Don’t tell too much about yourself on your website to keep things interesting may spring to your mind when you follow the links in my review of Michael Adkins’ Infotation album to his website and his label’s site. Well, here’s your chance to know more about the man who’ve impressed me with his debut album full of original compositions.

Q: Please tell me something about your musical influences and your musical journey so far.

Michael Adkins: Well, in terms of influences I would have to mention my early musical inspiration. We always had a piano and in my neighborhood it seemed like every kid on the block played a musical instrument. Our neighbors across the street were professional musicians and my grandfather could play many different instruments, could sing, entertain, and do this stuff that I thought was unbelievable. My older sister played saxophone and my brother took guitar lessons as a youngster and I would go to their school band rehearsals, just sitting in the back listening. They had an incredible school band and I was in love with the drums at this time. My older sister’s boyfriend was also a tenor player and a huge John Coltrane fan. That’s how I was exposed to improvising music. I idolized all these older kids that were totally into jazz and my teachers would tell me stories about these wildly creative musicians who would shave their heads and stay indoors just practicing like jazz monks or something, and I would get all inspired. I started buying the recordings, really listening and getting engrossed in it. It became an escape for me. As I played more and more I met other musicians who were extremely gifted and creative people. I learned so much from them. I was very fortunate to be around many musicians with incredible skills and integrity. Those were the experiences that were so inspirational for me, spending hours and hours listening to music, practicing together, going to hear live music every night, then being in cities like Boston and New York that offer so much musically. That’s the basis of my experience. I learned that it was possible for an individual to find a completely unique voice in the music and that no solo or no two people could ever sound exactly alike. That was a big attraction for me.

Q: Like I’ve mentioned in my review, I love the cover of your album. Please tell me where you took the cover shot and why you’ve chosen this particular photo as the cover.

Michael Adkins: Thank you so much, I appreciate it and a lot of people comment on it. I’m really happy with the way the album cover work came out. I felt like I had some design ideas that I definitely wanted to steer the artwork towards and was fortunate to be able to do it. The cover photo comes from a building on the upper west side of Manhattan near Riverside Drive. I don’t remember exactly where but there were three or four other totally different photos that I gave to the graphic designers and we bounced these ideas off of each other and decided that the building one was the most appropriate. I gave them these photos and said, ” What do you think? What can we do with this?” It just fit into to the whole experience of the process and felt right, that’s all.

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