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Ryan Adams

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AboutMixing the heartfelt angst of a singer/songwriter with the cocky brashness of a garage rocker, Ryan Adams is at once one of the few artists to emerge from the alt-country scene to achieve mainstream commercial success; and he is the one who most strongly refused to be defined by the genre, leaping from one spot to another stylistically as he follows his increasingly prolific muse.

Ryan Adams was born in Jacksonville, NC, in 1974.
While country music was a major part of his family's musical diet when he was young (he's cited Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Merle Haggard, and Johnny Cash as particular favorites), in his early teens Adams developed a taste for punk rock and he began playing electric guitar.

At 15, Adams started writing songs, and a year later he formed a band called the Patty Duke Syndrome.
The Patty Duke Syndrome developed a following in Jacksonville, and when Adams was 19 the band relocated to the larger town of Raleigh, NC, in hopes of expanding their following.
However, Adams became eager to do something more melodic which would give him a platform for his country and pop influences.

In 1994, Adams left the Patty Duke Syndrome and formed Whiskeytown with guitarist Phil Wandscher and violinist Caitlin Cary. With bassist Steve Grothman and drummer Eric "Skillet" Gilmore completing the lineup, Whiskeytown (the name came from regional slang for getting drunk) released their first album, Faithless Street, on the local Mood Food label.

The album won reams of critical praise in the music press, and more than one writer suggested that Whiskeytown could do for the alt-country or No Depression scene what Nirvana had done for grunge.

But by the time the band signed to a major label -Outpost Records - the band had undergone the first in a series of major personal shakeups; and in the summer of 1997, when Whiskeytown's Outpost debut Stranger's Almanac was ready for release, Adams and Wandscher were the only official members of the band left. Whiskeytown had a revolving-door lineup for much of the next two years, with the band's live shows become increasingly erratic, as solid performances were often followed by noisy, audience-baiting disasters.

Consequently, as strong as Stranger's Almanac was,
Whiskeytown never fulfilled the commercial expectations created for them by others.

In 1999, the band - which was down to Adams, Cary, and a handful of session musicians -recorded their third and final album, Pneumonia, but when Geffen was absorbed in a merger between PolyGram and Universal, Outpost was phased out, and the album was shelved; shortly afterward, Whiskeytown quietly called it quits.

Following Whiskeytown's collapse, Adams wasted no time launching a career apart from the band, and after a few solo acoustic tours, Adams went into a Nashville studio with songwriters Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and cut his first album under his own name, Heartbreaker, which was released by pioneering "insurgent country" label Bloodshot Records in 2000.

The album received critical raves, respectable sales, and a high-profile endorsement from Elton John, and Adams was signed by Lost Highway Records.
Lost Highway gave Whiskeytown's Pneumonia a belated release in early 2001, and later that same year, they released his second solo set, Gold, which displayed less of a country influence in favor of classic pop and rock styles of the 1970s.
In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the album's opening track, "New York, New York," was embraced by radio as an anthem of resilience (though it actually concerned a busted romance), and Adams once again found himself touted as the "next big thing."

Always a prolific songwriter, in a bit more than a year following Gold's release, Adams had written and recorded enough material for four albums; Adams opted to whittle the 60 tunes down to a 13 song collection called Demolition, which was released in 2002 as Adams went into the studio to record his official follow-up to Gold.

In addition, Adams has recorded in collaboration with Emmylou Harris and Beth Orton; guested on albums by Lucinda Williams and his former bandmate Caitlin Cary; and has planned albums with Nashville punk band the Pink Hearts and an all-star rock outfit called the F*cking Virgins, featuring Evan Dando, James Iha, and Melissa Auf Der Maur.

Adams then recorded an album, 'Love Is Hell' Which sounded like, as he once described it, "A druggy sucide record...i wanted it to sound like cracking up."
His label rejected on the grounds that they considered it career sucide.
Adams later recorded another, more direct album, 'Rock 'N' Roll', to critical acclaim.
His record company then decided to release 'Love Is Hell' as two mini EP's alongside it.

2005 saw the prolific Adams release three albums, "Cold Roses", "Jacksonville City Nights", and "29." The first and second albums were offically titled as recorded with his backing bad, the Cardinals, and 29, a kiss-off to his twenties, rounded off an incredibly prolific year.

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