Drunken Confessions Liner Notes (from the whiskeytownavenues message board):

Ryan Adams and Whiskeytown - drunken confessions
an unauthorized collection of bedroom and radio songs, old and new

RESUME
David Ryan Adams
[Address and phone number]

EDUCATION
Jacksonville Senior High, 1988-1991
Coastal Carolina Community College, GED graduate
College Courses: Cultural Geography, Math 1991-92

Ryan Adams is such a prolific motherfucker that there's no way any of us will ever get around to hearing everything he writes. This particular cassette is made up of two or three live radio shows, plus demos from the "Angels EP" sessions, and some older, pre-Whiskeytown solo stuff, recorded as "The Skylarks." Some you may have heard elsewhere, some you most certainly haven't.  You figure out which is which.

Drank Like a River
Too Drunk to Dream
Fucking Bastards
Take Your Guns to Town
The Great Divide
Mining Town
Nervous Breakdown
Pawn Shop
Macon, GA

Western Star
Jacksonville, City of Light
Young, Fair Mary
The Bed That I Bought
Movin' On Up ['The Jeffersons' theme]
Steal Somebody's Car
Nervous Breakdown
Lucky Star
Texas
Lay Your Hand on the Coffin
Barter Town
Messengers of God

An autobiographical fragment, by Ryan Adams

Most all of the songs I write now concern Jacksonville [N.C.]. For a
very long time I wouldn't write about it or even think about it because
I had a very hard time growing up there. And the town itself has been
going through a very hard time since before I was born. But I dropped
out of high school there ó I bought my first records there and I will
probably die and be buried there eventually ñ and for some reason I can
identify with that place now ó all those fucking people live there
because they can't imagine living anyplace else. It's all they know and
they're scared and don't like change. So that place is inhabited by all
these old fashioned people with ideas about the world that just aren't
viable anyplace else. They all drink a lot or not. It is the oldest
wrongest place in the world and it's where I'm from and it's where my
songs are coming from.

So to explain why I'm in a country band now as opposed to being in any
other kind of band ó?or not being in a band at all ó is because I feel
as though I have a lot of explaining to do ó like I have to tell this
terrible story about this terrible place that really isn't so bad when
you know what's behind the terrible part ó to be less cryptic.

Playing in this band ó writing these songs ó reminds me of my hometown
ó?of my G-ma and Papo ñ my Papo's (granddad's) death ó of my mother
calling the cops on me for being wasted when I was 16 ó?of the Dairy
Queen down the street from my house I used to drink behind when everyone
else was asleep ó at work ó or watching the TV. Of my grandma's
smoke-filled house with old hi-fis and lamps with dust on them.

I don't play country music because I want to be different or whatever ó
it's because that kind of music hangs like a blanket over Jacksonville
and I'd like to secretly have more in common with that town and those
people that led me to become...

WORK EXPERIENCE
Restaurant jobs, odd jobs, temporary services, furniture repair,
restoration and painting, and now pursuing a job as an office boy for
the News and Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina.

HOBBIES
Nightlife, writing songs and playing in random bands around the triangle
area. Usually I am the guitar player and write all the songs being that
the further up you go in the hipper music circles the more often you
come across the alcoholic types. Other hobbies include romantic
interests. Of course all past experience are too severe to mention.

I was jobless last year as I am now. Of course in the time lived between
then and now there were jobs, the kind that I expected to either quit or
be fired from. They served the purpose of playing bills at that time and
my interest in the job began and ended there. For some reason I have
become one of those people who cannot be satisfied giving into routine.
I get restless.

Of course it would be so much easier to just live. To be satisfied
solely with what I had. Any and all things good that would be gained
then would seem to be miracles. But real miracles don't come easy. As
time has passed I have noticed how quick I am to doubt and how cold I
become to the ideas of others. Idealism doesn't work. It works in the
movies and it works on paper. However in real life, in the real scheme
of things including nine to five work and romantic relations, it does
not. The end result is the individual seems slack and is accepting of
situations that are less than an acceptable way of living. Of course in
his mind it is something completely different. Perhaps a means to an end
to his paradise. An illusion of grandeur. I am as guilty as sin of
committing myself to things that I would otherwise be unhappy with due
to my excessive desire for the idealistic.

There comes when a time when old acquaintances must be forgotten, when
the party's over, when the fat lady is just about [to] let out those
first few repulsive notes and it is finally obvious that action must be
taken. Of course now what? What does the idealist pursue in modern day
society? More likely, what in the hell am I to pursue in modern day
society? Flat broke from the listless nights spend crooning life over a
bottle of strong liquor, using my youth as a weapon against the world
and myself. Taking advantage of life at all cost at any means and most
definitely every waking hour. I imagine I shall pursue the same
direction as I always have, maybe this time with more self discipline. I
have escaped every other form of discipline save the bad luck and hard
knocks that one comes across alone and against the world once and for
all. Even in failure I will still be at work. As restless as before. As
willing to submit only to the deepest of my whims.

It is important to become disillusioned with one's art so that one may
feel it necessary to overcome oneself in their own right. In the name of
their own vision of what is truth. A true artist cannot see the world
except through his art. His life and his work are art. His soul awaiting
translation.