Biography

Hi. My name is Adam. My surname is pronounced bow-cher, like voucher. Americans seem to have the most trouble understanding this. I hate band/artist biographies written in the third person, when they're clearly written by the artist (who is usually doing the website and all the promotion too). I myself have been guilty of this in the past, but no more! 

If you want a general idea of what I do, it's acoustic solo singer/songwriter in approach but think Billy Bragg meets Ani Difranco. Apparently, you have to classify what you do with some kooky term so I call it Shoutyfolk. That seems to work. Basically, I play mostly fast, up-tempo acoustic music, with shouty punk style vocals. I also play with my ace new band in full on electric mode as 'Adam Boucher & The Dead Set'. Which is nice...

Oh yeah, and I'm orignally from Bournemouth but now living in London.

In The Beginning...

I grew up listening to rock bands like Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Skin and Pearl Jam and played guitar in a few bands up until the age of 20, when my group at the time (featuring my buddy Paul Saunders, ex-Fat Arnold/Only Child who have since morphed into Munroe Effect) fizzled out. We never amounted to much, but had a load of fun playing, which I guess is the point. Maybe you were lucky enough to see us at one of our few gigs... As far as I know, no photos exist of us as a band... only some 4-track rehearsal recordings that I insisted on making.

Here's Paul:	and Geoff (drummer and bass player!)

  
(sorry Geoff, I don't have any more flattering photos).

I half-heartedly tried to find other musicians to start a new band, but nothing worked. Met some really weird people and have some odd stories to tell, but that's about it. Bournemouth is largely a musical shithole. Around this time I started writing full songs for the first time and sang (badly) on the demos. The original intention was to get someone else in to sing. I never got round to it though. It didn't seem right to have someone else sing my lyrics and I guess I was too scared to make contact with any other musicians.

So, in November of 2002 I tested the waters of life without a band and released a CD recorded on my trusty cassette 4 track. Cunningly titled '4-track demos', it was primarily aimed at getting gigs, but was also given out to people through this website. People from as far a-field as Canada, America & Norfolk asked for copies. Isn't that nice?

Many gigs follow... broken strings... new songs... I really sucked quite badly during this time!

I put out my next CD, 'Growing Up And Getting Out' on 2nd January 2004. Again, recorded by myself on my updated home studio set-up (Studio Zu). Much better than the first cd, though the 'singing' is still very ropey. Only a few copies are left and I have no plans to make anymore once they're gone. Nobody really needs to hear it. Ever.

In June 2005, after a rather shit recording session at a local studio, I put out a limited run freebie cd called 'A Concert for Archie'. This cd was a stopgap collection of odds and ends, including two of the better tracks from the shit studio session. People in Bournemouth seem to like free stuff. They don't seem to like paying for things though. This was the first release on my own label, zu-bean records.

I booked a session at a local Bournemouth studio, Active Music to record the next CD. On June 9th 2005 I recorded 9 songs, 8 of which made it onto the finished CD 'Hee Haw'. The missing track was ' Hurts To Say Goodbye' which just didn't work out and I was too tight on time to fix/re-record it. The CD was recorded in about 8 hours and mixed in about 6 a week later. Useless trivia fact #65: I listened to a lot of Operation Ivy, Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat & early Green Day on the way to the sessions. Nice.

The CD was the 3rd release on my own label, zu-bean records (Also home to Bournemouth poet & quirk-master The Poet Hi-Ho, lo-fi troubadour Ian Lory and local legend Si Genaro). It's also the first fully pressed/mastered, bells and whistles cd on zu-bean records.

Still with me? Good. I moved to London a few years ago. The streets weren't paved with gold. Mostly dog turd with rats scuttling around.  Not long afterwards I put out my next CD, a three track live recording called 'A Farewell To Harrington'.  It's my favourite of everything I've released so far.

I've toured the UK twice (June 08 and April 09) Not mammoth tours mind. I'm not pretending I'm Metallica or anything. Both tours were fucking ace and I'll be touring way more often in the future if I can help it.

I also started a band called Jesus And Tequila with a few mates,  Naomi and James. It recently went tits up though. Ho hum. Life goes on. You should check us out though. We were ace.

This brings us fairly up to date. I'm currently demoing for my next CD. Nice.  Oh yeah, I've put up most of my CDs for free download. Aren't I nice? and a bit crap at writing biographies?!