In Search of Ryan Adams

EVERY few years, Ryan Adams surprises me. He'll put out a song or album that reminds me what a goddam genius the self-destructive lad can be. 

He's someone I'm always on the verge of writing off as a  narcissistic showboat, or a pastiche artist, but he comes through with some of the most poignant and alive work in the entire alt-country tradition. It's a bit low-key for me, but last year's Ashes and Fire LP was one of those reminders, and some days I play the nine great songs on Cold Roses and just marvel at what a singer and songwriter the North Carolina native -- now long settled in Los Angles -- can be. 

I don't have nearly the same kind of roller-coaster relationship with the work of David Menconi, the longtime Raleigh News and Observer music critic, and frequent contributor to No Depression magazine. (Since I met him at South by Southwest, years ago, I've respected him for his knowledge of the tradition and his gift for clipped, distilled phrase-making.)

Menconi was among the first journos to notice Adams, and stayed on him during his early years with Whiskeytown and then as a solo artist in North Carolina. 

Those years, and the ones that came after, are the basis of Ryan Adams: Losering, A Story of Whiskeytown, Menconi's new book. It's the kind of short, well-reported musician's bio I wish we had more of. And it's the second in the American Music Series that Menconi is editing for the University of Texas Press.

Here is our recent Q&A on Ryan Adams.

You open the book with a night where you saw Ryan play at what was practically an open-mic in 1995. What struck you about his musicianship and performing style that first night?

Even in that informal a setting, Ryan’s raw talent was obvious. Precocious, too; he looked like a little kid, but his playing, singing and songwriting already seemed fully developed. And he was also remarkably mature in terms of expressing emotion. Every song, it really did sound like he put a little slice of his heart out there. He was remarkable.

The Ryan you met that night was already conscious of being a star. It seemed important to him from an early age, didn’t it?

Absolutely. His love for the music was also obvious, and he already conveyed a sense of swagger. He wanted to be big, larger than life, to matter. Plus he was just so enthusiastic about most everything, it was impossible not to be charmed. I thought so, anyway.

“He especially liked the rock clichés,” one musician and journalist said of him. How has that worked out over his career?

Way back when, that would manifest itself in Ryan adopting what one of his peers derisively called “rocker constumes” – dressing the rock-star part and carrying himself with a kind of Keith Richards vibe. During his solo era, he has spent entire albums aping his idols; “Gold” was Ryan doing a classic-rock playlist, “Rock N Roll” was him paying tribute to his new-wave favorites and so on. The results have been mixed, but he’s just so danged talented that pretty much everything he does is at least worth listening to.

How has Ryan seemed to have developed as an artist since, say, the first Whiskeytown recordings, or the beginning of his solo career with Heartbreaker?

My perspective, which I’m quite certain Ryan himself wouldn’t agree with, is that he has done his best work when he had something to say and peers to answer to. I don’t think it’s coincidental that his best record, Whiskeytown’s “Stranger’s Almanac,” was produced by a demanding taskmaster (Jim Scott) who kicked Ryan’s butt. I’m sure that was an unpleasant process, but the results were great. Ryan has done some fine work since then, but also a lot that sounds self-indulgent and unfocused. Last year’s “Ashes & Fire” was his best in years, so maybe he’s getting that focus back.

After covering him incessantly for years, you and Ryan had an odd falling out in 2001, and he’s not spoken to you since. How did that make the book harder, and how did you make up for that?

Ryan’s non-cooperation turned out to be less of an obstacle than I feared it might be. I felt like the most interesting part of his career was the Whiskeytown era, and I had voluminous archival material that I’d hung onto over the years (sometimes it pays to be a packrat). So his non-cooperation naturally moved the focus toward that period; and in some ways, I felt like it was a better book without the present-day Ryan in it. He changes his mind a lot and says numerous contradictory things, and I’m told his memories of that time aren’t terribly sharp. Anything he would have told me about those days probably would have been steeped in revisionist history.

For years it seemed like Ryan was going to either end up dead on the floor of a bar, or become bigger-than-Wilco huge. He seems less naturally suited to the middle ground, or to a hip, culty following of the kind Alejandro Escovedo or Gillian Welch have. Or is it just me?

Well, there is kind of an unrequited vibe about his career. Implosions of the band’s lineup and then the industry (the 1999 Universal/PolyGram merger) scuttled Whiskeytown’s chances; and then the record that was supposed to make him huge, 2001’s “Gold”…well, didn’t. At the same time, however, Ryan has a career that would be the envy of almost anyone. He can put out albums and sell into six figures, and play live as much as he wants while selling out 3,000-seat halls. In 2012, that’s about as good as it gets.

Tell us a bit about this American Music series you’re helming with Peter Blackstock of No Depression.

Glad you asked that! It’s being put out by University of Texas Press; and the rough thumbnail description is that if you can imagine a No Depression magazine feature about someone, then they might be a subject. Over time, we hope to broaden the subjects beyond Americana and alternative country and to have a wide array of authors. Peter and I are co-editors, and I’d liken our roles to record-company A&R people. We cast the nets among writers and artists, and bring suggested projects back to UT Press. They get final say since it’s their money, but we get a voice and a vote.

Don McLeese’s Dwight Yoakam bio was the first in the series, and Ryan is the second. Up next will be Merle Haggard by David Cantwell, and more are at various stages, including Los Lobos and the supergroup Flatlanders. I’m most excited about Kristin Hersh of Throwing Muses writing about the late great Vic Chesnutt.

What do you expect is next for Ryan Adams?

Well, “Ashes & Fire” was a good step back in the right direction, and it made me hope he was back. Since then he’s spent time doing a lot of different stuff – producing his wife (singer/actress Mandy Moore), producing/playing drums in the Lemonheads, recording with deadmau5, producing D-Generation. I’m sure he’s having the time of his life, and good for him. But…I think the cause of civilization and rock ’n’ roll would be better-served by Ryan bearing down and making his own record. Maybe he will. I hope so. Despite it all, I’m still a fan.

The Future of the Movies

THIS week in Salon, I interview David Denby, one of the New Yorker's film critics. We spoke about his new book, a collection of new and old essays and reviews, Do the Movies Have a Future? here.

A few years ago, I might have told you that Denby was too pessimistic and a little stodgy. I think it's clear today that his cautionary tone is warranted. In a nutshell, he's concerned that films have been reduced to corporate marketing for children and that real artistry is becoming hard to find. Movies for grownups have never had it so bad.

And this will make more sense after you've read the Q+A, but here are some bits that Salon did not have room for.

I think there’s good criticism in every genre if you know where to find it. I guess, it seems to me, that it’s bigger than that and has more to do with -- and this is true on Pitchfork as well -- popular tastes going one way and quality going another. I don’t have an answer here. I don’t know quite what happened, but I think we could -- whatever our differences in, say, musical taste -- probably agree that The Beatles, Dylan, the early Stones -- this is all stuff that has happened before I was born so  this isn’t Boomer nostalgia on my part -- was a period where a mass audience... and maybe 50s Miles Davis and some other things... where mass taste and quality were moving forward on the same track more or less. Even though, yes, some things were overlooked. Something is changed. Not just in rock and roll, but in film and perhaps in culture at large. Perhaps there is a larger cultural explanation for this. I don’t know what it is, but it feels like that’s happened in a number of different places.

Well, it’s the way the market system works. And the way people’s tastes are developed when they’re very young, and what they’re caught by. Cultivated taste in all the arts -- whether it’s literature, painting, music, film -- gets developed slowly by steps. And that’s why I said it was so important that, when you were a kid in the 50s and 60s, you were dragged to the movies by your parents. You half understood what was going on, but it aroused your curiosity. What was all of this sexual intrigue? The psychological complexity. Why was that person in a rage? It’s partly about how young people are educated into taste. I mean, very few people have naturally high-developed taste right from infancy or being aged 7 or 8. And that’s why I’m so upset that the movie business doesn’t seem to be laying the ground for grown up taste in the future. People will just drift off to television, and quite rightly, since there is all sorts of interesting and serious stuff there. It’s a calamity. Basically, the studios have attached their future to the birth rate rather than developing an audience that will go to movies in their 40s, 50s and 60s. That’s what they’re doing and I think it’s profoundly self-destructive.

I’m going to close with an old hero of yours. Pauline Kael was a mentor of yours and an undeniably brilliant person with an electrifying prose style. But she was also a critic who gradually ignored foreign films, exposed sensation for its own sake, insulted the art house audience as well as seriousness and cultivation. How does she fit into your argument?

Personally, she had an enormous affect on me and about 50 other people. She stuck a cattle prod into my side. And she changed her mind about my talents later on, which was a growing up experience that was painful, but I think, in the long run, healthy and necessary. Yes, she disliked overly controlled, formal exercises from Europe and austerity. She preferred the vitality and the mess of American popular culture to the highly controlled European art style. Although she did certainly push the young Goddard and the young Bertolucci, and she adored Kurosawa.

All influenced by American cinema, obviously.

Yeah. She adored Kurosawa, and then that influence of Kurosawa came back onto Spielberg and Lucas and many other people. But, I think, basically, your description is correct. As she grew less and less interested... For instance, she couldn’t do anything with the Germans in the 70s.

Fassbinder, she completely ignored.

Fassbinder was just, to her mind, thoroughly unappealing. And she just felt in a terrible mood everytime she saw one of those movies, so she didn’t write about them. But she didn’t really respond to Wenders or early Herzog, either. She felt... I quote some of those reviews where she felt her strength was being “sapped.” You know, her All-American energy. She was a California farm girl, she was not going to be pushed over by these European phonies. That was the persona. So, you know, I think that was wrong and some of us feel that she went too far in demanding craziness and zaniness and that she missed out on some interesting and exciting things. But all I can tell the young people is it’s great to have a mentor, and it’s great to be rejected by your mentor. Painful as that might be. Because then you’re forced to shed some of those early influences and find your own voice and interests.

I’m teaching a criticism class right now and encouraged all of the students to pick up a critic, read his or her work, do a report and get to know it. But, the next step is to transcend the influence of Dwight Macdonald or Ellen Willis or Pauline Kael or whoever it is.

You have to read everything. You have to absorb everything good. I always tell young people, “Don’t forget that your medium is words.” The artist’s medium might be music or film or digits, but your medium is words. That means you can’t just read journalism. You have to read Shakespeare. You have to read Wallace Stevens. You have to read fiction because otherwise you’re just going to fall into a kind of jog trot of journalese phrasemaking. You’re going to date yourself very quickly, and have nothing much to say. So, you’ve got to continuously freshen the language. And the people who do that are the ones who survive. 

Remembering Rodney King

IT'S not often that a theater performance stops me cold. But last week's Rodney King, a one-man-show by Roger Guenveur Smith at the Bootleg Theater left me both impressed and a little shaken up at the very least.

When I moved to LA in 1997, the city seemed like a sunny, youthful, high-spirited place after a few years in New England. But underneath the good times, there was a sense that I was living on the scene of a crime, one connected to an four-century old Original Sin.

A kind of scar seemed ripped through the city  when I drove past the intersection of Florence and Normandie or along Olympic Blvd -- names I first heard in news broadcasts. Nineties LA was, for me, simultaneously hedonistic and haunted.

All this came back to me at the Bootleg the other night. I should not say anymore -- I'll add that while this was a one-man-show by most measures, the sound design and lighting were excellent and made the whole thing work, and the Bootleg is becoming one of my favorite venues in town.

I won't say anything else about his King performance, except to say that Smith was sparked to put it together by King's death on Father's Day.

I wrote about Smith here, last year. Here's hoping that several of his shows, including this powerful, painful Rodney King project, get return engagements.

Stevie Jackson on the West Coast

ONE of the things we have to do from time to time here is to admit that not all of the finest 21st century culture comes from the West Coast. (Okay, just most of it.) Exhibit A is the Scottish band Belle & Sebastian, who have been perhaps our favorite band since the fadeout of (West Coast band, sort of) Pavement in the late '90s.

And one on the key members of that excellently melodic indie rock combo is guitarist Stevie Jackson, sometimes known as Stevie Reverb for his signature retro style.

B&S of course, started out as a folkie vehicle for singer Stuart Murdoch, but several other members have since put their respective stamps on the band. Jackson has brought a snappy '60s tune-manship to the group, and he's written some of their best songs -- "Seymour Stein," "Jonathan David,"  "To Be Myself Completely."

Not long ago, Jackson brought out the LP (I Can't Get No) Stevie Jackson, which is not as consistent as a B&S record but has its share of gems. (I'm especially fond of the opening track, "Pure of Heart.")

And this week, the Glaswegian axe-slinger is way out West. Tonight he's in Austin; Thursday night he is in LA to play the Bootleg Theater. He's in San Francisco Portland before heading back to Scotland.

Here's a video of Stevie playing an acoustic 12-string.

Ric Burns and the Civil War

IT'S not a pretty picture: The Civil War saw as many people killed as all American wars put together. In some places, the proportion of  young men killed was quite high: Parts of the South essentially lost a generation.

But the huge number of deaths, and the need to count the fallen, bury them, contact loved ones -- and to make moral/ spiritual sense of it all -- remade this country, says Ric Burns, whose documentary, Death and the Civil War, goes up next week on PBS's American Experience.

He's working from a book by historian Drew Gilpin Faust called This Republic of Suffering, which is a model of accessible but rigorous history.

Read about the doc is my LA Times story here.

I liked Ric a lot and found him quite passionate about his subject in an unforced way.

Brilliant Chamber Music Series

SINCE I first fell hard for classical music in my mid-20s, my favorite style to see live is chamber music. Early on, I think that came from my love of seeing rock n roll and small-combo jazz in small clubs. The intimacy of a string quartet in, say, an old stone church had some of the same energy and directness.

In recent years, perhaps the best venue for chamber music I've found is the Clark Library which is and isn't part of UCLA. (Okay, it's part of the university but on an archipelago closer to USC's campus than to Westwood.) I'll probably always remember the performance by the Takacs Quartet, especially their Janacek.

The Clark itself is a long and fascinating story -- lovely old Italianate building, built by local eccentric, now known for its holdings of 17th/18th c. British materials as well as more stuff on St. Oscar (Wilde) than you can believe. It's worth strolling the grounds, checking out the architectural details, and staying after for the receptions with the musicians.

But go for the music (and the acoustics.) The release and schedule is here. (NOT easy to get into -- there's a lottery.)

I'm especially pleased to see the series commitment this year to Shostakovich, one of my favorite composers and one who could turn pain into beauty and perhaps vice versa. (The Russians have a knack for that.)

And here is a video on youtube.

See ya there, gang.

Michael Chabon's "Telegraph Avenue"

LONGTIME Californian is one of our favorite writers here at The Misread City.

I had the pleasure to speak to him the other day about his new novel, set on the Berkeley/Oakland border. It's a long, rich book centered around a used vinyl shop that specializes in various styles of black music from the '60s and '70s. (If Brokeland Records really existed I would go digging for an original Blue Note pressing of the early works of Grant Green. And I bet they'd have it.)

This Q & A was my first piece for GoodReads. Here it is.

The interview is fairly long, but here is one more exchange exclusively for Misread City readers.

The other thing that strikes me about Telegraph Avenue is that there’s this buzz and hum to the street life, a kind of Jane Jacobs city life with its love of density. But at least going back a decade or more you’ve written at an artist’s retreat, at which you also have a role as chairman of the board. Why is that valuable to you and to other writers and artists.

I can just get more done, be completely disconnected. When you’re at MacDowell, you have no Internet access – that’s the heart of it. When I started going there, there was barely an Internet; it didn’t play anything like the role it does now in distracting me from my work. But that is what it has metamorphosed for me. More than any kind of getting away I do there, I get away from the Internet.

But a close second is having the opportunity to only be thinking about your work. When you’re not thinking, you’re reading, or walking – nothing else gets in the way. So even when you’re at dinner, and chatting with a composer and a sculptor, the things they say to you somehow feed into the work that’s your doing.

That level of immersion, 24 hours a day, even in your dreams – it’s feeding into the work. You end up using much more of your brain.

While when I’m home, I work all night, I hit my word count… But then I wake up the next morning, there are all this piddly things I’ve got to take care of, from housework to childcare to shopping for dinner, planning the menu, and the Internet, the greatest distraction of them all. I’m not working during those periods. There’s no subconscious work being done.