The Sunday evening crowd at The Station House Café was slim but engaged. Against a backdrop of a brick chimney, guitarist Doug Adamz led his band through a set of acoustic folk rock that didn’t shy away from a hue of the blues. When the multi-hour set concluded, a voice chimed out: “You transport me to places!” Finding her eyes, Mr. Adamz responded. “Well, you took us with you,” he said.
Two weeks later Mr. Adamz was back at the restaurant, though this time as a patron, and he recalled that moment of artist-audience connection. “I’ve come to realize—after playing about 1,000 honky-tonk gigs—that a performance can only go as far and as high as the audience lets it. It’s their equal responsibility if they want that high to happen,” he said. “I absolutely mean it. Those ‘places’ wouldn’t have been made available if she wasn’t willing to go there. If the audience is there, miraculous things can happen.”
Such miraculous interventions have followed Mr. Adamz ever since he first picked up the guitar, at age 13. It was the musically significant year of 1964, when The Beatles touched an audience through the Ed Sullivan Show and Bob Dylan began his controversial change from folk to rock.
Mr. Adamz was born in 1951 and spent his early years singing in a church choir; by 1968 his first hit single, at age 16, was transmitted through Southwest Texas radio.
“I Can’t Wait to See You,” by Doug Adams and Early Morning Traffic, was a modest garage rock hit but it gave him enough momentum to launch a career 52 years in the making. After earning a degree in classical guitar from the University of Texas, El Paso, he packed up his Volkswagen van and headed west.
“The first guy who heard my music was Ponderosa Pine in San Francisco,” he said, referring to the West Marin artist born Keith Lampe who was famous for his resounding chants. “We started talking and I had a car but no place to go and he had a place to go but was without a car… so I drove him out to Bolinas.”
Mr. Adamz continued to visit the area often, but remained in San Francisco, where he frequently performed at The Holy City Zoo folk club. One night his curiosity led him to the club for the one set of the week in which folk music was exchanged for belly dancing. Enthralled by what he heard, which was only a doumbek drum and finger cymbals, he approached the performers and proposed joining the group.
“I knew nothing about Arabic music but the next week I was playing with them and just improvising melodies,” he said. “When [the ensemble’s leader] saw what I could do with studio recording, she had the idea to record the music I did for her dancing.”
“Dream Dancer,” recorded in 1978 at a now-defunct studio called The Church in San Anselmo, sold out of its initial 1,000 pressed copies before becoming a worldwide attraction unlike anything of its time.
“This was before world beat was a term and before New Age. This was at the inception,” he said. “Of course, musicians had been borrowing and stealing from each other, but I don’t think an American had done a whole album of original Arabic music.”
He produced three more albums with the group, up until the 1990s, and “Dream Dancer” continued to draw international interest, with sales in places as far flung as Switzerland, Argentina and Japan. “What I love about it is they don’t know who I am. It’s not star-driven,” he said. “But they love the music and it’s in their lives.”
The royalties from these sales are modest—“It’s like an I.V.: it keeps dripping in,” he said—but Mr. Adamz said he’s able to support himself through his music. He has also had a string of odd jobs: as a personal driver for billionaires, a landscaper and a substitute teacher for West Marin Elementary, which he called the toughest gig he’s ever had.
He’s owned a home in Novato, lived in his van in San Francisco and bounced between San Anselmo and Oakland, but he finally landed in West Marin about a decade ago. He now lives on a ranch in Marshall with his partner. He converted their living room into a personal recording studio, and it was there where he recorded his three solo albums, including “National Steel” in 2014.
Entirely inspired by the style of brash guitar that bears the album’s title, the collection returned Mr. Adamz to the charts. Three of the album’s highlights held top spots for the Roots Music Report’s Top 50 Acoustic Blues Songs in 2015.
He said he’s currently at a musical crossroads, juggling three very different ideas for his next record. But in the meantime he’s a fixture in the West Marin music scene. On Sunday, he will perform at Rancho Nicasio with a different set of musicians than those at The Station House gig. (He likes to mix up his band, allowing for maximum spontaneity.)
The bass player for that show has been playing with Mr. Adamz since he was 13: his older brother of two years, Darrell Adams. “Doug and I just fall into this thing [on stage],” Darrell said. “I’ve listened to him for so long that I can just follow along.”
Reflecting on his micro successes, Mr. Adamz spoke to the notion of “making it” as a musician. “My whole life people thought I’ve been on the verge of ‘making it.’ I’ve read biographies of musicians and mentors and I’m doing just fine. I wouldn’t trade places with any of them,” he said. “A good night at The Station House is making it.”
The Doug Adamz Band performs at 4 p.m. this Sunday, Nov. 20 in the bar at Rancho Nicasio. There is no cover charge.