A Greenfield native son, and no stranger to playing music with country music’s elite, addressed the Greenfield Rotary Club on Thursday about a show for this year’s Greene Countrie Towne Festival.
Gary Adams said he was approached by a Rotarian about playing a couple songs at this year’s festival, but Adams said he thought, “If we’re really going to do this … let’s do it the right way.”
Through the decades, Adams and his brothers have played with Greenfield’s own Johnny Paycheck, legendary George Jones, and a slew of other country music greats.
The “right way” to do a show, he said, is to have his band playing on the stage in the streets of Greenfield paying tribute to a couple of those greats – Paycheck and Jones – as well as promoting Greenfield.
Adams said he’s been playing music since he was a child. “I’ve just always been a musician,” he said.
As Adams told The Times-Gazette in a September interview that he and his brothers grew up in the Lyndon area just east of Greenfield in Ross County. He said the first person he remembers meeting other than family members was Paycheck, known then as Donnie Lytle.
On Thursday, Adams said the first time he played with Paycheck was when he was 10 or 11, and they were in a talent show at McClain High School.
“He was a good guy and he was a bad guy,” Adams said of Paycheck, but he said that he thought in the end the good outweighed the bad.
Back in September, Mike Judge, the creator of “Beavis and Butt-head” and “King of the Hill” and co-creator of Emmy Award-nominated “Silicon Valley,” flew Adams and his brothers, Don and Arnie, to Hollywood to shoot footage for a 12-episode pilot that Judge wants to air on HBO and Cinemax, according to Adams and his promoter, Hillsboro resident Johnny Deans.
Gary and his brothers, along with two musicians out of Nashville, would be on the stage for a show at the festival. And Judge, Adams said, has expressed interest in being a part of the show, too, playing bass.
Getting the living members of the band together for this show, Adams said, could be “the last roundup” because everyone is getting older and he said a person never knows if they are going to wake up. And the show, this Paycheck and Jones tribute by the Gary and Don Adams’ Greenfield Express, he said, had the makings to be “the best show ever.”
Adams told Rotarians he and the band look forward to entertaining during the festival. “We’ll put on the best show you’ve ever seen,” he said.
Members of the Rotary Club’s festival entertainment committee said they are interested in having the Adamses perform at the festival, but details need to be worked out.
This year’s Greene Countrie Towne Festival, sponsored by the Greenfield Rotary Club, will be July 15-17.
Reach Angela Shepherd at 937-393-3456, ext. 1681, or on Twitter @wordyshepherd.
