Cardinal virtues of going it alone

Published on Friday 14 November 2008 13:36

SINCE parting company with alt-country act Whiskeytown in 1999, Ryan Adams, whether as a solo artist or with current band The Cardinals, has released no fewer than ten studio albums, not to mention the scores of songs he has put out under pseudonyms.

The 34-year-old from Jacksonville, North Carolina has also produced a number of albums for other artists, including his good friend Jesse Malin, and even written a book, Infinity Blues, due for release next year.

When it's put to him that he's prolific, however, he shakes his head in denial.

"No, it's not prolific," insists Adams, who brings The Cardinals to the newly opened The Picture House tonight. "It just doesn't fit into the ideas that corporations have instilled in the minds of record buyers in the last 15 years.

"They (the companies] can maximise their profits by over-advertising artists, over-working them, touring them on specific albums and never letting them graduate, artistically.

"By the time it's right for the band to produce new work, they've forgotten how to be musicians and are just walking billboards for a very silent corporation running them around. It's not what a painter is, so it shouldn't be what a musician is. Willem de Kooning (20th-century Dutch abstract painter] didn't make 'a' painting and then go walk around holding it for three years.

"Imagine if he had done, and then someone said 'Hey, Bill, here's some red and orange paint, do something.' He would have forgotten how to experiment with colours and shapes and we wouldn't have had his greatest work.

"I'm not prolific, I'm just not a sucker," adds the singer, who, a couple of years ago, dueted with country legend Willie Nelson in a TV ad for Gap which was shown around the world.

The current line-up of The Cardinals sees multi-talented Adams (vocals, guitar, piano, banjo) flanked by Chris Feinstein (bass), Jon Graboff (pedal steel and vocals), Brad Pemberton (drums) and Neal Casal (guitar).

The band first backed Adams on his 2005 double album Cold Roses, and have since played on Jacksonville City Nights, released that same year, 2007's Easy Tiger, although they weren't credited on the sleeve, to Adams' anger, and now latest album Cardinology.

"I'm just in the band," he explains, referring to his plan to dispense with his name in the band's moniker. "It's not my group. I'm one fifth and I'm only participating one fifth.

"At some point, if I want to bore everyone to death for 11 songs on my own, I'll do it, but from now on, we're just The Cardinals," he states.

Cardinology, the band's new album, was recorded during a "two-week or so" period in New York earlier this year, and carries on from where previous album Easy Tiger left off.

Praised by critics, the band describe the new album as a huge leap towards the sort of thing they eventually hope to achieve together.

For the moment, there's no other way Adams wants to work. "My old songs are decent, but not great," he says, modestly.

"When we write collectively, we write great songs, way better than anything I could (write] on my own. I know which I'd rather do.

"I don't want to write Come Pick Me Up (from 2000 debut album Heatbreaker]. It's not a classic song, but it's as good as someone at the age that I was when I wrote it can be.

"What we do now is easy too, because we work so well together. We go into the studio, make songs and then adults and college kids across the world can steal it from us on the internet, and then we go on the road to support it," he says, presumably only half-joking.

"There are subtle hints on Cardinology to what we're going to become. My old records are OK, but this is what's happening now."

Adams is already looking past Cardinology and dreaming about where the band will go next. "S***'s going to get weird and awesome," he says. "Because we're into bands like Oasis and Foo Fighters: big, monolithic rock bands who explore all those areas. That's what Cardinals is. That's the work I want to do."

The Cardinals, The Picture House, Lothian Road, tonight, 7.30pm, 24.50, 0844-847 1740