By Victor Wishna, Special to JTNews
Most Bar Mitzvah boys have to settle for fountain pens and savings bonds. When Adam Levy became a man at 13, however, he walked away with a new Gibson ES-335, still considered one of the finest electric guitars ever made. Twenty-three years later, the ES — or as Levy calls her, “Esther” — is still the guitar he plays in concert.
“It became my talisman,” says Levy, who is currently performing with Grammy-goddess Norah Jones and recently released his own album, Get Your Glow On. “I thought, ‘I have a professional guitar — that must mean I’m going to be a professional guitar player.’”
But Levy — who has toured the world several times over and will take the stage with Jones in Marymoor Park on August 5 — never meant to be a rock star.
Born in Los Angeles, he fell in love with the music business at age six on a visit to a recording studio with his late grandfather, George Wyle, a successful composer, who penned the theme to “Gilligan’s Island.” From what Levy saw, making music was a comfortable 9–5 job. No sex, no drugs, and not that much rock-n-roll — which was just fine with him.
“I don’t smoke, I don’t get high, and to me, one beer is like a big night out,” says Levy, 36, relaxing in a Brooklyn coffee shop a few blocks from his apartment. “I’m a bit of a homebody. I like to travel, but I like to stay home more.”
That’s just too bad for the reluctant rocker. By the time he finished music school in the late ‘80s, studio posts were a thing of the past. So after working odd jobs during the day and playing jazz gigs at night in L.A. and San Francisco, he got his first big break when singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman picked him for her band in 1994. After touring Japan and Europe, he recorded a solo on her Grammy-winning song “Give Me One Reason,” which rose to the Top 10 on the U.S. charts. This summer, he’s on the road again with Jones after traversing the globe with her last year. This past spring, he criss-crossed the country to promote his own album.
Get Your Glow On, released in April on Levy’s own Lost Wax Records, is a Memphis soul-inspired mix of original instrumentals and newly rendered classics, with an all-star line-up of guest vocalists. Jones sings a slow, stirring version of Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender,” and the album also features stalwarts such as the Holmes Brothers and Chicago soul legend Otis Clay.
“Memphis soul has always floated in and out of my music,” says Levy, who picked up his first guitar at summer camp when he was 10 and started playing the standards. “There’s something very direct about it. You feel like you’re in the room with these guys.”
Many of them were in attendance for a recent launch party/performance at Makor, the Jewish cultural center in New York where Levy and Jones used to play a regular weeknight gig in 2001. Taking the stage with Esther, Levy murmurs in tones mellow enough for an NPR announcer: “We were just touring the West Coast…now we’re back on the Upper West Side.” Pause. “I’m just sayin’ whatever I can to get applause.”
Before a weeknight crowd of about 75, he introduces his guests: Clay, the Holmes Brothers, Buttermilk Junior (his Austin, Tex.-based band), and then “Ms. Norah Jones,” whose own three concerts at the nearby 3,000-seat Beacon Theater had just gone on sale — and sold out in a matter of minutes.
Jones met Levy in 1999 on her first night in New York. The two became friends, then collaborators, and she says that in many ways he is the linchpin of her group.
“Our band is all very familial, and Adam has a lot to do with that,” Jones says. “He introduced me to my bass player and boyfriend (Lee Alexander), and he has a connection to almost everyone. He’s a really great person, and obviously a great musician. And he’s a pretty darn good songwriter, too.”
Jones sings one of his original songs on the current tour and her next album, which began recording in April, will include a couple more.
When asked about Jewish influences, Levy — raised by “hippie Jewish parents” who incorporated Crosby, Stills, & Nash into family seders — says he was never really inspired by “traditional” music. Though he has performed with David Krakauer’s Klezmer ensemble, he feels a stronger connection to the popular Jewish songwriters of his grandfather’s era. “I remember Carole King and Irving Berlin, and I think, ‘Hooray for our team!’” he says.
Yet he admits there’s also something Jewish in the communal catharsis of soul music, which he calls “blues with a beat.”
“It comes from pain, but it’s joy and it’s curative,” he says. “There’s a sense that, ‘Hey, it’s not just happening to you. It’s not raining on you, it’s raining on everybody.’”
Glow is actually Levy’s second solo album, but the first one — produced by Jay Newland, who also engineered and co-produced Norah Jones’ multi-platinum-selling debut — with national distribution. He is already thinking of his next project, an entire album of original songs. He may even sing on stage, for the first time since his Bar Mitzvah.
“In my head I’m still just a six-year-old kid looking at these professional musicians thinking how cool this all is, and sometimes I still wonder, is that me?” Levy laughs. “I know it’s not very ‘rock star’ to say that.”