The Cardinals Sept. 19 Montreal

[dave-O]

I haven't seen this posted here yet. Theatre St. Denis.

Ryan Adams fall dates are starting to trickle out...

http://www.ryan-adams.com/web/guest/newsinfo

[Booche]

SWEETNESS!

HARDONS ALL AROUND!!!!

[bradm]

Gov't Mule and Ryan Adams And The Cardinals in Montreal in less than the span of a week? (And with Gov't Mule in Burlington, VT in between them?) In. Double exclamation point.

Aloha,

Brad

[AdamH]

When are tickets on sale for this?

[NewRider]

I'm guessing Sept, 23 at Massey Hall.

[TheGoodRev]

Toronto date would probably be the 20 or 21...22 is Ann Arbor and 24 is Kalamazoo, they probably don't want to bother crossing the border three times. Here's hoping.

[LJFH]

Oh YEAH baby!!! WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWO!

[Northern Wish]

Front-man just wants a band

As a solo act, Ryan Adams tells Brad Wheeler, 'I have nothing left - it's just gone'

BRAD WHEELER

From Monday's Globe and Mail

July 23, 2007 at 4:07 AM EDT

'The disconnection has happened. If anybody is screaming at me, I'm not there." Hecklers and haters of Ryan Adams beware: The man you scorn isn't listening any longer.

Speaking in a downtown Toronto hotel room about his new album (Easy Tiger) and the current tour to promote it, the maverick alt-country balladeer is surrounded by bandmates who sprawl around him - some on seats, others stretched lazily across the carpet. "Physically I'm there, but I'm singing through and to these people," Adams says, gesturing to the five-man Cardinals, "and they're singing through and to me."

It's odd to imagine the fractious Adams as a team player. Certainly he's never worn his record-label colours very proudly. His battles with Universal Music subsidiary Lost Highway are the stuff of industry legend, and they continue still: Adams tried to release Easy Tiger as a Cardinals' record rather than a solo project, but the label wouldn't hear of it. Regardless, Adams now sees himself as one of the band. "People will never get a solo show from me again," he declares, "I can almost guarantee you that."

His bandmates are hearing all of this. You wonder if Adams is spouting it in the name of camaraderie, but he seems genuine. "I would rather get a gardening hoe and just stab myself in the nuts," he says, shaking his head at the thought of going it alone. "I just wouldn't do it. I have nothing left - it's just gone."

The death of Adams as a solo star was part suicide and part homicide. It's also a long story, one that Adams was willing to talk about candidly during a Toronto visit that included a show last month at the Enwave Theatre. Earlier Adams had made news with his lurid admissions to The New York Times concerning an "extended period" of substance abuse which ended a year ago. Reacting to that, critics are now viewing Easy Tiger as a clear-minded effort from a mature, newly sober artist.

That framing is misleading, according to Adams, still tousle-haired and boyish at 32. "Sobriety doesn't factor into the work of this record at all," he says, explaining that he had rarely ever created music under the influence of drugs or alcohol. "I wrote in the morning; I wrote when those times had passed."

Pop-music protocol calls for stars to break up their bands and then try for stardom on the lone, not the other way around. Fact is, Adams has done both.

After his Americana outfit Whiskeytown imploded in 1999, the North Carolina native struck out on his own, releasing a pair of albums (2000's Heartbreaker and 2001's Gold) that pushed a young troubadour to Next Big Thing status.

Looking back at the early days, Adams remembers himself as both eager and terrified: "There was a lot of my life that was going to be sacrificed in order to get where I wanted with my work. That being said, I was super-excited with what kind of life that was going to be."

His first solo record, the forlorn and fatalistic Heartbreaker, warranted the anticipation. As the name implies, the disc was a response to bitter breakups - with Whiskeytown and a long-time girlfriend. "Oh, one day when you're looking back," Adams sang on the first line of the album's first track, "you were young and, man, you were sad." Asked about the foretelling, Adams acknowledges that the time for looking back is now. He's just not sure how accurate he turned out to be.

"I don't necessarily remember that time as being sad," he says. "I have the same spectrum of emotions now that I had then." Is he wiser for the experience? "I don't think I was necessarily any less wise then, because I kind of feel like I've been at a level of wisdom for a pretty good amount of time."

After Heartbreaker and Gold, subsequent releases from the blazingly prolific Adams were hits and misses critically, and not big sellers. The low point came in 2003, when his record label refused to issue Adams's Love Is Hell, judging the collection of wintry ballads to be commercially unviable. "They just didn't like it," is how Adams remembers it.

Adams eventually struck a deal with the label: He would give them a more commercially viable album - the accurately titled Rock N Roll - and they would in turn release Love Is Hell as well. Adams speaks lowly of Rock N Roll, a disc that took less than three weeks to complete. "That record is my little finger stuck up in somebody's face," he says. "I gave them trash, and I kept the dreams for myself."

Those dreams include a stunning wealth of material recorded, but never released. A box set this fall is expected to include the unheard albums 48 Hours, The Suicide Handbook, Darkbreaker and Black Hole.

In addition to the blizzard of unreleased material, Adams found time in 2005 to put out three proper albums: Cold Roses, Jacksonville City Nights and 29. In response, critics blasted the musician for his crazed pace. "Some people saw it as ego," Adams says. "But really, I had opened this thing up that I couldn't calm. Music was coming out of me at an alarming rate, and I felt that if I didn't follow that, I would be disrespecting some mystical thing that was happening to me."

The criticism, from fans and media alike, walloped Adams. "It really tore me apart," he explains. "I fought hard, trying to let people know that I wasn't trying to be egotistical. I thought I was benefiting art and benefiting people, and maybe showing people that this was a good thing to channel."

Describing his younger self as sensitive, troubled and riddled with stage fright - "I was just a kid" - Adams eventually tired of the harsh treatment. And now, in 2007, securely in place with his "dream of a band," the Cardinals, the complicated artist relishes his new arrangement.

"I never liked the people that I've worked with as much as these guys," he says. "I get jealous when we're off the road, and nobody's calling me."

The new album is gaining favourable reviews across the board, often earning comparisons to Gold and Heartbreaker. Just as important, Adams has finally and firmly come to grips with the past. "I couldn't have worked harder," he judges, "I don't think I could have been more valid."

And as for the future? "It's great," he says contentedly. "It could change, but it doesn't seem like it's going to. I'm gonna follow the muses of my friends for a while."

Ryan Adams plays The Orpheum in Vancouver on Saturday.

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tickets on sale now at https://tel-spec.com/index.html

i just got 7th or 8th row on the right-side of the hall.