Ryan Adams Quotes
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For me, a record is valid when I actually hold the vinyl. Like, I've worked on the art for a while and I see the vinyl and I go "Ooh, it's an actual LP. How cool is that?" That's very sacred to me. You can't take that back, you know?
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I'm a pretty bad troubadour. I'm more of a music fan who got away with making records.
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They don't make coats for this kind of cold
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I think that music, or at least the kind of music that I make, benefits greatly from improvisation.
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It's hard to be bipolar and bicoastal at the same time.
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There's all these musicians in the world, and anybody that takes enough time to create a record or even think about the fantasy of rock & roll, I mean, it's a really vulnerable place to be in. It's a huge thing to do.
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You could eat sushi off my bookshelf. My cleaning regime is like a battleground. I'm Genghis Khan and my cleaning products are my Mongolian army and I take no prisoners. The rest of my life is an experiment in chaos so I like to keep my flat neat.
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The good thing about playing the guitar: You can take on different kinds of music. I'm always doing something different from the last thing I did because I have the shortest attention span on earth.
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I was never much of a bass player.
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I think it would be wrong to consider 'Ashes and Fire' a love album. The record is obsessed with time. I believe that there is a kinder view of the self on this record.
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Sometimes an idea from six years ago will come to me out of the blue. And maybe I haven't even seen the lyrics I wrote down, but I'll just have this physical memory of having written it, and in my mind I can see the piece of paper, and the words I wrote down, and then by muscle memory, I'll remember the chords that go along with it.
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I've gotten to a place where I still love to play and sing, but I don't have any ego agenda left, outside of just wanting to stay in a creative place and play music. I much prefer to sing for somebody else, and to somebody else.
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Caitlin Cary and I were always talking about X when we talked about whiskeytown, before it became an actual band. We like the concept of there being no real front person in X, yet this kind of switch up of vocals and really their sheer power, and their ability to sort of bastardise punk rock and midwetsren rock and even country into their own sound.
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The weirdest thing I've been fascinated with nowadays is the new contemporary country music, which to me sounds like very strange '70s pop, and sometimes like rock music. But some of the themes in there - maybe it's because I know how the songs were written, but it really does sound like it was written by two or three people, with the idea to appeal to the most general audience.
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Forever only takes its toll on some
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I got on the phone with the president of my label and I said, "Obviously, I write songs in a lot of styles and play a lot of different kinds of music. We're getting toward the end of our business collaboration. If you could envision a record that you wanted to hear from me, what kind of record would it be?" It wasn't like asking him to fill an order, it was really just a conversation. For all the things I'd ever asked him, this was one thing I'd never asked, and I don't know why. So I was curious. And the thing that he was most interested in hearing was a solo record.
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The process of making music is more interesting to me than the end result. If I was a cook, I'd be more interested in cooking food than eating food.
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Maybe I am a jerk sometimes. Maybe I'm not. I think most people are kind of a jerk once in a while.
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I don't think I've ever gone on stage to be an asshole. I know one thing, from the past, and that's that my intentions always began in a pure way. I really want to just try and play the songs.
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Do you remember stormy winter?Well button up your coat, one's comin' soon
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This is going to sound crazy, but I can hear music in my head. I can imagine a piano or a guitar playing, and I can sort of think out.
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Collaboration has become really integral to my process. I play music so that I can spend time with my friends and communicate in that way. I experience so much joy in that process, because, you know, it's those times of getting together and playing music and all that comes with it that are the best for me.
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It would be really nice to make a record that would be super-fun to play live - a record that would be funny, with a little bit of heart.
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There is nothing wrong with loving the crap out of everything. Negative people find their walls. So never apologize for your enthusiasm. Never. Ever. Never.