Ryan Again

Ryan Adams & the Cardinals
September 22, 2007
Michigan Theatre-Ann Arbor, MI

My funniest bootleg story is this. A few years back (2002) my friend Marla and I went to see Ryan in LA, the first US show on the "Gold" tour after the European leg. It was a great trip and a fabulous, if marathon long, show. The highlight for me was hearing "Oh My Sweet Carolina" live for the first time. It's a terrific song, suffused with a homesickness for a South and a hometown that is gone and perhaps never really existed in the first place. When they got to the lines "I miss Kentucky/and I miss my family" I screamed real loud cause, well, I do. Months later when Marla got the bootleg of the show we listened excitedly (it was very poor quality, one of those that sounds like the mike was in the ice bin) until we got to my scream and the cool hip LA people around the mike began to mock me and make disparaging remarks about hicks with no shoes. What a buy-to spend good money on a bootleg just to hear yourself made fun of!

I was thinking of that story last night when we saw Ryan again and again he did "Oh My Sweet Carolina". (And yes, I did scream again.) It was a beautiful rendition-the Cardinals do harmony almost as well as Emmylou Harris did in the original-and such a treat to hear. There were several old favorites last night ("Sylvia Plath", "Wildflowers", "Goodnight Hollywood Blvd") which I was glad for since Marla doesn't really like the Cardinals era Ryan as much and hearing the older songs temporarily stopped her Grateful Dead remarks. I get what she means but I don't think the Cardinals stuff is so far removed from "Heartbreaker" (which she loves) or else why would they be able to work them into the new songs so seamlessly?

Speaking of new songs there were very few last night-only two songs from "Easy Tiger" were featured. "Goodnight Rose" opened the show and they had a very extended "Off Broadway", which I still don't care for. Unlike in the spring, Ryan was playing both guitar and piano and playing them very well. Like "Off Broadway" several songs turned into extended jams, unfortunately they were on my least favorite songs like "Dear John". My only other complaint was the show's shortness-only an hour and a half. I, for one, would have been happy to listen lots longer and I think the enthusiastic crowd would have agreed. But overall I thought it was a good show, one I sorely needed.