Singer and songwriter Ryan Adams has long shifted between wiry, raucous country rock and more tender, acoustic reveries; his 13th album, Ashes & Fire, which drops on Tuesday, October 11 on Adams' own Pax-Am label and Capitol in the States, falls squarely in the latter category.
Produced by the legendary Glyn Johns, the father of Adam's longtime collaborator Ethan Johns (who produced Heartbreaker and Gold), Ashes & Fire is a candid, contemplative album for Adams.
The 36-year-old singer was cheerfully gregarious, but also quite honest, when he dropped by WFUV and The Alternate Side's Studio A to chat with Claudia Marshall about the new album, his struggles with Ménière's disease and his decision to take a hiatus from music for two years. Ashes & Fire is currenlty being streamed via NPR Music's First listen here.
Adams, who is touring North America this autumn, will head to Europe in November and has just announced a batch of additional dates in December, playing New York's Carnegie Hall on December 6 for a very special WFUV-sponsored show with Jessica Lea Mayfield.
Check out highlights from Adams' Studio A session and videos below, plus you can hear the conversation in its entirety when it airs on TAS' sister station, 90.7 WFUV, on Tuesday, October 11 at 9 p.m., also streaming online.
Claudia Marshall: The new one, Ashes & Fire. Why is that the name of the record, any particular reason?
Ryan Adams: Well, I wish I had a funny story about it but there didn’t seem to be any other title that would work for that album, honestly.
Claudia: It’s got to be hard to pick a record title.
Ryan: Sometimes it’s interesting to pick an album title before the album is done.
Claudia: And see if it coheres to that idea?
Ryan: Yeah and I’ve known people - or my own self - who sculpt a record to fit the theme or vibe of a record title or the thematic idea of what the title is.
Claudia: Is there a theme to this record, do you think?
Ryan: Not on purpose. But maybe there’s more of one because I didn’t do anything like that. It’s just a process of elimination of ideas that weren’t as strong as others or not as connected as other.
Claudia: It strikes me as being a mellow record.
Ryan: I would agree.
Claudia: It’s almost all acoustic, mostly downbeat - there’s a little country waltz in there - and I hear a lot of influence by The Band on this record. Was that in your head at all?
Ryan: Well, Glyn Johns, the gentleman who produced the album, he produced an album by The Band, Stage Fright, and I loved the band. But I did not listen to The Band while making this record and have not in a long time. I played this sort of music, or my acoustic guitar long enough, that at some point those records by The Band or even the seminal Rolling Stones albums, I feel those albums were the university I did not attend. I studied them. Interestingly enough it might have to do with the characteristic of how it was recorded and the fact that the whole record is analogue and live to two inch tape and there is no overdubbing on that record, except for what couldn’t be performed live. A string section is overdubbed and Greg Leisz wasn’t available at the time so he came in and did steel one afternoon for three hours.
Claudia: He’s probably one of the all-time great pedal steel players.
Ryan: He always sounds like Greg Leisz! He always brings that thing. He’ll pick the weird dissonant note and it just sort of looms over the track and it’s totally him. He does some of that stuff with the lap steel. Some of it isn’t pedal steel, it’s this crazy, crazy lap steel that he has.
Claudia: You must have done a total dance when you found out he was going to play on that track.
Ryan: I always see him every couple of years. We laugh about it. He played on my first record or the first real Whiskeytown record that was ever really made. He played on a few of my early records - I think on Gold for two hot seconds - then I saw him in the middle of my sort of career. He played on “Love is Hell.” The most atmospheric, non-country rock record I made. He’s like the guy on “Wonderwall,” the [Oasis] cover I did. I think he literally threw a nickel at the strings of his lap steel, he flicked it with the pedal on, and it made this weird noise and I played to the noise.
Claudia: I found the refrain of “Lucky Now” mysterious: “The lights will draw you in, but the dark will take you down and the night will break your heart, but only if you’re lucky now.” Can you quantify what’s going on there? It sounds like you’re talking about beauty in sadness.
Ryan: Interestingly enough, this song is very clearly about all the years I spent in New York in my 20s and the line, “the lights will draw you in” will maybe be the skyline, that beautiful allure of nightlife and the feel of the city at night. “But the dark will take you down,” for me that means that it isn’t necessarily a negative thing, but the transient deepness of going out alone, or the idea of sleep, or that narcotic feeling, not just of getting boozed up, but being out. It will take you down, consume you. And “the night will break your heart, only if you’re lucky now” - I felt it was saying that if you let those times really rock you, it will save you somehow. You really have to be broken. For me, it was really important to be broken by those years, to be consumed by them. Not to be tortured by them, specifically, but to really fall off the bike a few times, so to speak. So you could figure out how to ride the thing.
Claudia: You don’t want to be in your 30s, 40s or 50s and say, "Wow, I could have done it up."
Ryan: I know very few people who have that problem! But there are also people missing because of that problem! There’s a few people I know who didn’t have that experience and I think I sense regret from them. It’s not meant to be read as a cautionary tale either. I think I was thinking about my friend Chris [Feinstein], who passed away, when I wrote this song. He was in our band The Cardinals. There were several different incarnations of that band, but I played with him for a while. There’s some of him in that song too.
Claudia: It’s been an interesting ride for you, these past couple of years. You supposedly took time off. Did you really?
Ryan: Yes. I really did. I hadn’t played guitar for nearly a year and a half.
Claudia: Was that weird for you?
Ryan: No. I was really sick of it. I was so ready to be done. I have this inner ear disease called Ménière's Disease.
Claudia: Does it still bother you?
Ryan: Well, if I sneeze on you, your arms and legs will fall off.
Claudia: It’s a good thing I’m four feet away! But it sounds painful.
Ryan: I did the opposite thing that people do. I spent a year on the road with the loudest, alternative country band that ever existed besides the Drive-By Truckers and there’s no one louder than Drive-By Truckers. They’re too cool to know who I am, seriously. After all this stuff I decided to figure out how to adjust to that life, because there’s a lot of tinnitus that comes with it. Hearing loss. You’re dizzy. That’s the other thing, it affects everybody differently but most people, anything you do in your life that is even remotely decadent or bad, it’s terrible for that condition. So if you smoke, drink or eat food with lots of salt or don’t get enough sleep or drink too much caffeine; all that stuff will make you really sick. That’s pretty much all the stuff that I love to do so I had to quit smoking, change my diet, get sleep. I had to be a completely different person and it took a really long time to adjust to it. I was sick for a long time too so I got really good at lying around with the cats.
Claudia: Did you get the Ménière's before or after you kicked drugs?
Ryan: It’s hard to know at this point how long I was symptomatic. I was never a 24-hour drug addict; I just liked to party. So I kind of quit partying. I wasn’t like someone you’d see on that show “intervention” and was like, “I have to get wasted at 9 a.m. and listen to some Leon Russell now!” I just wanted to get really high and jam. So that will make you feel seasick. I do remember hearing tones, like a swan song of a tone where you get this really high-pitched tones. It’s indescribable. They start very, very high and it feels like your ears pop but they last a good amount of time. I would get very car sick. I just thought it was the speed I was taking. I’m not saying that anyone should do any drugs! I’m only being candid about them because that really was my life. I didn’t know what was what and suddenly it just became really obvious to me when I was sober. I was like, this is weird! Am I going to be hungover for ten years? But it isn’t something you get from taking drugs. I actually believe that my grandfather had this because he had extremely bad hearing, two huge hearing aids and he was quite clumsy. But he was a resllient guy. But I think it might have been genetic with me.
Claudia: So bottom line, you’re better? You found a way to deal with it?
Ryan: Yes. I eat very carefully. I don’t smoke. I suffered some hearing loss from it which causes anxiety. Stress and anxiety cause Ménière's stuff; it’s like a panic attack. I just worked on not responding to it so when I’m hearing tones, instead of focusing on that, I did this work so if that happens, I feel the sensation of my fingertips more. So instead of feeling one thing, which is unavoidable, I change my preferences. As soon as that triggers, I say to myself, “Wow, my hands feel really good. It feels good to play guitar.” I decided I’d pick things I loved. Things that are very sensory related.
Claudia: Changing your focus.
Ryan: Yes, absolutely. When I’m not sure about this note, I turn it into a possibility. I’ll play more. I lost some of the map, so I experience that as a good thing. I actually wrote a whole lot of songs that didn’t have capos on them, which I haven’t done since Whiskeytown. I completely changed my whole preferences.
Claudia: This set of songs that we’re talking about on this record - are these recently written?
Ryan: The oldest song would have been from the winter of 2010.
Claudia: So they’re all recent.
Ryan: Very. I didn’t write before that. I literally did not write a single song. I played a guitar once in a while but it was for fun. I was hiking a lot, the California mountains, to work on my balance. I don’t [experience vertigo], I just sometimes wonder, “How did I fall into these trashcans?” I’m really used to that from my 20s! I used to pay for that feeling! If I didn’t fall into trashcans, I got ripped off!
Ryan: “Invisible Riverside” is a song about where I live now and driving down to the beach, just to drive along the ocean.
Claudia: Where do you live? Over by Malibu?
Ryan: No, no, no. I live on the ass end of that. The other side. I’m an East Side guy. There are no secrets on the East Side. When you live out there, there isn’t a lot to do.
Claudia: In L.A.? You get stuck in traffic.
Ryan: I’ve never listened to so many records in my car. I’ve got a car with the best stereo system ever and the glove compartment, the back seat … I look like a hoarder. I’ve got records everywhere. All I do is listen to records in my car. And “Invisible Riverside” is about listening to AC/DC.
Claudia: In addition to taking time off and starting your own label, Pax-Am, you got married. Your wife, Mandy Moore, sings beautifully on a couple of these songs. I had no idea she had so much talent. Norah Jones is on a couple of these tracks.
Ryan: She was so funny at the session. She’s totally a cut-up. I’ve known her for a while. She’s like the prankster punk kid sister for all of us musos, but nobody would think that about her. She was the den mother of the whole session and kept everyone cracking up. It was amazing.
Claudia: Benmont Tench, the keyboard player from the Heartbreakers, is on this too.
Ryan: He’s the glue of that sound! It’s why the Heartbreakers have that expansive sound. A lot of people don’t realize that the band is beautiful is rock in a majestic, increble way. He’s the panoramic view. Just a few notes is all he needs; he’s very economical. It’s like somebody who comes into your house and goes through your cupboard. You have barely any groceries and they make some amazing pan-fusion salad. He can use something that wasn’t even edible for garnish. He just knows how to do it.
Benmont was on my second solo record, Gold. He’s very close to Glyn and he lives in the neighborhood out there. When you’re a musician out there, you know where everybody is at. Benmont hosts these get-togethers where people go and play guitar. He’ll show up at somebody’s gig and play! That’s what it’s like out there. Everybody out there is going dumb from all that sunshine. Our brains our cooking from Vitamin D and it’s got to the point where people will do anything to stay busy out there playing! The other day I walked right into Jim Keltner by accident.
Claudia: You did not!
Ryan: I did! It was on the street.
Claudia: Did you ask him to play on your record?
Ryan: Hell no!
Claudia: Why? He’s great!
Ryan: I don’t want to disappoint that man! I saw Johnny Marr walking down Sunset Boulevard. I know it was him. It was undeniably him. I nearly wrecked my car. It was amazing! Amazing!
