“It’s no Duke’s Mayonnaise,” Adeem the Artist would tell us about the magnificence of Duke’s in contrast to other inferior mayonnaises, sauces, and spreads in this in-depth interview-before sharing a stripped-down version of “Painkillers & Magic” and speaking to the specificity of their songwriting on “White Trash Revelry” and how it can become “an incidental surrealism to be so thorough in the details” about growing up in the South.
“For me, one thing that was really important was to go back into my childhood myth, to look at this version of me in cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, holding a fake shotgun, listening to Garth Brooks and hoping that I could be Garth Brooks someday-that’s six-year-old me.”
Reflecting on the growth that they’ve made in terms of the way they see social justice, racial justice, and expressions of systemic oppression, Adeem shared how they found their way back to this music “through the avenue of queer country as a kind of subgenre that felt safe to explore.”
While there was a time when Adeem wanted to be “a worldly New York folk artist that was sophisticated and cerebral,” they realized how that aspiration came from not wanting to be, “a poor trailer park kid from Charlotte.” Continuing with us, before soundchecking with “Carolina,” as a line formed in front of the Bluebird, Adeem said, “That didn’t feel cool. That didn’t feel like the hero in the story.”
But it was reconnecting to where and how they grew up in North Carolina that seemed to help Adeem understand their cultural voice and the impact we can have when reconciling the past with the future while trying to break certain generational cycles.
Adeem would also cover John Prine’s “Lake Marie” and speak to the influence that Prine has had on their craft and their perspective of comedy and how humor can be used to process trauma-which is shared in a previous Contrary Western session shot at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, Tennessee, in January of 2023.
★ Go Western on Instagram: / contrarywestern
★ Stay Contrary on our Site: www.contrarywe...
★ Get after the Gold by Subscribing
CREDITS
Director of Photography: Noah Cordell
Super 8 and Color by Emma Delevante
Recorded and Mixed by Luke Wiget
Edited by Sam Farahmand
Directed & Produced by Contrary Western in Nashville, Tennessee
6 сен 2024
