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As Todd Adams’ harmonica emits the foremost notes of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man,” it’s abruptly overtaken by the sound of a shattered wine glass. Dancers nearby glance at the floor before they eye Adams and return their gaze to their partners. The notes don’t stop and despite the blushed tile floor, a slow sway is almost immediately synched again with the fingers of Houma’s preeminent Piano Man.
Three nights a week, five hours a night, mostly without break, Adams sits at his piano inside an island bar at Vino!. The blue spotlight that cascades over his low-toned clothes and hallmark beret begs the attention of all patrons in an otherwise dim setting. This is Adams’ life, and it has been for some time.
“This is what I live for,” Adams says to begin a one-hour interview in the vacant nightclub after a show.
It’s hard to structure life around anything else when performing five nights a week, which is what Adams did at Aficionados on Belanger Street for nearly 10 years. Not counting some vacation time he took, that’s roughly 2,500 performances. The gig came to a close in June 2011 after the bar changed ownership.
“I met thousands of people there in 10 years and made a lot of close friendships and had a lot of good times there,” Adams says. “A lot of good memories. I’ll always be fond of that place.”
Darren Kraemer, a database administrator at Fletcher Technical Community College, sent Adams a text message the morning after Adams’ “very emotional” final performance at Aficionados, Kraemer says. The two were in Terrebonne High School’s band program together years before but had lost touch afterward. The pitch sparked the foundation for Vino!
“It was a spontaneous idea from start to finish, and that’s why it’s so great, to me,” Kraemer says.
Kraemer and his partner Chris Morris, who has a business and finance background, are still trying to firm up the nightclub’s non-Todd entertainment. Wine tasting on Wednesdays has proven successful, but Trivia Tuesdays hasn’t had quite the draw owners would like and could be replaced with something else soon.
But Vino! was built for and around Todd Adams and his legion of fans. The nightclub’s namesake is Italian for “wine,” and owners claim to have more than 80 wine varieties on their menu. The anti-downtown location and non-smoking atmosphere are alluring in their own ways, but Adams is the featured attraction.
“The minute he came here, we didn’t go back (to Aficionados) – there was no reason to,” says 30-year-old Derrick Chancy, who visits Vino! at least twice a month. “We don’t come to socialize; we come to listen to Todd.”
The concept behind the Todd Bar, isolated so that patrons have a panoramic view of Adams, was lifted from a design in Las Vegas.
“It’s a lot of fun to have people sitting with you,” Adams says. “It’s not like I’m just playing for them – they are a part of it. I have nights where I can actually stop singing and everybody around me sings the song, and that’s a really cool feeling.”
Consistency and diversity are vital to Adams’ shows.
Along with his cache of berets, which have covered his shaved head during every show since the late 1990s, Adams typically dresses in darker hues.
As the interview winds down, Adams reveals the secret of his attire. “My wife dresses me,” he says before jokingly adding, “I want to completely change to bright colored zoot suits. It would be fun.”
A MUSICAL LIFE
The wine bar is the latest stop for the 46-year-old piano man whose life has been linked with music. Adams started in the fifth-grade school band as a drummer, a hobby he continued through graduation at Terrebonne High School in 1984. At 17, while practicing with his rock ‘n’ roll cover band at the pianist’s home, Adams experimented with the new instrument, and “I just took a liking to it.”
Adams went on to play piano for a top-40, rock-oriented cover band. Later, he toured with Wayne Toups – even recording an album that included one of Toups’ great hits “Take My Hand” – and zydeco artist Roddie Romero. In 1995, he was enlisted as a pianist on the inaugural Delbert McClinton Blues Cruise, which is where he met Jill, his wife. The two moved to Jill’s home in Pennsylvania, and Adams didn’t touch a piano key for more than three years.
But after moving to Houma in 1999, Adams landed a regular, weekday gig at Top Hat, formerly located where The Boxer and The Barrel stands today. From there, he has steadily grown his reputation as a flexibile and beloved entertainer.
“I have a repertoire in every decade from the 1930s to today. That’s by design. I’ve worked over the years to develop that. That’s my toolbox. … I come in every night and react to what I see. … I’m like the human Pandora. ‘Well, if you like that, then I know you’re going to like this, this and this,’ and I beat them in the head,” he explains while slapping his closed fist.
Once he hits that rhythm, Adams does everything in his power to keep it – especially if it means he has to forego a break in the action.
“I don’t like to take breaks,” he says. “Once I get a rapport with a group, I feel like if I break on them, it breaks that chemistry. … If you get a group that’s really enjoying what you’re doing and you break, they might walk out on you and check out something else, or if they stay, when you come back the energy level you had with them is gone. It’s almost like you have to start your own night all over again.”
On one night, Adams follows Grand Funk Railroad’s “Some Kind of Wonderful,” with Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” and Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl.” The only pauses between songs are filled with Adams calling out drink specials and cracking jokes. He goes on to play Zac Brown Band’s “Toes,” Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” and Mark Cohn’s “Walking in Memphis,” which elicits thumbs-ups from patrons. A few songs later, Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” is the tune of choice.
Prior to each song, Adams sets a drum beat on an electronic set adjacent to the piano. With his drumsticks he supplements the beats of more complex composition throughout the song, turning the one-man show into a juggling act. The third prong of his performance is his rubbery vocals, which he exudes with rigid movements of his head in practice of emphasis and execution.
Mary Beth Clement, 25, visits Vino! because of Adams, who “can play everything from Elton John to Metallica. We’ve requested ‘Enter Sandman,’ and he’s played it.”
Of course, Adams is only human, so his range does have limits, at least temporarily.
“I’m in one of those periods right now where I’m anxious to turn myself over, so to speak,” he says. “I’ve got me a little list – I call it my grocery list – of songs that I need to add to my repertoire.”
Right now, his grocery list includes Gotye’s “Somebody That I used to Know,” and Jason Mraz’s “I Won’t Give Up,” two songs often requested of him.
Adams doesn’t listen to much music anymore – his car radio is set to AM talk stations. When asked about his musical tastes, Adams delved into his childhood influences, such as Soul Train, Cameo, George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars, and James Brown. As a drummer, he listened to The Police’s Stewart Copeland, Rush’s Neil Peart and Tower of Power’s David Garibaldi.
‘PIANO MAN’
Adams’ life is one of repetition. For nearly 10 years, he played for an audience five times a week. After a six-month hiatus, he changed his setting and started playing three times a week. Nearly every night, mostly by request, he straps on a harmonica and covers Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.”
When discussing the song, Adams referenced an interview of Billy Joel on “Inside the Actors Studio.”
“I have it on tape; it’s really fascinating. A two-hour segment, (Joel and host James Lipton) go through his career, his songs, and he talks about his songs. … Now when I think ‘Piano Man,’ knowing his story, that’s my impression of ‘Piano Man.’
“I’ve probably played ‘Piano Man,’ I don’t know, 3,000 times in the last 10 years, so I can’t even imagine how many times he’s played ‘Piano Man,’ right? (Joel released the song in 1973) … The way ‘Piano Man’ is written, instrumentally, it’s like a loop. It never changes. The words change – verse, chorus, verse, the words are changing and the form is changing, but the actual music doesn’t change, and the melody does not change. It’s a story-telling song. It’s a great tune, but instrumentally, it’s the same melody.
“Not only do you have something that is within the song, it’s repetitive, but if you have to play it every night, you know what I’m saying?
“But, if I start playing ‘Piano Man,’ and the people, ‘La, la, la,’ they start singing with me, it’s like I play it for the first time. And it’s any song. Any song that I get that feedback, at that moment, it’s the best song in the world.”
Despite the repetitive nature of his job, Adams is still able to differentiate from each night, mostly because he never approaches a performance with a given set list. “That would become routine. (My style) is random enough not to get me into a rut.”
The prolific artist keeps a tally of every show he has played in a log book.
Twenty-nine years after he first joined a band outside of school, Adams doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. He says he’ll play “until I can’t breathe anymore.”
A blue spotlight cascades over Todd Adams while he performs at Vino!. Adams, who played at Aficionados on Belanger Street for 10 years before moving to the new nightclub, plays three nights a week.
Todd Adams performs at Vino!.
