Adam Ezra (left) poses for a photo with Bobby Whear, owner of the Mill Pond Inn. The two have become good friends since Ezra first performed a benefit concert for the Damariscotta Mills Fish Ladder. (courtesy photo)
The Adam Ezra Group has played a number of shows and house concerts in the Midcoast, but to founder and lead singer Adam Ezra, the most memorable performances were those at Lincoln Theater benefitting the restoration of the Damariscotta Mills Fish Ladder.
Ezra was introduced to the fish ladder by Bobby Whear, owner of the Mill Pond Inn, when he stayed there during a visit to the area.
“If you’ve ever seen the alewives during spawning season it’s an amazing thing,” Ezra said.
Whear became a fan of the group’s roots-based sound and lobbied to have them perform a spring show to help defray costs associated with restoring and maintaining the intricate construction that aids the small fish in their annual voyage to the lakes and streams of Lincoln County.
“When Bobby wants something Bobby finds a way,” Ezra said. “We had a blast and we’ve loved coming back ever since.”
In fact, Ezra loved being in Maine so much he bought a house in St. George last year where he and wife, Alley, plan to raise their daughter.
“We’re digging in in Maine right now,” he said.
Ezra, whose mother was a folk musician, was initially inspired by artists like Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Joni Mitchell, who fostered a social mission through their music. His interest sparked even more when he discovered classic rock and recognized the inherent power when individual musicianship began to give way to bands.
“I listened to Led Zeppelin for the first time and my brain exploded. The way that they would create songs that could go in any direction they chose … what they did as a unit was so much bigger than just the sum of their parts,” he said.
He found himself drawn to the spontaneity of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the harmonies of Crosby, Stills and Nash, the storytelling of Bruce Springsteen, the simplicity of Tom Petty, and how the members of The Band – “Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm and all those guys” – each had a role to play in the music they created.
Ezra incorporated many of those characteristics into the Adam Ezra Group’s live shows. Every concert they perform is different, according to Ezra.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen when we begin a show,” he said. “(The) night ends up being an adventure that we all kind of create together.”
Ezra calls his current bandmates “three of my favorite musicians in the world.”
Drummer Alex Martin has been with the band for a dozen years.
“Because we play so differently from night to night, his style and even the drums that he plays have changed and morphed,” Ezra said.
Martin’s drum kit combines traditional drum pieces and cymbals with hand percussion instruments and even a hollowed out muffler.
“I love the fact that he’s always stretching to create new sounds and new rhythms.” Ezra said.
Fiddle player Corinna Smith grew up playing bluegrass and classical so joining a rocking band with a drum kit and a bass player has been a “challenge that she’s risen to,” Ezra said.
“Her fiddle doesn’t always sound like a fiddle,” he said. “Sometimes it sounds like an electric guitar … her style changes to support each song.”
Bass player Poche Ponce is the newest member of the band. His family is from Bolivia and Ezra said Ponce has “a knowledge of world music that is incredibly deep and brings a whole other level of expertise to our team.”
However, for Ezra and his bandmates, it takes the audience to complete the experience.
“The legacy has much less to do with me (than) it has to do with the people that have gravitated to and grown this community over time,” Ezra said. “They are the most powerful members of our band.”
Ezra was always intrigued by how communities of fans sprung up around artists and he consciously cultivated a spirit of connection within his audience.
“Some of my deepest experiences in music came from going to shows like the Grateful Dead in which all these disparate people would come together and suddenly there would be this community,” he said.
Over the last 20 years that symbiotic sense of community expanded beyond the traditional confines of the relationship between a band and its fans.
The group has played hundreds of small shows in the living rooms and backyards of its supporters, including four intimate sessions at the Mill Pond Inn. For 14 consecutive years they spearheaded the Ramble, an annual fan-supported festival in Ashburnham, Mass., that raises funds to provide housing for homeless veterans. During the height of COVID-19, Ezra and his bandmates livestreamed a series of online performances called the Gatherings for 500 days in a row to combat the shared fear and isolation of the pandemic.
Ezra calls the growth of the band’s community a slowly unfolding process.
The Damariscotta Mills Fish Ladder on Tuesday, May 23. The benefit concert by the Adam Ezra Group will help fund ongoing restoration and repair to the critical alewife habitat. (Bisi Cameron Yee photo)
“We’ve kind of slipped under the radar for most of our careers,” he said. “When I began playing it wasn’t because someone pointed their finger at me and said ‘you’ve got talent, kid.’
“We’ve been, and our community has been, this amazing underground success story that has literally passed through word of mouth,” he said.
That success story and the sense of mission that drives Ezra and his bandmates have spurred good music and good works for more than 20 years. Benefit concerts have fed the hungry, housed the homeless, provided green spaces in urban neighborhoods, and rebuilt communities devastated by earthquakes. For the last few years they have also helped preserve a critical habitat at the Damariscotta Mills.
“I have played for thousands of people and I have such a deep belief that … (we are) more the same than different,” Ezra said. “I think that we are at such loggerheads in our ideology that it’s hard to get past … But man, there is something magic about music, right? It can cross boundaries that nothing else can.”
The Adam Ezra Band will perform at 4 p.m. Sunday, May 28 at Lincoln Theater. Coyote Island will open with its unique brand of genre-bending psychedelic indie sound.
Tickets are $40 and are available for purchase at the door beginning 30 minutes before the show or in advance through the online box office at lincolntheater.net.
