Adam Schlenker

Adam Schlenker always has the big picture of American roots music on his mind. Where others might see Bela Fleck, Jimmie Rodgers, and Mississippi John Hurt in different leagues, he sees the fretboard of a guitar. Visualizing the similarities between their approaches has allowed musician, educator, composer, and arranger Adam Schlenker to step back and see how it all fits together.

As a thoughtful force in American roots music, Adam understands his embeddedness in this interwoven fabric. So, the dual aims of creating something new and honoring what’s come before suffuses all of Adam’s diverse projects as a musician and educator.

As a musician, Adam has never devoted all his time to any one genre. Growing up in Beckley, West Virginia, what began as an impulse to start guitar lessons after seeing a roadside advertisement soon became an integral part of his identity. Bluegrass, blues, country, rock, and progressive American roots sounds all contributed to his musical development.

Equally at home with a telecaster or a dreadnought in his hands, Adam found a thriving music scene when he moved to Columbus, Ohio in 1998. There, he continued to speak in the languages of many genres as a session musician, engineer, and band member. Over the next two decades he played in bands as wide ranging as electric jam band The Bootlegger’s Union, progressive acoustic and bluegrass unit Fox N Hounds, and regional country-rock supergroup The Spikedrivers.

Adam’s solo projects, meanwhile, showcased the balanced dualism between tradition and personal expression that have come to define his career. Half the space on the track lists of albums like Family Tree (2012), A Matter of Time (2017), and The Ghosts of Pain Creek (2020) was for his original compositions; the other half for what inspired him. Adam brings a version of this approach to his latest band Appalachian Swing, which plays the repertoire of the Kentucky Colonels—he adeptly tackles the challenge of blending the spirit of Clarence White’s flatpicking with his own musical voice.

Adam’s work as an educator is motivated by the same goal: to help his students develop personal style within the vernacular of American roots music. In 2009, he founded 5th Fret Productions, a thriving teaching studio that offers video lessons, written teaching materials that introduce students to Adam’s fretboard visualizations, and lessons through video conferencing platforms that reach students across the globe. Adam’s recorded teaching also boasts an impressive YouTube reach with over 1.5 million views over 7,000 followers.

Adam regularly brings his instruction style to in-person camps in the US and abroad, such as The Nashville Flatpick Camps and The Perry Stenback International Guitar Camp at Engelsholm Castle in Denmark. After developing his individual and ensemble-based teaching through 5th Fret Production and founding The Acoustic Roots Music Ensemble Series in 2014, Adam became Coordinator of American Roots Music Studies at Denison University in 2018. Under Adam’s leadership, the program expanded its scope from a single genre focus to covering the big picture of American roots music. This allows Adam to expose students to a wide variety of sounds and approaches, showing them the connections he sees along the way.

At Denison, Adam teaches a History of Bluegrass and American Roots class and leads the American Roots Ensemble class, where students explore a new artist or theme each semester like the Stanley Brothers, Hank Williams, or Sam Bush. In his signature American Roots Seminar course, Adam reproduces the process of his solo albums on a miniature scale: students study the inner workings of a song like “Gentle On My Mind,” write their own compositions inspired by these models, and record them in studio. Adam expands students’ musical perspectives by connecting them with off-campus music communities, whether that be taking students to IBMA’s World of Bluegrass showcase, or hosting workshops with visiting artists and local musicians as part of Denison’s yearly American Roots Music Festival.

As Adam enters his fortieth year with a guitar in his hands, he sees no sign of slowing down. Adam is always looking ahead to the next project, the next way to shepherd students through their next musical breakthrough, or the next way to explore the connections between his musical roots.