Ryan Adams: Follow the Lights and KCRW

While doing my usual weekly perusing of KCRW playlists, I realized that I completely missed Ryan Adams and the Cardinals performance on Morning Becomes Eclectic this past Friday, November 9th. Luckily, the KCRW peeps document the performances and make them available to listen and even watch at their website. Click here for the Ryan Adams session.

Adams along with his Cardinals played tracks from earlier this year’s Easy Tiger like “The Sun Also Sets”,”Everybody Knows” and “Pearls on a String” and a set of older gems like “When the Stars Go Blue”, “Oh My Sweet Carolina”, “Come Pick Me Up” and “How Do You Keep Love Alive”. The best part however is the interview that takes place in the middle between the always unpredictable Adams and the consistently cool and chief KCRW taste maker, Nic Harcourt. The interview further proves that despite being sober these days, Ryan Adams is still completely out of his mind. He explains that his songwriting hasn’t been effected at all by his newly sober lifestyle by saying that “Magnolia Mountain” wasn’t written while holding a coors light and “doing lines off of Gary Shandling”…yup…that’s what he says! Later, Adams talks about growing up in small North Carolina town and how it was either music or vandalism or marrying the next door neighbors daughter, “bless her heart, but i wasn’t going to consummate that relationship” he says before explaining the girls scoliosis problem….jesus Ryan! Well the songs sound great though and the interview is beyond entertaining so go check it out.

In other Ryan Adams news, he and his merry band of Cardinals just released an EP, Follow the Lights. While the 3 original songs that start off the EP are your typical Ryan Adams throwaways (see “Blue Hotel”) it also features a random cover of Alice in Chains’ “Down in a Hole” which almost makes me want to like Alice in Chains for the first time in my life. The other 3 songs on the 7 track offering are re-working of older Adams pieces, like the slowed down version of Cold Roses “If I Am a Stranger” and an improved “Dear John” from 2005’s Jacksonville City Nights. The best track on the EP is the Cardinal-ized version of “This Is It” from 2003’s Rock n Roll that lobby’s a little more support for those of us who retain the belief that Rock n Roll is indeed a great fucking album. Overall, Follow the Lights is a fairly cohesive effort and brings back belief that Ryan Adams is returning to his older days of throwing out more work than we can possibly take in…and we wouldn’t have it any other way.