Last year, Adam Lake made the move from Tumbler Ridge to the big city of Prince George to pursue his dreams of a musical career. And love.
“I moved to Prince George because I met a girl here,” says Lake. “Coming from Tumbler and not really knowing the city life at all, I wanted to start smaller and find a loyal fan base. Prince George is just a bigger stepping stone for me.”
Lake is a familiar face for people who like to golf, as he spent the summer working at the golf course. He moved to Prince George in November to work on building a fan base and developing his career.
That’s hard right now, as there’s not a lot of gigging for a musician in a time of Covid. “I haven’t really had proper exposure and with Covid going on,” says Lake. “But right now, I am doing music stuff only. I want to make this a full time thing.”
Lake has just released his first full-length album, Who I Really Was, which dropped on January 3. “I chose this title because a lot of my music reflects on past events in my life and I feel that since starting to work on this album I’ve learned a lot…not only about music but about myself and just how much I really can do.”
Previously, Lake released an EP—Hey It’s Me, Adam—under the pseudonym Rivr, which is available on SoundCloud. But recently he’s decided to dump the pseudonym and record under his own name.
“I chose to release the album under my real name because I don’t want to play a character I’m not,” says Lake. “I want everyone to know who I am and what I am about. I want to feel proud of sharing my music with family and friends and I feel that using my name can bring a more personal connection to everyone who checks it out and supports me.”
As part of that, he is hoping to get to 5000 followers on Spotify by the end of this year. “I just wanna spread my music and get as many people hearing it as possible,” he says. “I love seeing people smile from my music and I love how much positive feedback I’ve gotten back already with such a little following. I already know I have a group of people who support me and that’s amazing to me.”
Beyond that, he is working with Tribe Promotions out of Tampa Florida to promote his music, and in March he and producer AJ Cooper will be heading down to Victoria to spread the news and shoot a video.
AJ Cooper is also from here. He went to school to get a degree in music production, then returned to Tumbler Ridge. He currently works for the District and can be seen driving the sidewalk cleaner around on snow days. But in the evenings and on weekends, Cooper will create tracks for Lake and other local artists to perform over. “AJ is definitely the mastermind behind the group,” says Lake. He makes every single one of my beats and he is always creating more for everyone.”
By everyone, Lake means 25 Vision, a group of artists originally from Tumbler Ridge whose mission is to “explore Hip Hop in a new way.”
In addition to Lake and AJ Cooper, members of 25 Vision include AJ’s brother Zach, Myles Wagner (who records under the pseudonym “Savvy”) Nick “Rokjaw” Zavaglia, Braydon “Bmillie” Miller and Koal “Nago the Restless” Miller.
“Nick also does a lot of the beat making but he’s perfecting his own craft at the moment,” says Lake. “Myles does have his schooling and does help the group out lots with his knowledge as well. 25 Vision is more of a family and at the end of the day all the boys want what’s best for each other, so anything anyone can do in the group to help, we do it.”
He describes the collective as being a “family of brothers” “We all just gravitated towards music in a small town. We are very lucky to have all this talent in one group. 25 Vision itself started under a different name back before I was even involved. I think it all became a little bit more serious to everyone in the group around 2016. We released our first song on the SoundCloud around in the third quarter of 2016. I think the “why” aspect is because we all had such great energy together; there wasn’t really a downside to being a group!”
For Lake, a song will start with downloading a track from Cooper. “I’ll just hop on the mic and start free styling until I get the vibe and flow of the song and then I go through and tweak my lyrics to make it sound better and fit the actual feeling of the song.”
About 70 percent of the song will come from that original freestyling, but Lake is not above going through it with a red pen and making it better.
The 14 song album Who I really Was weighs in at 29 minutes. The longest song on the album is 2:58, the shortest just one minute long. Adam says one of the things that he’s learning is to make the music more personal. “I’d say my older stuff was definitely pure genre and not really much thought. But that was my practice. I still have so much to learn. My new stuff offers these glimpses into my brain that I usually can’t get out. Songs like ‘Veins’ and ‘Involved’ are the newest songs, and make up about half of the new album. My delivery is to sort of integrate what I like listening to and it kind of just implements itself into my delivery. I am not trying to portray someone I am not.”
Lake says he named the album Who I Really Was is because a lot of his music reflects on past events in his life. “I feel that since starting to work on this album I’ve learned a lot about not only music but myself and just how much I really can do.”
He says the song ‘Veins’ in particular captures what he is going for. “’Veins’ is my most passionate and vulnerable song. I love being able to express the feelings that I have in music form. I feel like all the songs on the album are all my favourites in some way but I feel the most amazing about ‘Veins’. That song features the line: “But I’ll keep on walking, fill my road, full of my people but I don’t know if you weren’t on my back then maybe I’d show you how to be selfless n care more for the others around you, then for the people who left, maybe you’re breaking inside but you want it right so take it, it’s alright.”
While he’s only been in Prince George for three months, Lake is finding the process a little different. “I have to do a lot more writing without the mic,” he says. “And we are having to travel to be in the same place: AJ will come here, or I’ll go there.”
Lake says music is still a work in progress. “I am still in such an early phase of my career that I take every bit of feedback I can and do what I can to put it into my thought process, because truly honestly I am making songs that I feel good about and that’s what matters most for me. I wanna spread that feeling I get when I listen to it. We are best friends doing what we love. We want to spread love and show the world what 25 Vision is made of.”
Who I Really Was is available on Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming platforms.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
