Monday 18 September 2017

Ryan Adams - Manchester 14th Sep 2017

Heres a guy thats been at it a long a time and probably hasn't got the accolade he deserves and honestly, until recently I hadn't heard of him. Ryan Adams, 42 from North Carolina, he's had a 2 decade long career with 16 studio albums. I'm not going to sit here and pretend I know them and him, my knowledge comes from the 20 or so songs I've known from being played in my partners playlists.

Alternative Country / Folk Rock is pretty much the genre, though I'd say at parts he floats into Hard Rock. 

The gig was at The Apollo, which wasn't the best venue on the night. I'm not sure if this was a combination of recent events but upped security was frustraiting and at times over the top. You can't stand within 1.5meters of the sides or back so there was a lot of people getting pushed to the sides and back in, nothing aggressive but poorly managed/set out. I don't recall it being like that at previous gigs.
Also the lower bar was closed, there was rumours this was at request of Ryan, though I don't know. So getting booze was a long wait, it was made up though by the queue having a chuckle at a the Barman who had an uncanny resemblance to Samwel Tarly so there was a lot of Game Of Thrones based jokes about the long queue. Also they don't do Tequila!

Into to the Stalls and we're waiting on Ryan. Got a couple of jokes murmuring in the background about playing 'Summer of 69' I guess this happens alot, I know got the jibe a few times at work when I said who I was seeing tonight. 

The set and lighting for Ryan Adams expect mood lighting and backlighting with an array of TVs stacked instead of the usual strobe lights. The reason for this is Ryan suffers epilepsy, but that doesn't stop the show from looking visual fantastic.





The lights made it difficult to see Ryans face a lot, plus the long hair didn't help. Not that it really made a difference, the performance was a show of why he's had 16albums. He's an excellent guitarist and never missed a note vocally. It's hard to say who i'd compare him to, he's very much the classic cult rocker long hair and V shaped guitar, you can hear similarties to  Father John Misty and Springsteen at times.

The 26 song setlist started with Do You Still Love Me off his new album, then it was mixture of the back catalogue flicking from one album the other. Very fast paced making his through the tracks pretty quickly with a lot of energy, it seemed each song had a guitar change too, it's almost asif he swapped guitars for each album the song related to. I haven't seen that many changes before.



The paced slowed down when he played the title track to the new album Prisoner, opting to go it alone in an acoustic with just a few fairy lights on the mic stand




Picking up the pace and moving back between albums, and a load more guitar changes. He certainly looks to be enjoying himself and the audience too. It's not heavy or overly fast paced so much of the crowd is just stood bopping along and singing. Although that didn't stop several people needing to be stretchered out by paramedics.


I don't recall a huge interaction with the audiance, the occassional Hows everyone doing and a joke about the TV's. Overall the gig was pretty good, worth the night out and a different genre than I'd normally go to





Ryan Adams - Prisoner (Spotify) 

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