"There's little he can't do, and do well." -- allmusic.com.
Adam Marsland has explored every facet of life as a musician.
From rough and tumble years touring with punk-pop band Cockeyed Ghost...through his travels as a DIY trouabour...then as producer, session musician, label owner, and now world traveler, Adam has never stopped growing, exploring and expanding.
The tally is huge: 2,000 gigs. 1,000 sessions.
12 albums as primary artist and 10 more as a producer. 50 more as a session musician and engineer.
It started in the early '90s. After helping spearhead the L.A. "pop underground", Adam and Cockeyed Ghost signed to Rykodisc-distributed indie Big Deal in 1996. Next came constant touring, shows with Redd Kross, Shonen Knife, Fastball and Third Eye Blind, an appearance in an NBC TV movie and the cover of the L.A. Weekly, as did four albums, each more critically acclaimed than the last.
Anticipating changes in the music industry, Adam then changed focus. Using primitive crowdsourcing and social networking years before it was commonplace, he became self-sufficient as a recording and touring musician. He founded the Karma Frog label to tour and promote his albums and was constantly on the road for many years, with his first two solo albums appearing in 2002 and 2004.
Next came the Beach Boys-oriented Long Promised Road (2007) CD in collaboration with soul legend Evie Sands and Grammy winners Alan Boyd and Mark Linett which missed a Grammy nomination itself by only a few votes. Even more impressively, his next two albums Daylight Kissing Night (2008) and Go West (2009) achieved #34 and #22, respectively, on amazon.com's sales chart. Go West, a song cycle spread over two discs, was Adam's high water mark as a songwriter. The next album Hello Cleveland (2010), was a satirical return to punk, recorded in less than eight hours by Adam's touring band with noted producer Bill Korecky.
Adam with '60s legends the Standells (left); session drummer Hal Blaine (center); and Beach Boys David Marks and Al Jardine (right).
After working alongside musicians from the legendary Wrecking Crew, Adam began to focus more on sideman and studio work. He also joined another legendary '60s group, The Standells, as co lead singer and guitarist until his increasing studio workload forced him to quit the band in 2011. Adam's garage studio, also named Karma Frog, quickly became a mecca for artists who wanted Adam's analog-styled musical abilities and ear for arrangement and harmony.
He also performed marathon 50+ song concerts with his virtuoso Chaos Band (featuring Sands, bassist Teresa Cowles [whose work with the Chaos Band earned her a spot in the Brian Wilson biopic Love and Mercy playing bassist Carol Kaye) and Cockeyed Ghost drummer Kurt Medlin) in Los Angeles.
He returned to his own music with The Owl And The Full Moon in 2013 and followed it up with three major tours in the U.S., Canada and Europe.
In 2015, Adam announced he would expand the Karma Frog label to outside artists. He toured Europe again with his new soul-oriented project Pacific Soul Ltd.
2016 saw more Adam-produced CDs, including Beach Boy David Marks' Back In The Garage and Pacific Soul Ltd.'s debut The Dance Divine. He also produced and played nearly all the instruments on the debut and sophomore CDs by New Mexico songwriter Rob Martinez.
In 2017 Adam released Bulé, his first album of new original material in four years, working from tracks made on a field recorder in Bali and other southeast Asian locales. It includes the first recorded performance by exiled Laotian singer Chantana na Hat Yai since 1986.
Immediately after the release of Bulé Adam announced he would be living in southeast Asia full-time, though he still maintains the Karma Frog studio and label business and occasionally returns to the United States to produce.
He was profiled in 2018 in The New York Times for his non-music interest in amateur detecting and desert hiking, and reunited with the Chaos Band for a career retrospective concert at Village Recoders in Santa Monica in October of that same year as part of the "Rock Justice Awards" concert series along with the Association and John Ford Coley, later coproducing John Ford Coley's 2019 live album. In 2019 he also debuted the YouTube travel series Adam Walks Around. In 2020 Rob Martinez' third album Maybe Miss America, with Adam as producer and primary instrumentalist, sees release.
Adam's range and output are vast. He has embarked on nearly 30 tours covering three continents. He is a credited musician on 50 CDs and on a dozen different instruments, as well as being an acknowledged expert on harmony vocals and a disciple of the Beach Boys' recording style, though he has also dabbled in power pop, soul, roots rock and punk in his 20 year career. He has recorded 11 official albums as featured artist, and as many more in rarities and limited edition discs.
As a producer, he is credited with 20 full-length CDs. He has performed or tracked with members of the Beach Boys, Earth Wind and Fire, Three Dog Night, Badfinger, X, Faster Pussycat, The GAP Band, plus Davie Allan, Carnie and Wendy Wilson, Paul Collins, The Honeys, Trotsky Icepick, Wondermints, 2008 Tony Award Winner Stew/The Negro Problem, Ronnie Mack, plus cameo appearances with Counting Crows, Brian Wilson, Julia Fordham, Matthew Sweet, and Stan Ridgway, to name just a few of the literally hundreds of artists Adam has played alongside over the years.
After 30+ years of adventures in music, Adam's philosophy can be boiled down to a simple credo: never stop reaching outward.