Detroit last night, opening for Zach Bryan! Awesome set and really cool to have Zach come up and sing King of Oklahoma with Jason. Very “your favourite country folk singer’s favourite country folk singer” energy. Would love to see him again in a more intimate venue as the crowd seem pretty unaware of his songs. Had a wonderful evening and Zach Bryan afterwards was electric.
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Seeing Isbell for the first time tonight, to say Im excited would be an understatement.
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Ryan is so cooked but lol’d at describing a JI show as being yelled at for 2 hours with Molly Hatchet guitar.
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Saw this the other day…
As a one-time HUGE fan of Ryan Adams, and now huge fan of Jason Isbell, this video just makes me sad.
I suppose I can understand the anger. Ryan Adams helped Amanda Shires convince Isbell to go to rehab and that probably saved his life and opened up a world of success for him that he probably wouldn’t have. While years later, when Ryan Adams was awash in turmoil, Jason Isbell stood with his accusers, which is completely justifiable. The difference is, Isbell’s situation was a slow decline, a disease while Ryan Adams’ was a dead end he created all on his own.
In his prime, there wasn’t a songwriter who could touch Ryan Adams as a contemporary. But the one thing lurking behind him – and what gave so many of his songs the fire and urgency they had – was this angsty teenager side of his personality that was always there. It was fun until you realized that he just never grew up.
Jason Isbell would probably be the first person to tell you he isn’t perfect, but he seems to have embraced growth and making grown up decisions (for better or worse). And he seems to have started to figure out who he really is.
This is just a bad look for Ryan Adams. I’d love to know the context from the first part of this bit that is missing from the video, but it just comes across as whiny and immature. Still stunted.
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Damn. That sums up my exact reaction. Well said. I am a huge mark for Ryan’s early work, up to and including his cover of TS’ 1989. But I think he has some serious mental health issues.
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Even Prisoner, released after his 1989, is an incredible album. Especially if you like that Johnny Marr/The Smiths sound. I wore it out when it was released. But then a few months later, the NYT exposé came out, a lot of the lyrics just took a gut wrenching turn. I mean:
I know our love is wrong / I am a criminal … I am a prisoner / For your love
It suddenly became him saying the quiet parts out loud. It was wild. I saw him play on the Prisoner tour in Columbia, SC and Phoebe Bridgers opened for him that show. Looking back at all of that with a different perspective was also wild.
I don’t know the full extent of the status of his accusations. I know I heard the FBI had ultimately exonerated him in the sexting scandal part of it, but the rest of his damning behavior remains. Ryan Adams is now kind of a wasted talent. It’s a shame. At least we have those early albums.
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I think in retrospect there has never been a bigger simp move in rock history than trying to draft off Taylor’s heat by covering that album. I thought it was fine when it came out and now I find it makes me physically uncomfortable when it comes on in shuffle, like watching a 50-year-old man try to fuck a 28-year-old, which well…
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Covering someone else’s entire album, especially someone younger than you, is an extremely weird thing to do. I always thought it felt like one of those annoying white girls covering rap songs on an acoustic guitar on YouTube got a record deal to keep doing that
his version of “Style” is kind of a banger though
but yeah, side door DeCaprio-esque
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“Like watching a 50-year-old man try to fuck a 28-year-old.”
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Was listening to this today. Wanted to share, figured this thread would apreesh.
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And then Jason wrote a truly mean fucking song about him. That was probably kind of a low blow, and I say that as a former big Ryan fan who now considers him 100% cancelled.
Let’s not discount the possibility of a third option: they’re both diseased individuals walking a tightrope of cancellation.
Part of me feels conflicted about that infamous Times story. It sort of blends allegations of being a bad boyfriend/husband (with Phoebe Bridgers and Mandy Moore) with being a creep and sexting with the teenager, which … I don’t know if that’s fair. I think the teenage allegation should stand on its own without implying Moore and Bridgers were similarly groomed. But it’s all fucked up and sad. The way worse fucked up shit that David Bowie and Jimmy Page and Steven Tyler and Prince are accused of doesn’t make it less bad either. It just seems like Adams lived in a time of accountability and they did not, which must feel baffling to him but is also just reality.
I think some of Adams’ decline is the natural cycle of a musician’s creative arc. It’s very rare that anyone writes great songs for 30+ years. Even the artists we claim have pulled it off (Bruce, Dylan, Dolly, Sir Paul, etc) you have to kind of pretend their later stuff is as good as their peak, which it truly isn’t. Most people just run out of juice or shit to say.
Isbell would probably feel worse about all this if Adams attempts at burning him weren’t extremely mediocre. Birmingham, his Isbell diss track, feels like a bad Ryan Adams parody, like something you write after a break-up as a college sophomore. At least saying “Molly Hatchet yelling at you for two hours” is mildly funny.
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DRA responded with his own “diss track” – but it’s not a good song.
I really don’t see Chaos and Clothes as a mean song, and I don’t think Isbell saw it that way either. I think he wrote it feeling like it was sympathetic but Ryan clearly didn’t see it that way. It’s probably a little too on the nose to be good songwriting, and could have been just as good without the Monster and Ferris Wheel references. (Turns his collar up to better frame his face, however, IS a banger of a line, so poor Taylor Goldsmith.)
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I’m sure Isbell filling up the likes of Gillette Stadium doesn’t make DRA feel any better about things, either. God I miss the heyday of the Cardinals just throwing molten lava all over the venue.
I thought Birmingham could have fit on Gold or something - I actually liked that track if you take out the fact that it’s all about Jason Isbell.
At some point, the singer/songwriter needs to grow into the distinguished ‘in the round’ type character. Grey hair, looking back on times of being a disheveled youth, and now writing songs that show wisdom. It’s kind of unique to that genre. RA was never ever ever going to do that, and his path of just never changing (right down to his haircut) looks so pitiful at the moment.
Isbell will play the game and do all of that.
Cards were my favorite band for years.
I didn’t listen to a note because I just can’t do it, but apparently the most recent Cards tour - I don’t even know who he assembled to be in the band… apparently it was really good. People showing up to hear the singer/songwriter stuff were getting their shit rocked and hating what they saw, which was a good sign.
I might need to check some of those shows out. Kinda just can’t bring myself to do it.