Adam Klein - Low Flyin' Planes (2019)

A singer/songwriter and troubadour, Adam Klein’s music touches on Americana, rustic country folk, folk-rock, and West African Mande music. He performs in a variety of settings– either solo, duo, with his band, Adam Klein & The Wild Fires, or occasionally with his American roots-meets-West-African-roots project under his Peace Corps name in Mali, Lassine Kouyate. A represented Atlanta-based actor, Klein’s roles have included Amazon’s “Z: The Beginning of Everything” as well as various commercials and indie film projects. He can be seen performing his unreleased song, “Goin’ Down to Peachtree”, in the award-winning independent film "Born River Bye".

For Low Flyin’ Planes, his seventh album, Klein teamed up once again with his longtime producer and engineer Bronson Tew at Dial Back Sound in Water Valley, Mississippi. “This feels like the final chapter in a trilogy of records I’ve made with Bronson,” Klein says, “although we’re already on to the next one together as well.” The other two albums in this so-called trilogy include 2013’s Sky Blue DeVille and the 2015 release Archer’s Arrow. “To me, Low Flyin’ Planes is the sonic follow-up to Sky Blue DeVille. I think it’s a natural progression.” To that end, the record features sometime Wild Fires guitarist Crash Cason, former Wild Fire Tew on drums, guitar, and harmony vocals, and the sound is capably filled out with Matt Patton (Drive-By Truckers) and Stuart Cole (ex-Squirrel Nut Zippers) on bass, Eric Carlton (Jimbo Mathus) on keys, Kell Kellum (Young Valley) on pedal steel and guitars, Will McCarley on drums, and other ace players from the Oxford, MS scene. The result is a strong, sincere collection of folk rock songs featuring Klein’s signature warm vocals colored by a lush, textured sound.

The songs stem from an extended period in which Klein, a world traveler who never stayed put for very long while his address of many years was his musically-rich hometown of Athens, Georgia, found himself stationary– working random jobs in the Atlanta film industry and generally hustling for an income. “I was missing both the excitement and stimulation of travel and the time and space to slow down and orient myself toward songwriting and other creative efforts,” he says. “I wanted to be surprised and energized by new experiences.”

Low Flyin’ Planes longs for this sort of movement, growth, and relevance, and it’s perhaps the most pervasive theme of the record. Of “To the Birds” (which asks, “Will I never leave?/ Am I here to stay?/ Will the open road/ the one I rode/ ever come back my way?”), Klein recalls: “I wasn’t playing many shows at the time and would find myself picking up the guitar in the living room or sunroom and watching the squirrels and birds perched on the trees.”