Rob Tweedie (Vocals) Josh Goldenhersh (Rhythm Guitar/Vocals) James Grossenheider (Lead Guitar) Mike Jost (Drums) Jeff Meyer (Bass)
(by Lindsay Tredent)
There's something different about Adair. Maybe it's because they are the combination of two bands melded into one. Or maybe it's because singer Rob Tweedie found the band's name in a baby name book. But one thing is for sure, don't try and categorize these St. Louis rockers into one of the many subdivisions of music today. Adair has steered clear from this homogenization, and is bound to create their own path and be known as an originator.
Adair is the end product of five musicians all playing music in and around St. Louis, Missouri - some separately, and some together. It all began the way most musicians get started, by having a love for music and deciding to pick up an instrument and jam with friends. "When we started a band, I didn't have enough money to buy a guitar so I decided to sing instead," says Rob Tweedie on how he began.
Tweedie and friends formed Disturbing The Peace in 1993 during their freshman year of high school. A year later Mike Jost, a friend from school, joined them on drums. "We played Nirvana covers in the beginning and through the years we built a pretty good following around Saint Louis," remembers Tweedie. "We originally had one guitar player and then we added Greg Haupt as our second guitarist. We came out with a full-length album in 2000."
At this same time when Rob and Mike were playing in Disturbing The Peace, guitarists James Grossenheider and Josh Goldenhersh began playing in a band called The Keikomen with friend Jeff Meyer. In 1996 they formed the punk band Dig Doug. James, Josh, and Jeff played together in Dig Doug, which eventually turned into Too Young The Hero and ended up disbanding in 2001.
After the split, bassist Jeff Meyer joined the tech-metal band Not Waving But Drowning, In 2001, Jeff moved out west to California. "I was in need of a good life change and just needed to get out of Saint Louis," says Meyer. "I joined Open Hand in 2001 and I lived with the singer. It was three guys, sometimes four, in a studio apartment on Vermont and Wilshire with no kitchen sink."
Back in St. Louis, guitarist Greg Haupt left Disturbing The Peace to join Big Blue Monkey (which evolved into Story of the Year). "A year or so after Too Young The Hero split up, I was twenty-years old and I heard Disturbing The Peace was looking for a guitar player," says Grossenheider. "Josh and I had always played guitar together so we tried out, they liked us, and we joined."
"It was crazy because we went from having no guitar players to having two," says Tweedie. This new lineup of Disturbing the Peace would soon trickle into the beginnings of Adair.
"I write a lot of the music and actual guitar work, so the style definitely changed once I started writing the music in collaboration with the guys," says Grossenheider. "The music was way different than the band's old style, which ultimately sparked the name change."
Born in Novermber 2001, Adair recorded a five-song EP entitled "The Permanent Bruise," and decided to move to California to pursue their music career. "During that time, I sold my Honda and bought a fifteen passenger van," says Tweedie. "We moved to California and we were dirt poor. We basically all stopped our lives to do the band."
"We were living in Westminster in Little Saigon, and we were the only white people on the street," jokes drummer Mike Jost. "Moving to California was awesome, I was really excited and we felt even more like a band because we were able to live together as a band, work with it, and go from there," he says.
Having never been out West and hardly getting outside of Missouri, Adair spent their time in California exposing as many people as possible to their music by playing shows and promoting their five-song EP. Meanwhile, in 2002, bassist Jeff Meyer ended up leaving his band at the time Open Hand due to artistic differences. "I had nowhere to live so I moved in with the Adair guys," says Meyer.
The lineup continued to be the same until bassist TK left Adair in January 2004. "When their bass player quit, I was already living with everybody and it was almost a no-brainer that they would choose me," says Meyer. "I joined the band, and that's the line-up we have to date."
Touring with the likes of Story of the Year, Letter Kills, My Chemical Romance, Hawthorne Heights, Calico System, Evergreen Terrqace, and A Wilhelm Scream, Adair has toured across the country exposing new people to their music. They have also written a full-length record, which currently lies in demo-form.
"I'm really proud of the EP, but I think our new stuff [on the full-length] is way better," says Tweedie. "We've evolved since then, but I do believe the EP contains five really strong songs that are a solid representation of where the band is headed," he adds.
The music alone speaks for their originality, going from one sonic extreme to the next, as heard in "The Diamond Ring." Driven by passion, and fueled by the desire to succeed, the band agrees that longevity is their main goal. "We want to prolong our careers as long as we can. I want to be doing this for awhile, and be doing it with this group of guys," says Jost. And this is just the beginning...
