Onetime alt-country wunderkind and singer for Whiskeytown comes of age with a solo effort, a transcontinental tour, a wagging tongue and a bizarre love for bad pop. an un-conversation with Basement-Life by Jonathan Bond It's a crisp fall day and Ryan Adams is fielding questions from me while in his front yard "kickin leaves". The North Carolina native now hangs his hat in Nashville, that institution that has crushed so many free spirits like himself. As the conversation begins to roll, Adams informs me that while we talk he will be preparing "supper -- not dinner" and throughout our talk you can variously hear birds chirping, a dog barking and the whir of a blender. On a week long hiatus from an ever-expanding tour in support of his solo debut Heartbreaker, Adams is affable, intense and left-of-center funny. I find as the interview begins to gel (and later looking back at the 3700 word, eight- page transcript, that this man is not afraid to speak his mind. And speak his mind again. I also notice that sometimes the answers don't match the questions, Adams coming across as half seasoned politico/half court jester. He clearly understands what it means to give a "Dylan interview". Rising quickly from the train wreck that became Whikseytown, the band that died from the weight of others' expectations, Adams has produced a diary entry of an album, the organic and largely quiet Heartbreaker. Heartbreaker is the reason for the interview, and the reason Ryan Adams has been touring his ass off, playing solo shows for the first time in his musical life, only catching his break for a bit before hitting the road again in Europe. A natural starting point with the singer/songwriter is to inquire how touring behind the album is going. Adams enthuses that the response has been "amazing! you wouldn't believe it, its really cool." He continues by explaining what an audience member might expect if they catch his solo act. "I get really quiet and I don't play with a pick or anything. I don't stand up, I sit down in a chair and just like get sort of lost, and people usually follow." It seems that audience members have a familiarity with the new material that surprises even Adams. "They know songs that aren't even on the record. Songs that I just play live that I've been playing live since I started doing my own thing." While audiences clearly have embraced this incarnation of Adams artistry, he still must deal with the untimely demise of Whiskeytown. Once touted as the savior of insurgent country music, the requests for Whiskeytown music at his shows are met with a flat "no fuckin way". When asked about the fate of the band and the fabled last album that sits in the can, Ryan rushes the response, like reciting lines or reading from a speech someone else has written: "Our last record is gonna come out but we pretty much decided it was over. It was what it was. There's not even really a band anymore." He begins speaking so fast at this point that it becomes very clear he would rather talk about the cleanliness of his fingernails. The next few sentences fall on top of each other like staccato gunfire. "The last record was great and we are all excited for it to come out and when it comes out were not touring to support it but were doing interviews. If I do anything more with Caitlin or Skillet (the other permanent Whikeytown members) we'll call it something else. We wont call it Whiskeytown. I think were probably decidedly as tired of that name and tired of what that means as anyone can imagine. I mean we just took a lot of hard blows . . . who knows, maybe one day we will decide to do it again, but I doubt it. I don't think anyone is going to cry if we don't." After this rough patch in our conversation, Adams becomes very animated and doesn't look back. In fact, Adams puts the verb in verbose, speaking freely on a hodgepodge of topics, only stopping occasionally to stir his "supper" on the stove. Asked to explain how the young alt-country performers fit into the factory that is Nashville Adams goes into a detailed explanation of the dynamics of Nashville nightlife, which mutates into an Anti-White America manifesto. From this point forward Adams goes off and never looks back. "Nashville works two different ways. Townies we call honkies. All the honky crew go to work or do other music row shit and they get off work at five, or five-thirty and they go out between six and nine. They actually have dinner and beers, but between six and nine. Ten is the latest they'll stay out unless they're cross honkies, unless they're rock and rollers . . . Around nine or ten o'clock the underbelly comes out. Like Billy Mercer and me and Lucinda Williams and fucking everybody comes out and we go to the bar, maybe some of the same bars that these people (honkies) were at. Were playing shows at like 11 o'clock or whatever. So basically, the kids rule the nighttime here. You know we'll go to the mall during the day and do like normal people stuff, but as far as night life and playing is concerned your going to run into the people you want the hang out with much later as opposed to much earlier. I wont go out to fuckin eat until 9 o'clock. I don't want to see a bunch of fuckin loser white people who don't fuckin know anything, you know? Let me just say this. . . moving to Nashville just really made me become just completely disgusted at fucking white people. Honkies. I can't stand 'em. Fuckin horrible. You know, wearing brand new jeans fuckin pulled up to their fuckin waist and their new cars and they are completely brainwashed by their television and shit, I cant fuckin stand it. . . They're idiots. They're complete idiots. They believe, they actually believe the television. It's fucked up, man. And I just don't want to be surrounded by people like that." Clearly hitting a nerve asking him to explain industry verses indie, I ask him how he feels about "new country radio" Jackpot. "I don't even like country music. I really don't. I mean, I like Johnny Cash and Hank Williams and Gram Parsons and stuff . . . They're not really genre-ized(sic), formulated or formatted. But no, I could give a fuck. I could give a fuck about anybody and their music on the radio. I could care. I mean definitely not that kind of stuff. I mean I like Shania Twain but I really don't like, I really can't stand all that bullshit like Toby Keith or all that crap. It's just retarded. These people don't actually have country accents. They're not from Tennessee, they're from fuckin Los Angeles. And then they get the accent on and even if the do have a fuckin accent it still doesn't give them a right to be M-o-r-o-ns. All that stuff, it sounds like Eddie Rabbit, it doesn't sound like country. It sounds like Eddie Rabbit, and it sounds like Def Leppard. The structure of the songs they are using now, the closes thing to country that any of that sounds like is the Eagles and the Eagles were way better than any of that stuff anyway." Everything is going along nicely, Adams is spitting fire, tearing apart the pop pap that is masquerading as country on the radio. And then something goes horribly, horribly wrong. Adams begins to positively foam at the mouth with praise for the cheesiest, lowest-common denominator music in the universe. Clearly Adams is not the arbiter of good taste, and his responses make me question his sanity or at the least his sincerity: "I mean thank god for Mariah Carey and fuckin Christina Aguilera and shit like that that's really good. As far as honky shit, that stuff sucks, but Mariah, man. Fuckin awesome. That's a star. Not Toby Keith. 'Cause like Mariah is not trying to be anything, man, she's just trying to get her flow down. She's just trying to make it work, make it happen. I mean, I don't like Britney Spears. I think she's just as honky as Toby Keith and Jody messiah and all that kinda shit, she's just totally fuckin fake. You can tell when somebody is up front and they're a pop star and they should be. I choose my examples as like Madonna and Mariah Carey and Christina Aguilera and Poppa Roach and Blink 182 is a great band. You just gotta filter out the crap. (no shit- ed) Some of those people busted ass to get up there, and they're still on fire, and then some of them are like whores. Disgusting fuckin whores. Britney's one and so is Toby Keith. Well maybe not Toby Keith specifically, but any of that trite bullshit that I hear when I'm messin with the radio when I'm stoned in the car. It's terrible." When asked if he is pulling my leg about his love for Mariah Carey's talent, the conversation goes as such: Me - Are you kidding about the Mariah Carey stuff by the way? Ryan Adams - No. I love her. Are you fuckin kidding man? She's fuckin amazing. She ROCKS! Me - Well she's got a great range and all that but . . . Ryan Adams - No man. No. She is really good. All those songs are really cool. She writes those songs. Somebody writes the music but she writes all the words. I love her man. The only hint that he is grinning at the other end of the phone is just after the last "man" when the faintest laugh escapes. But the game continues. Adams goes on to sing the praises of Rainbow, the new Stone Temple Pilots record, Black Sabbath, and Slayer. He only seemingly comes back to earth when he says that he loves the Smiths. He's been listening to Elliot smith, Al Green and Macy Gray. Not that there is anything wrong with a little Sabbath now and again, but you would never think the man that made Heartbreaker would mix up his styles into such a confusing amalgam of crappy music. The Mind wobbles. By this time in the conversations my ears are burning from shear volume, but not the noise kind. Since picking up the phone with Adams, over three thousand words have been tattooed on my brain. I begin to wonder what it all means. White people suck. Mariah rules and Britney is a ho. Ryan Adams, the front man from a legendary alt-country band doesn't like country. I decide to give in and stop trying to guide this conversation. I ask him if there is anything he would like to say to the Basement-Life readership that has yet to be covered. I'm really cute. I'm fuckin totally hot. You know Whiskeytown, the reason that Whiskeytown sold the kind of records that we did is because I have a great ass."