Ryan Adams
David Ryan Adams is an American rock and country singer-songwriter. He has released 30 studio albums and three as a former member of Whiskeytown.
In 2000, Adams left Whiskeytown and released his debut solo album, Heartbreaker, to critical acclaim. The album was nominated for the Shortlist Music Prize. The following year, his profile increased with the release of the UK certified-gold Gold, which included the single "New York, New York". During this time, Adams worked on several unreleased albums, which were consolidated into a third solo release, Demolition. Working at a prolific rate, Adams released the classic rock-influenced Rock N Roll, after a planned album, Love Is Hell, was rejected by his Lost Highway label. As a compromise, Love Is Hell was released as two EPs and eventually released in its full-length state in 2004.
After breaking his wrist during a live performance, Adams took a hiatus and formed a backing band called the Cardinals, who supported him on his next four studio albums. In 2009, due to complications from Ménière's disease, Adams disbanded the Cardinals and took a break from music. However, he returned to the music scene in 2010, releasing his 13th studio album, Ashes & Fire. Adams released his 14th album, Ryan Adams in 2014.
In 2015, Adams gained attention for his cover album 1989, a song-for-song cover of Taylor Swift's album of the same name. In 2019, several women accused Adams of sexual harassment, leading to a delay in the release of three planned albums. Adams later issued an apology and eventually released six more albums between 2020 and 2022. In addition to his own material, Adams has also produced albums for Willie Nelson, Jesse Malin, Jenny Lewis, and Fall Out Boy, and has collaborated with Counting Crows, Weezer, Norah Jones, America, Minnie Driver, Cowboy Junkies, Leona Naess, Toots and the Maytals, Beth Orton, and Krista Polvere. He has written Infinity Blues, a book of poems, and Hello Sunshine, a collection of poems and short stories.
Early life
David Ryan Adams was born on November 5, 1974, in Jacksonville, North Carolina. He is the middle child of three, with an older brother and younger sister. His childhood has been described as "dysfunctional". His father left when he was five at which time he, his mother and his siblings had to move in with his grandparents since they became homeless as a result of the divorce. He has said in an interview, "I became who I am now because of my grandparents" and of his grandmother "...she was like a mother to me." His mother remarried when he was 13.At the age of eight, Adams began writing short stories and limericks on his grandmother's typewriter. In his own words, "I started writing short stories when I was really into Edgar Allan Poe. Then later, when I was a teenager, I got really hard into cult fiction: Hubert Selby, Jr., Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac." At 14, Adams began learning to play an electric guitar his mother and stepfather had bought him and soon joined a local band named Blank Label. While they quickly disbanded, they did record a short three-track 7-inch record, in 1991.
Adams dropped out of Jacksonville High School in 10th grade, at the age of 16, subsequently moving into bandmate Jere McIlwean's rental house, just outside Jacksonville. Around this time, he played and performed with a number of local bands, most notably his and McIlwean's The Patty Duke Syndrome. After obtaining his GED, Adams left Jacksonville for Raleigh, shortly followed by McIlwean. The Patty Duke Syndrome broke up in 1994 after releasing a split 7-inch single with GlamourPuss.
Career
Whiskeytown
Following the breakup of his high school band, The Patty Duke Syndrome, Adams helped found Whiskeytown with Caitlin Cary, Eric "Skillet" Gilmore, Steve Grothmann and Phil Wandscher. Whiskeytown saw Adams move to alt-country, describing punk rock as "too hard to sing" in the title track of Whiskeytown's debut album Faithless Street. Whiskeytown was heavily influenced by a number of country-rock pioneers, most notably Gram Parsons. The band quickly gained critical acclaim with the release of their second full-length album, Strangers Almanac, their first major label release. A third album, Pneumonia, was completed in 1999, but record label problems delayed its release. It was eventually released by Lost Highway in 2001, at which time the band was effectively done.Solo career (2000–2004)
Adams made his solo debut in 2000, with Heartbreaker. Emmylou Harris sang backup on "Oh My Sweet Carolina". Other backing vocals and instruments were provided by Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Pat Sansone, and Kim Richey as Adams embraced a style more reminiscent of folk music. It was met with considerable critical success, but sales were slow.Adams released Gold, the follow-up to Heartbreaker, in 2001. It was well received. Adams, however, initially refused to promote the record through radio station meet-and-greets and other music-industry conventions, instead opting for more recording and some live dates. A video was eventually made for the album's first single, "New York, New York". The music video featured Adams performing in front of the city's skyline four days before the September 11 attacks. The video was played often on MTV and VH1 after the attacks and became Adams's breakthrough to mainstream music consumers.
Following the success of Gold, in 2002 Adams was blocked by his label from releasing his choice for a follow-up album. This would be the second time, the first being with Gold; Adams had recorded "the Suicide Handbook" which was rejected on the grounds that it was "too sad". The label opted this time around to cherry pick from four of Adams' recorded albums it had already dismissed as unreleasable to create Demolition, released in September 2002. Although the album garnered him more critical attention, it failed to sell as well as Gold. The same year, Adams produced Jesse Malin's first album, The Fine Art of Self Destruction, and later worked with Malin to form the punk-rock group The Finger, who released two E.P.s which were collected together to form We Are Fuck You, released on One Little Indian Records in 2003. He also starred in a Gap advertisement with Willie Nelson, performing a cover of Hank Williams's "Move It on Over".
In May 2002, Adams joined Elton John on CMT Crossroads, which brings together country artists with musicians from other genres. During the show, John referred to Adams as "fabulous one" and spoke of how Heartbreaker inspired him to record Songs from the West Coast, which at the time was his most successful album in several years. Also in 2002, Adams reportedly recorded a cover of The Strokes' debut album Is This It, though it has never been publicly released.
In 2002 and 2003, Adams worked on recording Love Is Hell, intending to release it in 2003. Lost Highway Records deemed that it was not commercially viable and was reluctant to release it, leading Adams to go back to the studio. Two weeks later he returned to Lost Highway with Rock n Roll, which featured guest musicians including Melissa Auf der Maur, Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, and Adams's girlfriend at the time, Parker Posey. Adams' songwriting received additional exposure when Joan Baez included his song "In My Time of Need", from his debut release, on her 2003 album Dark Chords on a Big Guitar.
Also released in 2003, Adams formed a punk band called The Finger with Jesse Malin, Colin Burns, and Johnny T. Yerington.The Finger #cite note-1| The name derived from notorious early/mid-1990s Raleigh, North Carolina rock band Finger, of which Adams was a big fan. This light-hearted project allowed both artists to return to their punk backgrounds. They began by releasing two EPs: We Are Fuck You and Punk's Dead Let's Fuck which were later collected to form the album We Are Fuck You that was released in 2003.
Adams and Lost Highway Records eventually agreed that the label would release Rock N Roll as well as Love Is Hell, on the condition that Love Is Hell be split into two EP installments. Rock N Roll and Love Is Hell, Pt. 1 were released in November 2003, followed by Love Is Hell, Pt. 2 in December. Both albums were well received by critics, and in May 2004 Love Is Hell was re-released as a full-length album.
Love Is Hell included a cover of Oasis' "Wonderwall", which Adams had previously performed live, and about which Noel Gallagher once said, "I never got my head round this song until I went to Ryan Adams play and he did an amazing cover of it." The song earned Adams a Grammy nomination for "Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance".
While on tour to support Love Is Hell in January 2004, Adams fractured his wrist during a performance at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool. Adams fell off the end of the stage into the lowered orchestra pit six feet below, while performing "The Shadowlands". Dates from Adams's European and American tours had to be canceled as a result of his injury.
Adams was featured on the album True Love by Toots and the Maytals, which won the Grammy Award in 2004 for Best Reggae Album, and showcased many notable musicians including Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Trey Anastasio, Gwen Stefani / No Doubt, Ben Harper, Bonnie Raitt, Manu Chao, The Roots, Keith Richards, Toots Hibbert, Paul Douglas, Jackie Jackson, Ken Boothe, and The Skatalites.
The Cardinals (2005–2009)
The year 2005 saw Adams join with backing band the Cardinals to produce two albums, Cold Roses and Jacksonville City Nights. Cold Roses, a double album, included backing vocals from Rachael Yamagata on three songs; "Let It Ride", "Cold Roses" and "Friends". His second album of the year, Jacksonville City Nights, featured a duet with Norah Jones on "Dear John". As well as releasing two albums with The Cardinals, Adams released the solo album 29 late in the year.Adams befriended Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead, after first meeting him at the Jammys awards in New York in 2005. The two performed Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter's Grateful Dead classic, "Wharf Rat". Adams performed at subsequent outings of Phil Lesh and Friends, including a two-night stand at Red Rocks Amphitheatre outside of Denver, Colorado and on New Year's Eve 2005 at the Bill Graham Event Center in San Francisco. Throughout 2006, Lesh's live performances included compositions by Adams, including several from Cold Roses.
Adams produced Willie Nelson's album Songbird, while he and The Cardinals performed as Nelson's backing band. The album was released in October 2006. He also opened for Nelson at the Hollywood Bowl later that fall, a show that featured Phil Lesh on bass and multiple Grateful Dead songs. Late in 2006, Adams experimented with hip hop music, adding to his web site 18 albums worth of new recordings under various pseudonyms, featuring humorous and nonsensical lyrics, as well as covers of two Bob Dylan songs.
Adams released his ninth album on June 26, 2007, titled Easy Tiger. The album includes many tracks which were debuted during 2006's tours, as well as other older tracks which were previously unreleased.
On October 23, 2007, Adams released Follow the Lights, an EP featuring three new songs: "Follow the Lights","Blue Hotel" and "My Love for You Is Real", along with live studio versions of other previously released songs and a cover of Alice in Chains' "Down In A Hole". Adams also appeared as a guest musician on Cowboy Junkies' 2007 album and DVD Trinity Revisited, a 20th-anniversary re-recording of their classic album The Trinity Session. In 2007 Adams co-wrote a song with Australian singer-songwriter Krista Polvere for her debut record Here Be Dragons; he also played guitar and piano on the album, which was recorded in New York.
A new album with The Cardinals, Cardinology was released on October 28, 2008. Adams has also announced plans to release a book, entitled Infinity Blues. According to Lost Highway chairman, Luke Lewis, there will be an "anthology" release in 2009, featuring several new songs.
On January 14, 2009, Adams announced that he was quitting the Cardinals after their final show on March 20, 2009, at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. Adams cited hearing loss due to Ménière's disease as well as disillusionment with the music industry, the media and audience behavior as reasons for his decision. He also stated that he has been working on two new books, in addition to Infinity Blues. The second book, released in the fall of 2009, is entitled Hello Sunshine. Preorders of Hello Sunshine were shipped on August 18 by publisher Akashic Books.