Dec. 31: Spend New Year’s Eve with Adam Ezra Group at Tupelo Music Hall 

DERRY, NH – New Year’s Eve is officially upon us and sooner than later 2024 will be a memory and 2025 will  be reality. This occasion usually brings a sense of either hope, progression, opportunity, resolution or a combination of these and there’s going to be an abundance of parties taking place to ring in the occasion. One of the many examples of this around New Hampshire is one that’s being put on by the Boston-based Americana act Adam Ezra Group. They’re going to be taking the stage at Tupelo Music Hall with two options – dinner and a show (doors at 5:30 p.m.), or show only (doors at 8:30, show at 9 p.m.)  Albany, New York act Sirsy are going to be opening up both installments, so make sure to arrive in a prompt manner regardless of which show you attend.

Ezra and I had a talk ahead of the festivities about a single the band recently released that’s actually a pretty old tune, collaborating with a rock & roll legend, live streaming in the post-pandemic era and his thoughts on coming back to Tupelo.

IF YOU GO

Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry NH

Two Options: Dinner and a show 5:30/or show only 8:30 p.m.

Rob Duguay: It took a while, but the single “Juna Please” you did with John Oates finally made it to streaming services everywhere after seven years when it was originally recorded at Addiction Sound Studio in Nashville. What took so long for it to be uploaded to Spotify, Apple Music and everywhere else? Was it a conscious decision or were there a lot of technological and legal obstacles?

Adam Ezra. Yeah, it’s kind of interesting, right? When John and I wrote that song, we were working on an Adam Ezra Group album called “Hurricane Wind”, which was where we first recorded “Juna Please”. During that time, I went into the studio with John for this recording session, and we recorded that song along with another co-write called “Truth In The Wine” and another song called “All I Am”. Our acoustic performance of “All I Am” in the studio is also on the album, and coincidentally, that song was just released by John on his latest solo album. This past summer, John decided to produce a single for the Adam Ezra Group called “Hold Each Other Now”, which we released back in September.

I’m super proud of it and I love the way that it came out. In kind of celebrating that with our fanbase and having another co-write with John out in the world while having him getting more involved in producing us, John and I talked a little bit. We both realized that we had these two other songs that we recorded seven years ago, so we decided to release them. They both never really had a home on an album and following the release of “Hold Each Other Now”, we wanted to do some acoustic stuff too, so we released “Juna Please” a few weeks ago and sometime early next year we’re going to release another tune as an acoustic duo with “Truth In The Wine”.

RD: How did this collaboration with John initially get started?

AE: It was so interesting because we wouldn’t have crossed paths otherwise. John is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, he’s kind of a superstar and I’m this underground, indie folk musician from New England. I was managed at the time by a guy named Brian Doyle who is based out of New York City, and he also happened to be the manager of Hall & Oates for a number of years. I write so many songs that I’m always sending my team little demos of what I’m working on, and I kept sending Brian some of these songs. He said,”You know what? I have this feeling that you and John are kind of kindred spirits, so I’m gonna send him some of your work and let’s just see how he reacts to see if he wants to do something.”

Sure enough, John listened to some of the music and he invited me down to Nashville to write with him. That started a friendship that has lasted throughout these years and we’ve probably written nine of 10 songs together. It’s been such a joy and honor to have him be a part of our story.

RD: That’s fantastic. For the past few years, you and the rest of the band have been doing these things online called “The Gathering Series”, and you’ve reached over 850 episodes so far. These take place in different locations, you’ve done some of them at your home in Massachusetts and you’ve done others as part of live concerts at various venues. Ever since the height of it during the COVID-19 pandemic back in 2020, the state of live streaming has shifted around where some musicians prefer to leave the live streams in that time period while others like yourself keep on doing them while incorporating different ideas. When it comes to your perspective on live streaming these days while doing “The Gathering Series”, how has it evolved and how has it progressed with you connecting with your fans through the internet?

AE: That’s a great question and thanks for digging into our history and wanting to know about it, that’s awesome.

RD: No problem.

AE: It’s so much more fun when I get to have conversations that don’t start with “So who are your influences?”. I was lucky in some ways because right before the live streams blew up because of COVID, it was actually the first night I cancelled my first show in March of 2020 and it had just been declared a pandemic. I went online to live stream, less to perform and more to just kind of feel a little less alone during the first night that I was home from being on tour. At the time, I don’t know if you remember what it felt like when they first declared the pandemic, but I thought it was going to be a couple weeks.

RD: Yeah, same here. I thought it would last until the summer and then it was going to mitigate on its own.

AE: Yeah, and nobody had any kind of idea what was going to happen, but it was scary nonetheless. I remember that I was supposed to open up for Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes down in Clearwater, Florida, and I had to cancel my flight and I had to cancel the show. I was just so bummed, so I went online to do the live stream and I was joined by a couple hundred people. At the end of it, I just felt a little bit better and a little less isolated, and then I said,”You know what, guys? I’ll come back tomorrow night.” I came back the next night and there were hundreds more and then hundreds more and so on.

We got so much traffic, especially during those first few, and then a week or two later the rest of the world started catching on to the live streams. By that time, we had established a series and that’s when we started calling it “The Gathering Series” and over the course of the pandemic, we gathered every single night for 500 nights in a row. At the same exact time at 7pm every night, no matter where I was or what I was doing, I would figure out a way to get enough connectability that I could live stream. Again, this was not created as a means to promote my music or get it out there as much as it was to just stay connected. We have always had this very inspiring community of music fans surrounding us, and as an underground band with this community, I’ve always felt very, very close to them and vice versa.

It became a way to stay connected, but also to galvanize us. On many nights, there was as much connection between the gatherings themselves on the chat board between the people watching and myself. It was just a really inspiring journey and before the clubs opened up, we did a “Live Gathering Series” where we would go to the backyards of fans all over the country. We had a system of pods so no one would have to get into each other’s space and we ended up doing about 100 shows without anyone getting sick. Once we reached the 500th gathering milestone, I was obviously still live streaming every single night, but it wasn’t exactly sustainable for the long-term.

It became such an important part of who we were as a community that we decided to keep the gatherings going and to this day, we gather twice a week. Every Tuesday at 8pm, no matter where I am, and then once every weekend we try to take fans to one of our shows while live streaming as part of the series. As you mentioned, we recently crossed the 850 mark and it continues to be a very inspiring way for me to stay connected to the amazing people who listen to our music.

RD: I think it’s a really cool endeavor. Do you have any plans for when you reach 1,000? Do you already have any ideas in mind for that or are you just taking it one gathering at a time?

AE: We were just talking about that at one of the last gatherings. We wanted to figure out when the exact date would be, because you can do the math from doing two gatherings a week, so during that night some of the fans figured out when the exact date would be. Of course, I messed that up because just the other day I did a doubleheader gathering, so I messed up our timeline. It’ll be sometime in May of 2026 and we’ve literally as a community have started talking about what we should do to make it really special.

RD: As an independent artist in an age of streaming services and people getting their music in a variety of ways, do you find yourself thinking outside the box a lot of times when it comes to marketing your music, promoting your art and promoting what you do?

AE: This is the case with independent artists in general. When you don’t have a big machine behind you, you don’t have a lot of money and resources behind you and you feel like you’re doing something special, how do you get that out to a wide audience? It’s something that we think about all the time. We are constantly trying to connect with other artists and collaborate in cool ways so we can share each other’s fans together, either by doing live shows or through writing and recording together. We are always trying to think about and figure out ways to make sure that all the people who are following us on streaming platforms and social media actually know when we’re going to be touring through town. It continues to be a really kind of fun challenge, but sometimes there’s a cruel irony to becoming an artist where you actually have to run a business at the same time, which is never something that I felt like I was necessarily great at.

We do have such a fun community around our music these days that it’s fun to try to mix it up and come up with interesting and new ways to share music and to do things that really engage with the people around us in unique ways.

RD: You have this show happening at Tupelo Music Hall on New Year’s Eve, so what are your thoughts going into it?

AE: I will tell you, I have a long history with Tupelo Music Hall. It used to be a smaller club and there was a different location for it, it was in Londonderry as a matter of fact. When it started out, it was a 250 capacity room and way back in the day, they were one the few really legit New England that took a chance on us. The first time we played at that early version of Tupelo, there might have been 30 people there to see us, but in spite of us not making them money, they continued to invite us back because they really liked us. Our fan base around that area grew to where we would eventually sell out that little place back in the day before they moved to the bigger location where they are now.

We’ve tried to play there at least once a year and for the last number of years we’ve made it our destination for New Year’s Eve. We just love that spot and we love Southern New Hampshire, that area has been so good to us and there’s an amazing group of fans. We like to do as many special things as we can in Southern New Hampshire and New Year’s Eve is certainly one of the shows that we look forward to the most every single year. It’s going to be the last show of a run that we’re calling “The Dysfunctional Family Gathering Holiday Tour”, which is our second annual and our friends in Sirsy are going to be opening up for us. It’s always a really fun part of our year and we wouldn’t have it any other way.