On the phone from the road, somewhere between Vermont and Cambridge, Mass., Adam Schatz is on his way to play a solo show in the room where he saw his first improvised music performance. It’s a poetic symmetry that reflects the multi-instrumentalist and composer’s ear for repetition and variation: a return to the root that creates harmony with the explosion happening around his other gig with Japanese Breakfast. It’s a harmony that Schatz is bringing to a short run of shows that includes an appearance at The East Room on Wednesday.
“Pretty much this whole year, I’ve just been booking solo things around [Japanese Breakfast] shows,” Schatz tells the Scene. These concerts give him the opportunity to “work out my stuff and start to feel spiritually fulfilled. It’s just stupid, but it’s the type of stupid I’ve always been, so.”
There was a moment during a performance on the season finale of Saturday Night Live a few weeks ago that perfectly encapsulates Adam Schatz. It was during “Paprika,” the second song of the night from Japanese Breakfast. The art-pop “overnight sensations,” the project of singer-songwriter and author Michelle Zauner, have found themselves knee-deep in the zeitgeist after years of intense and intelligent work. In the broadcast, fog rolls over the hallowed stage at 30 Rockefeller Center as singer Zauner shimmers, banging a gong wreathed in flowers and lights. The band goes silent as Schatz, wielding his tenor sax, glides into the spotlight. Zauner duets with the soft swell of the sax melody for what feels like a tender, intimate eternity before Schatz recedes and Zauner’s energy overwhelms the camera again.
If you’ve lived around Nashville for a while, there’s a good chance you’ve met Schatz. It seems like he’s always rolling into town, fog at his feet, sax in hand. His Music City connections go back to the days of locally grown and now-disbanded rockers Those Darlins, and he’s been through with his groups Landlady and Father Figures. He’s been through Nashville on tour with Man Man, he’s played solo sets — including a memorable appearance at a 2019 benefit for Jessi Zazu Inc. — and occasionally he’s just hung out for between-show stretches. Maybe you saw him at one of the old, informal Fourth of July parades in East Nashville on Fatherland Street. Or you might have seen that video of him improvising with Nels Cline and Mikael Jorgensen at Wilco’s Solid Sound festival. Expect something in between that Solid Sound gig and a full-on rock show when Schatz drops in at The East Room, with assists from singer-songwriters Becca Mancari and Tristen, steelist extraordinaire Luke Schneider, multi-instrumentalist (and former Those Darlins member) Linwood Regensburg, producer-engineer Dan Knobler and more.
“I’ve never done Fallon,” Schatz says. “I’ve done Colbert and I’ve done Corden, but those shows are all the same. They’re fine. SNL was the only one that was on air when we were growing up. We were just engaged with it, and some of the cast members were fans of ours, so they would watch us rehearse. It felt more connected. When you play a late-night show, you’re sort of just shoved in a green room, and then you play, and then you’re done, and you leave. You don’t hang out with Stephen Colbert to vibe.”
Adam Schatz at The Basement East for Ain't Afraid — Benefit for Jessi Zazu Inc., 2/6/2019
Schatz, ever the seasoned professional, sings his bandmates’ praises. “Michelle works twice as hard as everyone,” he notes. “She’s always doing press and doing book stuff. … I feel like if I was in her position, I would have lost my mind, because it’s become a monster. I’m very grateful.”
Squeezing solo shows into the empty moments between big, international festivals — Bonnaroo, Fuji Rock, Primavera — seems a bit extra. Schatz could relax between JB’s cool-as-hell tour dates with folks like Belle and Sebastian or The Linda Lindas. But there’s a restlessness at the heart of all his performances that won’t be kept quiet.
“I basically regret it until I’m playing the show,” he says, “but I’ve done it a bunch where it’s like, everyone else has a day off, and I’ve booked myself a solo show. And I wake up regretting it. And I don’t regret it. I regret it until I’m first on, and then as soon as I’m playing, it is amazing.”
When I caught Schatz in Cambridge, at a tiny venue named The Lilypad — a great place for, ahem, the jumping-off point of a career — his exhaustion seemed to dissipate with that first exhale through his reed, his energy and vitality building with each beat and loop. Soon, it felt like there was a conversation between Sonny Rollins, Tom Lehrer and Klaus Schultz bouncing between piano and sax and effects pedals. But it was just one dude, working out his new songs, dipping into old ones.
“If nothing else, the last few years have been really different from every other year in my life,” says Schatz.
There’s an optimism in his voice, a relief and touch of catharsis in recognizing that the past few years — the ones when live music just kinda disappeared from our lives — have been more than just total bullshit. They’ve also offered opportunities to grow and move forward. He is rolling with the fog, so to speak.
“I’m happy to be doing anything, trying to tone down the part of you that gets upset when things aren’t happening exactly the way you want. That shit just doesn’t happen for anyone.”
