Vancouver alt folk songwriter D.G. Adams drops an intense, heartfelt new full-length album titled “Nest of Vipers”, featuring visionary cover artwork (Painting by Irina Miroslava, Graphic design by Jo Bates). “While writing this record, which I had already titled ” Nest Of Vipers”, near Cancún, Mexico, someone asked me if I knew what Cancún meant in the Mayan language. Nope. “Nest of snakes.” That got me fired up!”
It may surprise more than a few listeners to learn that “Feminine Endings”, the title of D.G. Adams debut album, is a Shakespearean reference. Those who know that Adams has spent the past thirty-three years as a classically-trained actor and Shakespeare teacher will not be surprised. (For the curious: a feminine ending refers to the eleventh, unstressed syllable in a line of iambic pentameter! In poetic terms, the presence of the feminine ending may indicate that there is too much thought or emotion in the line to be contained in ten syllables.) In the acting world, D.G is known as Donald Adams, and he now plays leads in films and television.
Since the age of fifteen, Adams has quietly been writing music and lyrics, but only sharing his work with a handful of friends. Fast forward to the year 2000 when he met his best friend Torquil Campbell (of the Montreal band Stars) at Bard on the Beach Shakespeare festival in Vancouver, where both were working as actors. Campbell listened to one of Adams’ compositions backstage and said, “Donny, it’s so great when your friends don’t suck at stuff!” Adams took this as encouragement, if not high praise, and kept on writing and home-recording his songs. Fast forward to the summer of 2011, when Adams finally felt ready to record his first album of twelve originals, in no small part due to Campbell’s ongoing support.
“Feminine Endings”, which Adams describes as “rootsy folk-rock…about longing, lust, love and enlightenment”, is firmly rooted in the singer-songwriter traditions of his heroes Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. But, with the addition of a dash of exotica and political activism, one hears echoes of Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, and CSNY. While Adams still appears in movies and on television (his recent credits include Fox’s “Alcatraz”, Lifetime’s “Merlin and the Book of Beasts”, and MGM’s “The Betrayed”), and occasionally acts and directs for theatre, his main passion is now the music, one of the few things in life without which, Adams says, he “could not live.” “Feminine Endings” was only the beginning for D.G. Adams. He released “Vajra” (2014) and “The Old Heart” (2017), produced by Torquil Campbell, which received huge critical acclaim. Upcoming: “Nest Of Vipers” (2019).
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