamming in a field of kudzu somewhere in Alabama with the haze of dusk behind them.
- The Pelican

Close your eyes while listening to "This is Adam Holt," and it's very easy to imagine that you're hearing the music while having dinner or drinks at a venue with a view of water.
"Gulf Coast back-deck music" isn't a label you'll find on a record store bin, and it would be hard to pin down even if you could. Blues and rock dominate the genre, but jazz, contemporary folk, R&B and country often fit right in.
The one key criterion seems to be that people on Gulf Coast back decks want to have their cake and eat it too: They want entertainment polished and easygoing enough to serve as a backdrop for dining or conversation, if that's what they're there for. But when they're not treating it like background music, they expect lyrics, musicianship and presentation toothsome enough to reward their full attention.
Holt is hardly the first coast musician to rise to this daunting challenge, but he is certainly one of the most diligent, and his efforts pay off on his latest album. "This is Adam Holt" is a thoroughly accessible album, but not at the cost of intensity or sincerity.
It also represents a challenge of pace for Holt. His last album, "Who I Am," released in 2002, was the work of a gunslinger who'd started out in Christian rock and worked his way over to the blues. His band, the Blues Congregation, consisted mainly of veteran blues players, notably drummer Henry Jolley.
Thanks in part to their guidance, Holt wasn't just turning out the Stevie Ray Vaughan-style blues you'd have expected from someone of his generation. He was digging deeper, going back to the Chicago-style blues of Muddy Waters.
But as much as Holt appreciated the blues, he also wanted to rock out. "This is Adam Holt" finds him playing accessible mid-tempo rock that draws on pop, country and blues influences. Holt himself bills it as "singer-songwriter rock-n-roll with a Southern rootsy feel."
The catchiest tracks on the disc show Holt's ability to tell a clear and appealing story within the tight confines of a pop song. "Years Go By," a rolling country-tinged rocker in which the narrator wonders what might have been, is one good example. So is the free-flowing "She Left Town."
"Oh no, oh no, daddy's girl got away/ oh no, oh no, momma's baby got away/ she left town to go discover/ all the things the world could give her/ then she found a man to love her/ see that's me."
But there are some substantial change-ups. The second track on the album is a cover of the Beatles' "Blackbird," somewhat countrified when the band kicks in with a two-step beat.
Beatles purists might object. But it comes across as the best kind of cover, a respectful appropriation that gives the listener a fresh perspective on a classic work.
(If note-for-note covers are your preference, Holt has a secret weapon at live shows: a whole-nine-yards rendition of Peter Frampton's "Do You Feel Like We Do," complete with talking guitar.)
You'll here some blues influence on the album, but nothing approaching purism. Holt makes no apologies about shifting to a more commercial sound.
"I had gotten to a point where, playing blues, I had kind of capped out, financially," he said.
"I can either stay playing blues and play it to people who already know it, or I can be more commercial, and still play blues to people who aren't familiar with it."
So it's not that he's abandoned the blues. Particularly at his solo shows, it's still a big part of the mix, he said.
And there are quite a few of those. Holt takes a serious approach to bookings: His calendar shows him playing at least two out of every three days over the next couple of months. These cover everything from solo bookings at private parties to band shows at major tourist destinations such as Flora-Bama Lounge & Package and LuLu's at Homeport Marina in Gulf Shores.
"I do this for a living. I have to stay busy", he said. "I've got dates up into November."
If there's a downside to this, it may be the one Fairhope City Council member Debbie Quinn ran into when trying to book bands for the 2004 Fairhope Music Festival. She called Holt six months ahead of time, only to find he already had a gig on the festival's date. She had to wait until the 2005 festival to bring him in, but she said it was worth the wait.
"Adam was very personable with the audience," she said. "He could kind of feel the crowd, I thought, and could move his music whichever way he needed to. It wasn't set."
Holt said the disc took about five months to record. He produced it himself in his home studio, right down to designing the cd package artwork and taking the photos. That's even his dog on the back of the jacket.
Primary musicians were drummer Karl Langley and bassist Derek Jones, with contributions from Chris Spies (keyboards), Wes Loper (background vocals) and Pierre Robinson (bass on one song.)
The production is skillful: Holt indulges in layering guitar tracks, but keeps an open, almost live feel to the rhythm section.
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