Ryan Adams

Whiskeytown

Ryan Adams was born in 1974 in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and played in early bands, among them The Patty Duke Syndrome, which broke up in 1994. He then helped found Whiskeytown in Raleigh with Caitlin Cary, Eric "Skillet" Gilmore, Steve Grothmann and Phil Wandscher, taking Gram Parsons as a model. Their debut, Faithless Street, came out in 1995 on Mood Food Records, and Geffen's Outpost imprint signed them after a label bidding war. Strangers Almanac followed in 1997. No two Whiskeytown albums shared a lineup, and Adams and Caitlin Cary were the only constants.

A third album, Pneumonia, was finished in 1999, but Outpost closed during the Polygram and Universal merger and the record waited nearly two years for release. By then Adams had left the band and made his first solo album for the independent label Bloodshot. Lost Highway issued Pneumonia in May 2001.

Heartbreaker

His first solo record, Heartbreaker, was made with the producer Ethan Johns in 14 days at Woodland Studios in Nashville and released by Bloodshot Records on 5 September 2000. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings sang and played on it, and Emmylou Harris added backing vocals to Oh My Sweet Carolina.

Pitchfork's review called it "an album of astonishing musical proficiency, complete honesty and severe beauty", while Rolling Stone's Anthony DeCurtis thought the songs too often failed to rise above their plain-spoken details. Critical success came first and sales were slow. Songs from it later turned up in films: To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High) in Old School and Come Pick Me Up in Elizabethtown. Reviewing the 2016 deluxe reissue, Pitchfork's Ian Cohen wrote that its focus was less misery than nostalgia.

Gold

Gold followed on 25 September 2001 on Lost Highway Records, again produced by Johns. Adams had meant it as a double album, and according to him the label cut it to one disc and put the last five songs on a bonus disc, Side Four, with the first 150,000 copies. A young Kamasi Washington took the saxophone solo that closes New York, New York.

That single was due on 11 September 2001 and was delayed to 26 November. Its video, filmed four days before the attacks with the skyline behind Adams, was played often on MTV and VH1 afterwards. The album reached 20 in the UK, 59 in the US and 6 in Norway, went gold in Britain, and brought three Grammy nominations. David Fricke of Rolling Stone found it a little too long and said it lacked the concise ache of Heartbreaker but was stronger on naked truth. Other songs include Answering Bell, with Duritz on backing vocals, and When the Stars Go Blue, later recorded by the Corrs with Bono, by Tim McGraw and by others.

A prolific decade

Lost Highway assembled Demolition (2002) from songs on four unreleased albums, without Adams's involvement. Love Is Hell was recorded in New York in September 2002 and in New Orleans in 2003 with the producers John Porter and Adams. The label thought it not commercially viable, so Adams made Rock n Roll in two weeks, and Love Is Hell appeared as two EPs in November and December 2003 before coming out whole on 4 May 2004.

In 2005 he began working with a backing band, the Cardinals. Cold Roses, released on 3 May as an 18-track double album, was the first of three albums that year. Easy Tiger (2007) debuted at number 7 on the Billboard 200 with his highest first-week sales, 61,000. In January 2009 Adams announced that he would leave the Cardinals after a final show on 20 March 2009 at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, and he began releasing music on his own label, PAX AM.

Later work

Adams produced Willie Nelson's Songbird (2006) and Jesse Malin's first album. After Ashes & Fire (2011) and a self-titled album in 2014, he released in 2015 a song-for-song cover of Taylor Swift's 1989, which debuted at number 7 on the Billboard 200. Prisoner followed in February 2017 on PAX AM and Blue Note. More albums appeared from 2020 onward, among them Wednesdays, Big Colors, Chris and a version of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. Elton John said Heartbreaker inspired him to record Songs from the West Coast, and Joan Baez covered In My Time of Need on a 2003 album. In 2024 Adams announced a Heartbreaker '25 World Tour for the album's 25th anniversary.