I was joined by two young men on the short elevator ride from the Strathmore’s entrance level to the “Discovery Channel Grand Foyer”[1] on Tuesday night. They appeared to be in their early 20s, though it’s possible neither had yet to reach his second decade. One clutched an unwrinkled piece of notebook paper, which the two began to examine immediately upon entering the elevator.
My curiosity being evident, one of the them spoke up: “It’s the setlist from Ryan’s last show.”
“In Chicago,” the other chimed in.
“Do you want to see?” our first fan asked cautiously, his tone making clear that this information had the potential to spoil the evening for me.[2]
He handed me the sheet of paper upon which he had listed the songs performed that night. They were written out and numbered neatly in pen.
Skimming over the list, the takeaway was clear: Ryan Adams is again revisiting material from early in his career - something he has often been loath to do - and fans are excited.
I noticed the two were looking at me, awaiting a reaction.
“Wow,” I commented. “All the hits.”
The two nodded.
That wasn’t the first tip I’d received indicating that this concert would include a significant detour down memory lane.
Some friends and I have an ongoing e-mail thread that serves as a forum to comment on the ridiculous shit that seems to pour forth from the Adams camp every few months. It reaches back to the summer of 2009, when Adams made the announcement of his second book, Hello Sunshine; an announcement that occurred before his first book – the poetry and short fiction collection Infinity Blues – had even hit bookshelves. You can’t make this stuff up.
“Anyone want to start a book club when these things are released?” the inaugural e-mail read. “We can drink whiskey, do some speed balls and discuss the similarities between Infinity Blues and the dark currents that run through such esteemed songs as ‘Halloweenhead’.”
This group pounced at the opportunity to see the alt-country troubadour this fall during his first solo trek down the East Coast. Then the reviews came in:
“Pretty epic show - played Whiskeytown and mostly old songs. We were a little worried it was going to be all Ashes & Fire, but it was kind of a best-of show”
“Opened with ‘Oh My Sweet Carolina’, closed with ‘Come Pick Me Up’ and hit half of Pneumonia on the way there.”
“Same at Carnegie Hall last night - played for 2 hours straight.”
I came across Whiskeytown in waning days of No Depression, when the band was still intact and Adams had already established a reputation for onstage petulance.[3] Whiskeytown’s Faithless Street and Stranger’s Almanac weren’t game-changing – plenty of bands had mixed Gram Parsons with the Replacements earlier in the 90s – but Adams was proving he knew his way around a hook and was well-schooled in country and western archetypes.
The latter proved of little importance when Adams released his solo debut, Heartbreaker, in the fall of 2000. The album is now considered his “pinnacle” [4] – or at least somewhat of a cult classic – but the nods to Dylan and (Nick) Drake prompted some concerted headcratching from Whiskeytown fans.[5]
It would not be the last time Adams would confound expectations.
After Heartbreaker, the North Carolina native would spend a decade traveling all across the musical map: slightly overblown Americana (Gold), thrashy Mats worship (the Pinkhearts), trad rock (Rock n Roll), anglophilia (Love is Hell), early 70s Grateful Dead (Cold Roses), and… well you get the point.
Aesthetic shape shifting is in and of itself hardly a negative, but with the exception of Gold and Cold Roses (and perhaps Jacksonville City Nights), Adams' releases have been most notable for the mediocrity. Joshua Love’s evisceration of Cardinology cut to the core of the problem: “Cardinology, like Easy Tiger or Cold Roses or Love Is Hell or you get the idea, is melodically sound, remarkably insular and largely unaffecting. It's all soft edges, and its punches feel like pillow fights.”
In other words, save a few highlights each record, nearly everything released properly as “Ryan Adams” in at least the past five years has been a tepid snooze, riddled with such thematic puff that it’s a wonder the words don’t float off the lyric sheets.
But Adams continues to attract new fans, and fervent ones at that. Fans that don’t blink at a $45 ticket and a trip to Bethesda[6].
What’s most remarkable is that these fans are steeped in the lore of Heartbreaker. No matter when they started listening to Adams, fans are well aware of Heartbreaker’s backstory, and that it is the True Fan’s album. It’s as if someone sits them down and says, “I hear you’re interested in exploring the wild and wonderful world of Ryan Adams. You’re going to need your essentials, Heartbreaker and Gold, but listen to the last decade of music at your own peril.”
This solo tour, then, feels in part like an attempt to connect with newer fans recently versed in early Adams, and in part like an olive branch to those old fans who have been patiently losering through Cardinals records.
Adams slumped out onto the Strathmore stage looking exactly as you would expect, his bedhead shooting off in multiple directions and a retro baseball t-shirt peeking out from underneath a worn black leather jacket.
A pair of guitars painted with the colors of the Jamaican flag was propped next to a stool in the center of the stage.[7] Two separate performing areas were illuminated to each side of him: one showcased an old and assuredly expensive piano, the other an unadorned microphone.[8]
After some tuning, he began the delicate picking of “Oh My Sweet Carolina”, much to the satisfaction of the immediately gratified crowd. It was the first of four Heartbreaker songs he would play on the night, one less than from Ashes & Fire, an album that came out less than four months ago.
Adams would reward the audience with Gold ("Firecracker", slower piano renditions of "Rescue Blues" and "New York, New York") and Whiskeytown ("16 Days", "Houses on the Hill"), but it was his solo debut that drew the loudest applause.
He closed the initial two-hour set with a one-two punch of “Damn Sam (I Love a Woman that Rains)” and “Come Pick Me Up”.
It was roughly thirty minutes before the audience’s courtesy subsided and each lengthy pause between songs would be pierced by the occasional request.
These requests were largely ignored or deflected[9], until Adams launched into an impromptu song about how he had already developed a set list and “had a plan.”[10] He riffed on scrambling to develop the list after a game of basketball and audience members wanting to leave early and bombastic Hollywood movies and the time his manager was so sick she sounded like Peter Falk. It was funny.
Adams is a loveable and charming fuck-up.
But all I could think as he then proceeded to slog through songs like the generic “Chains of Love” (“Storms are brewing in your heart / I don’t wanna waste it") and “Crossed Out Name” (“I wish I could tell you just how I’m hurt / Pinpoint the location / It’s in another universe”) is how none of that personality makes its way into his music.
Yes, Adams released an internet-only metal album and another called We are Fuck You, but for whatever reason he has placed a firewall between anything remotely interesting and most everything properly released under his own name.[11] What's such a downer about these albums is how rote and impersonal they feel.
The singer seems to be aware of this, to a degree.
“I don’t know how I ended up making music like this,” he shared with audience. “We should all be at a White Lion show getting fucking hammered. We should all be wearing acid washed jeans that are so acid washed they just explode.”
Adams has been making this sort of “I make sadsack music, but what I really love is obscure punk and metal” argument for years now, and yet he’s continued to release records like Easy Tiger and Ashes & Fire.[12]
"If you leave depressed - and not because of my haircut - then I did my job," he would later self-deprecatingly remark. "Just in case there was one part of you that was optimistic about your life, I'll come back and crush it like an ant."
The highlight of the evening came during the set's three-song encore, when Adams was joined by former Drive-By Trucker Jason Isbell [13]. Isbell had opened the night with a short and sweet acoustic set, performing the kind of detail-rich, classically country and western songs that Adams has mostly abandoned.
The two began with a rendition of "Danko / Manuel", Isbell's heart-wrenching eulogy to Richard Manuel and Rick Danko. Next they tackled Whiskeytown's spare "Jacksonville Skyline", the strongest precursor to Heartbreaker on the band's swan song, Pneumonia. Finally, after much discussion, they settled on a cover of Alabama's "Love in the First Degree" to close the night.
It was a welcome reminder of when Adams could make feeling bad feel so good.
[1] Very little at the pristine Bethesda venue avoids corporate sponsorship.
[2] It bears noting that the Chicago show had taken place not the previous night, but six weeks earlier.
[3] Whiskeytown wasn’t some exotic find; it was on Output, an imprint of Geffen, and thus available at your local Circuit City.
[4] The contributions of David Rawlings and Gillian Welch to this record cannot be overtstated.
[5] There was also heated debate over what “I’m as calm as a fruit stand in New York” meant, and whether it was total bullshit.
[6] Tuesday’s show sold out quickly.
[7] One can only hope this was a reference to his MTV special “Music in High Places: Live in Jamaica”.
[8] Adams would relocate to the second stand a dozen songs into the set, explaining that he "came up with the idea of a second stage after numerous shows where my ass fell asleep.”
[9] “Is that a math theorem or something?” Adams asked in response to a request for Sheryl Crow duet – and “Harder Now That It’s Over” retread – “Two”.
[10] He proceeded to forgot how to play “Let it Ride”.
[11] It’s for this reason that I actually enjoy the inane “Halloweenhead”.
[12] I would point to Jens Lekman and Will Oldham as two singer-songwriters who have been able to have their cake and eat it too.
[13] Isbell's stretch with DBT was not coincidentally its most fruitful. See: Decoration Day and The Dirty South.
Previously in Live DC:
- 2/22: Live DC: The Dead Milkmen @ U Street Music Hall
- 2/22: $40 Fashion Challenge Is Back: Make Me Over
- 2/21: LiveDC: ZOLA JESUS @ U Street Music Hall
- 2/21: PHOTOS: Emilie Autumn @ Recher Theatre
- 2/21: LiveDC: Burlesqu-a-pades @ Birchmere
- 2/18: PHOTOS: Slow Club @ DC9
- 2/18: PHOTOS: MIXTAPE @ TOWN
- 2/16: LiveDC: This Will Destroy You @ Red Palace
- 2/15: LiveDC: Jack's Mannequin/ Jukebox The Ghost/ Allen Stone @ 930 Club
- 2/15: LiveDC: All Things Gold w/ Summer Camp/ Gigamesh/ Ghost Beach
God loves a cheerful giver.
brilliant review!