Tom Adams is a 3-time recipient of IBMA’s Banjo Player of the Year award known for his innovative approach to traditional Scruggs-style playing. Growing up in Gettysburg, PA, and playing in his family’s band the Adams Brothers for eleven years, Tom gained national recognition in 1983 as a member of Jimmy Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys.

For the next twenty years Tom toured and recorded with some of bluegrass music’s top artists: the Johnson Mountain Boys, Lynn Morris, Blue Highway, Rhonda Vincent, Dale Ann Bradley, and Michael Cleveland. Live at the Ragged Edge (2004) an album of banjo/fiddle duets with Michael, and Foggy Mountain Rock (2013) on the album A Bluegrass Tribute to Earl Scruggs earned Tom IBMA Instrumental Recorded Performance of the Year honors.

In the years since he stopped touring with the banjo, Tom has had an active schedule as a banjo instructor contributing for twenty years to Banjo Newsletter magazine and on staff at banjo camps across the country.