Ryan Adams

His rock album wasn't too bad, but I think I'm the only person who liked it.

and i never would have gotten into the replacements if it werent for a freind hearing me listen ROCK N ROLL and sneering "It sounds like a wanna-be Let It Be" or something like that

I would never have thought to make such an accusation. Little on the album implies awareness of or desire to replicate Let It Be.

after loving heartbreaker and then hearing everything else sucked I avoided all these albums, that was a big mistake, in one week I've gone through the majority of it and most of it is brilliant. I understand he may personally be a prick but he writes really great songs. I can't believe Love is Hell is not regarded as some modern masterpiece.

love is hell is his best record. never gonna understand that pitchfork score.

i feel like demolition & easy tiger are both really underrated. kinda hate 'rock n roll' and never really 'got' love is hell beyond the title track tbh.

apparently just this week they put out iii/iv which is a collection of outtakes from the easy, tiger sessions. i didn't realize they'd spent 6 months in the studio on that one.

its a 2 disc collection of outtakes!

I'm not entirely sold on III/IV yet. I vastly preferred the Dead-style meandering Cardinals of Cold Roses or the "country" Jacksonville City Nights, but none of it is really bad. Douche or not, the guy writes some great songs.

Yes. He knows what he's doing and written a buttload of great songs. Cold Roses is my favorite

new single from new album of same name, very gram, i love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4VGlkcBtfw

The Whiskeytown albums and Heartbreaker are essential. Caitlin Cary's albums are very nice as well. I don't know why I stopped paying attention to him after Heartbreaker.

Can't say that song set me on fire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82SaWx3-gks

http://yankeewombat.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/bush_devil_horns.jpg

lol

don't know why I stopped paying attention to him after Heartbreaker.

Can't say that song set me on fire.

― thinveneer, Thursday, September 15, 2011 3:35 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

he got all mercurial after heartbreaker so one either had to keep listening because one was a fan or one had to have the patience to trudge through stylistic detours, and a regular human's patience runs thin.

new record streaming at npr

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/25/140640429/first-listen-ryan-adams-ashes-and-fire?sc=fb&cc=fp

very mellow & analog, i like.

this is hilarious from that NPR write-up:

"He can successfully crib just about any style of popular music he chooses: the Dead, the Stones, The Flying Burrito Brothers — it's all in his wheelhouse."

THE WHOLE SPECTRUM OF POP MUSIC RIGHT THERE. three fucking country rock bands!!

fan of all four artists btw

otm tho

Love everything unconditionally through "Rock'n'Roll", including all the studio bootlegs, the really lost interest. I guess I just filled up the Ryan Adams tank.

That and I can't stand the Dead.

This really does feel like a well-polished mellow solo record, which Easy Tiger excepted he hasn't really done before. Not much in the way of Deadisms, which you can't have really said since the days of 29 & Love is Hell. It's a little monochromatic, like Easy Tiger, but more intimate.

Yeah ok, officially lovin this.

You're right, the Deadisms seem to have cleared, but I found the vocals lacking a little something... Did he sober up or something? :-P

mellow is def the word!

this is really good dude.

So we can thank Laura Marling for this one?

According to Adams, Laura Marling's second studio album, I Speak Because I Can, inspired him re-write the majority of the album's material. After being sent a copy of her album, by former producer Ethan Johns, Adams noted, "I thought: 'For fuck's sake.' I literally threw out 80% of what I had. And it felt good, to ask: 'What am I really capable of?' I felt competitive again to write great songs."

But also, kinda lol @ the personnel listed on wiki:

Ryan Adams – guitar, vocals
Norah Jones - backing vocals
Mandy Moore - backing vocals
Benmont Tench - Keys

xp

then he got smart and got ethan's dad to produce it

yeah that personnel is unexpected

it also seems to be selling really well -- that, combined with positive critical reception (!) for a lot of his shows in the past year, it seems like most people are willing to forgive and forget the early 00s.

Also -- Ashes & Fire:Harvest Moon::Heartbreaker:Harvest ? Think about it in terms of a 'comeback' after genre experimentation/fan base and critical alienation between each album. Not to mention everyone's always saying they want Adams to make another Heartbreaker, just like everyone used to want NY to make another Harvest (which remains one of his most boring albums by a mile). Thoughts?

Thoughts?

Ashes & Fire sure is boring.

it's quiet, but i dig it.

The Dyson Fan of music. You don't even notice it's there.

I mean I think if you are really into Ryan Adams, which involves "buying into Ryan Adams" it's obviously much more exciting to have him releasing like three albums/forty songs in one year and they're all over the place and keeping half of his greatest stuff unreleased/unofficial and him generally being an asshole and doing crazy stuff than, like, chilling in LA with Mandy Moore and releasing a "tasteful" 10-song album every two years right?

i think x has enough fans is not necessarily true without the major label promotion. fred durst had one of the limp bizkit albums released with no promotional push from the label as an intentional act and it sold poorly.

but ... fuck this guy anyway.

When you have a free ride in the industry for as long as he did, there's probably alot of that business stuff that's out of his grasp, and when it sounds like no one wants to work with him in any capacity...

Fair warning, I refuse to click on the link to read his actual whining, but I'm surprised it's more about labels. I figured he would be more whining about not getting booked to play where he's used to playing. Seems like the kind of guy with the (still, amazingly) sizable enough audience that he'd do alright (though obviously nowhere near the days when he was getting placed in every teen drama) releasing straight through bandcamp.

I believe in redemption and forgiveness for those honestly seeking it, and I believe people can change their behaviors, particularly when bad behavior is reinforced by substance abuse, which I'm sure much of his was. I've been in recovery and I know a lot of people who are sober who remain fans of his. That said acceptance is not to be sought, it should happen organically; apologies need to be honest, and not a manipulation; and very little Adams has done leads me to believe he has performed an adequate amount of self-reflection to warrant a comeback of the type he is hoping.

He should get a dayjob and upload his little self-recorded songs to Bandcamp and YouTube on the weekends for his friends and family to pretend to listen to, like 800,000 other guitar-playing white guys his age.

He basically wants it back the way it was. A bit of selling a decent amount, a lot of media coverage, a large chunk of worship and respect. Basically, like how Bob Dylan had it, and has it now.

He'd settle for a low level of fame, respect, forward anticipation of his new/unreleased projects, etc.

What he'll end up with is a cottage industry, a small scope website, and a reasonably easy to ignore media visibility. Which is what Jonathan King was doing last time I looked (about 10 years ago)

Latest album released on his own label has about 6 million Spotify streams. At ~3000 USD per million streams that gives 18000 USD. Not a lot of instant money from streaming to cover expenses for musicians, studio time, mastering etc. But I would suppose he has some income from his older recordings, of which some original compositions have +30m streams on Spotify. And ofc there are many other streaming services, Youtube, Apple Music etc.

Major label could probably help both with playlisting to increase play count, but also licensing for ads/movies/games which I imagine is much more valuable. No idea how physical sales factor in. But I'd assume Ryan could easily make about 3000 dollars in personal profit for playing a concert, so that's probably better for fast cash. He doesn't need a label to book shows afaik.

I bet he made a ton off of licensing songs to sentimental TV/film, Chipotle and Starbucks, Old Navy and so on. I remember Starbucks putting the Cold Roses right next to every cash register when it came out. Big lifestyle change when all of that dries up, other than past residuals. Also must be hard to know he will likely never set foot onstage again at the Ryman and so on.

whole lotta folks lining up to be ryan adams' business manager itt

haha, he's begging for it!

he doesn't need a better business manager, he needs a better sponsor

And then he can go on Opportunity Knocks!

He's got options.

https://www.printwand.com/blog/media/2012/01/tear-off-sheets-300x296.jpg

The whiner whines

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ryan-adams-wants-forgiveness-after-mandy-moore-and-phoebe-bridgers-emotional-abuse-accusations/

The 46-year-old has spent his forced isolation binging Bravo reality television, ordering copious amounts of Thai food, and plucking away at his guitar and writing somber lyrics, such as “I close my eyes and beg forgiveness before I sleep.”

I look forward to never hearing these:

But it’s hard to say exactly what Adams has learned, as he doesn’t get into specifics of what these past two years have taught him about his alleged controlling and emotionally abusive behavior. He hints that he’s saving these revelations for his music, with remorseful lyrics and song titles that question why he’s even doing all of this.

“​​I use what I’ve got and I work with it, and I try to make something beautiful out of it,” he said. “And then it changes me.”

“I’ve learned that Thai food is fantastic - but expensive if you eat it all the time”

Adams then asked the reporter if he knew of any Thai restaurants in the area that would allow him to perform an acoustic set of all new material

“Maybe we could interest Bravo in a reality show about this, like, a comeback tour of Thai joints”

He admitted that he was mostly taken aback by Moore’s participation in the story, where she alleged that over the course of their nearly six-year marriage, Adams was psychologically and emotionally abusive and had stalled her music career. “I was like, what is the point of this now? Because this is going to hurt my family and it’s going to hurt our friends,” Adams said. “And we talked about this stuff years ago.”

i mean we all know he learned nothing but he really learned nothing

His hero is Morrissey, so...

hey we talked about this already i thought we were good!

Drunken noodle

Reading the longer profile linked in that article makes me realize how near-impossible it is to read a portrait of someone in L.A. without it sounding PR hokum. (See also last year's New Yorker profile of Beck driving around.)

As in

One afternoon, he wandered into the Vedanta Temple in Hollywood, a gleaming miniature Taj Mahal built in 1938. Inside, Adams heard beautiful singing and saw flowers and other offerings to the Hindu deities. Then the singing stopped as worshippers began to meditate. In that moment, Adams says, he felt something beyond his initial curiosity. It was like, he says, “waking up inside my body.” Adams began returning to the temple nightly.

Lol

o_O

what do you do about a problem like ryan adams

xxp Don't think that's unique to L.A. I've seen plenty of NYC-focused profiles like that.

One thing that really rubs me the wrong way in that article is how handwavy the writer is in dismissing Adams' accusers. For instance, musing that because she was successful in the past, Mandy Moore should have had no problems relaunching her singing career, or implying that Phoebe Bridgers built her career on writing songs about her relationship with Adams.

It’s not really the music he misses, it’s the power trip.

Also he didn't abuse some of his female employees!

Also must be hard to know he will likely never set foot onstage again at the Ryman and so on.

do you think he thought of himself as The Ry-man?

It’s not really the music he misses, it’s the power trip.

I was into different music when this guy got popular, so I have only heard most of his music by Adams second hand - but from the start from someone that played a couple shows with Whiskeytown way back in the mid-90s I heard this dude was a serious dick. And pretty much any story from when that band broke up onward, pretty much any story had him being enfant terrible as an undercurrent. I just never gave his music any real chance and this was years and years before all this other stuff broke out...

I'd just moved to North Carolina (pretty much for the twang music scene) as he was beginning his ascent, and he'd already stepped on so many people in the scene I didn't have much interest in hearing him. I've had friends from other regions who were really struck by his songs. To the extent his art has bled into my life, it's struck me as about the level of solo Paul Westerberg.

It's only post #metoo that I'm starting to see that there's many successful people may feel some passion for songwriting/corporate management/owning a shop/directing prestige TV, but that's secondary to the high of controlling people.

I'm not going to lie, I was a huge fan of Whiskeytown and his first couple of solo records. But yeah, I remember lots of rumors about him being a complete asshole and essentially that being why they split up.

Good post, bendy.
it's struck me as about the level of solo Paul Westerberg.
Particularly sick burn.

David Berman said back in 2001 "I don’t expect to be insulted by being told Ryan Adams in the best songwriter in America. Maybe mid-period Steve Forbert B-sides sound fresh to some ears. It's just self-pity in rock."

Which sounds like a sick burn just from the sound of the word Forbert, but then you hear Forbert's "Romeo's Tune" and (for better and worse) it's completely Adams's predecessor.

it's struck me as about the level of solo Paul Westerberg.

in what universe is this a burn?

Ryan Adams was never a tenth the songwriter Westerberg is / was

He said "solo Paul Westerberg."

Dude is doing Instagram ads now, guess he’s taking promotion into his own hands:

https://i.imgur.com/lLZBVav_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

it bums me out that this guy i used to like sucks but it bums me out more he got away with it for so long

I thought the FBI was investigating him - what happened with that?

https://www.nme.com/news/music/ryan-adams-cleared-by-fbi-in-investigation-into-underage-sexts-2856567

https://variety.com/2022/music/news/ryan-adams-new-team-concerts-move-past-allegations-1235284292/

Interview w/new managers.

There will always be an audience for him, people for whom Wilco is just too spicy.

fuck variety for entertaining that bullshit.

Weirdly enough, I was listening to some music on random shuffle the other day, and I was given not one but two or three songs that turned out to be by Ryan Adams (or Whiskeytown). I'd never really listened to more than a couple of albums of his, and the couple of shows I'd seen were shitshows, but these songs were all pretty good. And he's a shithead.

Kind of interesting to see their strategy, as hideous as it is:

Cancel culture freezes bad behavior. It doesn’t give people a chance to apologize. Everything we like about our legal system is the presumption of innocence, the right to confront your accuser, the statute of limitations; none of that kind of stuff exists in cancel culture.

Personally, I see ‘call-out culture’ as better, far better than cancel culture. I understand that you can call attention to someone’s wrongdoing, and then, with the right people, they can have a chance to learn and correct the issue and become a better person. You can’t turn the clock back. We can’t change what’s happened. But I feel that everybody deserves a second chance, and as long as they follow the right path, then they should be allowed to certainly pursue that.

Here's the path he is actually on:

Since he participated in the Los Angeles magazine profile last year, Adams has avoided directly referring to the events that seemingly brought him down. But he may have said a lot just in a response he offered to Johnny Depp’s victory-lap post on Instagram, following a court verdict that went mostly in his favor. Adams added a comment under Depp’s post that consisted of a congratulatory heart and fire symbol.