Cher (SCAD Radio GM) and I went to see Me Nd Adam in concert on October 10th at District Live. I want to start off by sharing my personal thoughts on Me Nd Adam and their live performance. For all that aren’t aware–I get a bunch of submissions in my email (music@scadradio.org) in which I got an email from their manager (shoutout to Justine) and immediately liked the first song they shared. When I really like a song, I like to let the sender know. Ever since I showed my interest they showed theirs by sending me all their new releases. Honestly, I was never disappointed. I got excited every time I saw a new message. When I heard they were coming down to Savannah I knew it was finally my opportunity to meet them. I felt a combination of excitement and nerves leading up to the concert because it’s one thing to have an online presence and another to have a live/stage presence. I actually think their stage presence is different from the actual personalities of Adam and Vince. After interviewing them I learned this presence took time, but they looked confident up there as if they owned the stage. Some artists can end up overconfident and cocky but Adam and Vince are quite humble. They’re very nice people, which was a great relief on my end. This was one of the biggest projects I took on for Radio and very personal since they’re one of my current favorites. They’re an alternative rock band from Austin, Texas. This is our interview with them after the show:
Hailey: Who inspires you to be the artist you are?
Adam: All my friends and peoples’ stories.
Cher: Is there a particular story that inspires you the most?
Adam and Vince: Vince and I write all of our songs very literally about things we’ve gone through. Every song is a story piece. Usually what happens is we’ll have a song and we’ll talk about the character and any story, think about the arc of the story, so by the end of the song, there’s some type of resolution. Usually, the way we get the story written is by drawing from examples of people we know that went through something. A character can be many people that we know put together. It’s not always just like one thing. They’re [the songs] created by combining lots of different tales.
Adam: In terms of artists or musicians, currently I like Phoebe Bridgers a lot. I listen to a lot of modern music. We both agree that Blink-182 is good. We love old country music too; like Waylon Jennings.
Vince: I am really into trap music. I love The Cure. I like screamo. My favorite trap artist or rapper right now is Polo G. I spend a lot of time listening to Meek Mill and old-school rappers like Jay-Z for example.
Adam: He’ll listen to hip-hop and I’ll listen to Jason Isbell or something, like singer-songwriters. But then we both like Blink-182 and basically all rock. We’re pretty non-discriminatory when it comes to music unless it sucks.
Hailey: Do you think of yourselves as a rock band?
Adam and Vince: Yes, we think of ourselves as a rock band. Ideally, as an alternative rock band. I hope the public can view us as an alternative rock band one day.
Hailey: You explained how family and friends inspired you, is that how you started creating music? What got you to wish to be a band?
Adam and Vince: To be honest I wonder the same thing. I’m serious. I think we both started playing music in other people’s bands and we always found playing music fun. But this project is the first time both of us were the primary songwriters. It’s the first time we got to be co-pilots for each other’s ideas and such. I think most of the time me [Vince] and Adam are more like producers and second gunners to other bands.
I [Adam] always liked to create music and always respected listening to stories and songs, and thought maybe I could do that. But I never thought I was the guy. Like I never imagined myself being the lead singer, or a songwriter even. And then I just started liking doing it. And then he [Vince] was like “Dude you’re pretty good man, we could make a band.”
I [Vince] have been producing a lot of other guys’ music for a while. I was in New Orleans and I just called Adam and was like “Hey man, there’s an empty night at the studio, I’m not doing anything if you want to come over and record some music, we could just mess around,” and that was like the last time either of us did that because after we started this band. We made “Foolish Lover” that first time we recorded music together and now it’s one of our biggest songs. At first, we were like “Yo, this is fun!” then our friends were like, “Dude, you’re pretty good, you should put it [“Foolish Lover”] out.” We didn’t know what to call ourselves even. Then Vince was like, “I don’t know, how about Me Nd Adam.” It was very humble beginnings. We didn’t have big dreams really. But then when we went in we were like let’s do it for real. We wanted to take it as seriously as we could if we were gonna make a commitment to each other. Which is the thing about a band where it’s hard and good. It’s like a marriage. I’m [Adam] giving him [Vince] my whole life to him and he’s giving his whole life to me and we depend on each other. Long answer short, he [Vince] inspires me to be an artist, and maybe I inspired him to be an artist.
Cher: In this metaphor, are y’all already married or just engaged?
Adam and Vince: We’re deeply married. We’re well past the engagement.
Cher: Is there a band dynamic?
Vince: The dynamic has evolved a lot over time. I think when we first started Adam was more along for the ride even though he was singing; we haven’t yet figured out what we wanted “Me Nd Adam” to be. So at the time, we were just doing what we felt came naturally. As we felt we should be more serious, or if we were gonna take it to the next step, we had to get more serious and Adam had to find his ideas that he wanted to be represented in the music. Cause I would just mix some beats and Adam would come over and be like, “I like that one, let’s sing on it for a while.” And that really rapidly changed to Adam maybe coming over with a verse or something or an idea for a hook, and then we’d be like “ok, let’s work on that.” That started redefining the voice of what we were doing. Before it was almost like we needed to figure out some melodies on top of some beats, almost like a rapper. And then it became more organic, ground-up development for a song from an idea.
Adam: We started as Vince’s project aka the “Me” in “Me Nd Adam”, cause it was me singing on his beats. Then eventually we started growing together. The original stuff is way trappier. We liked The Weeknd and such, and still do. So it’d be like hip-hop beats and singing with autotune over them. And now we incorporate more Americana, more alternative rock, more of my influences, and started embodying them in the music as well as the writing. We also found a lot of music we like together. For example, we both grew up listening to The Eagles and got really into country music together. Before we started “Me Nd Adam” I don’t think either of us said we liked country to somebody else. But then those first couple of years we started listening to country and really actually exploring that genre seriously. I think we started listening to country ironically and then it rapidly became something we were deeply serious about. You have to cherry-pick the good stuff.
Cher: Where did the stage presence come from? Has it always been there, or one of those things that’s kind of evolved?
Adam and Vince: It has not always been there. We were not good when we started. Like not at all. Like very bad. We actually had a big break show when we lived in New York and there was this big showcase where a lot of industry people came. We performed “Baby’s Alright” and absolutely bombed it. It was a make-or-break moment; if we did this correctly everything would be done for us. We would be like, “everything has worked for Me Nd Adam, onward and upward!” If we were to have nailed it, we probably would be in some kind of development deal. There were a lot of people that saw us but we just sucked. We weren’t good.
I [Adam] used to stand there like moving in slow motion trying to sing but just sounding really shy. You know when you’re acting and you think you’re doing these really big moves and then you watch a video of yourself and you thought you were being so dramatic but when you look at it you realize you’re not at all. You have to over-dramatize. I [Adam] think we just developed it from playing music together for a couple of years now. When we started we thought we could like be a DJ… it was so different, it’s actually crazy to think about it. It was horrible and we thought it was good because we didn’t have to rely on anybody, and that was one of the main things, we don’t want to be in another band where everybody makes things hard. Looking back, we were avoiding being what we were good at because we had both been in bands our whole lives. I [Vince] was always the bass player in every band I was in and I was always good at that, and then I just stopped playing bass. We kind of realized we weren’t doing anything we were really good at; we should just do it the way we’re good at it. Once we went back to that, that’s when things got good. Now that’s that. We’ve been working on that for two years now; working in this format, with the drummer and guitar and everything. So you’re seeing the version that is that, and we’re very proud of it.
Hailey: How did you two meet? Are you both from Texas?
Adam and Vince: We were both born and raised in Austin, Texas. Unfortunately, we did not meet as little kids though. We kind of always thought maybe we did because we were in the same kind of circles. We would both play soccer too and go to the same summer camps. But we didn’t know each other as kids, but then we met in Loyola [University] New Orleans from both being in the music industry program there, and we became friends. Well actually, we didn’t get along that well. It wasn’t like love at first sight or anything, we were kind of enemies or frenemies first, then eventually I [Vince] was working on a record with some other friends and I heard a record Adam did and was like “wow this guy is really talented,” and I hit him up and I spent some time sleeping on his couch that summer. Then I [Adam] slept on his couch for like a year. When I [Vince] moved back to New Orleans a couple of years later Adam was like “can I stay at your house?” and I was like “yeah!”. That’s like when “Me Nd Adam” kind of started. But to answer your question, born and raised in Austin, met in New Orleans, went to New York, had a terrible time, well a great time, but it was mostly like a drug-induced psychosis of like two years. There were times and months that went by that we had no idea what was happening. And then I [Adam] was like we need to go back to Texas. It’s where we have our families. I think going back there is when we really started getting good.
Cher: What do you guys want people to take away from your music?
Vince: I think that mostly is just that you’re not alone. I know that that’s very tacky, but I think everybody is always disingenuous, like lame in their music, and I think that we are disturbingly honest about what we do, and whether or not you like it or not you can’t really critique it for us being fakers. We’re not posers. We tell it how it is; all the blemishes and the hard parts of life, and all the good parts. I think that’s what our music is about. It’s genuine.
Check them out: https://www.mendadam.com/
