Adams’ career has been plagued by the Ghosts of Rock and Roll, like so many men before him. In a recent interview, Adams eluded to “the ghost of a thousand speedballs” at Electric Ladyland studios while he was recording one of his many releases. His prolific output is often the center of criticism: a junkie can’t stop talking to himself. It just so happens this junkie had a tape recorder. The critics always found his work scattered, and felt he should concentrate more on one album. These were all just signs of a larger problem…an opiate and cocaine addiction that, like almost all who dabble in the dark arts, nearly killed him.
Easy Tiger, his brilliantly titled new release, is the perfect mash of focus, repent, beauty and apprehension, and he embodied all those things this Saturday night in Chicago. I saw a man who had a long conversation with himself, and thus, with God, and forgave himself for what he could, and looked for strength to push on through what he can’t change.
Magnolia Mountain was a great opener and got the place yelling, promptly turning a lavish theater into a honky tonk bar. The lighting designer did an incredible job making an already vintage theater even more antique by bringing in a lo-fi rig, consisting of outdated moving lights, small LED panels that front-lit the band, and no solid white light anywhere on stage. As prolific as Adams is, he’s still trying to hide it all in the darkness, and that is where you had to search for him. The LD revealed him at the most perfect times, but always, in a saturated veil of color. The dramatics were set.
Photo by ilamya
Dear Chicago was not without its obvious relevance and showed off the dynamics of the band right away. They rambled from rocker to shuffle with the ease of Nashville studio musicians drunk on vacation at an open mic night: They could do no wrong, and while doing no wrong, break your heart down to nothing then save your soul. The delivery was impeccable with Adams sober and in great form.
Goodnight Rose finally got the tear ducts working — I could take the emotional cavalcade no longer and succumbed to Adams’ heart-felt ballad. Ryan Adams and The Cardinals have perfected the most difficult instrument known to man: Heart Strings. I haven’t heard them played so well in quite some time.
The set read like a Western paperback, as we were allowed to look in Adams’ Window to America, trying hard to decide just how much was fiction, and how much has cut him to the bone. The more and more I listen, I’m starting to think, in some way, it has all happened to him in some life or another. You simply couldn’t explain these portraits as delicately.
“I got a really good heart…I just can’t catch a break,” our hero protests. Easy, tiger, we know you’re working it out. Two, the song from which this line was taken, was played to perfection, a little faster than the album version, and rocked out. This is, by far, my favorite of his new selections. Sheryl Crow does a great job backing him up and his band filled her role quite nicely.
Photo by Chad Leo
Cold Roses was the perfect ending to even greater set. But wait…another few chapters of the novel were about to be unveiled. That’s right, Adams would grace us with two encores, consisting of some one-on-one time with Ryan and the crowd: Sylvia Plath (solo piano), Call Me On Your Way Back Home (solo guitar), Sweet Lil Gal (solo piano), Why Do They Leave (solo guitar), Brown Sugar (solo piano). He then motioned for the flock to come back to play Dear John and Freeway to the Canyon. As if this wasn’t dramatic enough, they would come back to write the epilogue with Goodnight Hollywood Blvd.
Every starry eyed angel, still with their undeserving and equally enamored mates, stumbled out of that honky tonk bar feeling something. What, I can’t say. It could have been any number of emotions from anger to lust, but rest assured, we were all feeling something…a heavy tense, as my friend Jason would say.
A newly reformed man still playing with such emotion proved that our deepest regrets make us the greatest teachers of all. Keep teaching and keep forgiving.
- Previously on Hidden Track: Whoa, Ryan Adams….. Take It Easy, Tiger and Grousing The Aisles: Another Mixed Bag
- Click here for the full Wade’s World archive on HT
Ryan Adams & The Cardinals
September 29th, 2007
Chicago Theater
Chicago, IL
Set: Magnolia Mountain, Dear Chicago, Beautiful Sorta, Goodnight Rose (“smoking”), Rescue Blues, The Sun Also Sets (“still smoking” – that’s figurative), When the Stars Go Blue, Two, Let It Ride, Wildflowers, Peaceful Valley, Nightbirds (ryan on piano), Please Do Not Let Me Go, Off Broadway, Cold Roses
Encore: Sylvia Plath (solo piano), Call Me On Your Way Back Home (solo guitar), Sweet Lil Gal (solo piano), Why Do They Leave (solo guitar), Brown Sugar (solo piano), Dear John, Freeway to the Canyon, Goodnight Hollywood Blvd
8 Responses
Great job, Wade…thanks for the solid write-up. The parallel between the lighting and the moods was as quality as it gets.
Lovely review – it captured the event so well. Oh Ryan…
Damn…Why aren’t you in writing? Excellent, simple excellent review
You left out the part where you take Ryan Adams’ cawk out of your mouth for two seconds.
Nate, you left out the part where you just got home from a moe concert then threw on some string cheese to roll out with your gay jamband buddies. JAM IS DEAD. Real music, Ryan Adams, is ALIVE. Much better than any rambling improv I’ve heard of late, that most certainly, sounds like your boyfirend’s cock slamming off your mouth
stellar review, wade. wish i could have been there instead of hanging in the billysburg.
“I arrived to a sea of hipsters with angels on their arms, women far too beautiful to be walking in to a place this romantic with men so poorly refined.”
love it