Ryan Adams Week (7 days of music genius)

Anyone But Me By Ryan Adams (Whiskeytown)  
(Rare Bootleg) Listen for Ben Folds on Piano.

           Ryan Adams was born on November 5, 1974, in Jacksonville, North Carolina. When he was eight years old, Adams began writing short stories and poetry on his grandmother's typewriter. He is quoted as saying, "I started writing short stories when I was really into Edgar Allan Poe. Then later, when I was a teenager, I got really hard into cult fiction: Hubert Selby, Jr., Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac." At the age of 14 Adams began learning to play the electric guitar that his Mother and Stepfather had bought him, and shortly afterward joined a local band named Blank Label. Although Blank Label did not stay together long, a three-track 7" record exists, dated 1991 and lasting less than seven minutes in total.

          Adams dropped out of high school in his first week of tenth grade, moving into bandmate Jere McIlwean's rental house just outside Jacksonville. Around this time he performed briefly with two local bands, Ass and The Lazy Stars. Following this, Adams joined The Patty Duke Syndrome and once played in a bar in Jacksonville. After obtaining his GED, Adams left Jacksonville for Raleigh, shortly followed by McIlwean. The Patty Duke Syndrome split in 1994 after releasing a 7" single containing two songs (The Patty Duke Syndrome was on one side, while the other side was a band called GlamourPuss).

           Following the break up of The Patty Duke Syndrome, Adams went on to found Whiskeytown with Caitlin Cary, Eric "Skillet" Gilmore, Steve Grothmann and Phil Wandscher. The founding of Whiskeytown saw Adams move to alt-country, describing punk rock as "too hard to sing" in the title track of Whiskeytown's debut album Faithless Street. Whiskeytown was heavily influenced by the country-rock pioneers, most notably Gram Parsons (with whom Adams shares a birthday).   Whiskeytown quickly gained critical acclaim with the release of their second full-length album, Strangers Almanac, their first major label release.

        The band is considered one of the genre's most influential and successful, along with Uncle Tupelo, The Jayhawks and The Old 97's. Like these acts, Whiskeytown gradually expanded its sound outside the confines of alt-country, while still keeping roots in acts like singer/songwriter Gram Parsons and alternative rock band The Replacements.    Despite the fact that the band only released three albums, none of the albums feature a consistent lineup, with only Adams and Cary remaining constants.

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