E. 273: Adam Palm | Musician

Amy Gabay 00:00
This podcast is brought to you by People’s Food Co Op, a community owned grocery store in downtown La Crosse, Wisconsin and Rochester, Minnesota that promotes local farmers and producers through an emphasis on fresh, healthy, sustainable food. Anyone can shop, everyone is welcome. For more information, visit them online at PFC.coop. This podcast is also brought to you by Trempealeau County Tourism. Whether your idea of fun is bicycling, hiking or canoeing, afterwards head into the heart of one of their welcoming communities to experience historic architecture, independent shops and locally owned dining establishments. Visit Trempealeau County Tourism online. Artspire is back with a full weekend of art at the Pump House Regional Arts Center. Enjoy live music from Cloud Cult, Bill Miller and B2wins, plus a fine art fair, interactive art projects, and visual and performing arts June 10th through 11th. Learn more at artspire@thepumphouse.org. We sat down with longtime music scene alum Adam Palm. We chatted about early exposures to music, influences, past albums, new music, COVID, the process for songwriting, and what’s next for this musician. You can find more conversations, food reviews, live music and events on our website lacrosselocal.com. I’m Amy.

Brent Hanifl 01:22
And I’m Brent.

Amy Gabay 01:23
And this is La Crosse Local.

Adam Palm 01:46
My name is Adam. I was born in South Carolina, in Charleston. And I got into music from when I was about 11, when my dad had me listen to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, with headphones on, lay on the floor and listen to the album front to back. And like the next day I said that I want to play guitar. Yeah, and I got a cheap guitar from him you know, started practicing and practicing. And I just never gave up.

Brent Hanifl 02:17
Thinking about influences, you reference Pink Floyd. And you know what I’ve seen you playing locally with a number of different bands and some of those kind of bridging and overlapping and different genres, what are some of your influences that kind of inspired that sort of stuff?

Adam Palm 02:31
I guess I had a lot of different influences. Through the years I got into jazz with Brad Meldo, really back in 2001. And I’ve really loved jazz ever since, you know, I always try to incorporate that in some of my songs. And folk music is great. Bluegrass, I love the Bluegrass sounds, the picking, the twanging, you know, I’m a big fan of funk. So I don’t know, like, I like to listen to a lot of different genres of music, kind of draw my, what I write from that.

Brent Hanifl 03:01
Just kind of growing up in the, I guess in the bar scene, in some sense, seeing all the different bands that are coming up in the you know, the early 2000s. It seemed like there’s a lot of bands, but they’re also as a tight knit group of people. You played in quite a variety of different bands, didn’t you?

Adam Palm 03:15
For sure. Yeah. Played in Three Beers Til Dubuque, which was just more of a funk band, party band. Stuff that I would write it was more like jazzy bluegrass stuff, you know, sometimes. I don’t know, I played with a lot. Yeah, a lot of different people throughout the La Crosse area. And that’s, that’s the nice thing about this area is that we can all kind of sit in with each other and experience different types of musical creation. You know, I think one of my favorite times in La Crosse playing is the Palm Sunday series. I started that up, I think 2010. And we basically every Sunday, throughout the summer, I play with a different person. And a lot of times I’ve never played with these people, but we’re like, hey, let’s do a show. Like cool. So then we show up and on a Sunday. I remember one time I asked Dan Sebranek if he wanted to play and he said sure. Yeah, you know, so we got to the gig. And we started setting up and then we both sat down and tuned our guitars. And we looked at each other. And he says, so now what? And we just started laughing. Then we, I don’t know, we played four hours of music.

Brent Hanifl 04:22
Wow, that’s cool. So just kind of looking into you over the past couple of days. You know, I know you had an album called Morning that you released in 2018. Is there anything new coming out? Anything kind of interesting that you’re working on?

Adam Palm 04:33
Yeah, actually, since I did have a lot of downtime with pandemic, eventually, you know, past all the laziness and depression and what not. I got into actually working on creating again. So the last six months or so, I’ve been diving into a loop show and learning how to do a loop show. So this new loop show I’m doing involves not only guitar and vocals, but also I’ll be adding in trombone, keys, drums. And it’s gonna be a full party, new stage name and stage band name to be announced coming soon, which is pretty exciting. If you want to check out the loop show, I do have a video on YouTube called Peace in Ukraine. It’s based on a traditional Russian Ukrainian folk tune, which I added in lyrics for given the current circumstances in the world.

Brent Hanifl 05:41
So, you know, this sounds like a new project for you, that’s completely different than something you traditionally do in the folk sense, I guess. What is your process for songwriting?

Adam Palm 05:50
Honestly, I, you know, it’s been completely different almost every time. Sometimes I’ll write a bunch of the music, the chords, the melodies, and then I go back with like, oh, these words would be cool with the song. And I put it into the words after, sometimes, I don’t know. I went to New York City in 2018 in September, and I wrote 20 songs in 20 days. And I just every day, I wrote a song. I woke up, and that was the plan. So I wrote mainly like the lyrics first, and then I would write the chords to it later. But one time I was in Montana in 2019, up in Cole Bridge, and I wrote a song in a bar with like, around, I’d say, probably six people giving me kind of their opinions as well. And everybody had kind of chimed in. And, yeah, it was great kind of writing in almost a collaborative environment. In North Carolina, I co wrote a song with a couple friends Chris Spinelli and Zach Iso, and that we each wrote a verse of the song and then we collectively wrote the chorus.

Brent Hanifl 06:52
in terms of recording, you know, that just something wherever, whenever it happens, it happens, or do you work fast or quick or just whatever comes up? What’s your process for putting something down? Is it just the, you know, you throw it out singles now? Or how does that work?

Adam Palm 07:06
Right now, just working on a song by song basis. I have written a couple of new tunes that I have no recordings of. And I’m in the process of getting those out there. One tune I did write is called Universes One. And I’m actually going to be filming a music video for that this weekend. And in the process of filming the music video, I am recording the audio in conjunction with that.

Brent Hanifl 07:30
So what I’ve seen from you and I guess following you on social media on your Facebook Adam Palm Music, you kind of have a home base here in La Crosse, and maybe COVID changed that, but you were kind of bouncing around the United States weren’t you?

Adam Palm 07:42
For sure, I actually traveled before COVID and I was traveling for a year and a half straight. It was great. A lot of fun. About a year of it or maybe a little bit more, I didn’t have a car.

Brent Hanifl 07:55
Did COVID stop that in some ways, or just kind of shut it down?

Adam Palm 07:59
Oh, yeah, I was in Phoenix, Arizona, and I just got done working in downtown Phoenix and Tucson. I was there for a bit. But I actually had a plane ticket booked to LA to go live in Venice Beach. Gonna go start my new home base out there in LA, kind of settled down. But then the virus sent all the work, it just dried up. Beyond music. I’m also an audio engineer for live events. And all live events were canceled immediately. So when there’s no work, there’s no money, I figured, I really don’t want to be in LA with no money.

Brent Hanifl 08:36
So what’s next for you? What are you excited about coming down the road?

Adam Palm 08:39
You know, honestly, right now I have a tour being scheduled this summer, currently working with Broken Wrist Records. So there’ll be a tour announced very soon. And I’ll be playing some shows, getting some new music out there and spending some time with my dog Beatrix.

Brent Hanifl 08:54
So if people want to find out more what’s the best avenue for them to go to?

Adam Palm 08:58
Right now Adam Paul Music on Facebook is the best avenue. The website still needs to be updated and I gotta get on my editor about that, who is actually me, but you know how it is.

Amy Gabay 09:14
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