Margie Adam, a singer and songwriter embraced by feminist and progressive audiences, fuses ardent romantic ballads with playful wit and pointed social insight. Across the span from the mid-1970s into the early 1980s she contributed substantially to reshaping ideas of women’s music as creative expression, activist instrument, and viable enterprise.
Appearances at campuses, festivals, theaters, clubs, and events organized by major women’s groups including NOW and Women in the Law enabled Adam to build a catalog issued on her independent Pleiades Records. The releases encompass the 1976 solo-piano project Margie Adam and Songwriter, the concert recording Naked Keys from 1980, We Shall Go Forth! released in 1982, and Here Is a Love Song from 1983.
A standout moment occurred when she guided ten thousand women through a three-part harmony performance of “We Shall Go Forth!” at the National Women’s Conference in Houston; the piece later entered the Smithsonian Institution’s Political History division archives. In 1980 the National Women’s Political Caucus supported Adam’s pioneering national tour created expressly to benefit feminist candidates. She also headlined a Constitution Hall concert timed to the July 1, 1982 Equal Rights Amendment ratification deadline, an event attended by representatives of eighty national women’s organizations.
Adam withdrew from touring in 1984 to pursue a “Radical’s Sabbatical.” During that interval she undertook piano and vocal study, returned to college, and earned credentials to work in chemical dependency treatment.
To the astonishment of many observers, and of Margie Adam herself, she resumed songwriting in 1990 after a six-year pause. Once a new body of material took shape she chose to present it onstage. Repeated calls for fresh recordings led her to convene a circle of women musicians for the album Another Place, which distills the characteristic interplay of humor, politics, and emotion that marks her output.
