Strangers Almanac
I was listening to a couple friends talking about records the other night before a show… early work vs. later work. what is good? what is bad? the following essay is a thought or two about an artist who’s name seems to come up a lot in these kind of conversations.
Strangers Almanac
In the fall of 2000 i was working at a small record store in salt lake city. I had taken the job at a recommendation of my new friend chris that i had met in the photography program at the university of utah, where we had bonded over our love over The Red House Painters and Mary Ellen Mark. Chris was working there on weekends and said they were looking for someone, and suggested that it might be something i would be interested in.
Tom Tom record exchange was chocked full of pre-hipster cool kid employees. Way cooler than me … by miles. They were listening to Pavement and Pedro The Lion and talking about music that i hadn’t been thought about yet. I interviewed. The store manager rifled off some music questions and i made out with about 70 percent, which is about the same score i got on every other test i had ever taken in my life. apparently enough to get hired, and i realize now enough to get by in just about any job today.
I don’t remember the day exactly, but i do remember what the store looked like, and more importantly what it felt like. I was working with Cory, a down to earth kid with greasy hair and a grey, thread-bare cardigan. I really liked Cory, cause he was one of the few people (Also Sara Q.) who did not make me feel like a complete idiot when i said i did not know a band ( “I can’t believe you don’t know the Corleones!!! Are you fucking retarded?” ) or know a song (Oh man. I lost my virginity to Sweet Jane). We listened to a ton of new records, and I really appreciated him taking me under his wing and showing me music. I doubt he knows that a suggestion on a fall day would really turn my world on it’s side, and send me off on a journey that i feel like i am on still today.
“Do you like country music?” Cory asked from the back of the store. Immediately thought about the Garth Brooks record that had come in on trade. The white and black one with one of those crazy shirts he wore all the time.
I replied with a resounding “NO”
“I don’t mean THAT kind of country music. I mean Country Music”
I remember thinking i wished i had any idea what Cory was talking about. Country music at that time was Shania Twain, Colin Raye and terrible bands like Lonestar. It seemed these songs were being written for proms and wedding receptions and i wanted no part of it. Cory walked me over to the tiny “country” section of the store and started rifling through the records. He grabbed a couple and put one in my hands. “I think you might dig this… they’re called Whiskeytown, from down south. Really good american country music”
I took Strangers Almanac back to my crappy apartment, and sat on the floor at the foot of my bed, and put it on.
I should say … at the time i was really struggling. really struggling. struggling to find a place. struggling to be happy. I was hopelessly in love with a girl who wanted nothing to do with me, and in my fifth or ninth year of college trying adamantly to avoid the beckoning call of adulthood with it’s awful promises of careers and dinner parties. i was miserable and even more than miserable, i was terribly lonely.
As the first notes of Inn Town came on i was devastated. “I can’t feel anything …” Ryan Adams and Caitlyn Cary sounded like friends and I instantly felt like someone turned on a light. I never felt alienation and despair on the same plane that Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder laid out in that music … I guess a better way to describe is that i never identified with the music as i instantly felt when this record started playing.
Everything I do, Dancing with the Women at the Bar, Houses on the Hill. This was american music and something in it was speaking to me like i had never been spoken to before. I felt like this record was mine. These people knew me and they made me feel better … and i loved them for it. I still can’t listen to Avenues without remembering how the carpet felt between my fingers, and how badly i wanted to hold that girl i was in love with.
As the last few bars of not home anymore played and that alarm clock sound comes in i felt something stirring in me. I wanted to run. get in the car and get out of town. i wanted to meet a pretty girl wearing a red dress and dance. i wanted to meet the people in these stories. I could smell the perfume and feel the chill of the snow outside. It picked me up and knocked me down. It’s exactly what i needed exactly when i needed it.
I started spending all my money on these records. Ryan Adams had just released Heartbreaker and their was rumor of another new whiskeytown record that had gotten lost in a label shuffle. I obsessed over liner notes and credits … names popping up. Emmylou Harris, Benmont Tench, Gillian Welch, Ethan Johns, Greg Liesz, Kim Richey … “Wait, James Iha played on Pneumonia? Tommy Stinson?” I bought Wrecking Ball, Revival and American Recordings. I started listening to Willie Nelson and Loretta Lynn. In fact i started spending all the money I made working on records, and then even money that i was not making. Ryan Adams was my gateway drug into the history of American Music.
Ryan Adams made me love songwriting. I was amazed by these songs … they told stories that made you feel. they were heartbreaking and lovely. It changed what music meant to me and what i expected from it … opened me up like i never imagined it could or that i even needed. My first date with the lovely woman who is now my wife was at a Ryan Adams show. The music has touch points all over my life and for it i’ll always be grateful.
A criticism that i find interesting is that he was making too much music. Too many songs. Too many records. I spend every waking moment of my days trying to figure out how to make recordings of my songs that are far from the best songs ever written. I wonder if anyone ever said to Edward Hopper “Gee Ed. I think you are painting too much. Or telling photographers not so shoot or writers even … “um … i think we have enough stories.” Why would we care that someone is doing what we know them for doing? Why exactly are we upset that Ryan Adams is writing more songs.
A lesson i learned independently of this story is that artists need to create to survive. When you are moving forward and working on your craft you get stronger. That road is hopelessly fraught with thoughts of incompetence and irrelevance. People can be incredibly cruel, and carving a life in the arts is setting yourself on that path of criticism and availability. people love to tell you about things they think suck.
I remember leaving a Ryan Adams show a few years ago at the Red Butte Gardens here in SLC where I live. People were upset because they did not get the show they wanted. “He didn’t talk. No Encore? Bullshit.” The artist-fan relationship in music is really fascinating at times. We think because they have given us music, and we employ it in our lives that somehow we are connected and that they owe us something. When we don’t get what we want or feel like we are entitled to we lose our minds. What I remember that night was an amazing set. The sound was great, the band was great, and they played a set with loads of great songs. People get upset when they don’t get what they want, which seems so counterproductive with art and artists. “Picasso didn’t use purple on that series? Ryan Adams didn’t play Come Pick Me Up? Fuck that guy”
I am grateful for these records. i am grateful for these songs. I like to think that because of Ryan Adams i now know songwriters like Gillian Welch, TIft Merritt, Jason Isbell, Buddy Miller and Steve Earle. Would i know what a Greg Leisz pedal steel part sounds like, or why a drummer like Jay Bellerose is one in a million.
Would i have learned about them anyhow? maybe. who knows?
Ashes and Fire is a beautiful record. Is it Heartbreaker? Is it Cold Roses? No. Why would we want it to be? Do we really expect or even want that? I doubt it.
I’ll always have a soft spot for Ryan Adams. We were born in the same year, and we are both songwriters. I have been told from time to time that my voice is similar to his. It’s a flattering comparison, and honestly i don’t know it couldn’t be. In a way Ryan Adams taught me how to sing. I often credit Springsteen’s album The Ghost Of Tom Joad as the album that really made me want to write songs, but i think Strangers Almanac made me feel like i could write songs, and for that i’ll always be grateful.
Ryan Tanner
Salt Lake City
February 2012
