Ryan Adams

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.