Renowned ACM-nominated guitarist and songwriter Adam Shoenfeld is back in the spotlight with an inspiring new solo track, titled ‘Breadcrumbs of Hope.’ This eagerly awaited release is now available for streaming and download worldwide.
Shoenfeld, known for his extensive guitar portfolio of nearly fifty US #1 hit songs, is returning with fresh music in 2024 following his 10-track album, ‘All The Birds Sing,’ released last year. Over the years, Shoenfeld’s talents have graced over 500 albums, including over 45 #1 hit singles for prominent artists like Luke Bryan, Kelsea Ballerini, Cody Johnson, and Dan + Shay. His songwriting prowess also shines through, with credits that include Faith Hill’s #1 hit, ‘Mississippi Girl.’ He’s been Tim McGraw’s touring guitarist for a while now and band leader for Jason Aldean. We were thrilled to catch up with him to talk all about it.
It’s great to speak to you again, can’t believe it’s been nearly two years since we spoke last!
Time flies, man, just like that! (laughing)
‘All the Birds Sing’ came out nearly two years ago now, which seems crazy to me. What are your feelings and emotions, now, looking back on that album?
Oh man, I’m still so super proud of it. I wish it had got to more ears and did more stuff but all in all, you know, it was a project that I did for me and I stand by it, I’m proud of it to this day. I put it out into the world and gave it to whoever wanted it. There’s more music to come next year, too, which I’m very excited about.
That’s talk about your new song, ‘Breadcrumbs of Hope.’ There’s still a 60s, Beatles-esque melody and feel to that one. What were your inspirations behind writing that track?
I made an appointment to write with my friend Michael Ochs over zoom. He was in Germany and I was here in Nashville. We started the session just talking about the shape of some local Nashville politics, he still has a home here too. There was the threat of some people getting into office that really held different views to us that we thought were detrimental to society. Just talking about that and the overall amount of division and hatred in the world right now kinda inspired us to write the track.
It wasn’t for about another year that we revisited it and re-tweaked the lyrics a little more. In between that I started writing all these other songs with similar lyrical ideas and they will be on a new EP that’s coming in 2024 but ‘Breadcrumbs of Hope’ is so different, musically, to the feel and sound of those new songs that i decided to release it separately from them. The EP is more Rock, more Pop/Rock and more like something like my Digital Brains side project than it is my solo work and ‘All the Birds Sing.’
Then Katie (Katie Cook, Adam’s wife and singer in her own right) came down and said, ‘Can you let me have stab at producing this?’ and I was, like, ‘Of course!’ To me, it’s like a long-lost track from ‘All the Birds Sing’ rather than being something linked to my new EP.
What was it like working with your wife as the producer?
It was amazing! Always. There was definitely moments of me going, ‘Ahhhh, I’m not so sure about this, I liked what I did,’ and then she would walk upstairs and I’d be, like, ‘darn it, she was right!’ (laughing) She’s a musical genius and when I have those doubts I have to remember that her ideas and her thoughts about music are way better than mine! I just have to go with it! (laughing)
Your daughters did backing vocals on the track too!
Yeah! I sang the really high background part and when we started to mix it, well, my friend Chris Stone really did the heavy mixing, he took my mix and worked on that, when we got to that vocal part I was like, ‘Man, I sound bad!’ (laughing) I still use me in the second verse because that part sounded cool but the girls stepped in to help me out! My step-daughter Daisy has got a really great choral voice and Sophia can sing anything – she came in and did the same soft thing as Daisy did.
Christmas at your house must be a big musical affair around the piano then!
When we get everybody together it’s really great! I never really had anything like that in my Shoenfeld family but when I married Katie her dad (Hall of Fame writer, Roger Cook) would do it every year around the piano, with friends, and it was beautiful!
This past Christmas my daughter wasn’t here but Daisy and my son were. He plays guitar so that was cool. Daisy was playing piano, Hawke was playing guitar and I was on acoustic and it was really beautiful.
Daisy wants to be a choir director so she’s looking into that at Belmont University. Sophia is more interested in journalism and Hawke is a footballer, he’s a quarterback, all-conference, so he’s got things happening in that world right now. They do their thing, man!
‘Breadcrumbs of Hope’ is a song about positivity, hope and mitigating division. You guys are heading into an election year next year where things are going to get pretty crazy. How do you tune that all out and not let it stress or worry you?
I try to keep the mind frame that I’ve always had. My friends can think differently to me and still always be my friends. I hope that other people can think that way too, over the coming year. I had a situation recently where a friend of mine was producing a track, and I’ll be honest here, I’m not a Trump supporter, but one of my best friends is and he knows him. He might know something I don’t know, who knows! (laughing) He wanted me to come in on this session and I saw that Lara Trump (Eric Trump’s wife) was down to record a version of Tom Petty’s ‘I Won’t Back Down’ and I was, like, ‘Man, I love you, I respect you and I’ll never let politics get in the way but I can’t put my name and guitar on a track by Lara Trump that will probably be used out on the campaign trail.’ I had to do it.
He called me back and said, ‘Man, I understand, that’s what America is supposed to be about. We should be able to have differences of opinion and still be friends.’ From this guy’s reputation you wouldn’t expect that to be the reaction he would have but he did. He’s a good guy, he’s a smart guy and he’s a good friend.
Going back to your question, I think the key is to ride that fine line between always knowing what’s going on in your country without always watching the news 24-7, right? It’s a different world now though.
There’s always calls for artists like Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw to make comments about social issues. I think is you’re a big fan of an artist you inherently know which they lean and what moves & motivates them without them needing to become social justice warriors.
Yeah. I think music should be place where you can come and forget about that stuff at the end of the day. I have friends that say and act in a way that I don’t want to act and I feel like if you have a voice and hold a microphone and use words and terms that fuel division then you are part of the problem. It’s that simple. Use your microphone to bring people together rather than force them apart. You’re doing humanity a dis-service if you do otherwise.
You’ve played on hundreds of albums and countless singles, hits and number ones. Talk me through what it’s like when Adam Shoenfeld gets the call to come in and play on a track. Do you get it in advance? Is it a surprise on the day? Do you use the famous Nashville number system? What’s the deal?
There’s always a numbers chart, for sure. Every once in a while there’s always this wild thing where a producer will send me a song in advance! (laughing) It’s always nice to get a heads up. Sometimes, even though a riff might not be that difficult, it might be different in the way that your fingers or style is used to, right?
On Jason Aldean records I’m the band leader so I’ll always get the songs ahead of time so I can make the charts for the rest of the guys. If I’m not leading a session then it’s usually a surprise most of the time!
Do you like that? The surprise and spontaneity of that?
I do, yeah, for sure. I don’t like having to learn parts some of the time. I like getting the demo in advance and then being told to go do my thing! (laughing) There’s a lot of time in Nashville when the demos kinda direct the final recording though and you have to play exactly what is on the demo. I don’t enjoy that as much as finding something original but if it’s what they like, it’s what they like, it’s not my record.
Is that why, working within the confines of the Nashville recording structure, you have your side projects like Sunkat and Digital Brains, to keep your creativity and playing fresh and original?
Yes, that’s pretty much why I started doing those projects. It was for my heart, you know. When you’ve been playing as long as I have, for other people, there’s a danger that it can become a job. It’s the best job in the world but you can get to the point where you feel like you’ve played five different versions of the same song in five different studios in the same week, right?
Doing my own music also really gives me the empathy to understand that when I am playing guitar on someone else’s track it means the world to the singer or writer on the other side of the glass, even if it feels like something I’ve already done before somewhere else. It’s helped me personally, therapeutically and helps me enjoy my day job for other people and artists more too.
Talking about enjoyment, Tim McGraw’s new album, ‘Standing Room Only,’ is his best album since 1997’s ‘Everywhere’ for me.
Great. And i’m so proud to say that I am on that record on 8 songs or so, which I have never done before. He delivers in the studio, man. I was so impressed. I’m not necessarily drawn to listening to Country music but when I moved to town all those years ago I had two Country albums on my iPod: One was Tim McGraw’s greatest hits and the other was Rascal Flatts’ greatest hits. They both picked amazing songs.
There’s a depth to Tim, especially now, where he can almost just pick songs he wants to do without worrying about any of the other side issues that artists have to worry about. Boy, in the studio his voice was dead on and Byron Gallimore is one of the best producers I’ve ever had the privilege to work with.
Tim often talks about doing a record with his live band and it would be great if he did that one time. I’m proud to be in there and playing on this one.
That’s a thing that’s peculiar to Nashville, isn’t it? The whole deal that some players are live, touring players and some musicians are session or studio musicians and never the twain shall meet!?
There used to be a big stigma between the two, there’s not so much of it anymore. I was just talking to Jenee Fleenor about that the other day co-incidentally. It happens, still, to a point as there are guys that are out there on the road that aren’t capable of the studio hang, not necessarily because they aren’t capable or technical enough though and there are studio guys who don’t want to have to go out on tour.
I got very lucky that at the start of my career I did both and was able to work in both worlds, so I feel mega-blessed! (laughing)
It looks like you are going to be out on the road from March until the end of June with Tim next year. That’s a big tour! Do you have strategies or techniques that you use to survive life out on the road?
I create a lot out on the road, I write more songs. There’s something about the motion of travel that inspires me. I feel like I’m actually healthier out on the road, there are less distractions and obviously Tim brings the work out truck with us too, so there’s plenty of time to go do all that as well.
We’re all at that age and point now where we all take care of ourselves, we watch each others’ backs. Nobody gets too crazy and we try to be responsible – the biggest party of the day is the parking lot work out! (laughing) It’s all arenas too, which I love playing because you get the air conditioning! (laughing) I can’t wait, it’s gonna be great!
Let’s finish by talking about your upcoming EP next year. When, where and what can we expect to hear?
‘Splitting Atoms’ is going to be the name of the EP. The songs are about the way the world is right now. There’s a song called ‘Pray for the World.’ There’s a song called ‘One Voice’ where the main line of the song is ‘what if there’s just one voice that could change the world?’
I have a song called ‘Catch Me’ which explores the idea of having each others back. I really love ‘The Children’ which turned out to be very Pink Floyd inspired. We didn’t start out with it in that way but it’s a really dystopian view of where the world could end up if we don’t take some control over it. It’s different, it’s not like ‘All the Birds Sing’ – it’s somewhere between those influences and my work in Digital Brains, which is a very hardcore, Punkish Rock trio. It’s more like modern Rock, Radiohead and all that kind of stuff. I can’t stop making music!
Check out Adam Shoenfeld’s ‘Breadcrumbs of Hope’ at the top of this page and lets hope the Tim McGraw our finds its way to Europe at some point in the next year or so!
