Whiskeytown

Whiskeytown

RYAN'S SONG
Ryan Adams Muses on the End of Whiskeytown -- and His Promising Future
It's a sad story with a happy ending. At the end of 1998, acclaimed alt-country champs Whiskeytown -- reduced to a core trio of Ryan Adams, Caitlin Cary, and Mike Daly -- gathered to record their third album in an old converted church in Woodstock, New York. Soon after they finished recording, their record label was dissolved by corporate mergers, leaving the band and the album in limbo. Adams gave up waiting, and in 2000 he launched his solo career with Heartbreaker, one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the year. Cary, too, struck out on her own with an EP called Watlzie. Now, at last, the final Whiskeytown sessions will see the light of day, with the release of Pneumonia, a dark-hued set full of soul, fire, and twang. Adams, who will release his second solo effort, Gold, this fall, chatted with Barnes & Noble.com's Steve Klinge about Whiskeytown's -- and his own -- travails.

Barnes & Noble.com: Although Pneumonia is the new Whiskeytown album for everyone, it must seem like old news to you.

Ryan Adams: Oh definitely, but I took enough time away from it to where it's still interesting to listen to. It was nice to finally get to mix the thing. We mixed it a week or two before we started Gold, my new solo record.

B&N.com: As a whole, Pneumonia is more somber and meditative than were Faithless Street and Stranger's Almanac.

RA: Yes, spiritual. There was a huge learning curve that happened on that record for everybody. One of those things was to not lessen the gift, to accept whatever music was coming out of us at the time. I think that the overriding thing was that we really did want to make something that was a little more spiritual...kinda go inward a little bit more. On our second record we were going outward, and on our first we were still learning the ropes. We [had been] stuck somewhere between a traditional country band and whatever wild fiasco electric guitar things I had up my sleeve that day. It definitely switched.

B&N.com: Pneumonia starts in a spiritual, somber vein, and then it blossoms towards the middle.

RA: Well, that's a really good way of looking at it, and I think that's important, too. A lot of people sequence their records really strangely. A record should flow -- there should be a vibe, and it should be present... There should be some semblance of grace in the way things fit together. I really feel that this record is beautiful in the sense that it does start in a meditative way, then it gets really down there -- the penny's been dropped to hit the bottom of the well. Then it careens back up in the middle.

B&N.com: I'm guessing it bottoms out early on, with "Reason to Lie"?

RA: Well, no -- well, maybe, in a sense. It depends on how you look at it, but the seriousness of the record is presented early.... I mean, we're addressing the topic at hand: to be motivated by and completely enthralled in love, and to be afraid of it at the same time, and afraid of losing it. And maybe so desperately in love that all of a sudden all these things that never bothered you before do, like death or fear of abandonment. Which leaves way for some of the dreamscapes in the middle, where we're able to go and find out, Okay, here's fear, well, why is there fear? So you have to go to a place that's a little bit dreamier than day-to-day life and let some of those natural demons and superstitions do their own jig, do their own dance. By the end, late in the record, there's this sort of sad resignation over the fact that you don't have control over it.

B&N.com: Many songs on Pneumonia relate to your childhood town of Jacksonville. I guess that makes Heartbreaker your New York album.

RA: Yeah, and Gold is really New York-to-L.A. Heartbreaker and Gold were really more about the immediacy of things, and that really made sense to me because if you're going to be a solo artist, you should probably be addressing those things. [But] I've spent so much time talking about my mid-20s adult life or early adult life, now I'm ready to step away, do some other things. Almost pick back up where I left off with Pneumonia.

B&N.com: What have you been listening to recently?

RA: I have been listening to D'Angelo's Voodoo; I've been really liking that. Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath, Black Sabbath -- I've been liking that record a lot. I've been listening to American Beauty by the Grateful Dead, as well as the Grateful Dead's self-titled one with "Wharf Rat" on it -- I really like that record a lot. The Faces' Ooh La La. Leon Russell's And the Shelter People -- been digging that pretty hard.

B&N.com: Anything new?

RA: This band called Bellevue from New York, an album called To Be Somebody. It's really cool; it's ex-members of D Generation. Toots & the Maytals' Funky Kingston, that never leaves my headphones, really. I love that record. It's such a beautiful fucking record. And you know, the odd Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell record, pretty much as a staple I'll listen to that.

B&N.com: And you played on Alejandro Escovedo's new record, A Man Under the Influence.

RA: I sing background and play guitar on most of the album. I love that album. I got a chance to listen to it and wear the hell out of it before it came out. He's phenomenal. Gosh, I can't wait to see where he goes next.

B&N.com: You're just going to let Pneumonia come out and do what it will?

RA: There isn't a plan for any shows. We were really honored with a lot of really cool opportunities to do something for it, but I just think it's sorta opening a wound. I'd really rather let it lie where it is. I think we did a really, really good job as a band. I think that we did more as a band -- and more for each other in a band and tested the limits more as a band -- than a lot of other bands that I know of. We really took each other to some intense places. And we're all still friends. That's what's important to me.

May 22, 2001