#whiskeytown

[morningcallsphotography]

Whiskeytown Lake NY -> CA (and back), 2021

Contact ©morningcallsphotography

[rolloroberson]

Whiskeytown

[waugh-bao]

"One night when I was having some drinks Keith got upset with the guitar player in Whiskeytown and chased him down the hall with a [broken off] bottle of vodka. I think Charlie got snubbed in front of Keith. It was accidental but it really set Keith off."-Ryan Adams, 1997

[asoftepiloguemylove]

"I was born in an abundance of inherited sadness."

Whiskeytown, Jacksonville Skyline

[gregorygalloway]

Whiskeytown’s 3rd and final studio album was released on 22 May 2001.

Recorded in 1999, the album remained unreleased for almost 2 years as the band’s label was shut down during the merger between Polydor and Universal Music. The band broke up before the album was released. “If Pneumonia had come out when it was supposed to back in 1999, there would probably still be a Whiskeytown today,” said Mike Daly (who co-wrote 7 of 15 songs on the album) in 2001.

By the time Pneumonia was released, Ryan Adams had already started his solo career, and Heartbreaker had been released in September 2000.

[syrenandthewaves]

the love of my life

[plantfueledadventure]

Northern California is home to many great waterfalls. I need to make a trip up there (at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area) https://www.instagram.com/p/Byn-f7xBzDe/?igshid=vfokxrp5yrhw

[hyenabutter]

I loved Whiskeytown when I was younger, and after they imploded Ryan Adams released his first solo album, Heartbreaker about two months before I turned nineteen. It remains I think a really good record, romantic and self-absorbed and despairing in a way that speaks unusually loudly to someone very young. I listened to it endlessly while I was in a particularly bad place, both emotionally and physically, living in a motel during a cold and bleak winter in Carthage, Texas, more or less alone. I wasn't more than 90 minutes away from friends and family, but it felt at the time like I might as well have been on the moon, and Heartbreaker was one of the records that kept me tethered to the world. 

Adams put out another record shortly after, called Gold, that shed most of what made his earlier work with Whiskeytown and on Heartbreaker so compelling. I listened to it recently for the first time in many years and what struck me the most was how it made no attempt to disguise its obvious ambitions: this was the album that was designed to make Adams a star, and the pictures in the CD booklet of him lounging in bed, smoking cigarettes and playing with a pistol while nuzzling some anonymous woman (the singer-songwriter Leona Naess, to whom Adams was at one time engaged?) seemed especially callow to me, empty poses, preening and vain. 

It was around the time that Gold came out that I began to see interviews and read stories about Adams in magazines, and what came to light was rarely pleasant: what came through was that Adams, regardless of whatever talents he might have, was basically an asshole. He continued to release increasingly mediocre albums, and at some point the quality of the material began to be seriously outweighed by the defects of his personality. I stopped buying his records nearly fifteen years ago, and would check in every now and again only to have my decision vindicated. 

And now it's been revealed that not only is he an asshole, he's perhaps a criminal too. All I can say to that is I hope it's not true if only for the sake of the victim. But I suspect otherwise. 

I wish I could say I was surprised by this news, but Adams' bad behavior has been a matter of public record for so long that the only surprise to be had is that this didn't come to light sooner, but Adams has had the power to keep his accusers in check, and more importantly, an industry with the ability to protect him, a Boys Will Be Boys attitude that is endemic, which is the most troubling thing of all. 

Even if you could imagine a world where defending this kind of behavior was acceptable in light of the art being created, something I hope no one could, something I unfortunately know many can, the music isn't even worth that, and hasn't been for years. In truth it never was, and never will be, for Adams or anyone else. Ryan Adams has written some good songs, songs that I've loved. But that's no defense. Someone else will write more.