Chicago—Mike Adamsick, 26, yesterday stunned and offended sandwich eaters at a Lincoln Park Potbelly with the sheer eclecticism of his solo musical performance. A member of a number of local rock bands in Chicago, Adamsick recently decided to supplement his fledgling music career by booking solo daytime gigs.
“I was eating lunch at a Potbelly one day and some guy was playing classic rock covers on a little raised platform,” says Adamsick. “He was really getting through to the people there. I realized that day that when people open their mouths to voraciously consume warm sandwiches, they open their ears as well.” Adamsick scheduled a tryout, which he would eventually pass playing languid versions of songs by The Doors and The Rolling Stones. “Mike wowed us with his rendition of ‘Soul Kitchen,’” says Morgan Fay, the Potbelly manager who scheduled Adamsick to play on his location’s claustrophobia-inducing stage. “We booked him thinking that he would pay homage to the classic rock genre. Boy, were we wrong.”
Adamsick’s live performance, far from extolling one specific genre of music, was rather a meandering appraisal of them all. According to Stephanie Pontius, who was eating lunch with her friends at the time, “He [Adamsick] started his set with ‘Old Man’ [by Neil Young] and ‘House of the Rising Sun’ [by The Animals]. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, this is what Potbelly music is all about.’ His next song was one I recognized, although I don't know the artist or the title. 'She's a Bad Mamma Jamma' or something." The solo performer then went into Prince’s “Purple Rain.”
The audience responded to the jump in pitch and chronology with a mixture of perplexity and disappointment. “I didn’t even know it was possible to play Prince on a single acoustic guitar,” says Pontius. “Nothing short of betrayal,” says Potbelly employee Rick Salisbury. “The guy billed himself as a champion of classic rock, and then all of a sudden he starts bringing the funk and all this other crap.” According to sources, after Adamsick finished his first set with Earth, Wind and Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland” and approached the lunch counter for a cup of water, Salisbury refused, telling Adamsick he had to play “some fucking Crosby, Stills and Nash” before receiving refreshment.
Potbelly has long been a bastion of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s classic rock zeitgeist. Its inviting wooden walls, warm sandwiches, and intrusive employees are redolent of a time in our nation’s history when free love, baked brains, and abrasive personal and political rock and roll reigned supreme. And so Adamsick’s seemingly random impersonation of Everlast front man Erik Schrody’s gruff voice for his loyal cover of “What it’s Like,” was considered an exercise in deliberate grotesqueness by many in attendance.
“I come to Potbelly for three reasons,” says Mitchell Hunt, who was around for half of Adamsick’s second set. “To eat warm sandwiches and chili with Kraft singles on top, to deal with employees who ask me too many personal questions, and to listen to classic rock music. If you’re not going to play classic rock music, I just don’t get it. You’ve got to be nihilistic, or something. I mean, what’s the point?”
Adamsick, meanwhile, firmly opposes the charges of false advertisement, perfidy, and nihilism. “I simply wanted to represent a variety of musical styles and to showcase my talents,” he says. “For an apparently laid back place, Potbelly turned out to be pretty fascistic. I don’t think I’ll be back to perform, but I simply can’t quit their tuna salad sandwiches.”
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