while growing up in jacksonville, south carolina, singer/songwriter ryan adams (not bryan adams!) was raised on a diet of loretta lynn, merle haggard and johnny cash.  in his teens, he discovered punk and electric guitar.  as an adult, he has combined his childhood influences to create a heartfelt alt-country sound combining traditional country twang with distorted guitar and emotional lyrics.

ryan's big break came with the group whiskeytown (meaning "to getting drunk").  whiskeytown (along with uncle tupelo -who later split to form wilco and son volt- and the jayhawks) were highly influenced by and took off where gram parsons, the "father" of alt-country" (who died a year before ryan was born) left off.  in fact, whiskeytown had such high expectations from critics that it was suggested that they could do to their genre what nirvana did to grunge.   that never happened, of course, as whiskeytown disbanded in 1999.

soon after, ryan began a solo career, and released his solo debut heartbreaker to critical acclaim.  since that release, the prolific ryan has released nine other l.p.'s, three officially with his current backing band, the cardinals.  billed as ryan adams & the cardinals, his most recent effort, cardinology was released october 28, 2008.

click here to watch a in studio set/interview recorded by kcrw's morning becomes eclectic from november 09, 2007.  click here and here to listen to in-studio interviews/sets recorded by wxpn for world café on june 15, and july 23 both from 2007.  click here to listen to an story originally aired on npr's all things considered on november 04, 2002. 

ryan adams & the cardinals have quite a few dates scheduled.  check here to see if they are coming to your town.

as always, please buy this album from your local independent music store by people who know and love music and not from retailers like wal-mart (soulless, globally-homogenizing, community-killers) or i-tunes (albums should be listened to as an entire composition with album cover and liner notes in hand).  incidentally, these two companies sell more music than any other retailer in the united states.  that my friend, bites.