Adam Larkey has tried other instruments – “I play bass a little bit. Mandolin…”
“He’s a good mandolin player,” his father Eric says.
“I don’t know if I’m good,” Adam half-concedes. “I do drums in the middle school band, and I play a little guitar, but not very much.”
His real love lies with the fiddle: “I’ve just stayed with it all my life.” All his life isn’t too long – six years out of a dozen – but long enough that he’s played in Nashville, at the Carter Family Fold, at Virginia’s FloydFest, on the BCMA Pickin’ Porch in Bristol and in various radio broadcasts.
His band is called Mountain Time, and includes his father Eric Larkey on guitar, Joe Honeycutt on mandolin and Josh Hamm on banjo, and new band members Tim Decker on lead guitar and Ken Williams on the bass. All the band members live in east Tennessee, from Erwin to Jonesborough to Johnson City.
“New musicians means new songs,” says Adam.
He’s learning “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” “Old, Old House” and “Love of an Angel.”
“Plus Joe, our mandolin player, has been doing ‘Man of Constant Sorrow’ a lot.”
“I kinda give [my playing] the new sound of bluegrass, as well as the original sound.” The new sound he describes as “kickin’… really drivin.'” He’s influenced by Bobby Hicks on the traditional side, and Hunter Berry on the less traditional.
Adam wanted to play “because Dad and his brother were in the marching band and I wanted to get up to that level.” Now he and his dad play together, though sometimes being father/son has its challenges.
“It’s tough,” says Adam – “it’s easier for me if he’s on stage.” Why?
“The faces. It’s body language.”
Eric laughs. “I’m impatient sometimes and somewhat of a perfectionist,” he admits. “But when it’s all said and done, it’s a good combination, and we have a lot of fun… When we’re bored at the house and the power goes out, we can always say, ‘well, let’s play something!'”
And Adam’s playing plenty, including an appearance at Bristol’s Rhythm and Roots festival this fall.
“Rhythm and Roots always falls on my birthday,” he says. Last year at the festival he reached a new point in music – not during performance, but during a midnight jam afterwards. He found himself playing by ear more, and “having to break [the notes] down less… I wish I would have turned 12 earlier!”
Mountain Time opened for Dan Tyminski earlier this year in Gray, Tenn., the second time he’d met Tyminski, but the first time Tyminski had heard him play. Afterwards: “I talked to him and he said, ‘I heard you play. You sounded good.’
“I said ‘thank you.'”
For more information: adamlarkeyband.com.
