Sue Bonzell: Welcome to Cow Chair Country, powered by V-live cast. I’m your host, Sue Bonzell, and I want to say thank you to our sponsor SoCo Private Security. Today, we have an amazing guest with us and y’all are going to be impressed. It’s Adam Hambrick.
He has written Number One hits for Dan + Shay and Justin Moore, and he has his own new song out now that I am super excited to share with you. It’s Adam Hambrick here. Oh my God, hi Adam.
Adam Hambrick: What’s up, how are you?
Sue Bonzell: I am fantastic. You look great, is this your studio?
Adam Hambrick: Yes, this is my studio, we just moved in. I say we just moved in, it’s been a year. And it’s finally starting to come together you can kind of see, I finally hung a couple plaques on the wall back there. I got some guitars hanging on the walls. We’re finally getting to where it feels like a nice little space. It’s actually a closet, it’s not a big spot.
Sue Bonzell:
Well that works, that works. And you’re in Nashville, correct?
Adam Hambrick:
In Nashville, Tennessee. Yes, ma’am.
Sue Bonzell:
Nashville, Tennessee. Well, I mean I think I’m a little bit starstruck because I think you’re pretty awesome, and of course you’ve worked with some pretty big names doing some songwriting. So tell me about how you got into songwriting in country music?
Adam Hambrick:
Well, it’s kind of for me, I call it a God thing. I feel it was sort of like winning the “songwriter lottery” a little bit. I was making music on my own back home in Arkansas and music was just the dream that wouldn’t die, and that’s what I tell people. And Justin Moore saw me play on this local morning TV show because he’s from Arkansas. He just happened to be at home, happening to be watching TV one morning when I was doing some promotion for this little record I’d done, and he called his producer.
His producer was looking to build a publishing company, looking for young talent to work with, and that turned into me coming to Nashville once a month for well over a year to try to write songs and try to meet people. And I just fell in love with the whole process and got cut on Justin’s record. That was a duet with Miranda Lambert called Old Habits. I don’t know if you all have ever heard that one but then that turned into me getting to come to Nashville and kind of live the dream. I feel very fortunate and very lucky.
Sue Bonzell:
That is, that’s pretty incredible. I mean I love it, like you said, it was that Justin Moore just happened to see you on TV and the next thing you know, you’re working with him and some of these big names, so how do you describe your songwriting style?
Adam Hambrick:
My song writing style, I like to use pictures. Some, I like to say, “I don’t like to tell you, I like to show you.” So I like to use colorful languages that hopefully puts a picture in your mind like I hope when I’m singing about the town that I grew up in I hope you see yours, kind of thing. And use pictures to make people feel stuff. And that’s really the core of what my favorite music is, makes me feel stuff deeply. And so that’s what I want my music to do.
Sue Bonzell:
And, and like you said, having people identify with what you’ve written about and what you’re singing about and where you go. I totally identify with that, and then it’s that heart piece that they’re like, “I’m invested, I love this song.”
Adam Hambrick:
That’s definitely it. That’s all you can hope for as an artist, as a songwriter, that people see your story and they connect to it and it kind of becomes their story. Because those are the people who end up changing the game.
Sue Bonzell:
Exactly. Well, I read a little bit about you and I was laughing, almost. I was laughing out loud where it said that you basically wore out a tape of Garth Brooks, guess that tape?
Adam Hambrick:
I never will forget. I think it was Christmas. I want to say I was six years old. I got this cassette player for Christmas from my Aunt Joanne and it didn’t come with any tapes. And so she said, “Oh man, I’m so embarrassed. I should’ve thought of that. I should have got you a tape of something.” And she ran to her car and she pulled out the only thing she had. She said, “I think this has some country music on it.” I said, “Cool,” because I listened to country music on the radio. That’s all we ever listed to. And it was Garth Brooks, No Fences. It was just a blank, like a ripped off Garth Brooks bootleg, No Fences. And I wore it out. I played the tape until it literally would not play.
Sue Bonzell:
That is so awesome. I think I probably did the same thing with anything Garth Brooks I said, “Yes, I’m in. I want to be part of that.” He’s amazing. So, that’s a pretty big musical influence for you. What are some of your other musical influences as you write and sing?
Adam Hambrick:
It really was all that 90s country stuff was the thing that made me love songs and gave me a kind of blueprint for what a song is supposed to be. It was rich with all those kinds of pictures. When I was in high school, it became more of a lot of rock bands like Third Eye Blind, Foo Fighters, and Incubus was a band I was really into back in the day. But probably one of the most influential people on my music is probably John Mayer. If you listen to my music at all, you probably hear some of that, but it kind of covers a wide gap, even hip hop acts like Outkast find their way in.
Sue Bonzell:
I love that. I love that you have this broad range of influences like you said, and you pull those things in where you need to that fit right. And I just love that.
Adam Hambrick:
I was a Napster kid like the kids when I was in high school, we were the first generation that had this sort of, “Oh, we can listen to literally anything. And it left a fingerprint on my taste in music.
Sue Bonzell:
Exactly. And you probably, like you said, being younger that and finding the new stuff. “Well, what’s new that the nobody knows about?”, and you say, “Oh man, have you heard this?”, those kinds of things. I remember doing that as a kid, and that’s kind of what I’m doing now, where I’m finding you. You’ve been around for a while and I knew who you were before, and so, talking to a lot of these new artists where they’re going big and I say, “Yes, okay. This is what I love, love doing that.” So you’ve had these Number One hits for Dan + Shay and Justin Moore, so do you feel pressured to put out some more Number One hits. Is there pressure behind any of that?
Adam Hambrick:
Yes and no. The pressure always comes from in here because in Nashville… I tell people like young songwriters and new artists, Nashville has a way of making you wear success like clothes, and you feel like you have to put on the “jacket” of 10 million streams to go into the coffee shop where famous songwriters hang out. So you feel like you belong, because if you don’t have that yet, you can feel kind of naked. So I had a couple of hits a couple of years ago and that’s been awesome. It’s opened a ton of doors for me and I kind of like jumped, kind of like took a leap, and into doing my own thing as an artist.
So that’s where my focus has been. And it’s kind of a vulnerable place because now I’m looking for “where’s the next thing coming from?”. But I try to take those things one day at a time and try not to let the success that I currently have or have had, or hopefully will have one day, not define what I’m doing in the day-to-day, so that I can still make the music that makes people feel stuff. So that I can still make the music that makes me feel stuff, and I can be like the best version of myself.
Sue Bonzell:
It’s kind of like you’re doing it for the right reasons because you love what you do, not for, “Hey, I’m going to do this big thing and it’s got to be huge” and you’re just doing it because you love it.
Adam Hambrick:
Yes. If you can find that sweet spot of aiming, swinging for the fences, but also being yourself, that’s the sweet spot. That’s where we’re all trying to get.
Sue Bonzell:
The perfect balance, I love it. So now you mentioned you’re working on some of your own music and you’ve got this new song that I’m loving. So you have an EP, right? And it says it’s called Flipside, is that correct?
Adam Hambrick:
Flipside, yes.
Sue Bonzell:
So this song, “The Longer I Lay Here”, and you’ve got this great gal on it too who’s singing with you, Jillian Jacqueline, and I’m reading about her and I’m saying, “Wow, she’s done stuff with Keith Urban, she’s phenomenal.” You guys together on this song are just money on this song. I love it.
Adam Hambrick:
I like to think of it as our voices on this track do a, it’s not a ‘one-plus-one-equals-two’ thing. It’s like when we sing together, it feels like it’s its own thing, which is super cool. It’s what you hope for in a collab. And when we wrote this song, I thought it would be a cool collab kind of song. And then my producer, who’s also friends with Jillian, he said, “Hey, we should get Jillian.” And I said, “Dude, great idea.” And so we called her and she was all in for it and I don’t know, I’ve always been such a big, stupid fan boy of hers. And I think she’s a complete artist. She has her fingerprint on everything from the look, to the sound, to the videos, to all the stuff, and she’s just one of the most complete, creative people that I’ve come across.
Sue Bonzell:
So I want to say thank you for introducing her to me in my world where I say, “I need to find out more about this gal and I’d like to follow her.” Because I really, really enjoy what you guys did together with the song. So it’s called, The Longer I Lay Here, and it’s a little bit of an ear worm.
Adam Hambrick:
That’s what I hope for.
Sue Bonzell:
I keep singing it and I say, :I can’t get the song out of my head.” It’s great, it’s great.
That’s the idea, right? That’s what you’re supposed to be doing. So are you willing to play something for us today?
Adam Hambrick:
Absolutely, absolutely. I’ll just go grab one off the wall here.
Sue Bonzell:
Great.
Adam Hambrick:
Oh man, this is truly raw and unfiltered. I literally came out of my kitchen with kids screaming and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches flying through the air.
Sue Bonzell:
Bu this is what I love, it’s the authenticity.
Adam Hambrick:
This is real, this is real life. So I was just double checking that this guitar was actually in tune.
I’ll play this one, this song I put it out a while ago, but it’s the first unofficial week of summer. Memorial day was last week, so I feel like this is a good time for this one. It’s called, All You, All Night, All Summer.
[singing All You, All Night, All Summer 00:12:08]
Sue Bonzell:
Yay. That is a great way to kick off our summer. That’s amazing.
Adam Hambrick:
That’s my summer song. Everybody’s got to have one.
Sue Bonzell:
I thank you for sharing that with me. That’s, like I said, kicking off our summer. As you may know, I am in the wine country out here in California. I was going to ask you, do you like wine?
Adam Hambrick:
Yes, indeed.
Sue Bonzell:
Okay. What’s your favorite?
Adam Hambrick:
Oh, I mean it depends. Are we talking a specific brand or are we talking like Pinot Cabernet?
Sue Bonzell:
You know some of the varietals, I’m impressed.
Adam Hambrick:
I mean, I know some of them. I know just enough to be dangerous and I’m not picky. I’m not picky. I do like Caymus, it’s kind of a ‘can’t miss’. Whenever you can get ahold of one of those I usually get up on that when somebody else is buying.
Sue Bonzell:
Exactly. Okay, so you like the ‘Cab’. I might have to get you a bottle from out here in Sonoma county.
Adam Hambrick:
Hey, well, you might have to take out a mortgage to get it.
Sue Bonzell:
I didn’t say I was going to get you Caymus. I’ll get you a very nice ‘Cab’. We have lots of them here.
Adam Hambrick:
I will say that I tend to be a bit of a bourbon guy. I might know a little more about bourbon than I do about wine, but I do know that I enjoy a good red wine.
Sue Bonzell:
Okay. So I can teach you about wine, you could teach me about bourbon, because I don’t know enough about bourbon.
Adam Hambrick:
That sounds like a plan.
Sue Bonzell:
It’s a good plan. It’s a good plan. So Adam, what is next for you? What’s happening coming up in this next year? What do you have planned?
Adam Hambrick:
We’re just going to continue to put out music and that’s really the name of the game right now. It’s figure out how do we put out music and get the people who are already listening excited and keep them engaged? But also, put out new stuff that brings more people into what you’re doing and it’s all about telling stories, whether it’s through the song or through social media and all that stuff, and just find new ways to tell the stories around my music. And that’s really the name of the game for me and going to get up and play some shows. I’m going back home to Arkansas this month to play shows in Texas, Nebraska and Iowa and just all these just kind of random stuff that’s popping up as things are opening back up. So it’s not normal, but it’s normal adjacent, so I know everybody in Nashville is excited about that.
Sue Bonzell:
Yes, oh absolutely. I’m planning a trip out there, I’ll be out there at the end of summer. I’m super excited about that, maybe I’ll see you there, maybe you’ll be playing somewhere. We’ll have to get together. We might have to bourbon together.
Adam Hambrick:
There we go, there we go. Let me know when you’re in town, I’ll give you all the recommendations that you can take.
Sue Bonzell:
That is perfect. And we’d love to get you out of here in California too, so anytime.
Adam Hambrick:
I’m a big, dumb fan boy of California. It’s too far away from me to ever feel like I could ever live in California because I’d just miss my family too much, miss Arkansas, miss my people. But every time I go to California, I’m saying, “I get it, I get it. You all got it going on out there.”
Sue Bonzell:
Yes, we have a good time out here, that’s for sure. But you’re having a good time in Nashville, so, it’s good times, good balance. So thank you again for taking the time to chat with me, play the song. We’re going to look for you on TikTok, all your social media. Thank you so much, Adam Hambrick.
Adam Hambrick:
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. It’s great to talk to you today, Sue.
Sue Bonzell:
Take care.
Thanks for watching Cow Chair County, I’m Sue Bonzell. Make sure you follow me on TikTok, and like and subscribe. And of course, if you have an up-and-coming country artist that you would love for me to interview, please let me know in the comments.
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