Not since Neil Young have we seen a songwriter as prolific as Ryan Adams. While Young has routinely delivered two albums in a calendar year, Adams upped that ante by releasing three studio albums in 2005 and nine new albums in the first seven years of his post-Whiskeytown era. And that doesn't count the two albums that he's reportedly made but never released or the 18 albums' worth of material — much of it hip-hop, a sharp detour from his usual rock and alt-country fair — that he posted under various pseudonyms on his website in late 2006.
David Ryan Adams was raised near the North Carolina coast; he was reared primarily by his English teacher mother, who inspired him to become a voracious reader. As a child he wrote short stories on a manual typewriter, and to this day that is still his writing instrument of choice.
In the mid- to late-'90s, Adams fronted Whiskeytown, a band that many thought could do the same thing for the No Depression movement that Nirvana had done for grunge. His albums either combine or drift between the country music that he loved as a youngster and the punk and alternative rock that he fell for as a teen. Perhaps his best-known song is "New York, New York," which came out just after 9/11 and was quickly embraced by radio as a de facto paean for a city and nation so desperately in need of something uplifting.
Cardinology, which landed in the fall of 2008, is already Adams' 10th album since he went solo in 2000; it was recorded with his occasional producer Tom Schick and his backing band, the Cardinals.
Provenance: Jacksonville, North Carolina
Latest release: Cardinology (2008)
© 2008 Nigel Music Media LLC. Used by permission.
Ryan Adams
