SongVault Artist Profile

In the late '90s Adam Hill was bedridden for several weeks with a terrible illness. Deranged and delusional, he arose in his pajamas, loaded a backpack and El Presidente (his puke green upright bass) in his rusty Nissan and began driving across the country. He ended up in Knoxville, Tennessee. Though he had spent many an hour in his childhood listening to old vinyl records of Doc Watson, Dave Van Ronk, Mississippi John Hurt, and the Stanley Brothers, this was closest he had ever been to the infamous Blue Ridge Mountains. Something in those violent Southern summer thunderstorms must have sparked a creative circuit in him because it was in Tennessee that Adam began writing songs for the first time. The band that he formed there, Askewgrass Molasses, disbanded shortly after its conception, and Adam wandered off to live in towns with made-up names like Walla Walla, Moose, and Cork before settling down in Portland, Oregon. There he began making a name for himself as a bassist, touring with The Sham, Taarka, and Rogue Motel. In addition, he has performed with members of the David Grisman Quintet, the Gerry Mulligan Big Band, and Prairie Home Companion. But he still continues to craft his own songs which pay homage to his roots in folk and bluegrass music while nodding to the sonic creativity and lyrical playfulness of post-post-modernism. And if you're lucky, you just might catch Adam picking tunes out on the guitar and singing like he was sitting on a cockroach infested porch, thunder rumbling, and the warm rain coming down in sheets.