Miss Sunflower

So I might have a mild obsession with Ryan Adams. A few years ago, my friend Alicia had tried to get me to like his "New York, New York" song and it didn't really take. But I was in a Hear Music store in the Stanford Mall in Palo Alto one summer and happened upon a track off "Gold" that actually made me cry (confession-it was the original version of "when the stars go blue", which at the time had been covered by The Corrs and special guest Bono. I loved that version, saw that this guy wrote it and decided to give it a try. I'll spare you the messy details of who I had dinner with the night before and why exactly I was probably ripe for an emotional reaction)I sort of have a rule that if you are physically affected by music, you should buy it. So I did and I liked that album just fine. Then my sister sent me "Pneumonia" by Adams' old band Whiskeytown and told me it was an album best enjoyed in it's entirety. That became the anthem of my fall and by the time another friend put "Dear Chicago" and "A Long and A Sad Goodbye" on a mix CD a few months later, it was over for me. And now I'm that fan with eight versions of "Answering Bell". Yep, it's good to have passions.

I've only seen him live twice. The first time I was in New York for work and completely blew off a meeting to go see him with a friend who happened to be in the city that night as well. It was one of those killer fall New York nights where it was still warm enough to enjoy being outside and feeling the energy you can't miss in that town, Adams played a relatively smooth show-didn't sulk or storm off stage or anything, and we got to hear "Stars Go Blue" not just once with the Cardinals, but once by himself too. I was like a 12 year old at a Backstreet Boys concert. Not to mention that fact that honestly, alt-country fan boys are the very sexiest of all music fans. We went to Cafe Mozart afterwards and ate way too much chocolate dessert and then passed out from awesome in my company sponsored digs later than night. Such a perfect night.

The next show was last spring, first stop on the Cold Roses tour. My friend Andy and I drove almost two hours each way from Boston-in driving rain and crappy traffic-to Northampton too see him play with the lovely Rachel Yamagata at The Iron Horse Music Hall. We had a delightful drive to the show-Andy introduced me to some fabulous Martin Sexton live recordings and some early Rachel Yamagata stuff I hadn't heard. My little car was only two weeks old so we were still in the honeymoon phase (which, almost a year later, is still true). Our friend Lance met us there. I may or may not have had a little crush on Lance at the time. Well, probably may more than may not. Anyway, we'll just leave it at me not being entirely disappointed in the company. The show was a little bit bizarre, Ryan had a rat that he kept bringing onstage, he would stop playing for loooooong stretches of time, Lance actually fell asleep at one point which was hilarious (and which he will deny) but I was enthralled. He's a weird, weird dude and he continues to get weirder. But I honestly feel like he almost can't write a bad song (we just won't talk about Rock and Roll)(I do own it though).

And really the only reason for this l-o-n-g and mostly self-indulgent post about Ryan Adams (although come on now, isn't a blog really a fairly self-indulgent concept anyway? look at me everyone! you should really care what i think!) is that I have been listening to the Whiskeytown cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" on constant rotation since I picked it up off someone else's blog two days ago. Players only love you when they're playing.