Ryan Adams

Ryan Adams biography

David Ryan Adams (born November 5, 1974) is an American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter, from Jacksonville, North Carolina. Initially part of the group Whiskeytown, which was earlier considered one of the leaders of the alt-country genre, Adams left the band and released his first solo album Heartbreaker in 2000. The album was nominated for the Shortlist Music Prize. Adams has released six additional solo albums, including the UK certified-gold Gold, and five albums with The Cardinals.

Adams has also produced albums for Jesse Malin and Willie Nelson and collaborated with the Counting Crows, Weezer, Norah Jones, America, Minnie Driver, Cowboy Junkies, Leona Naess, Toots & the Maytals, Beth Orton and Krista Polvere. He has written a book of poems, Infinity Blues, and Hello Sunshine, a collection of poems and short stories. In 2009 Adams married singer-songwriter and actress Mandy Moore, left The Cardinals and announced that he was taking a break from music.

Adams resumed performing in October 2010 and released his thirteenth studio album, Ashes & Fire, on October 11, 2011. The album peaked at #7 on the Billboard 200.

Early life

Ryan Adams was born on November 5, 1974, in Jacksonville, North Carolina. When he was eight, Adams began writing short stories and limericks on his grandmother's typewriter. He is quoted as saying, "I started writing short stories when I was really into Edgar Allan Poe. Then later, when I was a teenager, I got really hard into cult fiction: Hubert Selby, Jr., Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac." At the age of 14 Adams began learning to play the electric guitar that his mother and stepfather had bought him, and shortly afterward joined a local band named Blank Label. Although Blank Label did not stay together long, a three-track 7" record exists, dated 1991 and lasting less than seven minutes in total.

Adams attended Jacksonville High School but dropped out of high school in his first week of tenth grade, moving into bandmate Jere McIlwean's rental house just outside Jacksonville. Around this time he performed briefly with two local bands, Ass and The Lazy Stars. Following this, Adams joined The Patty Duke Syndrome and once played in a bar in Jacksonville. After obtaining his GED, Adams left Jacksonville for Raleigh, shortly followed by McIlwean. The Patty Duke Syndrome split in 1994 after releasing a 7" single containing two songs (The Patty Duke Syndrome was on one side, while the other side was a band called GlamourPuss).

Following the breakup of The Patty Duke Syndrome, Adams went on to found Whiskeytown with Caitlin Cary, Eric "Skillet" Gilmore, Steve Grothmann and Phil Wandscher. The founding of Whiskeytown saw Adams move to alt-country, describing punk rock as "too hard to sing" in the title track of Whiskeytown's debut album Faithless Street. Whiskeytown was heavily influenced by the country-rock pioneers, most notably Gram Parsons. Whiskeytown quickly gained critical acclaim with the release of their second full-length album, Strangers Almanac, their first major label release. A third album, Pneumonia, was completed in 1999, but record label problems delayed its release. It was eventually released by Lost Highway in 2001, by which time the band was effectively done.

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