Adam Levy to release album

Singer, songwriter, producer and former guitarist in Norah Jones’ Handsome Band, Adam Levy proves he’s a capable front man and masterful storyteller in his own right with the release of his stunning new CD, The Heart Collector, due in stores September 20, 2011 through Burnside Distribution.

Levy enjoyed a successful career as an in-demand sideman, even before he joined Jones’ band, but came late to songwriting, penning his first tunes while on tour in 2002, after Jones challenged band members, to write songs. He delivered two tracks that she later recorded, “In The Morning,” and “Moon Song.” He continued to write and released two CDs of his own while still in Jones’ band, and a third, Washing Day, shortly after he left in 2007 to follow his own path as a singer and songwriter.

In late 2009, when he hadn’t written any songs in several months, Levy came up with his own plan to write a song a week as a way to help him focus. And like Jones, he threw out the same challenge to a select group of songwriter friends including Ari Hest, Vienna Teng and Tony Furtado. Levy would come up with a title, perhaps based on a newspaper headline, an interesting phrase, or a sign and send it via email to members of this small group he dubbed The Song Club.

He spent the first few months of 2010 writing and soon had more than 25 songs. Though he hadn’t originally planned to make a record, it became apparent that recording these songs was the only thing he could do.

This is the genesis of The Heart Collector, an intimate collection of 13 acoustic songs, rich in lyrical detail and laced with lush string arrangements and accents of accordion, vibraphone, dobro, bass harmonica, Marxophone and pump organ.

He raised funds for the recording through Kickstarter and headed to Portland, Ore., to work with his friend, producer and engineer Mark Orton. They made the disc over a 10-day stretch at Orton’s Camp Watertown Studios.

The Heart Collector opens with “I Wish I could Change Your Mind,” one of two tracks Levy didn’t write with The Song Club. It’s a jazz flavored tune that he co-wrote during a songwriting retreat in Wales led by Chris Difford, one of several over the last few years in which he has participated.

“A Promise To California,” taken from the title of a Walt Whitman poem, evokes California’s golden age of the great singer-songwriters of the 70s, while “This Is The Sound,” has a bluesy feel and a title taken from the Julianna Hatfield song of the same name.

On the title track, Levy creates a Raymond Chandler-influenced film noir soundtrack, based on a character he first encountered in the Sam Philips song “Edge Of The World.”
“What is his story,” Levy mused. “What does he do when he’s not in a Sam Philips song?” Levy works a haunting, open D minor tuning on the track in which the narrator himself may or may not be the Jack-the-Ripper-esque Heart Collector.

Levy explores a decidedly lighter subject on “No Dancing,” a song inspired in part by New York City’s Cabaret Law, an obscure ordinance that dates back to the dawn of jazz and which stipulates that patrons cannot dance in any venue that does not have a cabaret license. A bar in New York where he played regularly had posted handmade signs throughout, with just two simple words, “No Dancing.”

Other standout tunes include “Painting By Numbers,” in which Levy imagines himself in an Edvard Munch painting, and “Promised Land,” about childhood visits to his grandparent’s house, a place where he first became “entranced by music and the power of song.”

Adam Levy was born and raised in suburban Los Angeles and found musical inspiration from his grandfather George Wyle, a pianist and arranger who co-wrote the opening theme to the iconic 60s television show, “Gilligan’s Island,” and the Christmas song, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” He tried clarinet and piano before finding his groove on guitar.

He didn’t sing his own songs until his first solo gigs in 2005, after his first songwriting retreat with Chris Difford of Squeeze, where writers wrote in pairs and then performed the new songs each night. Though daunted initially, Levy soon found confidence in his voice noting, “for better or worse, nobody can sing my songs like me.” He recorded his first CD as a vocalist, Loose Rhymes: Live On Ludlow Street, live at the Living Room in New York in 2006.

As a singer-songwriter, his musical heroes are Chris Whitley, the Beatles, Hank Williams, Richard Julian, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Sam Phillips, Jill Sobule, Loudon Wainwright III, Tom Waits, Gillian Welch, XTC, and Neko Case. His guitar work can be heard on records by Norah Jones, Amos Lee, Tracy Chapman, Sex Mob, Hot Club of San Francisco and others.

Levy, who runs the occasional marathon, has called Los Angeles, San Francisco and New Orleans home, and currently resides in Manhattan.

He will tour in support of The Heart Collector, this summer and into the fall.

www.AdamLevy.com