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- Ryan Adams & Caitlin Cary only.
- * set list based on review from No
Depression:
WHISKEYTOWN
Exit/In (Nashville, TN)
September 27, 1997
A handwritten sign at the door announced Whiskeytown would be playing an
acoustic set, and though rumors swirled among the few there not to bask in
the execrable mediocrity of opener Neal Coty, it was not entirely clear
what
that meant until Caitlin Cary and Ryan Adams took the stage unescorted.
Their second night, they said later, as a duo.
The missing quartet - guitarist Phil Wandscher, drummer Steve Terry,
bassist
Chris Laney and utility player Mike Daly - went largely unexplained,
though
given the band's volatile revolving door history, it was hardly a surprise
that the faces onstage had changed again. What was truly a surprise, and
may
yet prove a blessing, was how beautifully Cary and Adams carried off a set
of songs that went on and on and on until the bar stopped serving.
It was a far cry from the pleasant but somehow perfunctory rock shows the
band had offered up a few weeks earlier in Atlanta, and in Knoxville.
Exposed, nervous, and energized, Adams revealed far more stage presence
than is usually his wont. Cary and Adams periodically resumed a running
banana-as-telephone skit, and Adams talked effusively - jabbered, as the
night wore on - between songs, but mostly it was a powerfully vulnerable
performance.
The songs shone like pebbles on a clear stream, Adams' vocals were as
tough
and lonely as the mountain wind, and Cary proved a wonderful duet partner.
And as much as Adams may be tugged in different ways by new music he's
exposed to or by the musicians he plays with, it is his songs, and his
singing, that are special.
Minus the bluster of electric guitars and drums, those songs were
spectacular, touching, revealing and - there's no getting around this word
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vulnerable. Minus the band's set list, Adams and Cary played about
everything they could think of, and comparatively few tracks from
Strangers
Almanac. Adams dug out a song from early rehearsals, another he hadn't
finished writing, "My Heart Is Broken" from their Bloodshot
double-single,
and something he'd written the week he owned a Joy Division record; Cary
brought back her stellar "Matrimony" from Faithless Street; they
took
requests; and the songs were all the richer for their simplicity.
The evening was not without humor. Adams paused with a wry shrug midway
through "Faithless Street", skipping over the part where he
sings "So I
started this damn country band" to laughter from those in the
audience who
knew the song. The second time through, Cary stepped up to the mike like a
visiting angel, adding only the second line: "Because punk rock is
too hard
to sing." In the end the band was perfect, far away.
- GRANT ALDEN
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