Videos by American Songwriter
ARTIST: Adam Klein
SONG: “Radar Man”
HOMETOWN: Athens, Georgia
CURRENT LOCATION: Atlanta, Georgia
AMBITIONS: To be well, do good work, and keep in touch.
TURN-OFFS: Vaseline, haughtiness, bananas, and mass shootings.
TURN-ONS: Kindness, travel, sustainable development, tasteful pedal steel, great art, community, late night pickin’ parties, natural splendor, and a good sandwich .
DREAM GIG: Playing at The Ryman and an ornate venue like Atlanta’s Fox Theatre.
FAVORITE LYRIC: I’ll limit myself to these two stanzas:
Well I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
Well it goes like this:
The fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Well your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you to her kitchen chair
And she broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
SONG I WISH I WROTE: I’d like to be able to write pretty much every song I like which I haven’t written. If pressed to name one, maybe I’d say Dylan’s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”. That song seems to carry you and evoke a sense of home nearly anywhere in the world.
5 PEOPLE I’D MOST LIKE TO HAVE DINNER WITH: Today’s answer will be the medieval traveller ibn Battuta, Mark Twain, Jimmy Carter, Cormac McCarthy, and Maimonides.
MY FAVORITE CONCERT EXPERIENCE: Tough call. Can’t list all the shows I’ve seen. Leonard Cohen at Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Neil YoungPrairie Wind premier at The Ryman, and Dylan at TPAC in Nashville earlier this year have to be on the list. Each show was stunning.
I WROTE THIS SONG BECAUSE…My grandfather wrote this as a poem when he was serving in World War II in the Philippines. The lyrics were found when my family was sorting through my grandparents’ papers and belongings after they moved from their house into an assisted living facility. I took the lyrics and wrote the song and played it for him at his 90th birthday party. My cousin (Seattle-based singer/songwriter Gabriel Mintz) also wrote a song using one of his old poems and performed it at the same party. I don’t think our grandfather remembered the poems, but he definitely enjoyed the surprise. “Radar Man” is on my new album Archer’s Arrow, which releases September 22nd on my label, Cowboy Angel Music.
