Travel to the Unknown: Interview with Adam Zwig

interview with M. Alberto Rivera

Adam Zwig performs breezy indie-folk which will make you feel familiar and at ease. These are stark and subtle acoustic harmonies with deeply personal narratives. The songs are pop smart and catchy, and Zwig uses the many colors available to him to paint broad brilliant portraits with his guitar. Ultimately there’s a hopeful quality to Adam Zwig’s music. Upbeat and sunny, lighthearted, he doesn’t have time for trite and tiresome negativity.
Currently on tour supporting his latest release, “Visions of the Shimmering Night,” (Conscious Records Music,) Adam was good enough to catch up with us and share his thoughts on touring, reflect on his time busking in Europe, and music as a means of personal growth.

M. Alberto Rivera: How is the tour going so far? Adam Zwig: The tour is going great! We’ve connected with some really cool audiences.
MAR: For those who aren’t familiar with you yet, how would you describe your music? AZ: I’d say it’s vision music – visions of what’s beyond everyday awareness, just below the surface of what you think and feel. And down there everything happening is meaningful, including the bad things…it’s all meant for us to grow…we’re all in process. Sound-wise I don’t know; people say I sound like Neil young, bob Dylan, Lou reed… One person said I play jazz!! But that’s not true …
MAR: Is it harder to command attention from people when you’re busking or in a club?
AZ: Busking or playing in a club or theater is pretty similar. You gotta do something real if you want people to listen.

MAR: What‘s the biggest performance lesson you learned while busking?
AZ: I busked in my early 20’s while I was in Europe. Crowds would gather and the hat got full and supported me well. But it didn’t start like that. What I learned was to focus on my art and my message, not on trying to entertain people. That paradoxically drew in more folks.

MAR: Do you have a favorite song in your set to perform?
AZ: Lately I’ve been loving playing our new radio single, Going Back To Vermont. Just feels right.

MAR: You talk about spiritual growth through music. Who is an artist that you listened to that helped you on a spiritual or emotional level?
AZ: Spiritually and emotionally it wasn’t just one or two artists that helped me. I think I learned to live by listening to blues and folk and rock n roll. The music always speaks to me on a deep level and shows me the unsaid things in myself and in the world. Music is therapy. For me songwriting and therapy are the same thing because they’re both methods of exploring the unknown, the ideas and feelings you don’t know yet, the parts of you that are just outside your awareness. These are the parts that bring change, growth, and healing. Music is therapy and therapy is music !!

MAR: Aside from a CD, what would you most like someone to take away from an Adam Zwig show? AZ: At an Adam Zwig show I’d like people to have an experience of something beyond what they already know – a thought, a feeling, an inkling, a sense that there are many worlds within yourself, and that you can transform life by opening up to things outside what you already believe to be true about yourself and the world. That and have great fun at the show!

MAR: Parting thoughts . . . .
AZ: Parting thoughts: Everybody love!

www.adamzwig.com