Meet Captain Adam

Today we’d like to introduce you to Captain Adam.

Captain Adam, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
The whole idea of “Captain Adam” as a brand is a still bit of an odd one for me, as it happened mostly by accident, but it’s really about the power of “and”.

I grew up in two places: working the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill (RDU) nightlife and party scene and the Marine Corps. My very first bar job had me bouncing and wrangling drag queens within a week or two of getting hired, and that pretty much set the tone for everything that came afterwards. I spent the next few years doing everything from bouncing and bartending to managing and even opening a place from scratch, along with a little stint as a producer. All the while and long after my bar and club days, the Marine Corps provided an intense laboratory environment in which to learn the rest of what I needed about how to attack a problem, how to lead and organize people, and how to get things done. All of this worked in concert with a hundred other supporting experiences to set the initial conditions.

Then, back in 2015, I got picked up to help a buddy out working DragonCon. I was still on Active Duty with the Marine Corps and at the time was an “actual” Captain. He was another Marine that I had known for a long time and so of course when he called me up I was all in to help run the overnight floor at the Marriott – us Jarheads tend to work that way once we know each other, there’s a common baseline that we can all operate against.

Everyone there who’s working the convention is on a radio headset of some sort, and everyone has their “badge name” as a callsign since it’s an open channel. Well, whatever my original badge name was (I honestly forget at this point) was phonetically similar to someone else’s who had been around longer, and we kept stepping on each other. Finally, my boss had enough of it and summarily renames me to ‘Captain Adam'”. And it stuck. I couldn’t change it if I wanted to (although over the years, there have been various additions proposed – I think the current “full version” is “Princess Sailor Scout Trashpasser Captain Adam”).

So, the next thing I knew, I was getting pulled into the convention circuit to work some of these events, and as time went on, I developed a lot of close friendships and relationships with these crews. I ended up moving to Atlanta about a year and a half after getting out of the Marine Corps and moving in with some of the folks that I had met working the same and they became this very close support network. All of a sudden “Captain Adam” was a name I heard on a daily basis, not just once in a while, which somehow makes it more real, right?

Meanwhile, my incredible partner and now Burlesque mentor, Silver Kitsune, had been encouraging me to grow a social media presence. So, when I started taking control of my health and my lifestyle and aggressively pursuing some of the goals that I had been putting off for a long time, I, almost as an afterthought, started throwing up a post a week. Just a stupid gym selfie or something. But it became this self-reinforcing measure. Every week on Monday, I had to hang the one honest picture. To get the picture, I had to do the work. And so, it just kept happening. And then about 4 or 5 months into it, I realize, holy hell, it’s working, and people are reaching out to me to ask for advice, or to tell me that it’s helped them keep going, which is so super cool. CDC, NIH, you name it, they’ll all tell you that the attitudes and behaviors of your social circles and regular influences are contagious, and this past year has certainly borne that out.

In parallel with all these “personal projects”, Candida Valentina pulled me back into the fold as a last-minute “Stage Panther” for her OutlantaCon show this past year, and it all starts to snowball. Next thing I know, I’m “kittening” burlesque shows and even being fortunate enough to be asked to do a duet or a walk-on with some of the incredible talents we have in this area (Silver, Kali, Risky, Royal, I’m looking at you…). And then, I get photos back from some of these and say “oh my gods, look at how awful my posture is” or “what the hell am I doing with my eye-line?!” And so you learn to adapt and improve very quickly – you don’t want to get caught making those same mistakes twice!

So, bringing it all around, I started off with talking about “and”. For me, the performance aspect is just one part of it. It’s the ability to bring the lessons and skillsets from all the diverse aspects of my background into focus and maybe make things a little better, a little safer, maybe the show runs a little smoother for folks. I’ve already beaten my first goal which was to help one person decide to improve themselves on their own, and that was a humbling experience. I think the next milestone for the stage is to bring some of this around into a solo act, to really prove to myself that I can get on a stage all alone and do something that’s original, but more importantly, that people *actually* want to see.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
So I think one of the hardest things to do is to look critically at yourself in an honest and productive manner. To say, “yeah, maybe these old habits were survivable, but they’re not the right ones anymore”, and to look efficiently at what you can do to change that.

This whole process of coming to Atlanta, and discovering that maybe I had some other opportunities to grow and figure out how to do so effectively and sustainably has been a huge rollercoaster. It’s humbling, man, and sometimes educational – If you, as a testicle-owner, want to get an education about how “the other side lives”, go to work in an environment that is femme dominated, largely unregulated, and carries heavy components of sexualized/sensualized artistry, and do it as a large, bearded dude. You’ll find out VERY quickly about just how much you haven’t had to worry about most of your life, and learning to navigate that is definitely a jarring adjustment.

I think besides that, the other thing that’s been super challenging is recalibrating my sense of priorities and figuring out what takes the place of some of my previous habits once they’re gone. There are time and energy and money and bandwidth suddenly available, and you don’t want to just let that go to waste, but you can’t be paralyzed by the possibilities either – you have to choose your course and then attack it.

What’s helped, however, are the incredible folks who have been willing to extend themselves for me along the way. The Slightly Smaller Council (long story) has been my chosen family since I set foot back in Atlanta in 2015 – it’s ebbed and flowed, but those folks have always been there for me when the chips were down. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be here. I’ve already mentioned Silver and Candida, who have been incredibly influential in their own ways. The rest of the Bifrost Collective – Kali Fornication and Jessica Nova – they’re building something special that lives up to its principles – I’m living proof of that as the beneficiary of their support and encouragement.

And then, there are the other highly talented performers like Risky Sour, Royal Tee, and Kali once again, all who trusted me with a part of their creative visions. Those are opportunities I had no right to expect, but for which I will be eternally grateful.

No one gets anywhere alone, and I think it’s important to acknowledge that more than we probably do these days.

What do you do, what do you specialize in, what are you known for, etc. What are you most proud of? What sets you apart from others?
“Captain Adam” is a professional problem solver, chaos manager, model, and performer with a uniquely deep and diverse background. His particular combination of over a decade and a half of entertainment industry and high-end corporate experience, along with his military and EMS provider background make him uniquely qualified for your most demanding events.

He is as comfortable on-stage as he is off, which gives him a unique ability to understand the challenges faced by talent, staff, and spectators alike, and to look at a problem from a personally diverse set of approaches. He is LGBTQIA+, Kink, and Fire/Flow Arts friendly, and available for a wide variety of bookings ranging from event safety and stage management to photo, video, and live stage performance work.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I think if I had to pick just one, it would come from my high school years, my very first “solo” live concert. It was my sophomore year of high school, and American Hi-Fi and SR-71 were playing at the Cat’s Cradle, which is a mainstay live music club in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

That was my very first experience at the absolutely electric crush of a live concert crowd, and I was hooked from then on out. Looking back on it now, that was probably a more important moment than I realized at the time, but then isn’t that always the way?

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/captain_adam_/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OneCaptainAdam/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/OneCaptainAdam

Image Credit:
Julie Hunter/Naturally Boudoir, Silver Kitsune

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