Mon, 24 Jul 2000 08:35:30 -0400 (EDT)


>From Wall of Sound:

Whiskeytown Wraps Things Up 

Ryan Adams promises that his band Whiskeytown's long-delayed 
third album will be released — as soon as the fall or possibly 
during early 2001. But take note: He says it will be the last 
Whiskeytown album, too. 

"There probably won't be any tours to support it," says Adams, 
25, who releases his first solo album, Heartbreaker, on the 
Bloodshot label September 5. "We may do major cities once and 
sort of end the whole thing. I'm pretty tired. I think I'm 
ready to kind of do things that are a little more my way. I 
want to do music that's Stones-ier, more broken-down; it 
might be better to do that kind of thing on my own, just for 
awhile, anyway. It's hard to operate in that big of a machine, 
like the band. I'm sort of cynically resigned to doing my own 
thing." 

Though Adams joked at this year's South By Southwest music 
festival that the album would be called "Why the F--k Did It 
Take So Long," it's actual title will be Pneumonia. It was 
produced by Ethan Johns, the son of legendary rock producer 
Glyn Johns, who also helmed Adams' solo joint. The Whiskeytown 
project was actually done about the time the group's label, 
Outpost, was left in limbo following the Universal Music Group 
mergers that swallowed up Outpost's parent, Geffen Records. 
Adams won't specify which label will release Pneumonia; "I don't 
want to jinx it," he explains, although he says it will be a 
new company that he describes as "the outlaw major. Some people 
are starting something new that's going to kick the ass of all 
these bulls--t, Seagrams-owned record companies." 

Meanwhile, Adams is planning to tour on his own in September and 
October to promote Heartbreaker before returning to Nashville, Tenn., 
to start work on his next solo album, which he's already written 
the songs for and will record with a new four-piece rock band he's 
formed there. — Gary Graff