Adam McIntyre played his first show at 9 years old in a ballroom in front of 300 people in Montgomery, Alabama.

Throughout Adam’s career he has played countless shows across the United States with his alter ego The Pinx and toured the US and Europe with StoneRider. He’s shared the stage with Wayne Kramer, Israel Tolbert, ATL Collective, Radio Moscow, Ben Harper, BB King, Bobby Moore & the Rhythm Aces, Royal Thunder, Mastodon, MC50, Living Colour, and many others. Adam has kept himself busy with various Atlanta bands like The Pinx, StoneRider, The Forty-Fives, and Demonaut. In addition to being a prolific musician, Adam also is a producer working with a number of bands from the Southeast.

Atlanta-via-Nashville-and-Alabama-based musician, Adam McIntyre, is a novel, a compelling open book, both on stage and in the studio. As such, there are myriad narratives in the work he offers his listeners, many characters, through-lines, and sonic habitats. For example, in one calendar year (during a pandemic, no less), McIntyre put out three distinctly different solo records, ranging from blues to rock to funk, all of which explicate the rich stories, different moods, and lifespans the artist can dole out with great facility.

“When I write,” McIntyre says, “it has to be fun and unflinchingly honest. In that way, I may end up saying some things that I wish I hadn’t told everybody! But that’s my cue because it might just help somebody else who feels the same way.”    

McIntyre, who cut his musical teeth in his hometown of Montgomery, Alabama, first stepped on stage at nine years old backing up blues musicians in one bar after another. He’s a supremely gifted slide guitarist, but he also knows when to add some grit and grind to his otherwise smoothed-out sensibilities. To date, McIntyre has worked as a producer and a touring guitarist, playing to thousands of people throughout the United States and Europe. In 2006, McIntyre took the plunge and relocated to Atlanta from Nashville, where he put together a rollicking band called, The Pinx, that boasts as much rock as it does roll. In 2020, The Pinx put out “Electric!”, a lean and mean five-song EP that received rave reviews and drew comparisons to Led Zeppelin. 

Music critic Chad Radford, who is published throughout the Southeast nailed it with this review: “Adam McIntyre of the Pinx recently released Black Planet, a twisted rock excursion that finds McIntyre embracing a mixed bag of musical elements (free jazz, funk, and so)—sounds that he’s been denying himself for years while keeping the Pinx on course as a modern psychedelic rock band from the South.”

The Devil Got My Soul!, the first of three albums of McIntyre’s 2020 releases, takes us back to the genre that started McIntyre’s music career, the blues. For McIntyre the genre is as comfortable for him as sleeping in shade is for an alley cat. Next, he sought some psychedelic inspiration for his funk LP, You’re Doing It Right. That themed record is rooted in the signature self-empowerment that leads to the unabashed encouragement of others.   

“If you’re breathing, you’re doing it right,” McIntyre affirms.   

The final 2020 LP, Black Planet, was an homage to artists like Prince and Miles Davis, 20th-century experimental rock ‘n’ roll geniuses. McIntyre, both an accomplished accompanist and solo artist, has worked with legends like Wayne Kramer of MC5, for whom he’s played back-up six-string. He’s also worked as a longtime session player in Nashville and as a producer in Atlanta. But more than anything, McIntyre is a passionate front-man and songwriter with a twisting, tumultuous and tantalizing story to tell.    

“Honestly,” McIntyre says, “I had a vision when I was about to go on stage for that first time when I was nine years old with Bobby Moore and the Rhythm Aces. I knew this was what I was meant to do. What if we all told ourselves that? Creatively, we can do whatever we want. I want to show people we can be brave. All it takes is a little nudge and some hard work.”    

“When lockdown started

I slept in the first morning. I beat that video game Earthbound. The next day I woke up and fed the dogs, made coffee and told my girlfriend “I’m gonna go downstairs [to the studio] and start on that blues album I’ve been thinking about doing.” I’d wanted to revisit my blues roots and make an album with a variety of blues styles where I took on personal demons such as depression. Two hours later I came running back up the stairs and said “okay! One song down.” I did a song or two a day for a week, got a little help on one track from Wayne Kramer. I released that album a week after I started it. I took about two days off again. Depression and anxiety started revving up. 

Then I tripped so hard on mushrooms that I had a two hour-long conversation with the sun and wrote a psychedelic funk record about the whole experience. It was highly influenced by Funkadelic, Dungen and Devo. Whereas making the blues record had felt kind of dark, because I took the emotion of it very seriously, this record felt joyful from the first note. “You’re Doing It Right” is extremely silly and personally profound at the same time. It took two weeks from start to finish. 

Black Planet took about six weeks, because it needed a little more shine than its predecessors. I’d spent a couple records digging deep, opening up and to me the next logical step was to ask “who do I think I am?” I seem to have decided that I know who I think I am, but what if I’ve been wrong? I’d been wanting to do some sort of homage to Prince since visiting Paisley Park last summer, and I decided to put on the vibe that I felt at that studio while exploring some ideas of identity and personality on a record. It was profoundly freeing to be able to head into the studio and just keep doing funky pop songs every day. A little jazz crept in; I have been wanting to have a jam like something off of Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew and I finally made it happen on the last track, “Voodoo”. I pictured three Voodoo priests casting a spell, and keyboardist Roger Manning Jr (Beck, Jellyfish, The Lickerish Quartet) and horn player Dashill Smith (The Omega Level, Common Ground Collective) really added to the brew. Both musicians guest elsewhere on the album, Roger on “Step Out The Way” and Dashill on the title tracks for Black Planet, and on “Now Is Not The Time”. 

On “Now Is Not The Time”, I was just feeling good, recording a good time and a little bit trying to channel Morris Day and The Time. I’m saying this is the time to forget all the BS and dive into getting creative and trying to do some good with it. 

In “Feel Like A Man”, I pictured singing to some sexually pent-up, frustrated guy who’s contemplating violence to take back some of his masculinity and identity. I didn’t want to poke the bear as much as point out a different path; make music about your frustrations. Country, rap, metal, whatever, that would be infinitely more freeing than pointing a gun at someone to appease the anger inside. “You think you’re who you say? You think you’re what you think. But you’re what you do, do what kindness brings.”

“Let’s Go Away” is about longing to be able to go somewhere to recharge and remember what it is that you like when you’re not having a massive panic attack over the events of 2020. I hope it makes you feel like you have your toes in some cool sand at night. 

“Step Out The Way” starts off by explaining some of the best advice I’ve received about music, from my friend Paul McQuillan. I ask how he’s just always immediately tuned into the best guitar playing ideas as soon as he gets on stage and he replied “I just try to get out of the way of it.” Just totally removing himself from the equation. And ya know, that works for lots of things all the way on up to what if you’re in charge and you don’t know what you’re doing. You step out of the way and let more capable people handle the situation instead of looking like a fool and making things worse. 

“All I’ve Got To Be Is Here Right Now” is about the value of Being Here Now, especially during a pandemic. Physically there’s places I want to go and stuff I want to do but I can’t. I’m supposed to sit my ass at home. Mentally I want to run from my issues but I’m just gonna sit my ass here and feel these things. And then I’m going to really try to be present and just observe and take part in this moment, as weird as it is. 

In “Voodoo” during my solo I thought about the peaceful protests and the anger and frustration they feel watching as the protests are infiltrated by violence and are met with violence. I hoped that the struggle would not be forgotten or dismissed but that instead positive, lasting change would occur. 

It’s all tied together by the Black Planet interludes, straddling the line between funk and jazz. I came up with that groove after having a dream that I saw another Earth in the sky when I looked up, and that it was black.”