Ryan Adams by David Menconi

Author:David Menconi [Menconi, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2012-05-09T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Maybe I just drank the whiskey, but I really did think Strangers Almanac was going to be enormous. I actually got chills the first time I heard “16 Days,” imagining it as the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” of alternative country. The hook, Ryan’s lyrical wordplay, and the vocals were all killer, every element exquisitely balanced. Ryan’s yearning lead vocal was amazing, with letter-perfect harmonies from Caitlin and Phil. So I had “16 Days” pegged as the breakout hit, with “Excuse Me” as the follow-up single to close the deal.

Around that same time, a review of Strangers Almanac appeared in Rolling Stone magazine. “If there’s to be a Nirvana among the bands that are imprecisely dubbed alternative country,” the review began, “look to Whiskeytown.” Of course, that review was written by Grant Alden, Peter Blackstock’s coeditor of No Depression magazine, so perhaps he drank the whiskey, too. But at the time, that level of success didn’t seem far-fetched.

The ride was going to be bumpy, though. Drama set in before the band hit the road that summer, when bassist Jeff Rice had to bow out of the lineup over health issues. For a replacement, Whiskeytown drafted one of Ryan’s old Freight Whaler bandmates. Chris Laney had just graduated from college and was working at a restaurant in Atlanta when he got the call, and he trucked on up to Raleigh to commence rehearsals.

“Ryan basically told everybody, ‘Chris Laney’s coming in and he’s awesome, kick-ass, it’ll be great,’” Laney said in 2011. “I’d met Phil once before and was told, ‘That’s asshole Phil’—and they stuck me with him, living on his couch. We had one band practice with everyone there and it was an hour at the most. It felt like Ryan was there maybe twenty minutes. He sang through a bass amp and we might have played three or four songs when he told everybody, ‘See, I toldja he could do it.’ He left, and I didn’t play with him again until we were onstage.”

Laney picked up where Jeff Rice left off, so Whiskeytown had a rhythm section that was decidedly more rock and less country. When they were on, that version of Whiskeytown could rock with an intensity bordering on metallic. Jeff Hart was playing bass in John Howie’s Two Dollar Pistols by then, and he remembers opening a Whiskeytown show in Tennessee during that period.

“That was the best version of Whiskeytown ever,” Hart said. “Ryan was great and Phil was at his very best, too. It was tight and powerful, not falling apart like it’d been a year and a half earlier. It was a quantum leap from anything I’d seen them do before.”

Unfortunately, however, there were other nights when things were falling apart more than ever. Relations between Ryan and Phil remained beyond strained, and the entropy that Jim Scott managed to keep under control in the studio ran amok onstage. Thomas O’Keefe, the band’s long-suffering road manager, once summarized Whiskeytown’s batting average as follows: “Typically, one-third of their shows were superb; one-third sucked; and one-third were some memorable punk thing.

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