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Chapter Five: Interlude: Meet the MuzikMafia of 2004
- University Press of Mississippi
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interLUDe Meet the MuzikMafia of 2004 The MuzikMafia’s membership has changed somewhat since the community officially began in October 2001. However, there was a core roster of MuzikMafia members that remained relatively stable in 2004 and 2005 and contributed much to the community’s rise to national popularity . You will find, among the following bios of those core members, similar experiences and common threads growing up that facilitated the strong bond of friendship that they eventually shared: age, eclectic musical tastes, working -class upbringing, connection to the South, religion, relocation to Nashville, and negative experiences with formal institutions such as school or the music industry. Chapter Five INTERLUDE 100 The members appear here according to the length of time that they were with the MuzikMafia. I should point out that James, Gretchen, Brian, Max, Pino, and Rachel began their association with the MuzikMafia either at its first performance or shortly thereafter. Their order of appearance here is purely arbitrary. Adam Shoenfeld appears first because he was already performing with Kenny and John before the idea of MuzikMafia was conceived. Known by friends and fans as Atom, Adam Shoenfeld has a unique role in the birth, growth, and development in the MuzikMafia. As an established Nashville session guitarist, he was already performing and recording with Kenny and John several years before the MuzikMafia began and was an active member of the MuzikMafia throughout its brief history. Adam was born on April 29, 1974, to Cookie and Andy Shoenfeld in Huntington, on New York’s Long Island. His family moved when he was three years old to Blairstown, New Jersey, where Adam spent the rest of his childhood and adolescent years. Adam inherited many of his childhood musical influences from his parents, whose favorites included rock acts such as the Beatles and Blood, Sweat, and Tears; jazz saxophonist Paul Winter; and Motown legend Stevie Wonder. Adam’s interest in electric guitar began at age five, and he still remembers jumping up and down on his mattress and playing air guitar to Peter Frampton’s album Frampton Comes Alive! (1976). Adam’s parents were inspired by his enthusiasm for music and subsequently purchased him his first guitar in 1979. Adam later adopted a fascination with heavy metal guitar technique, especially that of the Swedish virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen. With the support of his parents, Adam pursued his interest in electric guitar throughout middle school and high school. He played trumpet in school band in fifth and sixth grade, but sold his trumpet shortly thereafter and purchased his first Fender electric guitar. At age fourteen he began writing songs, and performed them as a member of a local heavy metal band called Morehead Fonster, a word play on “forehead monster.” While attending a private high school called the Blair Academy, Adam enrolled in the school’s jazz/rock band class and continued to broaden his musical horizons in addition to the experience he was acquiring with his own band, Exit. Adam’s training as a session guitarist began at home with his own four-track recorder. Later, while a senior in high school, he performed and [54.198.34.207] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:27 GMT) 101 INTERLUDE recorded music with a local ensemble called the Nathan Lee Band. Adam graduated from the Blair Academy in 1992, having been voted by his peers Most Likely to Succeed in Music. He spent the year following graduation in Blairstown working for a local wildlife photographer. Adam moved to Nashville in January 1994 with the Nathan Lee Band. Unfortunately, within six months the band had broken up, and Adam found himself working as a waiter at Ruby Tuesday while supplementing his income through sporadic gigs as a rock-blues guitarist around town. By 1995 Adam’s luck had changed; he began working at the well-known Woodland Studios, a state-of-the-art recording facility in Nashville. Although he was paid primarily for answering the phone, Adam was invited on numerous occasions by the studio’s owner Bob Solomon to play on various artists’ albums. In addition, when the studio was not booked at night, Adam and his friends would frequently record their own music. Adam’s professional relationship with Kenny Alphin began in 1998 when Adam was asked to audition for Kenny’s band, Big Kenny. Adam had known Kenny’s music from the band’s numerous performances at 12th & Porter and the Exit/In in Nashville and was friends with Kenny’s keyboardist...