It’s not unusual to have your identity stolen on the Internet. What happened to Adam Busch is a little less common, a lot less sinister, and a bit more complicated. Busch, who moved to Chicago in 1999 from Saint Louis, lived here until 2014, and during those years he fronted two excellent bands, Manishevitz and Sonoi. Shortly before leaving for Austin, Texas, he made his first solo record, River of Bricks, with assistance from another former Chicagoan who’d headed south, Michael Krassner of the Boxhead Ensemble. As Busch started playing out under his own name and readying the album for release on his Meno Mosso label, he discovered he had an identity problem: there was another Adam Busch.
With a label backing him, Ostrar says, “All I had to worry about was writing good songs, figuring out who I wanted to record with, and where and when I wanted to record. We made a better record because of that.” He demoed the new record at Michael Krassner’s home studio in Phoenix, Arizona, with Krassner on guitar. Along with keyboardist-bassist Wil Hendricks, drummer-keyboardist Stephen Patterson, and violinist Josh Hill, they repaired to Sonic Ranch, a studio in the border town of Tornillo, Texas, where the likes of Swans, Mountain Goats, and Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top have recorded. “It’s very secluded and you stay on the property and have all your meals there,” Ostrar says. “Point being, there aren’t any distractions. We recorded it live, all in the same room. I guess I made a record the way lots of people have made records, but it was a first for me. I’m used to piecemeal recordings and piecemeal recording budgets.”
