Ryan Adams

Ryan Adams
a.k.a. David Ryan Adams

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GOLD STANDARD
Alt-Country Alchemist Ryan Adams Reaches New Heights with Gold
It's been a busy 12 months for Ryan Adams, the alt-country torchbearer whose punk-fueled country combo, Whiskeytown, epitomized the genre during its short tenure. In the fall of 2000, Adams went solo with the emotionally charged, aptly titled Heartbreaker. Buoyed by the resounding response to that disc, Adams entered the studio in early 2001 to record 30-odd tracks for what he intended to be a two-CD follow-up. While weeding through those tracks, eventually culling 16 for the 70-minute single disc, Gold, he also cleared his slate in May by finally releasing Pneumonia, Whiskeytown's elegant swan song. Barnes & Noble.com's Steve Klinge caught up with the 26-year-old Adams right after he finished Gold -- a mesmerizing, ambitious folk-flavored disc that conjures up the soul of Bob Dylan, the edginess of Lou Reed, and the spirit of country-rock groundbreaker Gram Parsons -- to discuss the new album's place in his fast-growing discography.

Barnes & Noble.com: Where are you right now?

Ryan Adams: I'm sitting on the floor of my hotel room, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee. In Los Angeles. I just finished making [Gold]. We just finished this past Saturday.

B&N.com: Congratulations.

RA: Thank you. It nearly killed me.

B&N.com: Why?

RA: Just that it's a double album -- it's going to be two discs, 12-13 songs a disc. To do that you have to record about 36 songs and then you pare it down to about 26.

B&N.com: Heartbreaker was 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: How does it fit in with your other work?

RA: This one is kinda everything. It has all the different sides of music or different places I've been visiting. I kinda threw them together in a big pot and made a big soup of it. I don't know how to describe it, honestly. Some Motown-sounding things, like Otis Redding-sounding things, to really sad laments with just me and piano or on guitar, to some Nina Simone-sounding jazzy things, then to really like Faces- and Stones-sounding stuff, and more like that '60s- and '70s-sounding roots, that Band and Van Morrison kinda feel. And there's definitely a lot of my folk stuff, but maybe done up a little bit more, with more, like, percussion and backing band. So it's kinda all over the place.

B&N.com: Whom did you work with on the album?

RA: Ethan Johns produced again. Richard Causon, [Tom Petty keyboardist] Benmont Tench, and [Stephen Stills' son] Chris Stills [all play on it, and there's] a horn section that was really cool and a gospel choir that was really cool. It's sorta keeping to the tradition of the last couple records I made, but this one's a little bit bigger. I had a lot of songs prewritten that I thought were going to make the record, but I ended up writing over them -- where I [wasn't] satisfied with the flow of the record, I would challenge myself to write a song in, like, 15 minutes. And this new song would evolve, and I would go behind the typewriter and type the lyrics in five minutes and photocopy them and we were off! So most everything is first takes, the first time anyone's heard it. But everybody was really on, and it maintains this urgency that was in Pneumonia and Heartbreaker.

B&N.com: There's a core of desperate emotion in those albums.

RA: This is a little bit more of an overview and a little bit sexier. The Motown stuff -- this is more of a romantic record and less self-loathing. And I mean that in the respect that I'm sorta championing life, and sorta celebrating it. Even the saddest moments on this record, I'm uplifting them and saying, "Yeah!" There are definitely moments of darkness on this album, for sure, but I think that there's more a center. I tried to get into my head when I was heading to things as opposed to at the end of them. There's more tempo, there's more percussion, there's more feeling. It's still literal, maybe more so because it isn't such a bummer record. There's more natural emotion, more day-to-day emotion, less end-of-the-day emotion.

B&N.com: Maybe it's a little less self-destructive.

RA: Well, definitely. I definitely don't think the other two were self-destructive, but I was kinda trying to let go [laughs] by facing it right in the face, you know? And in this record there's a lot of forgiving going on. I felt like I was carrying ten-ton bags of lead weights behind my feet for years. I think I dumped at least one bag off. Within both discs I really feel a lot lighter, I really got a lot out. It's definitely more of a band thing and less of a me thing, but I know that immediately after this I'll go right back to the same structure I worked with in Heartbreaker, something more intimate. There's definite intimacy on this record, but it's just in a different way.

B&N.com: Heartbreaker was more stripped down, more somber.

RA: That still exists on this record, and the intimacy exists even when other people are playing. I wanted to do something a little different on this album. I was trying to make a very general statement about the last couple years of my life. I was trying to get out of my own body and overlooking my life the last three years, and pick right up from New York and lead it all.

September 25, 2001