I blog, Ryan Adams Responds

As I am sure any loyal reader of the Greenhaus Effect Dot Com its aware, there are few things I love as much as outing indie-rockers as closet jamband kids. And since the launch and of this occasionally updated blog, we’ve exposed the jamband roots of a slew of bands with either a witty and/or ironic name, including Feist, the Decembrists, MGMT, Vampire Weekend, Yeasayer, 311, Clap Your Hands Say Last Year, MSTKRFT, The National, TV on the Radio, Incubus and Maroon 5.

But one of the few artists who has come out of the jamband closet on his own is style-shifting, taste-making, indie-punk-jam-rock cowboy Ryan Adams: He wears Grateful Dead t-shirts onstage, regularly plays with Phil Lesh and even performed at our Jammy Awards in 2005. When not rocking through tunes from his much-harder Gold or making the tabloids by dating Mandy Moore, he also jams in the most literal sense: letting his country-rock songs slide into bits of freeform improvisation before segueing into the ether. In fact, I’m tempted to say that Cold Roses is the best “Grateful Dead” album made since the 1970s and certainly more of an extension of Workingman’s Dead/American Beauty/Garcia than their immediate studio successors, Wake of the Flood and From the Mars Hotel…which is probably why Phil added many of Cold Roses' best songs into his rotation between 2005 and 2007.

So I had no problem posting the follow on both Jambands.com and Relix.com last week:

Ryan Adams Retires Songs, Summons Reckoning

On Saturday, Ryan Adams & the Cardinals played a sold-out show at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium. Recalling both the spirit of the lauded room and spectator Phil Lesh, Adams stacked his setlist with a number of cuts from 2005’s Grateful Dead-inspired Cold Roses, including “Magnolia Mountain,” “Let it Ride,” “Beautiful Sorta,” “Easy Plateau” and “Cold Roses," among others. But, according to a post on his blog, the show was also something of a final hurrah for these songs before Adams begins to focus on material from his forthcoming album.

In a post titled “New/Old Jam Report,” Adams says the following:

The s.f. gig, at our lil’ lovely home away from home west coast- was a saying fare-the-well of sorts to our beloved last tour jams. now we enter new area’s/ new songs….things you will hopefully be happy to glimpse now, in their early stage powers- before they get, well, weird and lovely. also, from the old-stock, we have selected some surprises, some things electrified from the “Blue Cave (Cardinal-speak for acoustic/fragglerock/ G-D-Reckoning style set-up) and well a few things to amp things up.HEADS UP.we are the middle act on a THREE BAND BILL…..and have been given a generous hour, giver or take some…so, it will be LESS TALK/ MORE ROCK- and some tightening up you might not be used to if you are a regular….otherwise……if you are a CARDINALFAN and seen us a few clicks……hang on,cause this is where we brake off the braces and step by step, learn to channel more energy into a smaller bracket of time….and old jams in old tunes are now FREE ZONES……so, you know when we make the scary noise- and then it get’s all tripped out and pretty…..well, we don’t know what the fuck is happening there either…..and that is exploration…..and that is the new game.

In other news, Adams appears to be one of the few musicians more traditionally associated with the alt-country and indie-rock realms comfortable using the word “jam” to describe his music. The singer/songwriter describes his band by saying, “Cardinals love to jam. We're just a little gang of music fans that played hard for a long time, and you know, just want to contribute if we can to some good tunes and music, on this planet, floating at the edge of a spiral galaxy called ‘the milky way,’but probably called something else by people in the Andromeda Galaxy, because we are two thousand years behind them too.......can u imagine if they jam-or whatever jams I guess the universe is one big weird jam…”

But, apparently, Ryan isn’t as keen on the J-word as I thought since yesterday Josh found the following on his blog:

I’m dating jam’s (btw-Relix- ‘Jams’ means ‘songs.’ i learned that from Thurston interviews- i liked how he called them jams. I love that band so much. Sonic Youth. my god. its why i am out here right now- because of how much i liked all that good music.

That's right boys and girls and bloggers: This week I join such elite figures as Noel Gallager, Jay-Z and Batman as the subject of a real life Ryan Adams blog. Given my company, I figure the only way to celebrate is to run my mouth and/or put on a cape and tights, so I'll leave you with these parting words:

Ryan, if you are reading this, thanks so much for the shout out and please pardon my typos/gratuitous crazy girl references. We still love you like New York, Garth Algar hair and all, and hope that you will use the word jam as a verb once again in the near future. Until then, chin up, cheer up, and remember: don't get too deep, you might lose touch with the surface.