Pages tagged “adam schlesinger”

Christmas will come early for Stephen Colbert fans this year (before Thanksgiving, even). The funnyman will host A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All, a one-hour music special to air Nov. 23 on Comedy Central. And he's accumulated an impressive array of musicians, like John Legend, Elvis Costello, Feist, Toby Keith and Willie Nelson, to help him belt his Yuletide tunes.

When Paste recently caught up with Adam Schlesinger, he said that he's an early riser. And it's a good thing, too, because the Fountains of Wayne co-founder's plate has more on it these days than an all-you-can-eat buffet.

With a hefty resume that includes film credits, production work, Broadway scores and two critically lauded bands, Adam Schlesinger is power pop’s own Renaissance Man. The songwriter first rose to prominence in the mid-‘90s, when he penned the Grammy-winning title song to Tom Hanks’ “That Thing You Do!” while splitting his time between Ivy and Fountains of Wayne. The flair for multitasking continued into the following decade, where Schlesinger widened his expertise by penning tunes for the theatrical adaptation of John Waters' Cry-Baby, writing music for the Jonas Brothers, and producing Dashboard Confessional’s upcoming album. When Paste caught up with Schlesinger on a recent weekday morning, he cradled the phone in one hand while twiddling knobs in his recording studio with the other.