Jazz Pianist Adam Bodine's New Album Is About a "Kombucha Pimp"

Adam Bodine says his musical journey started in the womb: His mother taught jazzercise when she was pregnant with him. Apparently, jazzercise is very effective, because Bodine is now a professional jazz pianist and has been playing for over twenty years, performing with "hundreds of bands" and playing "thousands of gigs." A multi-faceted musician, Bodine also composes, and he'll be celebrating the January release of his most recent original album, Offscreen Pursuits, at Dazzle on Sunday, May 7.

Bodine grew up surrounded by several generations of piano players who heavily encouraged his musical growth. His grandmother and aunt both taught piano, and the instrument had a prominent presence in his childhood home. The typical child entertainer, he performed for his parents' parties and says he was "always forced to play piano in front of other people." Bodine majored in art history in college but did not stop his musical pursuits; he would play with local bands at bars and clubs at night, composing in his free time and daylighting as an art student.

Bodine prides himself on his ability to play a diverse range of genres and says that for him, having the capacity to play with any group is an important part of his profession. He is a regular genre collector who dabbles in rock, funk, classical, bluegrass, reggae and Latin. Bodine currently plays in the eTown house band in Boulder, where he does live radio tapings while collaborating with a wide variety of singers and songwriters.

But ultimately, his heart remains loyal to jazz. He loves molding the energy and creativity of jazz into improvisatory sets while still operating within the framework of the genre. For him, jazz is both "intellectual and emotional," a challenging combination that Bodine loves to conquer.

While his compositions technically fall under the umbrella of jazz, they are all eclectic puzzle pieces. Each album explores the constraints of jazz while incorporating musical elements from other styles, and his compositions weave melodies together in a way that transforms every work into a unique adventure. Offscreen Pursuits is the third album in a series recorded at Mighty Fine Productions. Each album features sequential melodic material that transforms with every song, or as Bodine calls them, melodies that "travel."
Bodine's albums have been likened to "channel surfing" as well as the ever-changing skits in Monty Python. "When it comes to piecing together an album — so the trilogy of the three — it's just a continuation of that [concept]," he explains. "Some tunes will be heavily orchestrated with fourteen musicians, strings and horns, and it is just this epic thing, and then boom, it turns into something else."

Offscreen Pursuits' underlying story is a very Colorado one, following the adventures of a character called the "Kombucha Pimp." Bodine seems to have a personal fascination with kombucha makers, especially those who eagerly request sacrificial taste testers. "It's like, 'What? Is that a shoelace in there? What are you fermenting? Is that a piece of meat?'" Bodine jokes. So he ran with the idea of a character who travels around town pedaling a bizarre concoction of funkily fermented kombucha.

Through offbeat musical interludes, Offscreen Pursuits follows the Kombucha Pimp from place to place as he sells his drink and encounters other wacky personalities. Bodine explains that the twenty collaborative musicians that play on the album each bring a different character and a unique mood to his compositions, emphasizing that it's the instrumentalists that "breathe that life into it."

Meanwhile, Bodine's compositional process suits his playful personality: It's very improvisational and based on spur-of-the-moment sparks of creativity. He begins at the piano with an image in mind and experiments with audibly representing the visual. One track on Offscreen Pursuits, aptly named "Alleway Soirée," leads the listener through a damp, dark alley and past a rusty dumpster. "I'm going to tiptoe through the alley, kind of scared, and how am I going to evoke that?" Bodine muses.

He explains that his music moves from lighthearted, trifling topics to more serious ones. "Melodically, [the music] can be something like: 'I like to eat sandwiches, and on my sandwich, I like to put lettuce and mayonnaise and maybe some pickles,'" he sings. "There's the storytelling, and maybe some humor of 'Here's the situation,' but it can also be deeper and therapeutic or dark."

During live performances, the Kombucha Pimp character acts as a springboard for the banter that often accompanies Bodine's shows. He loves riffing off of the audience, feeding off the energy of a lively crowd while he improvises.

"In a live [performance], what makes it pretty fun for me," Bodine says, "is the interaction with the audience and letting them know that this is a set of music about my friend the Kombucha Pimp, who I met in the alley right before the show, and he tried to sell me some kombucha with a belt buckle in it."

Catch Bodine's album release show at Dazzle, 1512 Curtis Street, Sunday, May 7, 6 p.m. Tickets are $20 each.